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Massively hands-on: Let's talk about The Repopulation
Writing about early access games is the suck. I guess it's something I'll have to get over, though, given how early access is now launch, how alpha is the new beta, and how gamers are lining up to pay big money for ideas. With that out of the way, let's talk a bit about my first steps in The Repopulation. It's an appropriately ambitious sci-fi sandbox from scrappy indie studio Above & Beyond Technologies. As you might expect, it's somewhat rough at the moment. I see it carving out a successful niche for itself in the future, though.
The Soapbox: In praise of SWTOR's 12X experience
It's taken 12 times the normal XP rate, but Star Wars: The Old Republic is finally my main MMO (at least for another week or so). Well, OK, it's also taken a series of spectacularly ill-considered decisions by XLGAMES and Trion, but that's a rant for another day. I've been playing SWTOR quite a lot over the past month since BioWare's subscriber-only pre-expansion boost has cut all of the godawful grindpark garbage right out of a galaxy far, far away. Too bad it's just a temporary fix, though -- here's hoping that the devs give veterans the option of keeping the XP bonus long after December 1st.
Massively's ArcheAge launch diary: Day six - P2W and the early verdict
Is ArcheAge pay-to-win? That's a question I've been asked several times in recent days. Before I answer it, let's get something out of the way up front. And by "out of the way," I mean that this is the most important part of the article and needs to be emphasized in the intro. Pay-to-win is 100% subjective. There is no scientific or universally accepted definition of pay-to-win. Some things in this life are absolutes. Pay-to-win is not one of them.
Massively's ArcheAge launch diary: Day five - Random knowledge
Today's diary entry is going to skip around a bit, as I'm still dabbling all over ArcheAge and finding it nearly impossible to convey everything important inside of a few thousand words. If you're just joining us, this is day five of Massively's launch chronicle because even though the game "launched" yesterday, it really launched last Friday via the founder head start. I'm aware that some people had disconnect issues and nightmare two-hour login queues on the 16th. I did not have much trouble with either, presumably because of my Patron account status regarding the latter. Trion does have some work to do, though, as I noticed a lot of slow-down in high-traffic areas throughout much of my play session last night, and I also logged into a black screen more than once and had to re-queue as a result. In other words, it was a typical MMO launch day. I've seen better, but I've also seen far, far worse.
Massively's ArcheAge launch diary: Day four - Trade runs, sea beasts, and pirates
I got ganked in ArcheAge last night, and believe it or not, it was one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had in an MMORPG in quite some time. I'm usually apathetic about MMO PvP. I mean, I will PvP with friends, but I don't think I've ever sat down to play an MMORPG and thought, "Hmm, maybe I'll go kill some players tonight!" PvP factors heavily into ArcheAge's design, though, so I knew going in that I'd be doing it more than in most of my other MMOs. I just didn't know it would end up being as fun as it was on last night's trade run.
Massively's ArcheAge launch diary: Day three - PvE, quests, and story
Welcome back to Massively's ArcheAge launch diary. I can't believe we're already on the third installment because there's still so much to see, do, and learn. That's a good thing, though, isn't it? Yeah, it is, and while ArcheAge has its share of issues, its breadth and depth is incredibly welcome in a genre that's gotten far too comfortable repackaging the same tired experience.
Massively's ArcheAge launch diary: Day two - Classes, skills, combat
Welcome to day two of Massively's ArcheAge launch diary. Technically, by the time you read this, it'll be day three, but you know how these things work. And I know, I know, it's not really launch; it's head start. But Trion's not wiping this weekend's progression, so I'm going to keep referring to this as a launch diary! Thanks to a bunch of virginal script kiddies who thought it would be cool to DDoS the ArcheAge servers on Saturday, I didn't get to play all freakin' afternoon as planned. That's OK, though, because we've got a lot to talk about with regard to the game's basic mechanics.
Massively's ArcheAge launch diary: Day one
I'm standing on a sun-baked rock along Nuia's northern coast. The waves lap at my feet, little bubbles are visible just off shore. Wispy strips of white cirrus float overhead, framing a baby blue sky that meets the ocean somewhere beyond a hazy horizon I can't quite see. I've been standing here a while because there goes the sun, melting into the water and leaking red-orange streaks across the purplish waves as I watch. Up the cliff face behind me, a gaggle of green-named newbs mosh about in the newb area doing what MMO newbs do. A couple of them make their way down the cliff face to join me. One of them jostles my character and apologizes. He didn't realize there was collision detection and he's very sorry and wow, this game is pretty, isn't it?
I saw a real Jedi in Star Wars: The Old Republic
Let me tell you about this Jedi Guardian named Nayelii. She lives on Star Wars: The Old Republic's Ebon Hawk server. She could actually be a he, but the avatar (and the name) seemed female, so that's the pronoun I'm going with at the moment. I say "seemed" because Nayelii was wearing hooded robes, it's fairly dark through most of the Kuat Drive Yards flashpoint, and I tend to play dungeons with my camera at max range. Anyway, that's all beside the point because last weekend Nayelii put on what is unequivocally the best tanking performance I've seen in all my years playing MMORPGs.
Massively's Elder Scrolls Online launch diary: Day five - The (early) verdict
Is it Friday already? Huh. This launch week has gone by fast, which I guess is a good sign for ZeniMax since time flies when you're having fun. My fifth day in Elder Scrolls Online was a bit more subdued than the previous four. I'm currently floating around Glenumbra between levels 12 and 13, waiting on my healer and tanker friends to catch up so that we can run Spindleclutch, also known as ESO's first proper Daggerfall Covenant PvE dungeon. There are numerous public crypts available for exploration and pillage prior, but Spindleclutch is the first big-boy boss-based four-man. But I didn't feel like pugging it last night, so instead I started crafting.
Massively's Elder Scrolls Online launch diary: Day four - PvP
My fourth day In The Elder Scrolls Online didn't start until well after 3:00 p.m. thanks to the North American megaserver going down in the wee watches of Wednesday morning and remaining down for several hours. When it came back up, the first thing I did was load into Doshia's Lair outside Daggerfall with a pickup group that intended to finish a Fighter's Guild quest called Anchors From the Harbour. Unfortunately none of us could see the others' avatars inside the instance, so after several attempts at reloading and relogging, we abandoned ship [Ed. note: Yes it's a solo quest, which wasn't in any way made clear to the group trying to enter it!]. While additional data like this has caused me to reassess my earlier observations about ESO's smooth (pre-)launch, it hasn't affected my overall enjoyment of the game. In fact, ESO would need quite a few more bugs and several more days of downtime to qualify as a "bad" launch. If you disagree, well, I question how many MMO launches you've actually experienced.
Massively's Elder Scrolls launch diary: Day three - Questing, story, and more
I'm just about to level 10 as the sun sets on day three of my Elder Scrolls Online pre-launch experience. After plenty of decisional paralysis on Sunday, I settled on a Redguard Nightblade and spent Monday and Tuesday leveling him through Stros M'kai, Betnikh, and the city of Daggerfall. Now I'm working my way northeast through the wilds of Glenumbra, stopping occasionally to assist the citizens of Deleyn's Mill and clean up the Vale of the Guardians.
Massively's Elder Scrolls launch diary: Day two - Skills and progression
Never in 15-plus years of MMO gaming have I been so bewildered when it comes to picking a main class and character. Part of this is because I ignored The Elder Scrolls Online prior to March 30th. So I'm drinking from the information firehose in terms of game mechanics while simultaneously trying to keep up with friends. The other part of it stems from the fact that ESO has an absurd amount of build customizability. I'm glad it has only four classes instead of six or eight because six or eight would probably send me over the decisional paralysis edge and into some sort of fugue state. I think for the purposes of this launch week diary -- and my own sanity -- I'm just going to stick with my Redguard Nightblade and forge ahead. There. Done. Maybe.
Massively's Elder Scrolls launch week diary: Day one
Like any proper Tamrielian title, The Elder Scrolls Online starts you off in chains. This isn't the boat-bound incarceration of Morrowind, though, or the relative comfort of Oblivion's initial Imperial lockup. This is the Wailing Prison, an otherworldly abyss stocked with iron maidens, soulless inmates, and a spectral Prophet who sounds a lot like Albus Dumbledore. Don't worry, though; ZeniMax didn't blow its budget on Michael Gambon or the rest of ESO's A-list voice cast. This is a fairly deep game, and it also does a surprisingly decent job of translating 20 years' worth of single-player sandbox history into a mass market MMORPG.
Pirates of the Burning Sea CEO on the economic revamp and a player-driven world
Pirates of the Burning Sea recently celebrated its sixth anniversary as well as the one-year anniversary of parent company Portalus' decision to strike out on its own following the expiration of its Sony Online Entertainment publishing contract. The dev team is currently prepping a major economic revamp, but CEO Charles Ellis kindly spared a few moments to answer Massively's burning questions. Join us after the cut as we talk about life after SOE, the game's robust economy, and Portalus' future plans.
Hitting the Mark: Turbine's sublime Rohan recreation in Lord of the Rings Online
I've written before about my on-again-off-again love affair with Lord of the Rings Online, and after finally getting my launch-day character to Rohan a few weeks ago, I think it's most definitely on again. Yeah, I'm still a sandbox fan first and foremost, and yeah, LotRO is still a dyed-in-the-wool nod to the World of Warcraft school of linear MMO development. But it's got a pleasing topcoat of Tolkien paint that often masks the pedestrian mechanics, and nowhere is this more evident than in the Riders of Rohan and Helm's Deep expansions.
Hands-on with the Elite: Dangerous alpha
I don't have much history with Elite. I played the original, circa 1985 on my dad's green monochrome Apple II, but frankly I didn't understand a bit of it and subsequently went back to Sundog and subLOGIC's fledgling wireframe Flight Simulator as a result. By the time Elite II and Frontier: First Encounters shipped in the early to mid 1990s, I was already losing copious amounts of my adolescence to Wing Commander, Privateer, and X-Wing, all of them of course indebted to the space trading flight sim thing that David Braben and Ian Bell published a decade earlier. For all intents and purposes, then, I'm an Elite virgin despite a lifetime of playing nearly everything in the genre it inspired. And if the Elite: Dangerous alpha client is an accurate barometer, gosh have I missed out.
iRacing is the real driving simulator
I've never been to northern California's legendary Laguna Seca road course. In meatspace, at any rate. But thanks to dozens of realistic racing game recreations, I know the track's serpentine layout and its infamous corkscrew corner like the back of my hand. I've barreled through it hundreds if not thousands of times since 1999's Gran Turismo 2, so it darn well ought to be familiar by now, right? And it was, right up until I loaded onto iRacing's version of it.
My first two hours in EQN Landmark
Sony Online Entertainment has an eventual winner on its hands with EverQuest Next: Landmark. I know, I know. You've been burned by SOE in the past. Maybe you're still angry about the NGE, or maybe you're a Vanguard lifer and the wound is still fresh. Maybe you're even one of those goofballs who mistakenly thinks that internet spaceships plus PvP drama equals the only relevant MMO. Whatever your bias, you should be excited for what Landmark represents if you're a sandbox fan.
Ship-spinning perfected: Hands-on with World of Warplanes' launch
On paper, World of Warplanes is a game I should love. I've been obsessed with World War II-era aviation since learning to walk, and Wargaming.net's free-to-play followup to World of Tanks oozes piston-powered familiarity like a radial engine oozes oil and sweet-smelling (per)fumes. Logging into a WoWP hangar is a nostalgic exercise in mid-20th century iconography, and for that reason alone it's hard to dislike it. I manage, though, because of the title's grindy progression and a design mandate that eschews traditional flight sim mechanics for arcade tropes aimed at gamers who wouldn't know an accelerated stall from a bathroom stall.
