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WildStar rocks out with the Granok
Stone is patient, stone is durable, and stone hurts a whole lot when applied to someone else's forehead. WildStar's Granok follow a philosophy they call the Way of Stone, and all of those principles apply to the race as a whole. The latest installment of WildStar Wednesday takes a look at the slate-skinned giants, explaining the race's culture and how they went from their isolated and primitive existence on the planet Gnox to being starfaring mercenaries. The Dominion originally approached the Granok hoping to use them as durable shock troops and laborers, but the Granok as a whole refused the offer, prompting a war with the superpower that the Granok quickly began losing. It was only when a leader emerged willing to fight dirty that the tide began to turn for the Granok, setting into motion their eventual exile from Gnox. Take a look at the full article for all the details on these stony soldiers of fortune and the war for their planet, one that ended with a victory almost as bad as defeat.
Write fiction for EVE Online, win fabulous prizes
EVE Online lends itself to stories. Not just news stories, although those crop up with fair regularity, but stories about the vast and hostile galaxy filled with spaceships, mining, and corporate warfare. If you've got a story to tell about the game, then you're in luck: An officially endorsed writing contest has just been announced, judged by representatives of CCP Games. And the prizes are nothing to sneeze at, including a new graphics card, a year's worth of PLEX, and over 20 billion ISK. The contest offers two ways for players to enter. First, you can write up a wholly fictional story based entirely in the lore, or second, you can write up an account of events centered around your characters in the game. Either way, contest entries are expected to be between 1500-5000 words in length and must be submitted by December 2nd. If you've got a story to tell, take a look at the full contest page and get writing.
Storyboard: Only good once
Truce Sokolov is a character I like to hold up as an example of how characters can take on lives of their own. She was created as more of a throwaway than anything, a Draenei Shaman whose main character trait was being kind of shy. Flash-forward a year, and she was my main character on the Alliance side of the fence, fleshed out into a strong and capable woman hamstrung by her lack of faith in herself and a resentment of her militaristic environment. She defined a large chunk of my roleplaying in World of Warcraft. So I've tried to port her over to other games. And it has never worked. To date, I've created about a dozen different Truces in different games, and absolutely every one of them has tripped at the starting gate. Or imploded on the launch pad. So as I sift through the wreckage of yet another incarnation of the character, it seems apropos to discuss characters that only work in a single incarnation no matter how hard you try.
First impressions of PlanetSide 2 through the eyes of an FPS noob
Rather than give anyone the wrong impression, let me begin by saying that first-person shooters are far from being my thing. I don't pant in anticipation for the latest Battlefield or Modern Warfare game. I do, however, like my share of third-person shooters. Global Agenda and the Mass Effect series come to mind immediately. So what in the world would make someone like me interested in Sony Online Entertainment's latest craze, PlanetSide 2? RPGs are my thing, and I have always had respect for SOE as a developer. Despite some obvious mistakes the company's made when under the umbrella of large intellectual properties like DC Comics and Star Wars, SOE has handled its own IPs very well. It was also one of the first Western AAA studios to step into the world of free-to-play (with Free Realms, which continues to perform well). And now PlanetSide 2 proclaims that online FPS titles can not only provide exciting vehicle combat but do so in a persistent world. So when SOE invited Massively to join Game Designer Margaret Krohn on a guided tour of PlanetSide 2, I thought, "Why not? At least I'll get to shoot some people in the face."
Leaderboard: Fantasy vs. sci-fi vs. contemporary setting
Whoa Nelly! We have ourselves a rootin'-tootin' genre standoff in this here Leaderboard! It all started when the various representatives from the major MMO settings got together for an early week brunch, and it ended with drawn swords, pistols, and ray guns. Every setting thinks it's the best, of course, and they all have the egos to back it up. Let's see whether we can't defuse this standoff today, shall we? Let's vote for the best genre setting for an MMO: fantasy, science fiction, or contemporary. By far, fantasy has the most MMO representatives and is pretty much the main staple of the industry. However, both science fiction and contemporary titles have been making in-roads, from The Secret World to Star Trek Online. Is it better to play in a virtual world that's the most similar to yours? Does a mythological spin on the Middle Ages resonate most strongly with our sense of adventure? Or does the far-flung future hold the most prospect in giving us an unlimited frontier? Make your vote known after the jump!
Storyboard: The social contract
Have you ever thought about the fact that every single one of your characters is a murdering thief? Picture the scene for a moment: You have a group of people living in an isolated and rural community. Without warning, a man with heavy weaponry bursts in and starts hacking his way through every inhabitant of the community, smashing his way into locked houses. But he also stops at the body of each victim to gather any money or important belongings, slowly working his way through the community until there's nothing left but carrion and a few trinkets he didn't deem valuable enough to steal. On the news, this would be up there as a pretty shocking tragedy. In an MMO, this is a good chunk of the gameplay. And that brings to mind one of the major issues that faced by roleplayers hoping for verisimilitude: the horrible discrepancies between the social contract as we understand it and the one employed by the characters in the game. They're divergent sometimes, identical at other times, and universally ambiguous.
Creative staff discuss the story setting of The Elder Scrolls Online
MMOs in an existing franchise always present certain issues: You need enough conceptual space to advance a game's storyline, but you may not want to be locked in to never doing another title in the franchise. So The Elder Scrolls Online has to be set in just the right time period for the game to work. In a recent video interview, creative director Paul Sage and content designer Rich Lambert sat down to talk about the why behind the when. Sage and Lambert explain that the real draw to this particular time period was the fact that there's neither a great deal of recorded in-game history nor a lot of huge events that might affect future titles -- it's a time when almost anything can happen without derailing future events in the universe. The duo also discusses keeping the game aligned with existing lore and ensuring that nothing gets thrown off by mistake. Those looking forward to the game will want to watch the full interview, which goes into more details regarding specifics of lore and setting.
The Mog Log: Ishgardbul, not Ala Mhigonople
There are three cities that players can select to call home in Final Fantasy XIV, but there are five cities of importance. Over the past few weeks I've looked at the former group, but that leaves two important places to be covered. At the same time, those cities are by necessity harder to talk about because we haven't set foot in either. Everything we know about them is secondhand, via quests and inference and in one case the ability to longingly gaze over an ornate stone bridge. Ishgard and Ala Mhigo both cast long shadows over Eorzea, but neither one is accessible to players. There are details about both swimming through the game, but it's always secondhand, always with one or two pieces gleaned from outside sources. In its own way, this makes both cities more alluring -- because one we know to be the heart of darkness and the other could be almost anything when the gates finally swing open. If, in fact, they ever do.
Chrome now easily opens email links in Gmail, thanks to some HTML5 magic
The next time you open up Gmail in Chrome keep an eye out for the prompt above, which uses HTML5 to finally close the gap between the way Google's browser handles mailto: links and its popular email service. Our only question about the change is what took them so long? Using extensions or simply copying and pasting email addresses as Gmail blogger and software developer Michael Davidson has been doing were available workarounds, but they won't be needed any longer -- no DRM necessary. Hit the source link for more info on what it's doing and how Chrome allows site handler requests.
WildStar invites players to meet the Aurin
There's a lot to be learned about the setting of WildStar before the game starts in on testing, but there are also a lot of prospective players eager to learn whatever they can. So they'll probably be happy to take a look at the latest entry on the official blog, a mock-interview with the Aurin character Liara from the game's original cinematic trailer. Aside from providing some character insights, it gives a look at the Aurin as a species beyond the obvious. The Aurin come from the forested planet of Arboria, where large ears and long tails for balance have some decided evolutionary advantages. Unfortunately for the Aurin, the Dominion invaded the planet and began cutting everything down, leading to the displaced animal-people lending their knowledge to the Exiles. It's an interesting glimpse at the game's lore for both the Aurin and for Scientists, something that several eager WildStar fans will no doubt devour with vigor.
Storyboard: From beyond the boundaries
Every game world has a basic setting premise. Your character in Guild Wars can come from all over Tyria, but he certainly doesn't come from Alderaan. Even though your captain in Star Trek Online is proficient in unarmed combat, she cannot bend the Matrix to her will. And no matter how similar the settings might seem, when WildStar finally comes out, you will not be able to claim that your character used to smuggle cargo on a Firefly-class vessel out in the black. People do these things anyway. People gleefully import characters wholesale from other settings and expect it to be accepted that they come from another time and place, often bringing with them plenty of baggage. It's flagrant disregard for the rules of the setting and the game as it exists, and it's a hallmark of bad roleplaying... And yet it doesn't have to be. This is an element of fiction that's always been very popular, and in some games (such as most superheroic ones), the idea of slipping from one world to another doesn't seem that far-fetched. So let's talk about why it tends to be done and how you can actually do this without being obnoxious.
The Mog Log: Fluffballs on parade
Despite what it might have seemed like, last week's column was not actually meant as a direct response to Final Fantasy XIV's announcement of class revisions. It was just a happy coincidence, really. I could go into more detail, of course, but I had already planned on talking about the eponym of the column, which I haven't done since I kicked the column off in the first place. Moogles are ubiquitous in Final Fantasy XI, and while they're a bit rarer in Final Fantasy XIV they're still not a secret. This is understandable -- after all, the small little critters are part of the glue that holds the series together conceptually. So it's odd that when you get right down to it, they're only peripherally involved with the settings of the games they appear in. Despite the ubiquity of the moogles, it's debatable whether some of them are even there.
City of Steam browser title features unique steampunk world
Steampunk continues to be a source of fascination for both game geeks and game developers, and the latest example of the phenomenon in MMO circles is a new title called City of Steam. An interview at Light Speed Gaming spills the beans on the browser-based title, which is being developed by a Chinese firm called Mechanist Games. If you've ever wanted to play a mechanical dwarf, or explore a world that is literally a giant machine, City of Steam may be your game. The setting is borrowed from a series of RPG books and incorporates all the elements of fantastical steampunk (plus a few novel twists) that fans of the genre have come to expect. "The world itself is a giant machine, and is, in fact flat. The elemental planes aren't found by mystical methods -- you can literally walk across the teeth of the world to reach them. The sun and stars are actually tethered to the world, orbiting as gyroscopic pieces of the superstructure of existence," according to the designers. Head to Light Speed Gaming for more on the setting and the game mechanics, and don't forget to view the video embed after the break. [Thanks to Soren for the tip!]
iPhone 4S lacks "Enable 3G" switch
If you're among the teeming masses holding a brand new iPhone 4S in your hands, you may be surprised (as we were) to find there's something conspicuously absent from the Network Settings menu on your new device: specifically the ability to manually shut off 3G data. After receiving word, and a screenshot, from a helpful tipster, rocking a 4S on Vodafone's network, we found the same option missing from our own AT&T iteration. Of course this isn't the sort of thing that's likely to have an impact on most users, but if you're the type that likes to squeeze every last bit of juice out of that Apple, the omission could cause some frustration. We gave Apple support a call to see what they had to say, and were told AppleCare has no official response on the matter. If you're lamenting the loss of the 3G flip-switch sound off in the comments below. Update: A few of our readers are reporting that the original Verizon iPhone 4 also lacked the 3G switch, which means the absence is most likely on a carrier-by-carrier basis. [Thanks, Chris and Charlie]
The Daily Grind: Do you prefer historical settings?
This week, Massively's Karen Bryan attended a GDC talk by Charles Cecil, the creator of Broken Sword, on the topic of writing games that employ history and historical themes. Cecil wisely noted that historical themes tap in to the audience's shared mythology to generate a compelling game and to serve as the foundation for accessible puzzles relevant to the storyline. And yet strict historical themes in MMOs, even when not diluted with more fantastic elements, can also betray immersion -- would it really make sense for a game about the American Revolution to allow female characters to become military generals? Dark Age of Camelot certainly saw its share of success pairing real-world European legend and modern 20th-century fantasy, while its cousin Imperator, set in a futuristic Roman Empire, was canceled in favor of another Mythic game. World of Tanks thrives off historical realism, whereas the upcoming The Secret World is making an art-form of layering myth over mundane. Still, history-flavored games are very much in the minority, perhaps because they allow studios much less freedom of lore design. What do you think -- do historical (or pseudo-historical) MMOs work for you? Do you prefer pure escapism, or would you rather play in a "home-turf" setting whose real-world backstory is your own? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Mog Log: Beauty of the beastmen
Well, it turned out to be a very good thing that I wasn't planning on talking about Final Fantasy XIV's patch 1.19 today, since it's not quite available just yet. That includes the absolutely enormous list of updates and changes to crafting, with several items apparently being yanked out of rotation altogether. Use up the ones you have and get ready to just vendor the rest, from the looks of it. Perhaps make some lumber ahead of time. At least your inventory woes should be somewhat diminished. But this week's plan wasn't to talk about the patch; it was to talk about beastmen once again. Regular readers will note that I've already spoken about beastmen once before, taking a look at the often fascinating societies of non-human creatures living outside of the major cities. (I'm using "human" as a blanket term here for hume, elvaan, tarutaru, etc.) Today, I want to look at this in a bit more depth. What exactly do both Final Fantasy XIV and Final Fantasy XI use the beastmen for in terms of storytelling? What makes them compelling and interesting?
The Daily Grind: What's your favorite in-game wildlife?
The general rule of MMOs is pretty simple to understand -- if it moves, either get a quest from it or kill it. Natural critters other than enemy soldiers exist mostly so that you can occasionally kill ten rats rather than killing ten beastmen. But from the chocobos of Final Fantasy XI to the elementally affected critters of RIFT, there are a plethora of different creatures that roam the land that you aren't necessarily meant to kill -- or at least those that serve a purpose in the world's ecology. In some games, such as the deep space setting of EVE Online, you're not going to find much in the way of wildlife. But in the games that do feature animals meandering about, which ones are your favorites? What local fauna catches your eye, either because it reminds you that the game takes place in a living world or just because it's so alien and bizarre? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Hyperspace Beacon: Expecting a living world
The other day I was talking to some friends about Star Wars: The Old Republic, of course. As of late, it seems to be the only thing I'm talking about. My friend isn't a guy who follows the game that closely, but he is an MMO player and has certain expectations for the game. Specifically, we talked about Crew Skills and space combat. He is an EVE player. EVE Online has one of the most in-depth crafting systems in any MMO to date, not to mention the game is completely set in space, right? On the other side of the fence, I was talking to some roleplayers in Star Wars Galaxies, who also don't follow the game as closely as I do. These MMOers are expecting SWTOR to be filled with the best roleplay tools available in the gaming industry. It's BioWare; after all, that team created Never Winter Nights, the most customizable RPG ever. (Of course, this doesn't take into effect that latest games to come from the developer were pretty linear and not very sandboxy.) As arm chair developers, we sometimes believe that implementing ideas in an MMO is a lot easier than reality. On the official forums last week, a player made this statement: "I, and 14 other guildmates, really want to plan on rolling on an rp-pvp server. It's such a trivial game feature to confirm for us, I don't understand why they wouldn't just mention it and be done with it." After saying that he would look into it, Community Manager Stephen Reid made the statement that "A good rule of thumb with MMO development is to never assume something is trivial." What are some other "trivial" expectations players are placing on this game? Which ones can BioWare deliver on? Which ones aren't as trivial as suggested? Why can't Star Wars: The Old Republic give us everything we want? In this week's column, let's talk about setting.
The Mog Log: Fit for man and beast
Some weeks, I just don't have quite as much material as others. Oh, don't get me wrong -- the new May version update is out in Final Fantasy XI, which is awesome. But I already did a reaction piece on that, which kind of narrows down my options. Similarly, right now there isn't a lot happening in Final Fantasy XIV, just a lot of stuff around the corner that will eventually be released and probably be awesome. The fact that it's been Golden Week over in Japan has helped contribute to this overall sense of silence. Thus, today I'm pulling something that at least distantly resembles a rabbit out of my hat by pulling out an old topic that I had never really written about before -- beastmen. Sadly underused thus far in Final Fantasy XIV, the beastmen in Final Fantasy XI contributed a lot to the game's setting and general sense of place, even though some of the critters were pretty hopelessly ridiculous. So as long as I'm taking a step off the beaten path, I'm walking around with some beastmen.
The Mog Log: Class act
It's been an exciting couple of weeks of news if you're a fan of fantasies that claim a certain degree of finality. I could talk more about some of the slated changes for Final Fantasy XI, or I could talk about all of the updates we know about for Final Fantasy XIV... but I've already done the former, and I think I want a little more information before I do the latter. This week, we're sticking with the original plan, and that's talking about the classes as they intersect with the game's lore, because it's pretty blessedly astonishing. Think about it for a second. Both Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV essentially let you be any class at any time. You aren't locked into a single selection a la World of Warcraft; your role is maleable based on the circumstance and what you feel like playing at any given time. By all rights, these classes could essentially be throw-away distinctions for abilities, without any sort of larger framework to live in. There's no strict mechanical reason why it would have to matter that a character was a White Mage if he could just as easily be a Warrior or a Scholar after a quick trip to the Mog House.
