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The Daily Grind: What was your favorite Gamescom reveal?
Gamescom 2014 came and went, but not before a handful of interesting MMO-related news blurbs made their way from Cologne, Germany to your monitor. My personal favorite was Star Citizen's quartet of new videos, not to mention a fifth that showed off a multiplayer-crewed Constellation fighting for its life. What about you, Massively readers? What was your favorite Gamescom reveal? Or did nothing much catch your eye this year? 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!
Gamescom 2014: Star Citizen gets racing, FPS, hangar, and Connie teasers
Star Citizen fans, we hope you're sitting down, because Cloud Imperium released not one, not two, not three, but four separate trailers during its Gamescom livestream. Let's see, there's one about racing, one about the upcoming hangar update, a commercial for the Constellation, and oh yeah, how about some FPS combat footage? Feast your eyes after the cut! [Thanks Cardboard!]
Last Week on Massively: Blizzard goes all-in on WoW nostalgia
This post originally appeared on Massively from Editor-in-Chief Brianna Royce. At the end of every week, we round up the best and most popular news stories, exclusive features, and insightful columns published on Massively and then present them all in one convenient place. If you missed a big MMO story last week, you've come to the right post. World of Warcraft stole the pre-Gamescom show this week by both dropping 800k subscriptions over the past quarter and promising to reveal on August 14th the Warlords of Draenor expansion's intended release date. Taking into account Blizzard's announcement of nostalgia-laced anniversary content, the Massively staffers and readers speculated on just when Draenor's launch might be. Read on for a look at the rest of this week's top MMO stories.
Star Citizen's Roberts talks trial accounts, the persistent universe, and more
Cloud Imperium has published the 33rd episode of 10 for the Chairman, which is a video show hosted by Chris Roberts that's designed to answer fan-submitted questions about Star Citizen. Roberts talks up everything from the game's persistent universe to a unique take on a trial account system to the various systems behind hirable NPCs. There are also bits about the game's Murray Cup racing mechanics, missile lock options, and more. Click past the cut to have a look!
Stick and Rudder: Should you be scared off by Star Citizen's community?
Massively's Justin Olivetti and I were talking MMO communities recently. Star Citizen came up, and my esteemed colleague mentioned that the constant hubbub surrounding the crowdsourced space sim sandbox has made him a bit wary of getting invested in the title for the time being. From the inside looking out, I can see how the game's community sometimes seems like a roiling mass of internet rage and entitlement, but I think it's worth mentioning that -- like the game itself -- it's also what you make of it.
Make My MMO: August 3 - August 9, 2014
Well, Games of Glory didn't last long on our crowdfunding list. Soon after I added it last week, Lightbulb Crew sent out a PR blast saying that it was canceling its Kickstarter drive on account of additional funding that it managed to secure from its existing investors. We also say goodbye to Bone Gulch for now, as the indie wild west sandbox failed to reach its Kickstarter goal. The Stomping Land and Ever, Jane also made headlines this week. The former is moving engines from Unreal 3 to 4, while the latter surfaced with a new build that includes endgame sleuthing and gossip systems. Finally, Star Citizen continued to roll around in piles of money, and oh yeah, it also squashed those troublesome rubberbanding bugs, opened up Arena Commander to all of the game's backers, and added a new CTF mode. More MMO crowdfunding news is just past the break.
Star Citizen's Arena Commander gets new CTF mode
Cloud Imperium has added a new game mode to Star Citizen's Arena Commander dogfighting module. Capture the Core is a team-based mode that sees players tasked with -- you guessed it -- capping the core on the opposite side of the map. If that sounds a bit like classic capture-the-flag games, that's by design, though CIG's announcement post points out that there's an "additional challenge of operating in three dimensional space." The new mode is now available to all Arena Commander-eligible backers. [Thanks Cardboard!]
The Daily Grind: Has Star Citizen made enough money yet?
These are the rules of Star Citizen club. The first rule is that you do not talk about Star Citizen, unless it's in the comments, in which case you can go nuts. The second rule is that you must somewhere mention money. The third rule is that you may not question the brilliance and perfection of Chris Roberts. The fourth rule is that all VHS cassettes must be rewound before returning them to the space library. So with almost $50 million raised from a half-million backers, one has to occasionally wonder: Has Star Citizen made enough money yet to fully fund the dream? Are players continually donating more money for diminishing returns at this point? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure this will be the best game of all time, full stop. But when one of the recent stretch goals is for a plant, I have to wonder when enough is enough. 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!
Star Citizen's Arena Commander open to all backers
Cloud Imperium released Star Citizen's July update this week, which says that the dev team has "finally achieved victory" in its long battle with the game's pre-alpha rubber-banding issues. Arena Commander multiplayer is "playing like we originally intended," the firm explains, and as a result the module has been made available to all eligible SC backers. The rest of the update letter details happenings at all of CIG's studios around the world. [Thanks Cardboard and James!]
Chris Roberts: 'If I were a little saner, I wouldn't be biting off as much as we're doing here'
Star Citizen will top $50 million in crowdfunding at some point over the next few weeks, and when it does, chances are good that you'll see increased media coverage. Some of that coverage has already started, if a new piece at The Verge is any indication. There's nothing new here for fans or backers, but it's a great high-level primer for your on-the-fence friends that focuses on creator Chris Roberts and his desire to build the ultimate space sim. "If I [were] a little saner, I wouldn't be biting off as much as we're doing here," Roberts explains, "but it's the game that I've wanted to play and dreamed about playing forever."
Star Citizen's latest ship is ready for the races
Not every spaceship is slated for combat or trade; some ships exist to go as fast as possible. The Origin M50, Star Citizen's newest offering, is a racing ship that can do double duty as a courier or interceptor. The craft is dominated by a pair of engines that provide an incredible amount of thrust and maneuverability. Players who cough up $90 can put one of these sleek machines in their collection right now. The devs promise that the M50 is "hanger-ready," meaning that you can admire it in person via the hanger module. Taking it out for a spin? That may be a while yet. [Thanks to James for the tip!]
Last Week on Massively: Crime and punishment in Elder Scrolls Online
This post originally appeared on Massively from Editor-in-Chief Brianna Royce. At the end of every week, we round up the best and most popular news stories, exclusive features, and insightful columns published on Massively and then present them all in one convenient place. If you missed a big MMO story last week, you've come to the right post. The Elder Scrolls Online enjoyed another big reveal week, this time from its throne at QuakeCon, as it launched on Steam and announced new zones as well as a new system for active world PvP and criminal justice that embraces players' compulsive kleptomania. Massively ESO expert Jef Reahard examined some of the proposed updates in his Tamriel Infinium column. Read on for a look at the rest of this week's top MMO stories.
Perfect Ten: Why the second half of 2014 will be awesome for MMOs
In the midst of mid-summer doldrums, it's easy to fall into a mild depression thinking that everything cool that was going to happen this year already has -- especially in gaming. The spring launch blitz is now officially over, with two highly anticipated MMOs launched, and now some people might be wondering if the rest of 2014 will be all downhill. Spoiler: It will not be. We started talking the other day in the Massively office about just how much there's coming for the latter half of this year and why we're excited to see what the fall and winter months bring. There's so much to look forward to, in fact, that it was incredibly difficult to narrow it down to a mere 10 entries. But that's my job, and that's what I did. Here's why the second half of 2014 will be awesome.
The Think Tank: Star Citizen and armchair speculation
This week, Star Citizen announced it's now raised a total of $48 million in crowdfunding and revealed its $50 million stretch goal, which is an absurd amount of money (but still not as absurd as how much some other AAA MMOs reportedly spent). "As a professional gamer and armchair developer with several failed armchair projects under my belt," wrote Massively commenter computerhelfer with his tongue firmly in cheek, "I can safely say this project has acquired too much money. This project makes my armchair feel uncomfortable." Apparently, large sums of money and large-scale projects make a lot of people uncomfortable, at least judging by the huge and sometimes nonsensical debates that sprawl across our Star Citizen posts. In today's Think Tank, I've asked some of the Massively writers to speculate on the future of the game, its impact on the genre, and how much higher that crowdfund number might go before all of the core pieces of the game have launched.
Star Citizen tops $48 million, unveils new bomber
Since our last look at Chris Roberts' space epic Star Citizen, the game's crowdfunding effort has pulled down another $5 million, bringing the current total to a staggering $48 million. With another funding milestone comes another stretch goal reward, in this case, the two-fold debut of the bomber seen above. Though work in progress imagery of the Retaliator is the only glimpse available as of yet, developer Cloud Imperium Games is working on a spiffy in-universe commercial for the ship similar to the ad spot it created for the 2944 Aurora last year. Looking ahead, the stretch goal for the inevitable $49 million mark is a plant. Literally, an in-game, extraterrestrial plant. "Similar to a bonsai tree, the Centennial Bloom is a very famous Xi'An plant indigenous to Eealus III that blossoms for one night every one hundred years," reads the official description of the Xi'An Space Plant. [Image: Cloud Imperium Games]
Star Citizen's $48 million mark means a commercial for the Retaliator
Move over, feathered millionaires, for Star Citizen now has more money than Scrooge McDuck. The space sim crossed the $48 million mark in crowdfunding today. The stretch goal for this particular occasion is the creation of a commercial for the Retaliator spaceship. "The symbol of the United Empire of Earth's power is the next ship to receive a slick commercial," the site posted on its stretch goals page. "Aegis Dynamics is in dire need of good publicity since the end of the of the Messer era. We currently have the Cutlass and the Constellation commercials in production and now the Retaliator will be added to that list." So what epic stretch goal reward is in store for $49 million? If players hit that milestone, then the team will add a plant to the game. But it's a Xi'An space plant, so you know you're getting your million dollars' worth.
Roberts' latest post peeks behind the Star Citizen development curtain
Star Citizen has opened another window on the world of game development, this time courtesy of a Chris Roberts post that details the investigative process behind Arena Commander's lag and rubber-banding issues. In a nutshell, the problems surfaced with patch 12.4 as Cloud Imperium expanded the pool of AC participants past the initial 60,000-player threshold. "Like doctors trying to identify a mysterious illness, we looked for common environmental factors," Roberts writes. "Was there a significant geographic distance between players? Surprisingly, no: in many cases, players with almost no latency between them were still having issues. The team moved on to examining our own code." He goes on to explain how CIG translates potential problems into JIRA tasks and assigns them to engineers who are responsible for repairs prior to the next patch. [Thanks Cardboard!]
Here's what CIG accomplished on Star Citizen in June
It's the beginning of a new month, which means it's time for Cloud Imperium Games to recap last month's Star Citizen progress. The big news was the release of Arena Commander and its four patches, but there are plenty of other interesting nuggets packed into the the latest update wall-of-text. Foundry 42 studio director Erin Roberts says that capital ships are coming together, and his team has also begun work on multi-crew vehicles. CIG Austin studio director Eric Peterson says that his bunch has been "busy working on the persistent universe and backend server component," while Behaviour producer Mathieu Beaulieu says that his studio is hard at work on hangar revamps as well as Star Citizen's mobiGlas development. Read all about those initiatives and more at the Roberts Space Industries website linked below. [Thanks James!]
Last Week on Massively: Draenor drops
This post originally appeared on Massively from Editor-in-Chief Brianna Royce. At the end of every week, we round up the best and most popular news stories, exclusive features, and insightful columns published on Massively and then present them all in one convenient place. If you missed a big MMO story last week, you've come to the right post. Blizzard has frustrated players with its penchant for wide content gaps between World of Warcraft expansions, but this week, the Warlords of Draenor closed beta finally got underway, suggesting it might make its December deadline after all. The studio also slashed prices on the current version of WoW, revealed new character models, previewed a new zone, and was helped along by a friendly Pandaren player. Read on for a look at the rest of this week's top MMO stories.
Stick and Rudder: How complex is too complex for Star Citizen?
I've taken a little while to let Chris Roberts' recent flight model manifesto marinate. In that time, my opinion has run the gamut from "funk yeah, simulation!" to "hmm, I hope I'm able to enjoy this title" and back again. I waffled because as much as I'm salivating over Star Citizen and everything it represents, it's still one game out of dozens that I'm following. And as much as I'd like to, I can't realistically devote all of my free time to a single title!
