Chris Chester

Gaming By Chris Chester

SOE throwing block party at Comic Con

This blogger has always been rather jealous of San Diego residents. In hosting Comic Con, they not only get to meet the best and brightest that the comic industry has to offer, but increasingly, they're getting attention by big names in the MMO industry too. We knew that SOE was going to be in attendance, showing off DC Universe Online in playable form. We've now gotten word, via Grimwell's Blog, that they'll also be hosting a block party on Saturday the 26th outside of the Con proper for anybody in the San Diego area who wants to stop by, Con attendee or no.They'll be busing people to and from the Con to their location, where they'll have food, unreleased games to play, a live band, and plenty of SOE employees to bug about their games old and new. As icing on the cake (do you really need icing?), Jim Lee be making an appearance from 4:00pm to 5:30pm. To say this blogger is simply jealous would be a gross understatement.

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Amazon

Amazon By Chris Chester

Amazon lets loose a Blizzard of bargains today

At this point, we work under the assumption that there are probably very few people reading this blog that haven't had the pleasure of playing a Blizzard game from start to finish. But even if through some extraordinary happenstance, there was somebody out there who hadn't played World of Warcraft, there's s chance that they haven't yet had the opportunity to play some of the other Blizzard classics. Though Diablo 3 didn't turn out to be an MMO as we'd hoped, its progenitors are still fantastic games to have on call in the odd occasion that your internet goes down.That's why we recommend that you take a peek over at Amazon today, as they'll have 5 of the latest Blizzard games on sale today through their Deal of the Day and Lightning Deal promotions. The WoW Battlechest (which includes the original game, Burning Crusade, and a guide) will be up all day, but the Diablo Battlechest, the Burning Crusade expansion, the Warcraft III Battlechest, and Warcraft III proper will be on sale for a limited time and in limited quantities. You can't beat that with a stick.[Via Cheap Ass Gamer]

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Gaming By Chris Chester

Champions Online devs holding meet-and-greet at Comic Con

July is a good time of year to be nerd. E3, though not quite the spectacle it used to be, still carries in its wake loads of exciting news for fanboys in the know. It's followed a week later by the comic convention to end all comic conventions -- the San Diego Comic Con. While we were a bit disappointed to see that Cryptic wasn't going to be sporting a booth this year, they did put up an announcement on their website saying that they'll be holding a meet-and-greet for any budding Champions Online fans in attendance.For those interested in making an appearance, they'll be in the Oni Press area around booths 1834-1837 both on Friday the 25th at 1:15 and Saturday the 26th at 2:45. Writer John Layman (the man behind Tek Jansen) and combat designer Geoff Tuffli will be in attendance, ready to take your questions, complaints, suggestions, diatribes, and anything else you can throw at them. Don't miss the chance to pick their brains.

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Gaming By Chris Chester

NetDevil's Brown likens Jumpgate to Gran Turismo

Of all the unlikely comparisons we've heard over the years, one we hadn't really anticipated was the comparison between Jumpgate Evolution and Gran Turismo. And just the same, there it is, smack dab in the middle of a recent interview Gamasutra conducted with NetDevil's Scott Brown. Brown says that in Jumpgate Evolution, instead of merely relying on a level-based progression system, you can achieve ranks in specific classes of weapons and ships in a manner not unlike Gran Turismo's license system.Brown goes on to talk about their priorities when it comes to putting the game through beta, the lessons they've learned from both Auto Assault and Jumpgate Classic, and the iterative development strategy they've employed. The interviewer also expressed shock--as many have--about the game's relatively lilliputian group of developers, with only 13 people developing such a brilliant-looking game. It's worth a read if you consider yourself a pilot-to-be.

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Gaming By Chris Chester

New Wakfu trailer spotlights cross-media push

For those of us not fortunate enough to be part of the Wakfu closed beta, the game has remained something of a mystery. A beautiful, sexily-rendered 2D turn-based mystery, but a mystery nonetheless. We've seen a few screenshots, we know its release is going to be accompanied by an animated series, and we know the game is going to be in the same general vein as sister series Dofus, but beyond that it's still a little vague.The marketing team over at French developer Ankama Games has passed a trailer our way that really highlights the synergy between the animated series and the game proper. It also puts the game engine into motion, giving us a better idea of what the gameplay might be like, including some glimpses of player-to-player interaction, albeit in French. Check out the video after the jump if this sounds like it might possibly be your cup of tea.

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Gaming By Chris Chester

Activision Blizzard locks down senior management with long-term deals

In sports, it's fairly common practice for successful teams to sign their top talent to long-term contract extensions--both to shore up a sense of security for the owners over the long term, but also to demonstrate in straight forward monetary terms how much they mean to the team. This is not quite unlike what has happened over at Activision-Blizzard, where the senior talent at Blizzard has signed five-year contracts with the company to reaffirm their commitment to the team. It's not immediately clear how many people this is meant to include.Activision-Blizzard also reportedly offered similar deals to blockbuster developers Infinity Ward and Neversoft, who are responsible for the other big money-making franchises in the ActiBlizz portfolio. When you consider the speculation from the other day that developers might be gaining greater control of their projects and the news that EA Mythic is getting their Mythic Entertainment moniker back, it seems likes its a good time to be a proven developer. They suddenly have leverage they could only grumble for over the past few years.

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PC Gaming By Chris Chester

WAR guild beta begins

It's been a big day for Warhammer Online fans, and in spite of our expectations, not entirely in a good way. We've been having enough trouble attempting to process the news that Mythic is cutting four capitol cities, but wrapping our heads around the idea of a world without Choppas has been trying indeed. In spite of our scarcely contained nerd rage, we haven't been entirely immune to the good news that's come out : namely, that the Warhammer Online closed guild beta should begin some time today.Or at least, that's what the press release says. A straw polling of our many internet spies shows that, as of the time of writing this, guild beta centers have not been updated for those who were accepted into this round of testing. We expect lots of page refreshing to ensue.

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Gaming By Chris Chester

Leash on developers slackening thanks to Blizzard?

Few developers in the world have the leverage with their publishers that Blizzard has enjoyed over the years. Where most companies involved in major mergers or corporate hullabaloo end up being cut up and sold for scrap, Blizzard actually had a major say in which parties their parent company dealt with. The resulting mega-corp is even partially adopting their name. Not bad for a developer started many moons ago by a trio of UCLA grads.Some are now speculating that the spectacular success of outfits like Blizzard and Bungie may be prompting publishers to reconsider their relationships with other rockstar development houses like Infinity Ward, the folks behind the best of the Call of Duty series. It seems the suits are finally coming around to the idea that trusting in their proven talent can yield benefits far exceeding the cost of a delay here and there. EA, for instance, appears to be demonstrating patience with Mythic's treatment of Warhammer Online, but only time will tell whether these aren't just isolated cases.

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News

News By Chris Chester

Mark Jacobs responds to 'magic show' accusations

Earlier today, we posted a link to an article over at Warhammer Alliance that accused Mythic of conducting a "marketing magic show" on their fan-base by refusing to come forward with many of the juiciest, most controversial details about Warhammer Online yet to be released. Judging by the comments on that post, the disagreement about the quality of Mythic's efforts to date is stark indeed.In a demonstration of class and forthrightness, Mythic co-founder and designer Mark Jacobs stepped forward on the WHA forums today to address the editorial directly, taking apart the argument piece by piece. He outright rejects the notion that the marketing department is calling the shots when it comes to the release of details, saying that the flow of information begins and ends at his desk. He further disputes the notion that the game is unfinished or lacking in the fun department, citing the imminent guild beta as proof of the confidence they have in their product.Given the volume of information we were allowed to show off in our Massively goes to WAR coverage, we're inclined to side with Mark. For a site whose message of the day for many moons now has been, "The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last," we hope the writers and posters over at WHA regain their patience.

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Gaming By Chris Chester

Shareholders officially approve Activision-Blizzard merger

Like a storied Hollywood romance, the landmark merger of Activision and Vivendi Universal first took us by surprise; then garnered approval over time; and finally comes to fruition today as Activision's shareholders have approved the buy-out, with a whopping 92% voting in favor of the deal. When you consider EA, their biggest rival, is reporting losses and both Activision and Vivendi Universal riding high on the backs of Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft respectively, this deal will have as much resonance on the stock market as it does within the game industry proper.We've heard many a detail on the stormy courtship between the two publishers, with hints at who sought out who and to what ends for some time now. Even as much as we've written about it, this whole affair has had a sense of unreality since the beginning, and it's bizarre to think that the deal is finally complete. This blogger, for one, welcomes our new Activision-Blizzard overlords.

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PC Gaming By Chris Chester

Interview with AoC CM pulls some punches

If there's one individual whose position we're glad we haven't been in for the past few months, it's that of Age of Conan Community Manager, Glen "Famine" Swan. We've long been aware of the trials and tribulations that are part of the every day life of your average CM. It's an experience that is trying enough to have forged the bonds of a community management... community. We've seen only small snippets of the almost illogical anger that Age of Conan's troubled launch has provoked, and we can only imagine what it must be like being the front man for such player disappointment.We were a little disappointed then to see that a recent interview with Famine really failed to dig into any juicy tidbits. Of course, we understand that he wouldn't be able to recount any of the truly horrible details of the last month in print, lest he raise the ire of his community, but we'd have hoped some of the questions would have at least attempted to give the poor man an outlet. At the very least, he mentioned that they're trying to put together a class lead system on the official forums that should help channel feedback to the developers more efficiently than at present.

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Gaming By Chris Chester

Ask not what your MMO can do for you...

MMO players are a devoted lot. When we're not actually in our game of choice, we're often on forums arguing about the latest patches, researching new talent builds to make better use of our given class' abilities, or blogging about recent experiences. A tremendous amount of energy goes into making an MMO community what it is, both in and out of the game. But as wonderful as player enthusiasm can be in its many forms, it is frequently ignored or utterly under-utilized by game developers. And as blogger Aspendawn reflects in a recent post, when they do throw their weight behind community events, their support tends can be quite hollow -- as was the case with the EQ2 "Guild Recruitment Fair" pictured above. Her call for more developer-sanctioned mentoring systems is also spot-on, particularly for games that have been around for a while. Even if a community is friendly and welcoming, it can be intimidating jumping into a PUG when you don't quite have a grasp on your class' role just yet. We'd also love to see more events like Tabula Rasa's Friday Night Fights--events blossoming from the minds of creative gamers and taking official form with the addition of actual in-game assets to support them. It's not all fancy graphics and epic lootz, we want community too!

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News

News By Chris Chester

Balance not what it's cracked up to be

One of the truly sacrosanct beliefs in the greater MMO community (which includes both developers and players) is that achieving balance between classes is a necessary ingredient for a successful game. Even though the relative power of classes is liable to swing wildly depending on the latest patches and play styles, the goal is always to achieve that perfect (and largely fleeting) point at which classes are more or less equal. According to Eric over at Elder Game, achieving balance shouldn't be more important than making a game fun to play.While Eric's post was directed primarily at system designers currently in the employ of game developers, we think the lesson should be well-learned by players as well. Few things turn otherwise nice and friendly people into sniveling, pedantic jerks quite like the knowledge that the way they choose to play the game isn't perfectly balanced with whatever the flavor of the month happens to be. Isn't it enough just to have fun playing? Or is fun inextricably bound to one's relative power? We'd like to think that's not the case.

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Gaming By Chris Chester

Mythic's Barnett rails against GDC's 'peacock display'

With the demise of E3 proper some two years ago, there's been a tectonic shift in the way games are announced, developed, and shown off. Where once the entire development year revolved around having a polished trailer or playable demo available at the conference in May, the burden has shifted a bit. One of the events that has really assumed some of the burden up to this point has been the Game Developers Conference, an annual event where game developers get together to network, discuss design philosophy, and occasionally show off their wares.According to Mythic's Paul Barnett, that might be less worthwhile than it sounds. For long-time attendees like himself, the conference is the repetition of a tired, old "peacock display," where people come to argue about the same things they've always argued about. For someone in his position, nothing productive stands to get accomplished. While our gut feeling was to dispute the point, his argument isn't entirely unfounded. The difference, we suppose, is that as outsiders we rather enjoy the peacock display.

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Gaming By Chris Chester

The Daily Grind: Is Age of Conan as good as it gets graphically?

One of the newest trends in the PC gaming industry--perhaps best exemplified by Battlefield Heroes--is a re-evaluation of development priorities such that lower minimum system requirements have become more important than raw graphical horsepower. This has the dual effect of improving performance across the board as well as expanding the potential customer base by several orders of magnitude. Consider the number of people playing Team Fortress 2 as opposed to Crysis.With the release of Age of Conan and the considerable hardware it requires in order to run smoothly, we wonder whether we've seen the end of the rig-busting MMO. What do you think: will developers do as NetDevil has done in modeling their own minimum specs after World of Warcraft's, or will there always be room for beefier graphics?

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PC Gaming By Chris Chester

Xfire's Age of Conan statistics eschew easy classification

It's an interesting time for Age of Conan. On the surface, their monumental first month and record sales numbers give the appearance of a solid new contender in the MMO sphere. At the same time, the bug problems and vacuous end-game has reportedly left many players heading for greener pastures. Fanboys and detractors alike have been looking for some sort of indication of how the game is faring as it moves into its second month of operation. One metric that's been tossed about recently is the Age of Conan usage data for Xfire users over the past month.On the surface, the numbers look less than optimistic. From a peak of about 80,000 player hours around the time of launch, the game is hovering around in the mid-30's this weekend. This data may be less than helpful for a number of reasons, however. For one, we don't have reliable trend data about how similar games like Lord of the Rings Online (which pulled in a quarter of the minutes played per day over the same period) have fared immediately post-launch, and we don't know how reliable a sample Xfire users actually are. Still, expect these numbers to continue to be bandied about as proof of one thing or another.

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Gaming By Chris Chester

AoC forum fun: know your bows

This is my bow. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My bow is my best friend. It is my life. My bow without me is useless. Without my bow, I am useless. Such is the life of a Ranger in Funcom's Age of Conan, at least once you've gotten out of the starter area. While the careful use of abilities plays a larger role in determining the success of any given Ranger, using the right equipment is still paramount maximizing damage. And when you're a straight DPS class, that's why people want you in groups.That's why we were so delighted to see a guide being built over on the official Age of Conan forums, detailing the locations and stats of the most desirable rare bows, crossbows, and quivers in all level ranges from Tortage to the end-game. With the truly tremendous amount of bitching that goes on over at those forums, we love to see useful information like this floating to the top of the morass. If you've got a Ranger or regularly group with one, make sure to check out the list to see if you've got the best bow for your level.

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Gaming By Chris Chester

Are you a worshipper of Tzeentch?

One of the delightful things about the development of Warhammer Online is that it has breathed life into a tabletop game that, for many, was an every-present fantasy standby as they grew up. While few people we know of were actually rich and/or talented enough to put together that 2000 point painted and converted army that is the stuff of dreams, just about everybody could inhale the lore in the army books and fancy the day when they could.Cicadymn over at The Greenskin is doing his part to get everybody back into a Warhammery mood with a recent blog post about the chaos god Tzeentch--pronounced "Zeench" for those who tend to side with the forces of Order-- the first in a series highlighting the plethora of Warhammer gods. As he rather astutely points out, Tzeentch, as the changer of ways, is really the patron god for any MMO player who strives for the next level or who has ever gone back to fix his talent layout. More than that, we think EA Mythic opted to go with Tzeentch over one of the other Chaos gods because they couldn't stand the thought of making a game without those nifty Discs of Tzeentch.

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Computing

Computing By Chris Chester

To shard or not to shard

As massive as we like our MMOs to be, the realities of modern networking have made sharding, the creation of identical game worlds hosted on separate servers, a practical necessity. Last week, Awen, Jumpgate Evolution community manager, elaborated on why the NetDevil team was looking at sharded server architecture. Understandably, players maintain that the ideal MMO minimizes sharding to allow players to interact with the greatest possible population of other users.As Awen explains, this isn't exactly possible with Jumpgate Evolution. While their spaceserver architecture--which is similar to EVE Online in that different regions of space can be hosted on different hardware and scaled to the server load--is technically capable of handling most of the challenges of going unsharded, the central-state server on which all the non-combat activity is managed, does have a physical limit. In a game that is focused on real-time space simulation, their focus is on minimizing latency, and that's why they're going to use sharding.

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Gaming By Chris Chester

The Daily Grind: Too hard to bard?

To the eternal lament of some players, roleplaying is a dying art in MMOs. Players interested purely in socializing, exploring, and roleplaying have largely yielded to achievers, who thirst for the high levels, the best gear, and the world-first accomplishments. That's all well and good for your warriors, rogues, and mages, but where does your friendly neighborhood spoony bard fit into the equation? They're a class that a big company like Blizzard only jokes about including.It's a question asked elsewhere in the MMO blogosphere, but it's one we're curious about as well. Is there still room in modern MMOs for a Bard class, or are they destined for the dustbin of gaming history?

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PC Gaming By Chris Chester

SOE announces online trading card game for Galaxies anniversary

In celebration of five years of Star Wars Galaxies, SOE and LucasArts have put out a press release announcing the production of Champions of the Force, a trading card game that will be available only to current Galaxies subscribers. The trading card game will only be available online, and will allow players to play decks against one another or even single-player in a story-based solo game. Interestingly, the game will sport "loot" cards which will be redeemable for virtual items within Galaxies proper.Subscribers will get a bountiful five booster packs a month just for paying their subscription fees, but starter decks and booster packs will be available for purchase from the Station store as well. They're aiming for a release late this summer, so make sure to check out the official site for more details if it sounds like it's up your alley. Also make sure to look at their community site to find the other goodies they've got planned for the five year anniversary.

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PC Gaming By Chris Chester

Staffing shake-up on Tabula Rasa

Feelings must be mixed over at NCsoft Austin today, as the Tabula Rasa team is experiencing a bit of a staffing shake-up. April "CuppaJo" Burba, who only a few months ago was promoted from Community Manager to Associate Producer, will be leaving the team to take on the same Associate Producer role with the Dungeon Runners team, who just recently released their first retail box. Dane Caruthers, long-time Tabula Rasa team member, is being promoted from QA Lead to fill CuppaJo's combat boots at Associate Producer. and Neal Johnson will be getting the nod to take Dane's former position.Just two months ago, Tabula Rasa designer Paul Sage left the team to work on another unspecified project within NCsoft. The flight of their lead designer and associate producer within such a short timespan is worrying, to say the least. We don't think the game is going anywhere or anything dramatic like that, but as gamers it makes us a little uncomfortable to have people we don't know shepherding the team forward. We will, however, be looking forward to Dane's first communiques as Associate Producer.

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Gaming By Chris Chester

Tabula Rasa to get emote-tional at Comic-Con

With all the flaws we've seen in Tabula Rasa over the last eight months, one thing we'd never criticize the game for is a lack of creativity from the community team. They've consistently done their best to keep their community engaged, despite the fact that said community is disbursed around the internet due to the lack of an official forum. Their support team has pulled in similar praise in the past as well.Continuing their reign of awesomeness, the Tabula Rasa community team is going to be spear-heading a new event at this year's Comic-Con. Critters and co. will be setting up a booth giving away free Tabula Rasa goodies, an exclusive Lumin pet, and filming fans performing their best real-world emotes. They'll take the footage back to their Austin offices and vote on which one is the best, and actually recreate it in-game. It's a pretty neat contest, and we recommend you check it out (booth #5209) if you're headed to Comic-Con this year.

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Gaming By Chris Chester

Which WAR faction favors more mature players?

It's generally accepted as common knowledge that Horde players in World of Warcraft are, by and large, the more mature of the two factions. Whether or not this is actually supported by hard data is a matter of debate, but the logic says that older players are the ones best able to overlook the stigma of playing races long-perceived to be the "bad guys." There are mouth-breathers no matter what faction you roll, but perception is what it is.We've been watching a poll over at Warhammer Alliance that sought to identify a specific age correlation between the two factions amongst the hardcore Warhammer Online community. With just over 2100 votes cast at the time of writing this, we did find an interest trend. Although Destruction was more popular than Order in every demographic, the disparity between the two become decreasingly pronounced as you move up in the age bracket. The ratio went from 1.7:1 in the 12-16 bracket to 1.5:1 amongst those 17-25 to 1.3:1 for ages 26-35, finally to 1.1:1 in the 35+ bracket. Does this mean Order will be the faction of choice for older players? Definitely too early to tell, but this early data is intriguing.

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Gaming By Chris Chester

Blizzard to Activision: we choose you

We don't know if anybody has told you, but Blizzard is actually kind of a big deal. Not many companies can hold the attention of their target audience for an entire week with naught but a series of cryptic splash pages. They're such a big deal, in fact, that when it came time for Vivendi to choose a partner for their big merger, Blizzard's preference for Activision was instrumental in their ultimate decision. That is, if Blizzard COO Paul Sams is to be believed.It was no secret that Blizzard was the real prize in the merger, having pulled in approximately $1.2 billion for Vivendi in 2007 alone. With the twin juggernauts of Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 looming on the horizon, and their "next-gen MMO" project still lurking in the shadows, it seems clear that Sams' comments are anything but idle boasting. According to Sams, the leverage they have in this arrangement is what is going to allow them to preserve their existing management structure that has proved so spectacularly successful. I think that's something we can all get behind.

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