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League of Legends turns two this Thursday, celebrations planned
The relatively new MOBA genre has seen a massive surge in popularity over the last few years, due mainly to the popularity of DotA remakes like League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth. It's hard to believe it, but League of Legends is already almost two years old. The free-to-play giant celebrates its second birthday this Thursday the 27th of October, and the developers at Riot Games aim to make sure the day goes down in players' memories. Celebrations have been planned for the big day, but Riot is keeping the details a secret until the day. Players are urged to keep an eye on the LoL website on Thursday. To help celebrate reaching the two year mark, Riot has released an interactive development timeline page showing the game's development from launch day all the way up to last week's Graves patch. The timeline shows when each of LoL's champions was implemented, as well as major developments like the Twisted Treeline 3v3 map, the player-mediated banning tribunal and the recent release of the Dominion game mode.
Behind the Mask: Two years and two thousand miles
Some of you will recall what Champions Online was like at launch. I think that a lot of readers here at Massively still remember that soreness. The first year of CO was kind of a rough, rocky ride. At some point or another, I think all of us expected the game to fail. It was really only in the in the last few months of that year that Cryptic started to turn the game around. The second year of Champions has been a lot more successful. I'm pretty sure that from a bottom-line perspective, the F2P launch helped turn the game into a profitable venture. However, that hasn't been the only major change. If Cryptic had held this kind of attitude from day one, I think things would have turned out differently.
Runes of Magic celebrates its second birthday
Happy birthday, Runes of Magic! Two years have gone by, and you're growing up so fast. Anniversary celebrations are already underway in RoM. If your account has been lying dormant, you may want to wake it up, join the festivities, and get some free goodies while you're at it. For me, these two years flew by. It doesn't seem all that long ago that I wrote a look back at the first year of RoM. In two years, RoM has seen three major updates, and a fourth is just around the corner. The first two chapters made it into the first year, and although Chapter 4 didn't quite make it into this article, chapter 3 brought a whopping amount of content and features. If your extra ginger beer isn't cutting it anymore and you're feeling brave, move on up by grabbing a bottle of Blenhiem's old #5 and join me for a look back at the last year of RoM.
Welcome to the terrible twos: Happy 2nd Birthday, App Store!
You could argue that the App Store ages in Internet time (it's like dog years, only slightly faster), so in terms of its mental age it might be closer to a gawky adolescent than a human two-year-old. Nevertheless, as we mark the 2nd anniversary of the launch of the App Store back in July of 2008, in some ways it is remarkably like seeing an individual personality emerge from an immature, unfinished baseline. It may be a personality with a fondness for bathroom humor and some disturbing control-freak tendencies, but it's something. I could cite superlatives from here until the App Store's next birthday -- over 225,000 apps live in the store, more than 40 thousand unique publishers, over $1 billion in revenue paid out to a crowd of still-enthusiastic developers -- but what it comes down to is this: Apple built a market. Built it, made it run, invited in the innovators and 'the crazy ones' who decided to see what would come of their hard work. Before the App Store, most people didn't associate 'phones' and 'applications' at all, even though there were plenty of apps out there. Now, a would-be smartphone that skips over the app availability question is pretty much dead on arrival. Happy birthday, App Store; we'll begin our celebration today from the date of the press release announcing 500 launch applications (500!), even though tomorrow (July 11) was the on-sale date of the iPhone 3G with OS 2.0. Congratulations to all the people both inside and outside of Apple who have contributed to making the past two years as lively and exciting as they've been. We can't wait to see what happens next -- even if it is a few months of tantrums and growing pains. [hat tip to William @ Different District] Photo by D. Sharon Pruitt | flickr: cc
EVE Evolved: Two year anniversary
On April 27th 2008, the EVE Evolved column kicked off with an in-depth look at the controversy surrounding the removal of NPC supply of shuttles in EVE Online. That first crude article began a continually improving weekly dose of EVE spanning the last two years. In that time, I've written around 100 articles on topics ranging from faction warfare and piracy to mining and economics. It sometimes seems to me that I've covered practically everything of note but in a game as complex as EVE, there's always something to write about. The rapidly evolving universe of New Eden seems to continually produce something new and interesting to discuss. To celebrate the second anniversary of the column in just over a week's time, I'm giving away an expensive faction battleship worth around 500 million ISK. One lucky reader will win and take his pick from the list of navy or fleet issue battleships. To enter, just drop a comment and suggest a topic you'd like to see covered in a future edition of EVE Evolved. Every suggested topic may be written up as a future article in the column with credit to the reader that came up with the idea. This is your chance to say what types of article you'd like to read from Massively's weekly EVE column. The winner will be the reader that suggests my favourite topic by the evening of Friday 23rd April. In addition to winning an expensive navy issue battleship, the winner's suggestion will be written up as next week's anniversary column topic. Skip past the cut for full entry guidelines and a look back at this past year of the EVE Evolved column.
Bioshock for Mac on October 7th
I can personally attest to Bioshock being a terrific game, but the problem is that probably, many of you can as well. Let's be honest -- it actually came out for PC and consoles a full two years ago. At this point, a Mac port is probably useless, but it's coming out anyway. Feral Interactive has announced that they'll be releasing the port on October 7th of this year, so those of you Mac diehards who refuse to play games on any other platforms can finally get your fix. The game will be released for $49.95 in the US, and can be preordered on Feral's store right now. Or, you know, you can run out to Best Buy, pick up a copy for $20 and run it in Boot Camp, it's up to you. If you are going for the Mac version, however, you should know that the game doesn't support the Intel GMA integrated video cards, so you'll need a dedicated video card in your Mac to play it. Bioshock is a great game, as I've said, and if you really stretch it out, it might give you a good six months of free time entertainment -- just in time for you to pick up the Mac port of Hellgate: London, a game released in December of 2007. Oh wait.
EU Commission proposal wants two-year guarantee for games
European game developers are up in arms about a recent EU Commission proposal that, if approved, would require devs to abide by the EU Sales and Guarantees Directive, a rule that mandates "a minimum 2-year guarantee on tangible movable consumer goods." While this guarantee sounds great for consumers, Dr. Richard Wilson, head of game developer advocacy group Tiga, is worried it may "stifle new ideas as [developers] could end up just playing it safe."Developers' qualms go deeper than that, however -- they're worried that consumers might abuse a two-year guarantee on video games by returning the game with a complaint about a bug or glitch that doesn't actually exist. Furthermore, Business Software Alliance director Francisco Mingorance argues digital content isn't tangible, and shouldn't follow the "same liability rules as toasters." He also pointed out digital content isn't technically sold to consumers -- it is licensed for private use.Joystiq's Law of the Game writer (and radical lawyer) Mark Methenitis threw in his two cents, explaining that patches and updates have ended the age of game-ruining glitches, and that a potentially exploitable two-year guarantee on games is unnecessary. He adds, "if you're unsatisfied with an ongoing pattern of bugs you encounter from a developer's product, you should probably consider whether you want to continue purchasing that developer's products, thereby letting the market correct the problem." [Image]
Mocked-up Cinema display taunts us with an update
Are we going to see new Cinema displays by the end of the month? If so, they might look like this-- it's a nice-looking mockup posted by Ben over on the redrant forums. It is interesting that Cinema displays are almost starting to match up to the Beatles as the one thing we hope to get from Apple but never do. For years now, people have been hoping for an update to these things-- an installed iSight (that one's actually been "a lock" for years) and even a touchscreen display. But Apple hasn't budged-- the last time they updated the Cinemas, it was to drop the prices two years ago.Yup, it's been since then that a Cinema update has seemed to be just around the corner. You can only think of so many ways to update monitors, but it seems that Apple hasn't, so far, liked any of the ideas enough to put them on sale.Thanks, Jacob!
Irth Worlds going free-to-play... for at least 2 years
A very short post on the new Irth Worlds (the name seems to go back and forth between Irth Worlds and Irth Online) website drops the bomb that any account that has been created already, and any that are created up until the 29th of February next year, will not have to pay to play. This free play will begin on November 23rd. There is an unusual twist to this one though -- it seems they can only guarantee this situation for a certain period of time, saying that these accounts will remain free for at least two years. Evidently a lot of questions came flying in, as the Irth Worlds poster Damian has made two updates to the story since.
