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Golden Age goes for a walk on the town
Forget the silver age or the iron age -- the Golden Age is totally where it's at. Where what's at, you ask? Apparently where MMOs meets real-time strategy and crosses paths with castles and tall ships. Aeria Games is ramping up publicity for this upcoming title by releasing five new screens showing off the common town where players will bump into each other while they check out the sights. Golden Age is a free-to-play browser RTS where you can assume the role of the lord of a castle in the golden lands of yore. When you're not building up your fortress, you can go on hundreds of quests in the surrounding areas and unleash hell with your elite armies. You can take a tour of the town in the gallery below. Right now the title is in beta for both North and Latin America, so if you're ready to move out of your parents' basement and into a roomy 200-room keep, head on over to the official site to sign up! %Gallery-131092%
The Game Archaeologist and the SysOp's Sinister Stratagem
When you think of MMORPGs, I wouldn't blame you if your mind stayed rooted firmly in the past decade or so, perhaps taking a brief vacation to 1997 before returning to today's 3-D polygonal glory. But it's not like people just woke up in the late 90's, looked at each other, and said, "Hmm. Online multiplayer RPGs. Let's make it happen!" On the contrary, history had been building up to that moment for quite some time. Tabletop RPGs and computer MUDs (multi-user dungeons) were both important ancestors of modern MMOs, just as was a mostly forgotten piece of software lore: the bulletin board system, also known as the BBS. In layman's terms, BBSes were like pocket internets -- host computers that allowed anyone to dial up and use special programs remotely. While BBSes weren't (initially) tied together like the world wide web, they featured a lot of the elements that would make the WWW so popular, such as email, forums, and, yes, online games. Today's special one-shot Game Archaeologist will take a brief look at the history of the BBS, as well as a couple of its games that could be considered "MORPGs" (like the renowned website, the "Massively" part would be a while in coming). Dial up, gentle readers, and make your hissing modem noises!
Warner Bros. appoints Turbine's new boss
Ever since hearing the news of Turbine's acquisition by Warner Bros. last month, players have been anxiously awaiting a sign of how this might affect Asheron's Call, Dungeons & Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online. While answers are still in short supply, now we know who Turbine answers to: Jeff Junge. Junge was named Senior Vice President of Online Games and Digital Games Platforms by Warner Bros., a new position for the company. He was a key player in the purchase of Turbine, and will now be Turbine's direct boss. Junge has had a lot of influence within Warner Bros. as they moved into the games industry -- he convinced them to invest in OnLive, and led the initiative to purchase other game studios, such as Rocksteady Games and Midway Games. As one of the largest independent MMO studios is folded into the WB umbrella, we will continue to keep a close eye on the direction Junge and WB will take Turbine in the future. You can read the full press release here.
