overworld
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Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake dev accused of stealing artwork [Update]
Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake has been accused of copying its map artwork from another artist, Athens, Greece-based Ilias Sounas. The illustrator posted a blog comparing art they completed in 2012 for Karios Games' MonsterUp Adventures to that of SleepNinja's game, which was funded on Kickstarter to the tune of $26,096 in February 2013 and just launched this week on iOS and Android. "My dispute is over the game map, not the mechanics and overall style, which is identical to the world I had created for MonsterUp Adventures," Sounas told Joystiq. The blog compares the two games' monsters and overworlds, each being an island with markedly similar features such as trees, hills and shadows. Sounas began uploading his creations for the game to the Dribbble design community site in April 2012 as well as the Behance portfolio site in July 2012. Sounas said he contacted both SleepNinja and publisher Cartoon Network regarding the allegations and "their replies are pending." Likewise, Cartoon Network replied to an inquiry from Joystiq, noting the publisher is "looking into this" and "will be in touch with a response."
A WoW player's guide to Guild Wars
Last time around, Massively introduced us WoW players to Age of Conan, and today they've posted a guide to Guild Wars for us World of Warcraft players. Unlike AoC, I have actually played Guild Wars, and they've hit the nail on the head here: for two of the most popular MMOs, Guild Wars is very different from our experience in Azeroth. From a completely instanced overworld (everything outside the cities is instanced, so you won't see anyone else out there questing with you unless they're in your group) to a much more streamlined leveling system and a completely different PvP game (you actually create different characters for PvP, something WoW players have actually been asking for), Guild Wars is a very different game, and definitely an experience worth trying for those of us ingrained with the way they do things in Azeroth.However, one thing Massively missed was the community of Guild Wars -- because the game doesn't have a monthly fee at all, there seems to be a very different audience playing it, and the feel of the chat channels and city general channels is very different. If you thought the trade channel was chaotic in Ironforge, just wait until you get into the starter area of Guild Wars -- because the game has no AH, not only is there more crazy business to be done, but people playing the game for free seem to have even less of a conviction towards making it a good experience for everyone else. WoW's community is a little crazy, but at least there are a few good people out there who'll group up or give you a port to Shattrath. In Guild Wars (in my experience), maybe it's a combination of the instanced world and the free-to-play quality, but it's very much an every-man-for-himself game unless you're playing with friends you know.Not that GW is a bad game -- I enjoyed it, and still jump in occasionally to do some questing. But it's very different from World of Warcraft and many other MMOs.
A first look at Mythos' Overworld
What do you call it when the developers of a hotly anticipated free-to-play Diablo-esque MMO decide at virtually the last minute to entirely redesign their game? You could call it crazy, or unwise, but developers of the upcoming title Mythos went ahead and did just that. Many of Flagship Studios' beta players said the game was more than ready to ship as it was, but it wasn't good enough for the developers. They combined all the instanced, single player overland zones into one massive continent, shared among all players. Instead of being reached by maps that led players through narrow paths to dungeons which looked identical from the outside, the devs placed the dungeons, Oblivion-like, through the world. For the past week, the folks at Flagship promised the Overworld Real Soon Now. A deathwatch was kept on the forums. It was going to be the next day, or the day after, or in a few hours. Players gathered on Mythos' IRC channel where devs tossed out tantalizing hints of what was to come. Then around 9pm EST dev Taylor Balbi advised everyone to re-patch and log in to the Test Center to see the Overworld. He gave some advice as people hurried to be the first into the new world. Test Center will be a separate server. Test Center and Beta Server will be online at the same time and require the same client. To tell which version you currently have, the login screen screen will make it obvious (two different ones). Test Center will start lagging after like 800 people, Mythos Beta won't. Taylor Balbi is Awesome. We think the other Flagship devs are pretty awesome as well. Though there were more than a few glitches with patching, we were able to eventually get in and take a quick run around some of the Overworld, its dungeons, the villages outside Stonehill, and the city of Stonehill itself. All we have left to wait for now is the open beta, expected in the next several weeks. Take a first look at Mythos' Overworld with us %Gallery-10781%
Is Hellgate an MMO or not?
Being as Hellgate: London is seeing lots of installs this week, the question is going around: is it an MMO or not? As Cuppy points out, it certainly fits the bill. It is Massive, it is Multiplayer, and it is definitely Online. But on the other hand, Hellgate is a little different-- it's free to play, like Guild Wars, but also like Guild Wars, expansions will cost you. You can form guilds, but as I understand it, there is no "overworld," per se-- even towns are instanced.So is it an MMO or not? Depends, of course, on how you define MMO. A persistent overworld is a huge element of "normal" MMOs-- a world in which you can walk around and see thousands of other players playing the game alongside you, and Hellgate doesn't have that. On the other hand, its unique model lends itself to pulling in a lot of non-MMO players. Players turned off by the time and money commitment implied by a monthly fee have no such problems with Hellgate, and that will definitely be a nice draw for them (as it has been with Guild Wars).So maybe we need a new label for just what games like Hellgate are. Anyway Games says, wisely, that labels are how you sell games, and, for better or worse, Flagship can't call their game an MMO. So what can they call it? These "buy once, play in a virtual world" games will surely become more popular. Instead of simply being called MMOs, maybe we should put them in an "instanced multiplayer game" (IMG) market of their own.
