Michael Zenke
Articles by Michael Zenke
Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria launches!
It seems like a long time ago that we were waiting on word from the Connect08 event about the possibility of a Lord of the Rings Online expansion. When word came down that we'd all be delving into the Mines of Moria we weren't surprised ... we were ecstatic! Even in our very first interview with Jeffrey Steefel about the expansion, you can tell our cup runneth over with excitement. Today the expansion finally goes live! The official patch notes are up on the forums, and the servers went live at midnight with all the new content! We've collected up all of our best pieces of news and information on Turbine's latest ... check it out! Massively's Top 5 most-anticipated features of MoriaWith Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria releasing in less than a month, there are quite a few things we're excited to see in this first expansion for the game. Most of these favorite changes are well-known for anyone following Moria news, but a few we discovered through the beta. Here are our five favorite! Massively's exclusive Mines of Moria dev tourEarlier last month, Massively was invited to get a hands-on look at Mines of Moria, the first-ever expansion for Lord of the Rings Online with Turbine's Adam Mersky and Moria Producer Mike Jablonn. During this special dev tour, we were treated to many of the features of the new environments, new creatures, certain landmarks and the Legendary Item system. Exploring Book 1, Chapter by ChapterAs part of Massively's ongoing coverage of Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria, we're happy to bring to you this extensive look through the entire Book 1 of Volume 2. This entire article will be approached as a comprehensive venture through the Book, from Chapters 1 through 14. Unboxing the Mines of Moria Collector's EditionOn Sunday's The Daily Grind, we asked if you had purchased the Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria Collector's Edition. Some of you said you did, while others of you said that you didn't see the sense in paying extra for physical items that would simply collect dust or sit in a box. Low-level guide to Mines of Moria: What's in it for me?So you are enjoying Lord of the Rings Online, and are looking forward to the Mines of Moria expansion tomorrow, but you're wondering if it will actually have anything for you, as a low-level casual player.
Cryptic may be porting Champions / Star Trek Online to the PS3
The folks at Kotaku were tipped by a reader to the possibility of a new twist in the MMO console wars. The popular job board/want ads service Craigslist is currently playing host to a job posting from Cryptic Studios. Developer of Star Trek Online and Champions Online, the company already has deep roots in development for the Xbox 360. They've shown their second superhero game playing quite well on Microsoft's console at events all through the summer con season. Now it seems as though they're looking to bring those games to the PlayStation 3 as well.The Craigslist listing specifically calls for a "PS3 Engine Programmer", and the job description includes daily duties touching on the company's massively multiplayer games. "We have developed a flexible, cutting edge MMO platform to power games like Champions and Star Trek Online. It runs on PC and XBOX 360 - now we want to support PS3 too." Kotaku labels this as a rumor, and rightly so; no confirmation or announcement from Cryptic means that this may be nothing more than fact-finding.%Gallery-17946%
Lineage II Update: Pailaka and New Kamaloka
The folks at NCsoft were kind enough to give us a heads up: there's some great new content coming to Lineage II! An all new, all free expansion to the game called Gracia Part 2 is coming soon to the game and we have a chance to look inside two of the new areas being added to the gameworld! Or should I say, being added near the gameworld? Pailaka and Kamaloka are the two new areas in question, and they're unique instanced content for players of a wide level range.Pailaka in particular sounds very interesting - it's a series of solo instances intended to challenge and reward players who take on big tasks on their own. We have extensive details from the developers below the cut, and lots of images of the new content in our gallery below. Go check out the pretty pictures, or read all about it!%Gallery-37082%
Massively.com giveaway: Snag a key for EverQuest II's The Shadow Odyssey
For the third week in a row we're fortunate enough to be able to bring you a fantastic giveaway. After the explosion of swag during our Birthday celebration, and last week's Lich King loot pile, you'd think we'd be flagging. But no, instead we're collaborating with Sony Online Entertainment to bring you five keys for the newest EverQuest II expansion! The Shadow Odyssey is hitting stores tomorrow, and you can snag your keys first thing right here from Massively.com. The expansion is worth $39.99 at retail, making this giveaway valued for a total of $160.To enter just leave a comment here on this post letting us know what you're most looking forward to in The Shadow Odyssey! You'll need to comment before 7:00 AM EST Tuesday, November 18th. You can only enter once per person, and after the contest closes we'll ship out the prize to five randomly-selected winners. To win you must be age 18 or up and a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec). For full eligibility details, we suggest you read our official rules. Good luck! %Gallery-35619%
The week in Massively features
The Anatomy of WoW: Seven games that inspired BlizzardMillions of people are playing World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King today, so we decided this would be the perfect time to dive into WoW's mechanics and see what other games inspired Blizzard when it was creating this monumental phenomenon. Lord of the Rings Online player's guide to World of WarcraftWorld of Warcraft's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, has released yesterday. Lord of the Rings Online's first expansion, Mines of Moria, is releasing this Tuesday. They both promise to be revolutionary expansions, and the fact that their launch dates are within a week of each other most likely means that you won't be playing both. Well, we're here to help bridge that gap a bit. Know Your LotRO Lore: The story of GandalfIn this inaugural edition of Know Your LotRO Lore, we thought we'd kick it off with one of the most lore-tastic characters of all time: Gandalf. If you don't know Gandalf, you don't know Lord of the Rings. He's been an iconic figure throughout Tolkien's books, Jackson's movies, countless songs, works of art and prose. Massively catches up with the new Age of Conan directorJoin us as we reflect on this initiative, discuss issues that the Funcom staff see as most important to the Age of Conan playerbase, and walk through features associated with the most recent expansive patch. Read on for the full details and insight into this unique MMO. A look at World of Warcraft's unique characteristicsAfter four years of being pretty much the biggest dog in the yard, does World of Warcraft still bring new ideas to the table? Click below to find out what we think.
CoH Merit Reward system explained pt. 2
It seems like your choice to move to this meta-currency system is an increasingly common design choice in MMOs. Do you see this as a trend in the industry, or did you have ulterior motives for going in this direction aside from satisfying your players? Phil: Really our goal was to more accurately reward players for their time. Give players what they want, give them more choices. Do they want the random roll? Do they want to save up for something specific? This turned out as our best option, a universal currency system, and that's how that came about. Matt: Which is not to say we dislike the side effect this has on gold farmers. You can buy as much influence as you want, but it's not going to get you any more merits. Your time in playing the game is what we're trying to reward.
The City of Heroes devs explain the new Merit Reward system
City of Heroes Issue 13 is enormous. Even with the Mission Architect pushed out to early next year, the next big patch coming to City of Heroes has enough content to satisfy a small army of players. We've talked previously about the upcoming PvP changes, the Day Job system, and we had the chance for extensive conversations with the developers back when the Issue was first announced. That said, there's still a lot of ground to cover. That's why we were thrilled when designer Phil Zeleski and the infamous Matt 'Positron' Miller reached out to us to clarify what's coming down the pipe with game rewards. We chatted with the gents extensively about the new and improved meta-currency coming to City of Heroes. It's going to make Task Forces and Story Arcs far more rewarding for the average player, and the background behind their design is fascinating. Join us below the cut for discussions about how they chose what rewards to give out, trends along these lines in the indstry, and much more.%Gallery-36910%
World of Warcraft Arena season 5 starts December 16th
Our friends at WoW Insider noticed last week that the 'blues' have put out just a few words about the next World of Warcraft Arena Season. Season 4 came to an end last week, with existing arena teams and ratings wiped during the extended maintenance earlier this week. Arena points will persist on a character until he or she hits level 71, allowing them a chance to spend any that remain. Arena Season 5 will begin on December 16th, giving everyone a chance to level to 80 and enjoy all the next content in Wrath of the Lich King.Until that time, players can still participate in Arena skirmish matches in two new brackets (71-75, 76-80) if they want to hone their skills prior to the new season. After the 16th of December and the new season, normal Arena rules will be restored and players will be able to compete for gear and end-of-season rewards. One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!
Massively.com giveaway: Play Wrath with a brand-new Razer mouse!
If you've been reading the site for a while, you might already be aware that our good friends at Razer have been pitching in with mice and mousing surfaces. It's always great to do giveaways here on the site - a nice change of pace for us and lots of fun for you! So we're thrilled to be able to do yet another giveaway with those folks, this time offering up a trio of Diamondback mice just in time for the launch of Wrath of the Lich King. Each of these babies retails for $49.99, making the pack total about $150. If you win you get to pick your mouse color; blue, red, and green are your options.To enter just leave a comment here on this post telling us why you're still playing World of Warcraft. What is it about WoW that's keeping you tied to Azeroth?. You'll need to comment before 7:00 AM EST Friday, November 14th. You can only enter once per person, and after the contest closes we'll ship out the prize to three randomly-selected winners. To win you must be age 18 or up and a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec). For full eligibility details, we suggest you read our official rules. Good luck! One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!
World of Warcraft's paid customization may allow race, gender changes
Eurogamer caught a few moments with Blizzard COO Paul Sams and Associate Producer Lee Sparks at the London, UK Wrath of the Lich King Launch event last night. There they managed to catch a few moments of conversation with the busy, busy men and asked a few follow-ups on the recently announced paid character customization options the comany has in the works. Essentially, the company views it as another value-added feature along the lines of the paid server transfer or name transfer. The paid character customization options will allow players to go back and tweak choices made at character creation. The capacity is already in the game to change hair style and color, but Blizzard seems to be implying 'deeper' changes - facial features, skin color, perhaps even gender or race. Despite that, the two company men resisted nailing anything down specifically. The feature, Eurogamer offers, is "more about making changes to decisions made in the past than adding additional options," and isn't intended to be a new microtransactional revenue stream. "The reason for the monetary expense is more of a barrier so that people don't do it every day," Sparks said. Read on into the article for full details.%Gallery-36550% One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!
Massively.com giveaway: Wrath of the Lich King collector's edition
Earlier we started off the day by giving away a quartet of Wrath of the Lich King expansion boxes. Now we've got a fantastic followup: a Collector's Edition Wrath box to really get you up to Northrend in style. This massive box features a pleasant blue coloration, an enormous number of perks, and (of course) that exclusive in-game pet named Frosty the Frost Wyrm. The World of Warcraft site has full details on this mighty offering. It retails for $69.99.To enter just leave a comment here on this post telling us what your favorite vanity pet (or companion pet) in the game is. This blogger? Big fan of the Red Dragonhawk. What about you? You'll need to comment before 7:00 AM EST Friday, November 14th. You can only enter once per person, and after the contest closes we'll ship out the prize to one randomly-selected winner. To win you must be age 18 or up and a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec). For full eligibility details, we suggest you read our official rules. Good luck! Tune in later today for one more giveaway! One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!
Blizzard talks (very generally) about its next MMO
Speaking very generally, Blizzard COO Paul Sams has unveiled just a few pieces of information about the well-known game developer's next MMO. He spoke briefly with Videogaming247 ahead of the London launch event for Wrath of the Lich King last night, referring to the in-development title as 'next generation', 'cool, new, and different.' Despite the time we've known they were working on another game, it is still apparently very much in the early stages of development. Sams describes a bit of their development process, noting the length of time the company takes on pre-production before actual content creation even starts.The COO was up-front about the fact that Blizzard is going to keep this thing under wraps for some time yet. As Sams put it, "The last thing we want to do is say, 'Hey we're doing this,' and everyone says, 'Oh cool,' and then we change things completely. We want to have a level of confidence that the direction we're going in the right one, and that it's polished enough to be able to show something, also. And we're not in either of those places yet." Check out the full article at VG247 for his complete (if uninformative) commentary.
Massively.com giveaway: Wrath of the Lich King boxes
You might have been around for our week of MMO giveaways, all surrounding Massively's first birthday! We're a full week and half into our second year now, and today's release of Wrath of the Lich King is a great way to get that year kicked off! We've been watching the folks at WoW Insider throw some really over-the-top giveaways for the last seven days, and we just had to get in on the fun. So today we're giving away four Wrath expansion boxes, each retailing for $39.99. That makes this contest worth a total of about $120. To enter just leave a comment here on this post telling us what your favorite Northrend zone is. You'll need to comment before 7:00 AM EST Friday, November 14th. You can only enter once per person, and after the contest closes we'll ship out the prize to four randomly-selected winners. To win you must be age 18 or up and a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec). For full eligibility details, we suggest you read our official rules. Good luck! Tune in later today for more WoW-themed giveaways! One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!
The Daily Grind: Are you braving the Wrath of the Lich King?
Today's the launch of an expansion to a game you may have heard of. Blizzard's second expansion to World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King, began selling at midnight launch events across the country early today. In fact, Massively and our sister site WoW Insider were onhand for a number of those events, and we hope some of you were as well. By now you're either deep into Northrend on a much-deserved MMO-related day off, or you're checking the site from work wishing you were questing your way through the Northlands.We've got a simple question for you today: Did you snag Wrath of the Lich King? If so, what feature or features made you jump onboard for launch day? If not, what's keeping you away? And, if not, make sure to stay tuned later today for some great giveaways! This blogger is probably playing right now, enjoying the danger and beauty of Howling Fjord. Let's add that as a bonus round question: In which of the two starting zones are you beginning your Wrath adventure? Let us know! One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!
A whole new Whirled: The future of Flash MMOs with Daniel James
Earlier this week we had the chance to speak with Mr. Daniel James, the CEO and co-founder of Three Rings. Makers of successful online titles Puzzle Pirates and Bang! Howdy, the company is well known for the quality of its work and the quirkiness of its GDC parties. They've been working on a third project, Whirled, for the better part of 2008 and it just launched into full live service earlier this week. We spoke with Mr. James about the whys and logic behind Whirled, about the power of user-created content, and the power of offering actual compensation for hard work and talent. Read on below the cut for our talk with Mr. James, and a thorough exploration of a brand-new Whirled.%Gallery-36577%
The future of Flash MMOs with Daniel James pt. 2
How do you compare what you're doing here with other Flash game initiatives on the web? Daniel: Well, they're sort of doing our thing and we're doing ours. We're not really interested in becoming the next Kongregate with thousands and thousands of flash games in Whirled. We're looking for a smaller number of – dare I say – good and interesting games. That's, I think, what we're going to see when people make original content for the platform. It's just a bit unique, you'll find it everywhere on the internet, but it's going to be built on Whirled. We're already pushing our Whirled games back out to sites like Kongregate, but it's essentially Whirled in a little box.
Age of Conan director interview pt. 2
Was there anything else in particular that jumped out at you as being noteworthy? Craig: In terms of the other content most of what we focused on, as we discussed earlier, there were several issues the players have brought to our attention. There were a lot of changes to the combat system in today's update, making sure that the game systems and the combos are fun. We tried to make them slightly easier to use in hectic situations, without dumbing things down. We definitely didn't want to do that. We did realize that certain of the high level combos tended to be a bit volatile, some of them had five steps to them in addition to the starter. We found in PvP that meant they weren't as effective as they could have been; they actually counted against people who were relying on the damage from those combos.
Massively catches up with the new Age of Conan director
A short while ago we had the chance to speak with Craig Morrison, the new director for Funcom's pulp fantasy epic Age of Conan. Morrison assumed the helm after the previous (development) director Gaute Godager stepped down, and since then the AoC team has been making a concerted effort to reach out to players. Perhaps drawing on lessons from other companies that have experienced player perception problems, the Funcom director seems to be making a deliberate campaign out of player recruitment, feedback, and communication.Join us as we reflect on this initiative, discuss issues that the Funcom staff see as most important to the Age of Conan playerbase, and walk through features associated with the most recent expansive patch. Read on for the full details and insight into this unique MMO. %Gallery-11743%
Three Rings officially launches Whirled project
Whirled, an ambitious web/virtual world hybrid from Three Rings, launched into Beta early this year. We were incredibly impressed with the project even back then, bouncing pieces of tofu or not. From there the project has only grown by leaps and bounds, and word now comes down that Whirled has officially launched! The interactive web environment now offers a microtransactional system where you can make money directly from your content. You can make or play games, chat with a wide array of players, or just enjoy the numerous and creative rooms players have generated over the last eight months.We had the pleasure of speaking with Mr. Daniel James about the new vision of Whirled, and you'll be able to read that discussion tomorrow. For the time being, go check out Venturebeat's analysis of the project or (if you're so inclined) read upon the full press release below the cut. PS: If you play, we recommend Brawler Whirled or Corpse Craft. They're both fantastic!%Gallery-36577%
A detailed look back at raiding in World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
Jennie Lees is the hard-bitten raider over at WoW Insider who offers advice through the "Ready Check" article series. This week in advance of Wrath of the Lich King's launch she has a great look back at the enormous amount of laughter and tears experienced during The Burning Crusade. World of Warcraft's raiding endgame is a high watermark in the MMO industry, and reading back over the content offered by Blizzard's first expansion is like taking a trip through a family photo album.Even casual players like this blogger has heard stories of Gruul and his growths, the horror of Vashj positioning, and problems with 'the ledge boss' in the Twins fight. It's a great read, designed to make every veteran reader smile and every casual player go "really?!?!". Make sure to keep your eyes peeled for all new raid information starting this week as Wrath takes its opening bow!%Gallery-36550% One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!