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Marvel Heroes announces Asgardian content, playable Loki
Marvel Heroes is a game known for its ability to suck players in to the universe of Marvel superheroes. Its linear play is also augmented by the much more open area of downtown Manhattan, and there is no other MMO that allows you to control heroes from all of Marvel's timelines and universes, from the movie franchises to the classic comics. And now we've learned the game is gearing up for a very nice update in November. So what's in store for this patch? Well, it just so happens that Marvel's latest movie, Thor: The Dark World, is coming out in a week or so. Gazillion Entertainment couldn't very well sit back and let the moment get away, could it? So it created an entire suite of content based around Asgard, Thor, and the new movie. We asked Jeff Donais, Creative Director, some questions to find out all of the details. Warning: There might be spoilers below!
A look at the PlanetSide 2 World Domination Series
PlanetSide 2 players have been asking for something that gives their favorite game a bit more persistence. Conquering territories is a lot of fun, but it can sometimes become repetitive and less satisfying when those territories simply turn over to the next empire that decides to take it. This is where the World Domination Series has stepped in to give the game and its loyal fanbase even more reason to log in and fight. The World Domination Series hands out points to factions that hold on to an area for longer periods of time and will eventually give out points to individual players. Even though it just finished a first wave of in-game testing Sunday night, it will soon be accessible through a handy scorecard in-game and lists the daily, weekly, and seasonal scores as well as each empire's server- and game-wide performance. Each territory is worth a certain number of points, but holding a territory for longer periods of time is worth even more points. At the end of each week, rewards will be handed out. During the testing, the rewards consisted of experience boosts, but it'll be expanded later. How does this new system affect the rest of the playerbase, and what's in store for it in the future? We asked Matt Higby, Creative Director for PlanetSide 2, to answer some these questions.
Rise and Shiny: Heva Clonia Online
Heva Clonia Online, by publisher OGplanet, is a cutesy, Anime-style MMORPG that offers tons of combat, a lot of quests (mostly from kill-X-rats territory), a bunch of other players to join up with for dungeon-running, a pet collection system that borders on Poke-something, and quite a few other activities. I've seen my share of games from Korea, China, and Japan and know that the details of each game are what set them apart from each other. The foreign games can seem the same, just as many Western titles can, so to know the difference, you simply have to play them. I gave my usual Rise and Shiny treatment to the game and enjoyed it over the last week, casually poking around town, jumping into dungeons, collecting monster DNA, and trying to understand some of the strange, mistranslated quest dialogue. As I finished up my time with the game (for now), I discovered that I had quite a bit of fun, but I also ran into many of the same problems that I have had with other titles from the same area.
MMObility: Combat Monsters still needs some tweaking
Combat Monsters is made by the folks at Rubicon, the same people who brought us the cute Great Little War Game and others. This made me almost immediately happy as I've spent a lot of time playing some of those titles and loved the way the developers kept things simple to play yet hard to master. Combat Monsters is supposed to be a multiplayer, turn-based, card-based, arena-style combat game with optional in-game purchases. I found it to be most of those things, but I also found that it still needed more time in the oven. You start off in a tutorial that does a relatively good job of explaining how everything works. You have a card deck with a limited number of cards, mojo for card creation that's earned every round, and several different types of cards that do different things during a round. It's all pretty straightforward... until the frustration kicks in.
Free for All: The other side of MMO leveling
As I pointed out in last week's column, I am more fond of spending money to obtain a high-level character than I am grinding out levels to gain one. As usual, I put out my opinion without considering how many people might take it the wrong way. To set the record straight and to give some evidence to the pro-leveling side of the argument, I would like to list off some of the reasons leveling is important. (Also in my opinion, of course.) While I did refer to leveling as drudgery, my opinion does not automatically set some universal definition. What can be drudgery to me can be bliss to someone else, and so -- because it is gaming -- the impact of leveling can be felt differently by different people. It's not science; it's opinion. Besides, it's not all drudgery anyway.
Rise and Shiny: World of Battles
World of Battles starts off strong, it looks pretty cool at first glance, and it appears to allow you to control massive armies of riders, archers, giants and other fun units as you clash against equally massive armies. You do see a lot of combat in the game, and it is from the massive-army school of design, but unfortunately, the game quickly and regrettably drags itself down into a standard pit of grinding. I started to see the end of this tunnel of drudgery near the end of my week with the game. It started off by giving me some basic tutorial tips and then pushed me into quest after quest that had to be completed before I was able to move on to the next one. Each step sucked the fun out of the game and made it seem as if I would never be seeing the massive battles and castle bombardments that the game's trailer promised.
MMObility: Checking in on location-based MMO Life is Magic
The mobile market is a great place for unique games as well as remakes and games that are influenced by past titles. But mobile is sort of a Wild West right now, one filled with titles that are obvious ripoffs of more popular games or games that are advertised as MMOs but are nothing like an MMO. I don't mind coming across a game or two that is MMO-like, but when a game claims to be something like the "most popular MMO on the market" or "the first mobile MMO," I get a bit peeved. Luckily there are a lot of great titles to choose from, games like Arcane Legends from Spacetime Studios or Grepolis from Innogames. There are also games like this week's Life is Magic, a neat location-based MMO that comes from Red Robot Labs. It leans a bit more to the pseudo-MMO side but is still a lot of fun when you want some turn-based action.
Free for All: Why I'd love to buy high-level characters
There is a seedling of a possibility of an up-and-coming trend that I've noticed lately, one that has some players' hackles raised. It's just one of many trends that have shaped MMOs over the last several years. Some of those trends include the massive market switch to free-to-play models, social gaming's influence on the MMO industry, the continuing popularity of selling power even by publishers who seem set against selling power, and the ever-growing mobile market and switch to mobile devices as favorite gaming destinations. But to me, this new trend is one of the most exciting: the recent trend of giving away or selling high-level characters in games that require leveling. When I really think about it, it's been going on in some form for a long time, but the different designs and systems of all of the different MMOs we play have hidden it for much of that time. I'll tell you why I love a free or paid-for high-level character.
Rise and Shiny: Rise of Mythos
I am surprised at how much I have enjoyed Rise of Mythos, a free-to-play browser game published by GameFuse. It's not as though my years of exposure to games from all sorts of genres and publishing houses has dulled my senses against browser-based games; it's that all of those years and all of that exposure has given me the ability to sense when a game will suck. Generally, I am correct. But this time, I thought Rise of Mythos would be a much simpler game, one of those click-once-to-do-everything types that have no depth to them. It turns out my senses were wrong in this case! Rise of Mythos is roughly animated, sure, and the fact that it exists within a browser is enough to give many gamers a reason to run, at least those gamers convinced that the way a game is delivered is some guarantee of its quality. I found its easy access, interesting and surprisingly in-depth gameplay, and tons of activities to be a powerful mixture. Call me gleefully wrong about this one.
MMObility: Introducing Deepworld to Minecraft fanatics
My nephews are visiting this week; they are nine and seven years old. And if there is one truth about these two, it's that they love Minecraft. Oh, they're also creative and smart young kids, but Minecraft is always a ready topic of conversation. Jeff, the younger one, loves to drill me on my knowledge. "Did you know..." is how it starts off, followed by some cool fact about the game. John, the older one, is calmer about the situation, and he has gained the ability, thanks to his elder status, to pull his gaze away from the game (I have it running on three different PCs and three iPads) in order to maintain an air of politeness. When I ask him something, he can give me an answer that has nothing to do with Minecraft! I thought this week would be a cool time to introduce Deepworld to both of them. Deepworld is a fantastic iOS-based Minecraftian MMO that is free-to-play with optional and fantastic cash-shop items. The last time I looked at it, I bought an entire private server for only 10 bucks! I logged in this week for the first time in ages and found my server still sitting, waiting for my creations. Then I showed it to my nephews.
MMObility: Manyland is deceptively simple and surprising
Is the primitive 8- or 16-bit design movement becoming too much of a good thing? At first it presents a cool way to see and interact with the game world, and it does so with a style that is familiar but in many ways more fresh than anything we've experienced for a while. But, then we grow used to it and it starts to feel a bit dated... even though it's only been introduced (in its unique way) in recent years! If you're a designer and you design a game with mining and artwork that looks like something that came from an 80s arcade, do you risk a backlash from writers and gamers who yawn and say "ah, more Minecraft stuff?" Of course you do. That doesn't mean that fun things can't be done within the genre, and Manyland is a great example of that. It's also free and runs right in your browser, so you have zero to lose in terms of checking it out!
Rise and Shiny revisit: Wakfu
One of the great benefits of this job comes from revisiting worlds that have gone unchecked for a while. These are games that I already know I enjoy but want to check back on in an "official" manner, every year at least. Honestly I visit many of them several times a year, but not in the same way I would if I were working. Wakfu is on the same list as Ryzom, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Champions Online and many, many others. This time around I wanted to get out more and explore the surrounding areas, and I found that Ankama has made many improvements to the game that help make exploration possible. Granted, the changes that I noticed were not significant but notable, and overall the game appeared to be just as smooth, interesting, and original as before. The only problem is that many of the same issues I had with the game are still there, and I doubt they'll disappear any time soon.
MMObility: Battle Dragons and Tiny Tycoons make for light fun
This week I would like to mention two titles that only recently came across my desk, Battle Dragons by well-known mobile MMO developer Spacetime Games and Tiny Tycoons, a semi-social, real-world game that is published by The Tap Lab. Which is possibly the cutest company name, ever. Both games shine a light on the current mobile market, even though they do not represent every genre that is popular on mobile devices right now. Both games show off just how well-made many mobile games can be and both design's help illustrate why mobile gaming has gained such a large piece of the gaming pie. We'll start with Battle Dragons, the more MMO-like game of the two. Perhaps because it was created by a studio that has dominated the mobile MMO space for the last several years, Battle Dragons works perfectly on a mobile device.
Choose My Adventure: Learning and seeking revenge in Age of Wushu
Age of Wushu continues to impress and confuse me at the same time, but I can see much of the appeal behind many of the systems. As a reader noticed last week, many sandbox MMOs have the same in-depth systems and mechanics that Age of Wushu does, but as I have said many times before it is not only the specific systems that make a great game, but how the game has taken those systems and combined them in a package. Age of Wushu takes much of the appeal of many of my favorite games and wraps it in a beautiful package that can run on lower-end systems. I crank it all the way up, turn up the music, and enjoy exploring and trying to slowly figure out some of the harder-to-understand mechanics. This week I wanted to try out the two options that were put up for polls, and once again Age of Wushu Community Manager Earthquake and Massively columnist Patrick Mackey joined me to explain, hand out tips, and to help me remember how much of a newb I still am.
Free for All: Playing the eternal noob
As I just finished up my Age of Wushu livestream with Massively's own Patrick Mackey and Age of Wushu Community Manager Earthquake last night, I realize once again that most people do not look at MMO gaming as I do. Of course, I am basing this only on my existence as an island of a person, someone who spends most of his time soloing through content and generally getting lost in one game after another, after another and another. Patrick is a lively personality who is what players would call a min-maxer. A theory-crafter. He is someone who takes hold of a game and learns it backward and forward, something I can only wish I could do. Not only do I not have the mental ability to sit still that long (and no, that's not an attempt at bragging about the size of my brain), but I physically cannot read that much text or spend more than several hours online without taking a break for fear of a days-destroying migraine. This physical inability to study up came well after my already-established love for virtual travel, however. I am an explorer of virtual worlds, an occupation that does not permit sitting at one stop for long. But this hurts me as a player. I realize this and accept it.
Rise and Shiny: Ensemble Online
I always love it when a new indie MMO comes across my virtual desk. I never know what I'm going to get, even though I think I can tell a lot from its name or even the font that the name is written in. Ensemble Online is one of the newest ones, and I assumed it would be a sci-fi sandbox. In reality, it was indeed a sci-fi sandbox but mostly felt like a more cartoony, gentler Wurm Online. I was even able to sit down with the developers during my livestream of the game. Thanks to the fact that the team seems to be really up on social media and appears to pay attention to things like the press (unlike many indies), I learned a lot from that livestream. Be sure to watch it; it's embedded in the article. Ensemble Online holds a ton of potential. It's not there yet, but I'll tell you why I think it can stick around for a while.
Free for All: What a Memoria MMO might look like
There are a few styles of gaming that we just don't see much of anymore, and point-and-click adventure games has been one of those. The good news is that compared to other older styles like text-based or email-gaming, point-and-click adventuring is making a comeback. Thanks to the mobile market and its resurrected titles like Broken Sword and amazing newer games like The Walking Dead, adventure-lovers have much to do. Personally, I find adventure gaming to be a thrilling experience because they generally allow a player to use her brain more than her reflexes, and the experiences are usually quite beautiful too. Memoria is Daedalic Entertainment's latest adventure game set in The Dark Eye universe. It's often described as "the German Dungeons and Dragons." I'm not sure that the description gives either IP full credit, but The Dark Eye is one interesting universe. As usual, though, my mind wondered how the game could be worked into a multiplayer version. A massively multiplayer version. I've asked the same question of other games before, so let's look at how Memoria might make a killer MMO!
Choose My Adventure: I believe I can die in Age of Wushu
Wow. What a game, Age of Wushu. I mean, I have played many, many open-world, free-for-all PvP sandboxes in my time before this one, but Age of Wushu places all of those cool systems in a world that the West generally doesn't play in and then adds in little systems so that there is always something to do. Always. In fact the most common complaint I hear about the MMO is that there is too much to do but not enough explanation to cover all of the activities. I think the real frustration comes not from the lack of guides and pop-ups but from the fact that many of these "helpful" guides are localized for English-speaking audiences enough for them to make some sense, just not enough. I mean no offense here; this is just the truth: Broken English inside a game can make already complex gameplay much harder to understand. There are many small anomalies as well. For example, an NPC referred to me as a man although my character is a woman, and when a small icon indicated that I was hungry, I ate some food, but then an icon told me, "Hungry and Thirsty. HP and internal Energy Recovery speed increases slightly, but you will need some food." Huh? I just ate... I think? Now I can see why Patrick's Age of Wushu guides are so popular!
Rise and Shiny: Vega Conflict
You might be familiar with Kixeye for many different reasons, but this week I am discussing one of the games from its line-up: VEGA Conflict, which is typical in many ways but can definitely be surprising when it needs to be. Many of my favorite MMOs are made up of mechanics we've seen before, but those mechanics are delivered so smartly that the end result is a game that is worth more than it should be. As far as browser-based MMORTS titles go -- and there are scores and scores of them -- VEGA Conflict is a fun and unique blend of strategy, city-building, and Gratuitous Space Battles. It implements none of its designs flawlessly, but the game is almost perfectly balanced between casual play and powergaming. I did receive a wad of coins from the developer shortly after I spent 10 dollars on some myself, and those coins bought me resources and sped up development and building. It's not directly a sell of power and is typical for the genre, but some might find it distasteful. The community didn't seem to mind the model much.
MMObility: Perfect World's new mobile lineup
When I first heard that Perfect World was finally moving into the mobile space, I was excited and a bit worried. The gaming giant publishes a wide variety of games but tends to stick with classic, three-dimensional, client-based MMOs and has even rescued or bought out a few "Western" titles. If you want a publisher with a ton of different F2P games to play, Perfect World is a solid one. So how will it tackle the mobile world? Will it offer as much variety as it does with its other games? Will these mobile games be MMOs or pseudo-MMOs that are attached to social networks? I was able to snag some answers from Fabian Pierre Nicolas, General Manager of Mobile for Perfect World Entertainment.
