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GamersFirst talks APB core game changes
Fans of All Points Bulletin are in for a treat this week as GamersFirst has dropped a ton of new info about the game in its latest APB Reloaded blog entry. Zak "Qwentle" Littwin (former QA Lead at Realtime Worlds and current designer at GamersFirst) devotes a lot of virtual ink to APB's closed beta tweaks, and also hints at "much more extensive changes" in store for the game's open beta and release clients. Littwin teases a new game mode called Turf Wars as well as APB's first proper expansion which will feature a new district for the city of San Paro. First things first though; the meat of the blog entry concerns core gameplay adjustments that GamersFirst wishes to test in the closed beta. These include cheat detection (via Punkbuster as discussed last week), weapon modifications, and sweeping changes to the old game's progression curve. A few of the game's vehicles have also been modified. The original version of APB received a fair bit of criticism related to its driving mechanics, and GamersFirst is looking to rectify this in part by "giv[ing] each vehicle a lot of individual personality and specialisation and unique benefits, rather than everyone rushing straight to the Cisco/Bishada/Jericho/T25." Finally, Littwin touches on premium accounts and the challenge inherent in differentiating them from free-to-play services without unbalancing the game. Grab a cup of your favorite beverage and read all about it at the official APB Reloaded blog.
EVE blogs examine CSM discussions on nullsec warfare
The first round of minutes from EVE Online's CSM summit were released yesterday, with two further parts to be released in the coming week. EVE blogger Keith Neilson was privileged to be present at some of the meetings between the CSM and CCP, and has posted a summary on his blog. Since the official meeting minutes have yet to be released, concrete conclusions on any specific points in the meeting can't be made. Keith was able to confirm, however, that nullsec PvP was heavily discussed at the summit. In particular, the effect of last year's Dominion expansion on nullsec warfare was examined, some problems were highlighted and potential solutions were explored. The summaries on Keith's blog reveal some surprising facts about nullsec. CCP's lead economist Dr Eyjo is said to have voiced concerns over the fact that new players are moving into the more PvE-focused wormhole content instead of forming alliances and moving into nullsec territorial warfare. This is understandable, as wormhole systems are much more friendly to colonisation by small groups. They offer a similar level of rewards to nullsec but the size of a potential attacking fleet is naturally limited by the size of connecting wormholes. In anticipation of the official minutes being released later this week, Calais from EVE blog The Hydrostatic Capsule has delved into Keith's summaries and drawn some compelling conclusions about why nullsec is still the domain of massive alliances. While Dominion was meant to open nullsec for smaller groups, Calais suggests that super-capitals and jump bridges actually prevent smaller groups from competing in nullsec PvP. "Where small teams should have the advantage of stealth and agility – the ability to strike fast and hard before melting away," Calais explains, "we actually see the very opposite." Using supercapital jump drives and jump bridges, it's big alliance fleets are able to outmaneuver smaller invading forces who can't afford to set up and defend the same infrastructure. Full details of the discussion between CCP and the CSM about nullsec PvP will be released later this week on the EVE devblog page.
ArenaNet reveals the wisdom and power of the Kodan in Guild Wars 2
Guild Wars 2 still seems achingly far away if you're one of the many players hotly anticipating the game, but we can take comfort in the fact that ArenaNet has continued to share more of the lore of the world via regular blog entries. The Kodan, previously known in only the barest terms, have been revealed in full with the latest writeup. A mighty and proud race from the northern lands, these powerful ursine warriors have begun moving south, at once seeking refuge and judging the other races of Tyria. "Judging" is to put it mildly, really -- the kodan view themselves as the arbiters of spiritual purity within the world, even as they flee from the elder ice dragon Jormag. Some norn and kodan alike believe that the norn are descended from the bear-men, which the kodan view as a great failing of the norn, hence why the other race has been stripped of its natural form. Learn more about this new addition to Guild Wars 2 in the full entry, complete with a few pieces of the game's signature beautiful concept art.
Forsaken World details floating guild halls
There are guild halls and there are guild halls, and Forsaken World's recently announced command centers are definitely the latter. Perfect World Entertainment has detailed the nifty new floating guild base feature coming to its free-to-play fantasy MMO in a new blog entry on the game's official website. Obtaining (and maintaining) one of the command centers is no easy task, but it looks to be a rewarding one since the facilities will generate income for your guild via entrance fees and will house personal merchants and workshops. Construction materials must be obtained through daily quests and events, and PWE indicates that the guild bases can grow into sprawling social and mercantile hubs given enough time and effort. "The layout of these command centers is vast and multi storied. Your guild's base will have plenty of room to expand and grow. With enough dedication, a command center can be something of a miniature city in its own right," says the blog.
APB's Book-Larsson talks story, game modes
Bjorn Book-Larsson is back! Forgive the exclamation point, but we had to accentuate the latest in the long line of developers with action hero names (and with apologies to Atanas Atanasov and Tasos Flambouras, Book-Larsson has vaulted near the top of the spiffy name list). In any case, the GamersFirst COO/CTO has updated his APB Reloaded blog with some interesting insights into the game's story. Yes, you read that right; we said story and APB in the same sentence, and before you think we've been brainwashed by the likes of The Old Republic, TERA, and other story-centric MMOs in the offing, consider Book-Larsson's assertion that APB was originally designed to facilitate the "open world-ish" nature of the Grand Theft Auto series. "APB actually has the beginnings of a lot of the elements that will make it a really successful game in the long term, and could in theory exploit (maybe complete) both types of interactions [story and shooter elements]; there is actually a giant backstory to the entire city (100 plus pages of it), there are deep anthologies of the various factions in the city, and there is even the foundation for a single-player mission mode," he writes. Whether or not players will care about APB's potential to grow beyond an ordinary shooter remains to be seen. After all, Global Agenda is a similar title with a fairly deep backstory (and one that is summarily ignored by 99.9% of the players fragging it up in AvA and merc matches). The fact that GamersFirst is even considering future additions to APB is relatively exciting news, and we'll be watching with great interest.
Ghostcrawler explains tanking with a vengeance
Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) had some very interesting tidbits of information and explanations on the new tanking mechanic vengeance in a recent blog post on the new World of Warcraft community website. Vengeance is a new passive ability that all properly specced tanks receive, which converts damage taken into an attack power bonus to make sure that tank threat scales with the increasing power of DPS. Ghostcrawler admits that as with all new mechanics, there is much tweaking still to happen to Vengeance. He explains that the ability has been implemented to give tanks the tools needed to retain threat, but not do the job for them. One interesting point that Ghostcrawler makes is that Blizzard and the designers strive for a healthy balance between the mechanics making tanking possible and players' ability to successfully hold threat. All in all, this is a great post, and I hope for much more from Ghostcrawler like this. I love the systems design posts and rationales behind gameplay design, especially when it covers my role of choice. Check out the whole article on the new community blog. And, Mr. Street, as for that dinosaur -- screenshots or it didn't happen. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion (available Dec. 7, 2010), from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.
Loremaster achievement changes coming with Cataclysm
With the old world changing so drastically come The Shattering, there's been some question of how the Loremaster achievement might change in the wake of Cataclysm. Community Manager Zarhym has clarified this for us in a recent blog post. As he puts it, if you already have either Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms or Loremaster of Kalimdor, those achievements will stay intact. However, if you're only partially through with those achievements, you may suffer a setback, as any quest that's being removed from the game will no longer count toward those achievements in progress. Therefore, it's a good idea to finish up the achievement if you can. That said, it will be a little bit easier to get those Loremaster achievements come The Shattering. Instead of having one huge quest counter for each continent, patch 4.0.3a will introduce zone-specific quest achievements to the old world, similar to the ones that already exist for Outland and Northrend zones. Once you finish the zone-specific achievements for every zone on a given continent (minus the new Cataclysm zones, of course), you'll have the achievement. Even old-school Loremasters can get in on the action, as the zone quest achievements will still be available for them to complete. While Zarhym didn't specifically outline it in his post, Loremaster of Cataclysm will be required for future Loremasters as well, although it's not clear whether that will start to be a requirement in patch 4.0.3a or at the launch of Cataclysm itself.
What is it like to work at Apple?
Ever wondered what it's like to work at Apple? AOL Jobs spoke to Joe Moreno, a software engineer who worked at Apple from 1998 to 2007. Joe touched numerous products and projects, notably WebObjects and the Apple Online Store (No, he wasn't the guy who puts the yellow sticky note up when new products arrive). His accounts of Apple make it sound like working there is almost as innovative as their products. From HR to communications, there's a lot other companies could learn from. As TUAW is a blog about Apple, I found the following quite interesting: "As an Apple employee, you definitely get the feeling that blogging about the company is frowned upon. It goes to the extent that, if you have a personal blog about an unrelated topic, you don't even want to mention that you work for Apple." There are very few company blogs, even with notable exceptions such as Surfin' Safari, their WebKit blog. Still, this is in contrast to Microsoft, where there are numerous blogs by product divisions and personnel. Then again, it's been a long time since Microsoft routinely surprised and delighted their customers and fans, so perhaps Apple is on to something.
Age of Conan's Morrison on designing for challenge and accessibility
Funcom executive producer Craig Morrison is drawing on his game journalist roots of late, via a series of in-depth postings on his personal blog. Morrison, a former IGN editor prior to his Funcom days, has a lot to say about gaming trends, which is great news for industry watchers and anyone interested in occasional glimpses into the thought process of an MMO developer. In his latest opus, the former Anarchy Online (and current Age of Conan) game director discusses the challenges in developing, well, challenge. In a followup post to his earlier discussion on progression, Morrison talks at length about the decisions developers face when it comes to providing players with a steady diet of dings and digital pats on the back, while simultaneously making it seem like something worthwhile is being accomplished. The post contains a number of interesting observations, among them the notion that most modern MMORPGs parcel out their challenging content in sideshows that are entirely optional (raids, dungeons, etc.) and, in many cases, tangential to the main event (questing and hunting). While it would seem to be a relatively simple matter to add occasional challenges to the leveling treadmill, Morrison cautions that care is needed to avoid alienating segments of your playerbase. "If you are going to be able to inject occasional challenge or difficulty spikes into the standard progression as well, you need to have thought about it to make sure that it won't become a bottleneck, and that it will survive a review," he says.
Drama Mamas: Dealing with absent RP guildies
Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm. This week's is a long one, so let's get right to it. Dear Drama Mamas, I belong to a small roleplaying guild on a fairly heavily populated server. Two of our guild leaders have recently retired, and the discussion that followed seems to have opened up a particularly ugly can of worms. There are a lot of complicated drama subsets that are going on at the moment, but I fear I may have started the one that's now bothering me the most. Previous to our guild leaders retiring, we had a few incidents of members who had been very active suddenly disappear with no word of why or when/if to expect them back. (We have a forum for the guild, so the means of communication are readily available). We have a very strong policy of RL > the game; but as a small, close-knit guild, I feel that someone disappearing impacts guild members both in story lines and in the way they feel OOCly.
New Apple Store opens in Australia, and a sneak preview of the new Chicago store
Apple celebrated the opening of another retail store in Australia, the fifth such store in the state of New South Wales, and the tenth in the country. The Charlestown Apple Store had a grand opening today at 5:00pm, and TUAW reader Paul L. was on hand for the festivities, replete with the usual blue-shirted employees and lines of customers. He says he waited in line and got a black store opening t-shirt for his troubles, but unfortunately, there's no word on which of yesterday's big announcements, if any, were on display in-store. Elsewhere in the world of Apple retail, the Chicago Tribune's blog site has a great sneak preview of that Chicago Apple Store that's opening up this weekend. This is that store at the North/Clybourn stop that Apple spent $4 million on, with the city's blessing, to not only design a new three-sided Apple Store, but also completely renovate the El stop nearby. Turns out the store is a "Significant Store" for the company -- rather than just imitate the normal design, Chicago's new store was specifically designed for the area that it's in. Sounds fascinating -- the store in Chicago officially opens to the public on Saturday. I'd love to go if I was still in town (I actually used to help manage the Borders directly across the street from it), but since I've moved out to the West Coast, we'll have to recruit some of you readers. If you go to the Chicago store opening this weekend, be sure to send pics and tell us how it all went.
Age of Conan's Morrison talks progression, design
Armchair designers of the world, take note. If you've ever wanted a peek inside the mind of an MMORPG developer, Craig Morrison's latest personal blog entry might be right up your alley. The Funcom executive and current Age of Conan boss has posted a lengthy look at his thoughts on massive design, and more specifically, progression. Morrison examines progression versus entertainment, and goes on to contrast the need for the former with the desire for storytelling. He also touches on the vast array of player motivations, ultimately concluding that while "progression, and the need for it, is a bedrock of the expected player experience," future MMO designers should be mindful of the differences between what they want the player to do and what the player wants to do. Clearly, there is no easy answer to the question of how does one design a good MMORPG. After all, one gamer's soul-sucking grind of death and despair is another's relaxing evening at home. That said, Morrison's perspective illuminates at least one line of developer thinking and is worthy of a read-through whether you're a dev, a player, or both.
Blogger claims to be Mythic employee, tells "Why Warhammer Failed"
If there's one thing the internet needs more of, it's drama. OK, that's a giant lie. The stuff is everywhere, and the MMO industry is no exception. Here at Massively, we get tips about player and industry kerfuffles on a regular basis. It usually turns out to be either a minor conflict or some industry he-said-she-said, but every now and again something takes hold and causes enough of a stir to make everyone take notice. The "Why Warhammer Failed" blog post from "EA Louse" is a perfect example. EA Louse claims to be a Bioware-Mythic employee who will be "dismissed from Bioware Mythic during the next round of layoffs EA coming this November," and he or she has a bone to pick. We've attempted to contact EA Louse to verify his or her identity, but at the moment there's no way to determine whether this person is legitimate or a random troll. Either way, the post has gained an amazing amount of attention today -- including some from Mythic's former Director of Community Sanya Weathers. Sanya had quite a bit to say in response to EA Louse, and while the whole situation should be taken with a grain of salt rather than official EA news, it's still gained plenty of attention in the MMO blogosphere.
WoW Insider is available on your Amazon Kindle
So, I bought an Amazon Kindle recently, and it's just the coolest thing. All the books I could ever read, available to me any time, on a crisp, easy-to-read display that doesn't hurt my eyes. "But I don't care about books," you say. "I care about blogs! Specifically, blogs about WoW that are named WoW Insider!" Well, you're in luck. WoW Insider is available on the Kindle right this very moment, and you can get it one of two ways. The first is to use the experimental browser, accessible from the main Kindle menu under "Experimental"; enter our URL or mobile address (i.wow.joystiq.com). The browser is surprisingly nice for being on an e-reader device, and especially for being in black and white. The second way is admittedly cooler. You can subscribe to WoW Insider from the Blogs section of the Kindle Store for a small fee, and as long as you have a wireless connection, your Kindle will automatically update your archive of WoW Insider articles as often as we post new articles. Most formatting is intact in the Kindle blog format -- the only thing missing is pictures. Reading the latest Know Your Lore like it was a book? Now that's technology I can get behind.
Windows Live Spaces throws in the towel, sends users to WordPress
Are you a proud user of the Windows Live Spaces social networking / blog publishing service? Since the halcyon days of 2006, Spaces has been helping users connect with each other (and publish their Get A Life! fan fiction), but no longer: under a new plan announced yesterday, users who sign up for a Live account will be instead sent to WordPress, and users who already have Spaces accounts will be given a couple options: delete the site entirely, download the data, or migrate to WordPress.com. According to Huffington Post, this is all part of a new corporate strategy that sees Microsoft working to "play nice" with other people's solutions, and as such the company is assuring users that existing code and content will be compatible with (or convertible to) WordPress. This is also, obviously, part of a strategy to pull the plug on services that aren't makin' any money. All we can say is: we're having flashbacks to the great Geocities disaster of 2009, and it's not pleasant.
Craig Morrison on success and failure
Last week's Craig Morrison blog topic brought a wave of interesting comments from readers and writers alike, illustrating why MMO number-crunching is always a hot-button issue. The Age of Conan game director takes another crack at a controversial topic with his followup post, and attempts to deconstruct the logic of fans who insist on labeling games "successes" or "failures" despite not having the information necessary to make such a judgment. "Whether any title that displays a numbers trend similar to another can be deemed a success or a failure depends entirely on the budget, ambition and infrastructure of the project," he writes. While that's common sense to most folks, there are still some who insist that AoC and Warhammer are "failures" despite the fact that they remain open for business and profitable. Morrison acknowledges that both titles fell short of their ultimate subscriber goals, but also cautioned that equating lower-than-desired numbers to failure "is a very dangerous assumption to make."
Craig Morrison talks MMO numbers (or the lack thereof)
Ah, the numbers game. It's often quite comical when it comes to MMORPGs and their die-hard fans (or detractors, as the case may be). Aside from Blizzard, very few MMO development houses release real numbers relating to their playerbases, and forum jousters are thus relegated to citing guesstimates and, in most cases, pure supposition sprung from the likes of wildly inaccurate measuring tools such as Xfire or the late MMOGchart. Funcom executive producer and Age of Conan game director Craig Morrison weighs in on the perplexing state of MMO number-crunching on his personal blog, offering a bit of insight as to why hard data is, well, hard to come by. He cites a lack of context for the near-universal reticence of developers when it comes to publicizing their community sizes. "Without standard definitions everything ends up in that vague, murky and entirely subjective middle ground... and a middle ground that very few could reasonably be expected to accept as being worthwhile exploring in a business sense," he writes. So what's his solution? In broad terms, he mentions a rating system, citing television's Nielsen metrics as well as cinema box office figures as semi-comparable standards. While such a system probably wouldn't stop the endless fan bickering, it might at least provide an answer to the question of how each individual company defines success.
EpicWin aims to turn your real-life tasks into a social game
Given the amount of iPhone and iPad apps coming out these days, I'm not all that interested in getting excited about an app before it comes out. There's already plenty of games and apps available now, so worrying about not-yet-released apps isn't all that important. That said, this app called EpicWin is gaining quite a bit of attention -- it's a very originally designed to-do list masquerading as a game that gives points for accomplishing things in real life. If this idea sounds familiar, it's because we've seen it before -- Booyah Society was supposed to be a game that rewarded you for real-life accomplishments, and there have been a few other apps like it poking around. Most of them haven't worked very well -- the issue has always been that there's no validation, no proof that you've done what you said you did in real-life. But EpicWin has some solid developers behind it (the folks that worked on Little Big Planet for the PS3, and MiniSquadron for the iPhone), and a very intriguing art style and tone, so maybe it'll be more intriguing than what we've seen along these lines in the past. EpicWin is "coming soon" to the App Store -- we'll keep an eye out for it, and let you know when it's out.
For Gnomeregan! Your thoughts on the Midsummer Fire Festival
For Gnomeregan! is where the members of <B.L.O.G.> on Shadow Council (US-RP-A) roleplay guild meetings as part of an in-blog and in-game RP campaign. The rules for this campaign are: no ERP (Erotic RolePlay) and no vampires (though death knights are welcome). Everyone is invited to participate. Assume that to get into the guild, you at least pretended to be in full use of your faculties and are willing to fight for the cause. You are all welcome to join us here in the comments and those who wish to play with us in game should friend Peenk and ask for an invite on Shadow Council (US-RP-A). I am Peenk the Scorchling! Flame on! It's like magic! I love this holiday! Woohoo! I will admit, however, that I am squeamish about all of that fiery torch tossing and what have you. But those bonfires make me feel like I am magic or a fire elemental or both! My cousin Kixi was right about this holiday. I feel so wise and more experienced when I participate in some of these rituals. It's like things just come more easily to me. The enchantments are so strong! It seems an invaluable way to speed up our training.
Funcom's Morrison talks MMORPG evolution
Age of Conan game director and executive producer Craig Morrison has something of a reputation for interacting with fans and fellow gamers. He continues the tradition with a post on his personal blog in which he discusses both his favorite MMORPGs as well as the evolution of the genre. "I think when a company is going to sink tens of millions of dollars into a [triple-A] MMO then it is only natural that those games will have a pretty casual friendly approach as they want, and need, to retain more customers than a niche product might. Those types of games though introduce far more players to the genre, and those players end up trying other MMO games too. That's never a bad thing for the genre," he writes. As for his favorite (non-Funcom) MMORPGs, Morrison confesses to both an EVE and a Fallen Earth habit, although he admits that "both will suffer again once the Starcraft 2 beta comes back up." Check out the full article at Morrison's blog.
