2012-predictions
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Ask Massively: Counting the hits
At the end of December, the Massively staff laid out its predictions for 2013 in a tidy post, after which a reader named flatline4400 graciously complimented our wild conjecture: I think Bree and Patrick are right on in a number of points. (Bree also did very well in last year's predictions too!) We are pretty awesome, aren't we? Well, except for the part where I also predicted City of Heroes 2. Soooooo maybe not so awesome after all. In today's Ask Massively, let's take a peek back at our staff predictions from last year, the ones we made in 2011 for 2012. And let's count the hits and the misses. Did we get as much right as we got wrong? Come on -- it'll be fun(ny).
Reader UI of the Week: 2011 user interface review
Each week, WoW Insider and Mathew McCurley bring you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which spotlights the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you'd like to submit? Send your screenshots along with info on what mods you're using to readerui@wowinsider.com, and follow Mathew on Twitter. For me, 2011 was a great year in terms of getting to know you guys and writing about your user interfaces. People sent in a variety of different types of UI, great tips, tricks, and cool new tweaks to a game that's pushing eight years old. As WoW grows the UI community that has sprouted up around it has grown as well, showing the drive to create and be a part of the whole WoW phenomenon is still very much alive. Mists of Pandaria will only serve to fuel more fire. I wanted to thank you all for your submissions last year, as well as issue a preemptive thank-you for all the great UIs that you have sent in over the year. Now, as we are knee-deep in Cataclysm's final patch, we all have time enough to hang out, sit back, and watch The Destroyed explode into sparkles while we tinker with our UIs getting ready for panda time. Here's a little taste of last year's highlights and my thoughts about 52 Reader UI of the Weeks.
EVE Evolved: Development on EVE in 2012
Following the summer drama that came to be known as monoclegate, the past six months have been challenging for EVE Online's players and developers alike. When players learned that cash-shop clothing was priced higher than its real-life equivalent, the quirky story of the $80 monocle swept across gaming blogs like wildfire. The story's tone soon turned a great deal more sinister with the leak of an internal company newsletter titled Greed is Good, and a second leaked memo from CCP's CEO added more fuel to the flames. Ultimately, players spoke with their wallets; subscriptions fell by at least 8%, and with no financial backup plan, CCP was forced to lay off 20% of its staff worldwide. The staff members who remained were faced with the task of turning things around, and with the feature-packed Crucible expansion, they did so spectacularly. In just a few short months, hundreds of high-profile features, graphical overhauls, and quality of life improvements breathed new life into a neglected universe. I think most players recognise that this has been a genuine turn-around from within CCP, but some are still skeptical that the company has really reformed. The question on everyone's mind is whether CCP can really keep up this quality of development in the coming year as it delivers two full expansions and integrates EVE with DUST 514. Perhaps nobody is better qualified to assess that than CSM delegate and former CCP game designer Mark "Seleene" Heard, who recently attended the December CSM summit and witnessed first-hand the aftermath of monoclegate and Crucible's development. In this week's EVE Evolved, I delve into Mark's CSM Summit report to find out how development at CCP has changed, what we can expect in 2012, and how monocle-gate has affected CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson.
The Daily Grind: Want to make an inaccurate prediction?
Today is the first day of 2012, and that means there's a whole new year awaiting us, a year during which no doubt a lot of things will happen in the MMO space. But while we've already made our staff predictions, we're sure that our readers have their own... both the kind that seem likely and the sort that seem like they'll never happen, the sort of crazy pie-in-the-sky stuff that you usually file in the back of your head and forget about. Well, not today. Today, we want you to dust off those theories about the next year that have a 1% chance of happening at best. If you're wrong, hey, odds are low. But if you're right about your guess that World of Warcraft will go free-to-play or that Guild Wars 2 will announce a subscription fee of $30 per month, you said it here first, right? So go nuts with your crazy predictions in the comments! Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Mog Log: The 2012 forecast
As we enter the twilight of 2011, I can say with absolute certainty that my predictions for Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV were wrong, which is fine, since when I made them last year I seem to recall saying to myself that I was predicting more on the basis of "should happen" than "will likely happen." I was overly optimistic about several things, overly pessimistic about a couple of others, and going in a completely different direction from the design team on the rest -- which is fine by me, actually. That having been said, whether proving that I'm not afraid of failure or that I don't know when to quit, I'm coming back for another round of predictions for this coming year. But there's one major variable in the equation that's horrible to try and account for, and that's Final Fantasy XI. I can easily see the game going one of two ways, and while I think one's a bit more likely, there seem to be more divergent futures for it than for Final Fantasy XIV.
