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Perpetuum dev blog talks player influx, bug fixing, and new features
Avatar Creations has come up with a new Perpetuum dev blog, and it looks like the little sandbox that could has turned a bit of a corner when it comes to server stability and accommodating its expanding community. Avatar's Dev Calvin explains how the team had to allocate most of its resources to dealing with an influx of EVE Online refugees. The scramble was a successful one, but "the development plan for the first two weeks [of July] was ruined," he writes. Going forward, Perpetuum players will be seeing the long-awaited storyline PvE missions in short order, as well as tweaks to beta outposts and a large helping of what Avatar calls "industrialist love." Calvin does point out that new features will be taking something of a backseat to bug fixes, though, so a little patience is in order. "The influx of players brought light to a lot of glitches, imbalances and dysfunctional mechanisms in the game, so instead of rushing forward and pushing out new features in the next few weeks, we are taking a step back and making everything that is available in the game better," he said.
The Game Archaeologist jacks into The Matrix Online: Jamming with Ben 'Rarebit' Chamberlain
When we started into The Matrix Online month last week on The Game Archaeologist, one of the comments caught my eye. Massively reader stealthrider wrote: Please, please do a tribute to Rarebit. MxO was his baby, and no one took its death worse than he. He did everything for that game, much of it single-handedly. Everything from playing the canon characters and co-writing the story to fixing hundreds of bugs and even creating a new zone from scratch. Not to mention developing and implementing the story missions, new items, the RP item vendors, and pretty much everything else in MxO's final couple of years. He even implemented and moderated a player-created minigame as part of the official story. He retired from game development in the months before MxO's shutdown. He was that dedicated to this game that he couldn't work on anything else afterward. He's a god among developers, and he is as sorely missed as the game itself. I think this sums up how many Matrix Online vets feel about Ben "Rarebit" Chamberlain. So instead of a mere tribute, we drove the MassivelyMobile over to Chamberlain's house (read: send a polite email request), and he graciously said he'd be glad to reminisce with us. So hit that jump to find out the last word on MxO from the dev who held it together!
The Game Archaeologist jacks into The Matrix Online: The highlights
It's not every year that a movie comes along that captures the pop culture zeitgeist so powerfully and so quickly as The Matrix did. I recall lugging a few college friends along to see this in 1999 -- having heard only a few sparse details about it beforehand -- and coming out of the theater feeling as if we we'd been electrified. The bold mix of science fiction, martial arts, philosophy, action, and leather ensembles became the smash hit of the year, and a franchise was born. And while we had great hopes that this would be this generation's Star Wars, The Matrix ultimately proved to be a lightning-in-a-bottle phenomenon, impossible to recapture once unleashed. Sequels, animated shorts, video games, comic books -- none rose to the height of the original film, and eventually the franchise petered out. During this period, an odd duck of an MMO was born: The Matrix Online. When you think about it, an online virtual world where people log in and fight against programs was a really short hop from the movie series. MxO, as it was abbreviated, was an audacious game with unique features, story-centric gameplay and a sci-fi bent in a field of fantasy competitors, and while it only lasted four years, it was enough to make a huge impression for its community. So by popular demand, this month we're going to revisit the 1s and 0s of The Matrix Online to see just how deep the rabbit hole (and well-worn cliche) goes -- and what made this game stand out!
Exclusive Dev Diary: Designing the task forces for City of Heroes Issue 20
City of Heroes traditionally packs quite a lot into its large content patches, and Issue 20 looks to be no exception. Aside from the two new Incarnate Trials meant for endgame players, the update is going to see two new mid-level task forces added for players between levels 20-40. With one force for heroes and another for villains, everyone will have a chance to enjoy some new storytelling about the war against Praetoria outside of the earliest invasions. But of course, new task forces don't just materialize out of thin air. It takes some hard work and a solid set of design principles to make them rewarding, something that Paragon Studios has been steadily improving since launch. John Hegner, Lead Mission Designer for City of Heroes, took the time to share with us what went into the construction of these new task forces and what they should mean for the player, so click on past the break for our exclusive developer diary on the design of the new content.
Final Fantasy XIV's patch 1.16 goes live with a new producer's letter
As we learned yesterday, patch 1.16 for Final Fantasy XIV has gone live today, bringing along a much-awaited infusion of new content and mechanics. The full patch notes are fairly meaty, with the new sidequests and several improvements to local levequests topping the bill. Players will also see slower gear deterioration for appropriate equipment, enlarged enemies with visible aggro warnings, new targeting modes, constant regeneration of MP while in passive mode, and a variety of general improvements. If that's not enough, Naoki Yoshida has chimed in with another producer's letter, this one discussing the results of the second player poll. Players have responded positively to the questions, and Yoshida interprets the results in great detail, with the ultimate conclusion that small-scale PvE content is in the works for groups, while solo leveling and solo content remains high on player agendas. It's a busy day for Final Fantasy XIV's fans, but given the recent development pace, it doesn't look to be slowing.
The Daily Grind: What NPCs stick in your memory?
I'm not fond of a lot of the storytelling on display in the Prophecies campaign of Guild Wars, but I have to admit that, against all logic, I was happy when Gwen showed up again. I joked about her, I complained about her uselessness and her irritating habits, but the fact that she turned up alive again always tickled me on some level. When I think about the game, I think of her, and her trials and tribulations stuck with me long after Prince Rurik had all but vanished into memory. In an MMO with any sort of story, some NPCs are going to stand out to different people. Even beyond the signature characters of a game's box art, incidental figures wind up getting embedded in the consciousness of players. Maybe it's one of the recurring heroes in the City of Heroes tip missions, or perhaps it's one of the more amusing mission NPCs in Star Trek Online. Whatever the reason, what NPCs stick in your mind regardless of their importance or lack thereof? 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!
Breakfast Topic: How often do you read quest text?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. If you have played WoW for more than five minutes, you have done a quest. It is nearly impossible to avoid doing them altogether. Since the option has been implemented to have instant quest text and the options tracked on the map by Blizzard's default UI now, most players see the exclamation mark, click on the NPC, accept the quest, and go get the items -- whether it be someone's head, 10 rocks, or going to kill a certain number of creatures -- without paying attention to the why. We want the gold, experience, achievement, or perhaps a quest reward, but we cannot be bothered with why we need to commit genocide on a population of wild animals. We would rather crit the mobs required for the quest than be crit by a wall of text. I am as guilty of this as the next person: Oh, bring you murloc eyes ... Sure, why not? Kill a bunch of boars? Whatever. However, when I recently went back and finished off Loremaster, I found myself actually paying attention to some of the quests, and I realized there can be some great stories there. The Burning Crusade, Wrath, and soon Cataclysm have come a long way in terms of making the quests feel like they are leading somewhere, as opposed to killing these random mobs for no apparent reason. While working on Loremaster, I was like, "Wow, that was a neat little storyline in that quest chain!" It made me both impressed and a little sad, wondering about all the possible nuggets of story I had simply ignored just so I could level a couple of minutes sooner. Do you actually read the quest text? Do you ever want to know why we have to kill the creatures we kill and why the NPCs want these seemingly inane items? Or do you just do it for the XP and money and could not care less?
Final Fantasy XI previews the end of Wings of the Goddess
The December version update is kicking off the end of many things for Final Fantasy XI -- the end of the year, the end of the level cap from the last update, and perhaps most notably the end of Wings of the Goddess. After a very long and drawn-out storyline and series of missions, it's time for players to finish up their adventures in the past. But as can be expected, it's not going to be quite as simple as walking up to the Spitewardens and politely asking them to pack up shop. After a series of defeats, challenges, and the usual confusion regarding any time-travel storyline, it seems the final movement begins in Grauberg with a rather flustered Cait Sith and moves on to the Walk of Echoes. It's time to face off against the Spitewardens and Lillith, the main villains of the expansion's arc, if adventurers want to maintain any hope of a future controlled by the free people of Vana'diel instead of the beastmen. While the preview only gives us a small taste of what's coming, Final Fantasy XI players had best steel themselves in advance -- this promises to end with a bang.
EVE Evolved: The living storyline
When EVE Online launched over seven years ago, it was a small game with a niche place in the MMO world. Sci-fi fans were drawn from across the world to the potential offered by the fledgling universe of New Eden. As a small independent studio, CCP Games made up for its lack of funds with an incredible creativity and a willingness to work closely with players. Much of the early development was focused on working with players, from updates to the user interface to balance issues and ideas for new ships and modules. In 2004, CCP began involving players directly in the game's evolving storyline through massive storyline events. I have fond memories of the time the Serpentis pirate corporation hijacked and stole a Federation Navy titan, an event orchestrated as much for the enjoyment of players as for showcasing the new titan class of ship CCP had been working on. Another particularly memorable storyline arc was the Crielere event, in which players assisted NPCs with research into mysterious new Guristas prototype cloaking devices. These events formed part of EVE Online's living storyline, affecting the game on a fundamental level through the introduction of new ships and items. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look back at the history of EVE's storyline and forward to what the future might hold.
Final Fantasy XIV discusses companions and crafting
One of the more frequent complaints about the nature of Final Fantasy XIV is that the game doesn't go out of its way to be accessible. If anything, it revels in a solid veil of mystery and encouragement for players to experiment. That doesn't sit well with everyone, however, which is no doubt why Square-Enix is making a conscious effort to expand the resources on the official player site as a basic reference. The most recent update has seen some common questions about crafting answered, as well as a brief guide to choosing a path companion. Path companions are an element of the game introduced at the start of the fifth main story quest, giving you an NPC who accompanies you on the missions. There are a multitude of different personalities, determined by race and gender, with the short guide provided explaining how each choice affects the outcome. The brief rundown on crafting is also illuminating, as it highlights certain heretofore unknown elements of the system -- such as a character's elemental affinity helping to determine what sort of crystals and shards come from gathering. Final Fantasy XIV players are encouraged to check both pieces.
What scares me about Final Fantasy XIV
I am not the biggest Final Fantasy fan. But that's more because I lack for time, not because I lack interest. I played FFXI, but only until level 18 or so, and even then I would only return once in a while. The game was punishing to a solo player even with the recent changes that gave more opportunity to level. There was something ever-alluring about the world, however -- something complex and deep, and I knew that, if I could just become more powerful, it would show itself to me. Skip to the present and to the FFXIV beta. For the record, I try everything. I am not just a "free-to-play" guy -- quite the opposite. For most of my time in blogging and podcasting, I have maintained subscription games like FFXI. So, when the opportunity finally came to try the "new" version, I jumped at it. I'll be honest, it feels a lot like FFXI but with a nice twist. It's friendlier, more accessible, yet it still retains that uniqueness that attracted me to FFXI. There is one thing I'm a bit scared of, though.
The coming conclusion for Final Fantasy XI's Wings of the Goddess
Time travel storylines are one of the most complicated things that can be done in any sort of fiction, even more so in MMOs. But Final Fantasy XI has been working hard at keeping the story of Wings of the Goddess personal and engaging, and players have responded positively to the experience as a whole. Still, all good things come to an end, and the expansion storyline will be coming to a close with the September version update. The small preview of the upcoming conclusion hints at what might be around the corner for the adventurers who have braved the time-ruining antics of the Spitewardens and Atomos. Lilith's appearance marks further wrinkles in the already-convoluted timestream, with the possibility of her future inching ever closer for all of Vana'diel. If you've been following the story from the beginning, it promises to be a very emotional finale, and Final Fantasy XI players will be able to enjoy it starting next month.
Breakfast Topic: What's your story?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. I have a confession: I am not a roleplayer, yet I feel the need to create a backstory for every single one of my characters, from the mighty main to the lowly banker alt who sits comfortably in Stormwind. I do not really know why. Maybe it is the storyteller in me, the sheer boredom, or the 60 ounces or so of various energy drinks that keep me up at night, but I begin to imagine the details of my characters, even going so far as to create a web of connections between them, as if when I'm not playing, they are banded together, battling side by side as brothers and sisters in arms. A main example is my main and all the human alts I play on. There are only two at the moment, but a third shall arise, of the wolfish variety, come Cataclysm. Their story? All of them are brothers, my death knight being the eldest, a once-accomplished paladin who fell during the purging of Stratholme, being one of the very few against it. My main warrior is the middle child who was the least likely to accomplish anything of the three brothers but fought nonetheless as part of the Stormwind guard, before becoming a mercenary for hire. The newest addition will be a worgen rogue, the long-presumed-dead, sickly little brother who was astute in the arcane and was taken under tutelage of a sorcerer in Gilneas before being infected as a worgen. He will return instead as a quick and nimble character, one of the few worgen who likes his new form.
Burning Life author talks EVE novels, chronicles
French fansite EVE Mondes Persistants features an interesting interview with author Hjalti Danielsson, otherwise known as CCP Abraxas. Danielsson, a seven year veteran of the Icelandic development team, is perhaps better known as the pen behind the EVE universe tie-in novel The Burning Life, as well as a number of the short story chronicles on the game's official website. In the interview, he talks about everything from the challenge of lengthy prose, to future EVE novels, to the makeup of CCP's storytelling staff. "I belong to EVE's content department and the storyline effort is actually a collaboration between content writers working on in-game missions and fiction and content writers like myself that deal more with the fiction behind the game unattached to the client. We all work as one unit to decide EVE's NPC storyline, work on the EVE Chronicles, and so on; and the Storyline Board, which sits on top of all those efforts, is staffed with people from multiple disciplines," Danielsson says. View the full interview at EVE Mondes Persistants.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Does whatever a spider can (VEAT levels 20-50)
Welcome back to our conclusion of A Mild-Mannered Reporter's guide to spiders! After last week's long discussion of the various builds possible for the villainous epic archetypes, we're back to blast through to the end of the unique leveling missions. And it's a pretty interesting string, although like much content in City of Heroes it starts to slow down a bit as you get higher in levels. But it also has the nice story interplay of the best content available on the Rogue Isles, the constant back-and-forth as untrustworthy people stab each other in the back. For players or readers coming in late, we left off at the conclusion of the level 20 arc, where you delivered the Eye of Chronos to Fortunata Hamilton. She tells you that the process of seeing whether or not you truly are a Destined One will take time... which is true if you turn the mission in before level 20, but otherwise it apparently takes two seconds. Of course, there's a good reason for that.
Storyboard: Back me up, backstory
Welcome back for another edition of Storyboard, where after a couple of weeks in which we laid down ground rules we're ready to start in on the fine details. So it only makes sense to start at a point filled with fine details and yet often searingly inconvenient: backstory. Because we all know how beneficial backstory can be, how it can add depth and meaning and rich interaction to even the most innocent and trivial incident. A quest about killing boars can dredge up memories of hunting with a lost father, making one of the most obnoxious holdovers in MMO quests into something interesting. And yet it's a double-edged sword. Because not only is backstory time-consuming to come up with, much of it requires either events that can't be supported in the game's engine or work on details that never come up during actual play. So we're left with something that's a huge benefit, but also such a huge inconvenience that the occasional benefit is outweighed by the massive amount of work required beforehand. How can you work character backstory and get the benefits without the negatives?
Final Fantasy XI posts previews of the nation quest conclusions
It's a truism of any good story: all good things must come to an end. And it's certainly true of the overarching story for the last Final Fantasy XI expansion, Wings of the Goddess, which is finally approaching a conclusion after two and a half years. The upcoming June version update won't conclude the overarching mission storyline, but it will draw the nation-specific quests to a finale. Square-Enix has given the players a brief peek at what's awaiting them in these final movements of a story that quite literally stretches across a huge span of time. The San d'Orian story forces the nation's forces deeper into enemy territory, investigating rumors of a resurrected Count Aurchiat. Citizens of Bastok, meanwhile, will pursue the would-be assassin Klara Bester straight to Castle Zvhal itself... where Zeid's past is waiting to confront him. And as Windurst nears its final victory against the Yagudo, their final push brings out the true cost that the war has exacted on its people. It's the last hurrah for these stories, and the strength of storytelling is one of the greatest assets within Final Fantasy XI, so players are encouraged to look at the coming ending.
Lunia releases Chapter 7 and doubles their affection
It's always a little frustrating to have to wait for installments of a story you're enjoying, but at the same time it makes it that much more satisfying when each part comes out. Fans of Lunia have plenty of reason to be satisfied, as Chapter 7 of the heavily anime-influenced and cel-shaded title has just been released. And if that weren't enough reason to be happy, players are being given the opportunity for increased experience via the new Double the Love event running through June 23rd. The chapter update adds ten new stages to the game, as well as a new level for raid stages and a new set of equipment for players. It also continues the game's central plotline, with level 60 and up players continuing to search for a way of reviving the princess Eir. Players can experience both the Double the Love event and the full update on Lunia right now, so if you're a current or former player, take a look at the patch notes to see what's changed.
Massively's hands-on look at Rift: Planes of Telara
While Trion was happy to announce the name change for Heroes of Telara to Rift: Planes of Telara, we were stoked to be able to get our hands on the game for the first time and really see it in motion. We've heard all this talk about delivering dynamic content, high quality "HD content," a deep back story, and an evolving world. But, could Trion deliver all of the hype they were promising? Well, if the titular rifts are any indication of how the rest of the game will progress, then this game seems to be in good hands. Join us as we pilot a cleric through the dangers of Telara, take on a rift from the Plane of Life, and learn just what makes Telara tick. %Gallery-101448%
Chaos Rings and Sonic 2 out, Square Enix games on sale
Square Enix has released their Chaos Rings game that we heard about a while ago. At US$13.99, it's one of the most expensive iPhone (not iPad -- yet) games you'll find, but the reviews are terrific so far. The game appears to be a classic Square Enix title, complete with great graphics, a deep storyline and a tight battle system. I haven't gotten a chance to try it yet, but it definitely looks intriguing, and if the game matches up to the hype, we could have a new bar set on Apple's handheld platform. To celebrate, Square Enix is putting all of their other games on sale, including dropping Final Fantasy 1 and 2 down to $7 each. If you've been waiting to pick up one of their other titles, now's your chance, and maybe you can add the money you save into the price of the new game. And finally, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is now out from Sega for the iPhone. Unfortunately, the game uses the same Sega emulator as all of their other games, so it's not exactly glitch-free or polished gameplay. Still, it's playable, and it's definitely the second Sonic game, recreated on the smaller screen. You can pick it up for $5.99.
