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Massively's gift guide for the Star Wars Galaxies player
They say pet owners look like their pets. There are enough people who put stock in their horoscope to see it put in the daily newspaper. Heck, even which Hogwarts House you identify with probably says something about you. So why not your Massively Multiplayer game of choice? Over the next few weeks we at Massively are going to do our level best to help you make holiday gift giving easy. We'll run down some of the player archetypes you might have among your friends, based on the games they play. We'll give you gift ideas perfect for that type of player and (if it seems right) even some in-game presents that might fit well with their play style.Today I've got a pile of gift ideas for that rare breed: the Star Wars Galaxies player. Playing a much-maligned game can be hard, but the folks still participating in the story of the galaxy far, far away have their reasons. Maybe it's the crafting, maybe it's the twitch combat ... maybe it's the awesome player housing. For that player - be they Jedi or Bounty Hunter, Sith or Savior - we have an idea that'll keep them happily humming John Williams music on December 25th.Read on for our gift ideas, and (please) toss out your own in the comments!
The Digital Continuum: Five potential Star Wars settings
This isn't a "Top Five" list, but rather a list of five possible settings for a Star Wars MMO that I've complied for your reading pleasure. With the rumors flying around about a Bioware Star Wars MMO, the topic of just where in the Star Wars timeline the game would even be set appears to be absent from discussion. Everyone is assuming that Bioware would just sit back and do another Knights of the Old Republic game because they've had previous success with that property. However, it is possible that if Bioware is indeed developing a Star Wars MMO they're placing it in an entirely different era altogether. I know that if I'd already made a fabulous game set in KOTOR I would probably want to explore other avenues of interest that have yet to truly be touched on.Follow the jump for an overview on five of those places.
On the Inside, Episode 20: Eureka Dejavu and Schmilsson Nilsson
Welcome to the twentieth episode of On the Inside, the podcast that lets you take a peek at the virtual world of Second Life! This episode features Eureka Dejavu, real life name Rita J. King, investigative reporter, blogger for the Huffington Post, and founder of Dancing Ink Productions; and Schmilsson Nilsson, real life name Joshua Fouts, Director of the Center on Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California. In this episode, we discuss the Macarthur Foundation and their ongoing research into virtual worlds, the positive power of transformation, and Star Wars Galaxies. (Note: This interview was conducted on October 30th.)As always, I welcome your questions, comments, and suggestions for future topics/interviewees. Drop me a line!To hear all eighteen previous episodes, click here to access the Second Life Insider podcast archives.[Mp3] Download the MP3 directly
MMOGs: missing a sense of mystery
Just this afternoon, Craig Withers was talking about the regrettably static state of Azeroth. Tying nicely into that theme is an article in the Guardian, a paper known for its thoughtful coverage of gaming news. Columnist Alexander Gambotto-Burke talks more about EverQuest 2, but makes much the same point: MMOGs need more of the unknown. Mystery is one of the most significant themes in culture. One of the most appealing aspects of the fantasy media and mythologies that inspire and inform games like EQII is the sense of uncertain, and most likely perilous, adventure. But in EQII and its peers, however, the unknown, basically, doesn't exist.Gambotto-Burke goes on to note that Tabula Rasa is attempting to fill in a bit of this gap, with its fluid control points system: The AI-controlled alien enemies, the Bane, will work against both player and computer-driven humans to capture towns, military bases and cities. Sometimes they'll succeed. Players will never really be certain of which areas are safe and which are overrun, as the battle constantly waxes and wanes - with or without player input.
Massively's Top 5 Sci-Fi MMOs
Orcs and Elves are all well and good, but some of us are more attracted to a mythical future than to a mythical past. Sci-Fi is trendy again, in case you hadn't heard. From Tabula Rasa to Star Trek Online (we hope), the future belongs to, well ... the future. But what about the past of the future? Sorry; this is getting more verbally confusing than a Voyager time paradox episode. Let's put it this way: click through the jump to see Massively's top 5 Sci-Fi MMOs to date!Can you think of any tragic omissions? To paraphrase a character from pop culture, "Science Fiction is neither Science nor Fiction. Discuss!"
Explore the SWG Chapter 8 gunships in VRML
The wait for Star Wars Galaxies players continues. Chapter 8 is still probably a little ways off, and aside from a few teases about space content, there hasn't been a lot of concrete information about the space-based content. (I'm hoping for some clarity to the space quest trees, myself)Luckily, Galaxies player "Spaceguy5" has some entertainment for us today. He's posted about a series of VRML environments he's put together that display the interior views for a number of the new Chapter 8 ships. The three featured ships are the Imperial Gunship, the Black Sun Gunship, and the Rebel Gunship.If you don't have a VRML browser installed, he has a page dedicated to explaining where to download it and how to use it. Enjoy your stroll; I imagine it will be a bit less peaceful when you're flying one of those crates in a live-fire exercise.Thanks to MrBreton for the tip!
One Shots: Vader seems to like me...
Reader Gary sends in this Star Wars Galaxies shot with no further explanation. Thus, while Vader's praise seems to reference some important event, we can't tell you where this shot was taken or anything about the events leading up to it. However, our readers are a clever bunch: would any of you like to fill in the how and why behind this shot?We're looking for One Shots submissions and hereby challenge you, good readers, to send in your screenshots and stories! Were you there when Morpheus walked among us in The Matrix Online? Do you have screens of when Luclin came in EverQuest? Were you around for the opening of the Dark Portal in WoW? Send your screenshots to oneshots@massively.com and you could find your shot and story featured here for all to see! %Gallery-9798%
Star Wars Galaxies patched to 7.2, 54 month vet awards added
The Chapter 7 update to Star Wars Galaxies went live at the beginning of the month, and has already been patched once. Now the second iteration of the Chapter content is going out to live servers - with presents! Patch 7.2 is aimed primarily at further tweaking the content recently added to the game. Fix highlights include: Correcting problems with the Tusken Raiders Heroic encounter. Adding/improving functionality on Storyteller jukeboxes. Fixes allowing some previously un-completable quests to be finished (including expanding the definition of 'Veermok' for the 'Veermok Killer' quest, thankfully). And I quote, "Removed the Emperor's underpants." Anyone want to explain that, or is this some sort of practical joke? I wouldn't want to tick off a Sith Lord, but that's just me. They've also added 54 month veteran rewards to the game. Yes, the game's been out that long. Yes, that makes you old. Players who have accounts that 'venerable' now have some attractive new options to choose between: A city-placeable flag, which can be changed between one of a dozen different designs. A podracer statue, appropriate for all your housing decoration needs. A permanent storyteller token, which will allow to spawn a boss level Super Battle Droid, Rebel Commando Vindicator, or Stormtrooper - perfect for those epic events.
One Shots: Jump to lightspeed? But we were admiring the view!
Reader RogueJedi86 sends in this shot taken of some of the astonishing space scenery in the Star Wars Galaxies Jump to Lightspeed expansion. He believes this particular nebula was over Kashyyyk, but it can be difficult to tell which region the shot was taken in. Do any SWG experts in the audience want to take a guess as to where, exactly, this shot comes from?We're looking for One Shots submissions and hereby challenge you, good readers, to send in your screenshots and stories! Were you there when Morpheus walked among us in The Matrix Online? Do you have screens of when Luclin came in EverQuest? Were you around for the opening of the Dark Portal in WoW? Okay, we admit, that last one was a trick question -- obviously the servers weren't stable enough for anyone to have been online to see the Dark Portal open. But send us your screenshots anyway! E-mail them to us at oneshots@massively.com, and you could find your shot and story featured here for all to see! %Gallery-9798%
Star Wars Galaxies post-chapter state of the game
With Chapter 7 just released, and already patched, the developers and producers of Star Wars Galaxies are looking forward to Chapter 8 and beyond. To give us a sort of snapshot of what the game looks like right now, Producer Jake Neri and Lead Designer Thomas Blair passed along a State of the Game letter to the folks at WarCry. They recap the last half-year or so of content updates (like the Chapter 6 Beast Mastery system and the big bug fix that followed), and go into a good bit of detail on what was just released in Chapter 7. We just released our latest piece of content, Chapter 7: A Collection of Heroes and we're feeling very good about the release. We haven't delivered a piece of content this big since the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion pack, and it was no simple task pulling the Chapter together. The Chapter is focused around two new major systems, the Collections System and the Heroic Encounter System, which presented a great challenge, but the team definitely succeeded in pulling it off. Now that the players are engaged in the content we're hearing good things about the release and it's always nice to get that positive feedback.At the letter's conclusion the two men tease the core concept behind Chapter 8: space.Early in the year we polled players to see what they wanted in the game, and space-based content came in very high. Without giving too much detail right now, our broad goal is to provide content to SWG's space game, which really hasn't been touched much over the past two years. The Chapter gives us an opportunity to link the Collections and Heroic Systems to space content. We are already working on a new heroic encounter for Chapter 8, as well as additions to Aurilia to reflect the new heroic story.
One Shots: Meet Vader
One of the most entertaining aspects of any MMO is the many places to go and people to see -- but few games have places and people as well-known as Star Wars Galaxies. Michael Zenke shares this shot showing off his character chilling with the infamous Darth Vader at the Emperor's Retreat on Naboo. Smile for the camera, Mr. Vader!Do you have a screenshot of your own that you think expresses a unique or memorable moment in your favorite MMO? Send them to us with a description (including game name and location) and you may see it posted here for tomorrow's One Shots. %Gallery-9798%
The Digital Continuum: Sci-Fi, Looking Back
Where are my friggin' virtual hover craft? Where are the energy swords and teleportation devices? I'm not talking about botched attempts and broken promises. I know that redemption is a possibility and that my childhood dreams could come to fruition. I'm also very sure that anyone who gives two tugs of a dead dog's -- well, anyone who cares about the sci-fi genre of MMOs knows a bit about most of the past attempts. If you're going to make an MMO that focuses on the freedom of combat, trade and exploration in space well that's just peachy! However what you still have to remember is that a lot of us sci-fi nuts (and there are a lot of us) want more than just warp, mine, trade, dog-fight and repeat. Now I'm not knocking the types of players in EVE Online or the stick-jockeys playing Jumpgate and looking forward to its upcoming sequel. You see it's also not enough for many of us (or perhaps this is just me) to just focus on a sci-fi version of what we basically have with any standard fantasy MMO game. You have to include both space and land at launch to entice and possibly please me. Am I asking a lot of developers? I don't think I'm asking very much by current industry standards. So where do we start to get to this nirvana of sci-fi MMOs? Well, there are some good lessons to learn from the past and one game comes to mind specifically.Earth and Beyond launched on September 24, 2002 to average reviews. One of Earth and Beyond's largest issues became content and its eventual updates. This was likely due to Westwood Studios being half the studio it was before the (first of many) Electronic Arts acquisition. Unfortunately for the die hard fans of E&B, the game servers were shutdown due to an ever-declining subscriber base. This was far before the time when WoW roamed the land and MMOs were major-ultra cash cows in the eyes of industry moguls. This was the time of EverQuest and industry moguls who only desired to create a standard cash cow.
MMOGology: The next big thing
I remember the excitement I felt back in 2001 when World of Warcraft (WoW) was announced. I greedily read early previews as new details were released in magazines like PC Gamer and Computer Gaming World (now Games for Windows). I savored each scrap of gameplay information and every gorgeous screenshot. It seemed so different, visually and conceptually, than all the other MMOGs I had played to that point. Yes, Blizzard was taking tried and true gameplay techniques from Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, and other popular MMOGs at the time, but it was keeping the fun concepts and removing the painful ones. It was a somewhat foreign concept at the time to focus on making the fun factor the focus of the game. Some people will undoubtedly argue with me, but running naked while avoiding agro on a twenty minute corpse run in Everquest was not my idea of fun. Blizzard's game was also the only MMOG I knew of that promised it wouldn't discourage casual and solo play. Apparently I wasn't the only one excited about World of Warcraft. Six years after WoW was initially announced, and on the eve of its three year launch anniversary, WoW has somewhere between eight and nine million subscribers. WoW is clearly the current king of the massively multiplayer mountain; at least in terms of populatiry. With one expansion under its belt, another set for release in 2008, and constant upgrades along the way, it's clear that WoW has a lot left to give. But there's always one thing you can count on when you're the king of the mountain; you'll always have a challenger aiming to steal your crown. Inevitably it will happen. Something will replace the WoW so many of us MMOG players know and love. It might be another Blizzard creation, a WoW 2.0 or a World of StarCraft. Or it might be something entirely different by another developer. It's a question that will continue to be asked until WoW is finally replaced. What will be the Next Big MMOG?
Star Wars Galaxies Patch 7.1, new site features
Chapter Update #7 just hit the live servers at the beginning of the month, but already the Star Wars Galaxies live team is working to improve the just-released content. Patch 7.1 highlights include: Adjusted the creature difficulty class weighting for hydrolyses extraction. Players should see consistently higher results from Boss and Elite level creatures over normal. Added "Start Listening to Jukebox" and "Stop Listening to Jukebox" as radial options on a jukebox. This will allow players to listen to the jukebox music if they missed the automated start. This usually happens in cases when they are not part of the jukebox owner's story at the time it started. Storyteller Imperial officers and stormtrooper squad leaders should now use their ranged attack. Heroic Tuskens will now update the Tusken Terrorizer collection. Fixed a case that would cause the second player in a group to launch their own instance rather than join the first player. Lord Vartonis's health has been reduced to the intended level. The official site is also featuring a pair of informational pages this week. One is a new comprehensive list of the Player Cities across the galaxies. It lists their planets and locations, as well as their size for players who want to explore. They also have up a preview of Chapter 8: three brand new ships slated for inclusion in the space-focused game update.
Making things massive: worlds we crave
As the holiday season approaches and our favorite videogame genre bulges with new titles, it seems like many of them are intellectual properties (IP) that have been made massive: that is, an IP that somebody, somewhere thought would be cool (or profitable) to turn into an online experience. Past MMOGs based on well-known IPs have had mixed success. Star Wars Galaxies, for instance, converted arguably the world's best known IP into an MMOG but fizzled. The Matrix Online tried to take advantage of a pop-culture phenomenon but that didn't work out either. City of Heroes/Villains cashed in on our love of comic books – not an IP exactly, but close. Lord of the Rings Online has had some success, as well, but not overwhelmingly so. In the near future, Games Workshop's Warhammer IP will be making its MMO debut as Warhammer Online (developed by EA-Mythic), along with Age of Conan (Funcom's ambitious interpretation of Robert E. Howard's barbarous world). Even MMOGs based on other videogames could fit into this 'make-massive' trend: Blizzard Entertainment turned its own real-time strategy Warcraft franchise into an online world, as did Square-Enix with Final Fantasy.That got me thinking: if I had the power to make an MMOG, what would it be? A series of books, or a movie? Personally, I think that Perpetual Entertainment's Star Trek Online has great potential, but that could be due to the fact that I always thought I would look really good in a red and black uniform commanding a starship. Maybe Harry Potter? Though who knows how that one would work. As Matt points out, fans don't always make the best game developers, and it's certainly true that converting a big, complex IP into an MMOG can have its pitfalls. But ideally, in your most secret heart of hearts, which world would you love to see be made massive? Where would your dream MMOG be set?
Witness the power of this fully armed and operational SWG update
Despite its rocky past, Star Wars Galaxies still has a solid base of players who crave new content. To meet the demand, SOE has been releasing major updates every couple of months. It's been a longer wait than usual since the last Chapter, which went live way back in May.Now Chapter 7 has finally hit the streets. Is it worth the delay? Read the release notes and come to your own conclusions. The quick of it is: new epic encounter instances, a new town where high-level players can congregate in preparation for said encounters, and over 90 "collections" for the patient, OCD gamer.Oh, and RPG Vault's Jonric interviewed LucasArts Associate Producer Tim Temmerman about the update yesterday; be sure and glance over that for some more insight. Of course, if you're a Star Wars Galaxies player you can just log in and play the thing yourself.
Exhibition teaches youth about WoW, Second Life
If you're in the American Northeast and you love games, you might be interested to know that the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston is hosting an exhibition about the role computer games have played in New England's economic development, and that said exhibit includes coverage of MMOs. This is all part of their New England Economic Adventure program.Subjects of the exhibition span from the birth of computer games -- Spacewar!'s creation at MIT, according to the press release -- to present day titles like World of Warcraft, Star Wars Galaxies, and Second Life. Organizers hope the exhibits will teach kids how technological innovation and entrepreneurship can spur economic growth. Old-school arcade games will be free to play at the exhibit too.If you ask us, the folks at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston have come up with a brilliant plan -- bait kids with Frogger, then make them learn something!
Bioware and the KotOR MMO
Primo has just confirmed some juicy news about the Bioware Star Wars MMO project we have been hearing rumors about. Well, if you've perhaps been living under a rock, let me summarize: people have been talking about the possibility of Bioware working in conjunction with Lucas Arts to build an MMO set in the Star Wars universe that isn't, you know Star Wars Galaxies. I'm here to tell you that we now know this game will be based on the incredibly popular Knights of the Old Republic.Now, despite my firm belief that George Lucas is a hack of a writer, he has some brilliance when it comes to world building and the marketing of those created worlds. To that end, I admit that this non-Star Wars fan is kinda excited about this news. It remains to be seen if the new Star Wars MMO will suck less than the current iteration of SWG. But then again, it is Bioware we are talking about, and that bodes all kind of well for this project.
SWG gets a Galactic Senate, we get Community Managers?
I know what you're thinking over there. You don't care about Star Wars Galaxies. Maybe you played it for a while, caught up in the release hype -- or maybe you were too smart to get caught up in the hype in the first place. But either way, it's hard to see how SWG has many subscribers these days -- though they obviously have at least enough to keep the game running. However, despite the game's flaws, its recent implementation of a player-run Galactic Senate is an interesting idea. The senate is comprised of 32 players, nominated by the player-base, but selected, in the end, by Sony Online Entertainment's community team, so it's not a completely democratic process.And what can a senator do? They get to vote on "legislation" proposed by the SOE community team and can "request a redress of issues by the development team." Very nice -- and an interesting implementation of direct player interaction with the development team. In World of Warcraft, I suppose the system does work similarly -- enough reasonable player complaints on on the forums will get the attention of the CMs who will be able to bring up issues with the developers. And with SOE selecting the senators, they may have no more overall influence than our own forum posters.
BBC reports on upcoming WoW competition
Slashdot is linking this morning to an article that BBC has posted today which gathers views from several game developers as they talk about what comes next when you have a behemoth such as the World of Warcraft dominating the MMO-verse. While somewhat light on new perspectives, it's just further showing that developers really do have to account for WoW when considering their existing and future software offerings. Though the article talks with people behind Star Wars Galaxies, Lord of the Rings Online, and the upcoming Age of Conan, I find that Slashdot commenter JanusFury sums it up best with, "Instead of complaining about the lack of a strong competitor to WoW, how about making one?" What's on your MMO horizon as a WoW-killer? Does anything coming up, or existing on the market now, have a powerful enough hook to pull you away from the World of Warcraft? Obviously, if you look at the included image, you know what I'm waiting for. [via Slashdot]
