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Molten Games is building something called Blunderbuss
Remember last summer when Molten Games sent out a press release saying that it had picked up ex-Blizzard and SOE personnel as well as a substantial chunk of funding courtesy of NCsoft? Well, the company has revealed the name of its project, though not much beyond that. The concoction is called Blunderbuss, and according to 2P it is an Unreal 4-powered title that is "expected to launch with [a] free-to-play model in the summer of 2015." The genre is still unknown, though the source article says it's a "core game" designed for e-sports. What's a core game? Your guess is as good as mine, since that's basically a marketing term that could mean anything from hardcore to softcore to Andrea Corr. OK, maybe not that last one, even though MOBAs with Irish pop musician heroes should be a thing. [Thanks Zedrick!]
Some Assembly Required: Want a real living story? Try a sandbox!
I'm going to criticize Guild Wars 2 this week, or more accurately, ArenaNet. I know, I know. I might as well change the name of this column to How to Alienate Friends, Co-workers, and Commenters. As a qualifier, I don't play Guild Wars 2. I have in the past, briefly, but my criticisms today are mostly directed at ANet's marketing folks or whoever is responsible for the Living Story refrain that gets sillier and sillier every time I hear it.
Piranha: MechWarrior's F2P model not pay-to-win
Concerned about the free-to-play nature of the newly announced MechWarrior Online title? You shouldn't be, according to the latest Piranha Games dev blog. The big wall o' text comes courtesy of one Bryan Ekman, who says that the new battle mech game will definitely not be pay-to-win. "One of our core pillars is role warfare and [it] is designed to, well –- level the playing field –- another concept from our original design. We're doing away with the arms race and making battle mechs of all shapes and sizes have a purpose and role on the battlefield," Ekman says. Why should players spend any money, then? That's not as clear, though the blog does touch on the usual F2P bullet points of convenience and acquisition speed. Get out your PR decoder rings and head to the official MechWarrior Online website for more info. [Update: A second blog post outlines the team's reveal plans in the coming weeks. Thanks to nimzy for the tip!]
SWTOR Friday update talks warzones, EA pooh-poohs launch-day demand concerns
Electronic Arts boss Frank Gibeau says that fans shouldn't fret about the possibility of missing out on Star Wars: The Old Republic's launch day. The only trouble is that he doesn't say how, opting instead to float a few lines of fluffy marketing speak during a conference call this week. "We're looking at a rollout plan that is fairly ambitious. We don't feel like we're going to be leading too much demand behind at launch but we definitely are going to be very cautious and thoughtful about how many people we bring on and in what order," Gibeau says. So, how exactly does that allay our launch-day left-at-the-altar fears? Yeah, your guess is as good as ours. Moving on to more useful SWTOR news, the official site has pumped out its traditional Friday update, and today's reveal isn't so much a reveal as it is a concise collection of information about the game's warzone functionality. Head over to the site for some verbiage and videos about Voidstar, Huttball, and Alderaan.
