wod
Latest
The Soapbox: World of Warcraft isn't back, and that's fine
So. That Warlords of Draenor, huh? To take the narrative that a lot of people have constructed, World of Warcraft has been sort of floundering for the past few years. It released one expansion (Cataclysm) that consistently ranks as the worst expansion in the game's history, coming behind the launch game, The Burning Crusade, and Alganon. Then it released another one that turned out to actually be pretty good but with a premise that turned a lot of people off right out of the gate. Mists of Pandaria's quality doesn't matter in the face of the game losing five million subscriptions in three years. But then, Warlords of Draenor was announced, and suddenly hope returned to the faithful. There's this thought that the game has suddenly returned from the brink, that Blizzard hit the big red button labeled "Save World of Warcraft" and the game will be catapulted back into prominence once again. Except that I think that portion of the story isn't just premature -- it's making a stab in the dark about a game that isn't back and can't, in fact, be back.
Community Blog Topic: What's your biggest disappointment with Warlords of Draenor?
So much information is continuing to flow in about Warlords of Draenor. Since BlizzCon, we've seen the new Forsaken female models. We've also learned that spirit will be a secondary stat and won't show up on armor. The fact that flight in WoD won't be available until 6.1 and will probably require a quest chain to acquire it is a controversial topic. Not everyone is happy with everything. My biggest disappointment is the lack of female participation in the story on the Horde side of things. There's been a lot of discussion on this topic already, and I don't mean to start it up again, but it is my answer to this week's Community Blog Topic: "What's your biggest disappointment with Warlords of Draenor?" My other disappointment is a minor one. I wish that garrisons were account-bound instead of restricted to each character. It's minor because I love everything else about this feature. What about you? Are you at all disappointed about any of the announced features of WoD? What are you looking least forward to? Or are you going to wait until the details are more flushed out before making up your mind? Blog about your answer and link to it in the comments below. Or if you don't have a World of Warcraft related blog, respond to the topic in the comments. We'll spotlight some of the responses next week.
7 things casual players need to know about Warlords of Draenor
The dust has finally settled from the BlizzCon newstravaganza, which means it's time for us more casual players to figure out just what's going on with World of Warcraft's upcoming expansion, Warlords of Draenor. Here's the basics: Where's the expansion set? Draenor, before it became Outland. Yep, we're heading back in time for this expansion. What's the new level cap? 100. But don't panic if you haven't even reached the Mists level cap yet, because Blizzard is going to boost one of your characters to level 90 so you can play in Draenor. What can I do in Draenor? In addition to the standard leveling, questing, dungeoning, and raiding, the expansion will have garrisons for you to build. Think of them as a seriously amped up version of the farms in Mists, letting build your own in-game city. What new classes or races are coming? None -- however, all of the current classes are getting new models. It may not sound like much, but it makes the original WoW races look brand new. When will I be able to play? We don't know yet. But as with most Blizzard games, we suspect it will be out "when it's ready." So that's what the next expansion has in store for us. But there are some upcoming gameplay changes that will definitely help low-level or more casual players find their footing and get through the game -- if that means you, read on for 7 things you'll want to know about the next expansion.
BlizzCon 2013 in photographs
BlizzCon might be over, but pictures last forever, or at least until something happens to our data center. Don't get any ideas. Hey, where are you going with that tornado?! Enjoy our view of the con! Massively's on the ground in Anaheim during the weekend of November 8th, bringing you all the best news from BlizzCon 2013. Whether you're anticipating World of Warcraft's and Diablo III's next expansions or reveals from Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm, we aim to have it covered!
CCP taps EA's Sean Decker as new VP of product development
Big changes from Iceland today, as CCP announced that it has brought on Sean Decker as senior vice president of product development. Decker is a 12-year EA veteran and recently headed the publisher's free-to-play focused games group, along with previously overseeing DICE and EA Los Angeles. EVE Online, as crazy as it sounds, is entering its second decade of being a game about internet spaceships, and CCP is looking toward the future. The company referenced Decker's extensive industry experience as a valuable asset in helping guide EVE Online through its next 10 years and in ensuring growth through the eventually-maybe launch of World of Darkness and the expansion of DUST 514. Decker will be based out of CCP's Atlanta studio. Massively's Brendan Drain spoke with Decker and EVE's Hilmar Petursson at a press event yesterday. We'll have more information on how the new hire will impact EVE this afternoon! [Source: CCP press release]
World of Darkness 'years away' from launch
If you are hanging your hopes and dreams on World of Darkness coming along to rescue you from the humdrum of life and your precious mortality, well... be prepared to settle in for a good long wait. Executive Producer Chris McDonough said in an interview that the title is still in pre-production and that players shouldn't expect to see it for a few years yet. However, CCP did show a few technical videos to the press to assure folks that the game is still alive. McDonough did have good news to share, however. World of Darkness has a 70-person crew that is currently building the framework for the title, and according to the producer, they are "making phenomenal progress." The team plans to host the entire game on a single server where active combat and politicking between vampires will be the crux of the content. "We're making sure this is a next-generation MMO. It's very focused on movement and motion and capturing what it's like to be a vampire," he said. "People ask about our high level designs for World of Darkness, and we've called this a vampire simulator. What's it like to be a vampire. Not a superhero, but a super-powered individual. The way the characters move around the city feels very vampiric."
EVE Fanfest 2013 day two: World of Darkness, Odyssey, and EVE Virtual Reality with the Oculus Rift
EVE Online's tenth anniversary Fanfest promised to be its biggest yet, with over 1,400 players packed into Iceland's Harpa convention centre to find out the latest on EVE Online, DUST 514, and World of Darkness. The first day focused mainly on DUST and its link with the EVE universe, but today the focus largely switched back to internet spaceships. There were plenty of roundtable discussions, and the CSM and Alliance panels were as awesome as ever, but it was the EVE Keynote that really blew the crowd away. The day got off to a good start with the highly anticipated World of Darkness talk. Most fans were probably expecting to see more airy game design ideas and another shiny trailer, but this year CCP just came out and put all its cards on the table. We saw that the game is still firmly in pre-production, with much of the previous work going into developing the engine and cool content creation tools and shaders. While I was initially disappointed at the lack of gameplay progress or shiny cinematics, I found this approach of being open and direct with fans very refreshing. As I told WoD art director Thomas Holt, honest beats shiny every time. Read on for a full run-down of the EVE reveals from the second day of EVE's tenth anniversary Fanfest, including in-depth details of the Odyssey expansion's features.
World of Darkness development shown at EVE Fanfest 2013
When the World of Darkness MMO was first announced in November 2006, it was just an idea and we knew that it wouldn't be released any time soon. The chance to play a sandbox game set in the Vampire: The Masquerade universe nevertheless made fans of the series go nuts, but now over six years later we haven't seen much progress on the game. At EVE Fanfest 2013 today, CCP laid the current state of development bare for all to see and showed some plans for the coming year. There are now 70 people on the WoD team, and they've spent the past week working on everything from art tools and server infrastructure to vampire powers and social options. "You're a powerful, immortal lord of the night. You don't want to stitch a shirt." Development plans for 2013 include working on out-of-game web-based social tools, clothing systems, and PvE game environments. There are also plans to work on item creation, but direct crafting is probably not on the cards. As the presenter put it, "You're a powerful, immortal lord of the night. You don't want to stitch a shirt." Though the game is still in the pre-production stage, CCP was keen to show off the tools it's made to speed up the development process. "Some of these videos are a bit dry and technical," joked the presenter, but it came across as more real and honest than another trailer or musings on theoretical gameplay.
What to expect from EVE Fanfest today: World of Darkness, EVE Keynote, and an interview with Jon Lander
The second day of EVE Fanfest 2013 is now underway, and the schedule is packed! Today kicks off with a highly anticipated talk on World of Darkness at 7:00 a.m. EDT, and continues with the CSM Panel at 8:00 a.m. EDT, Alliance Panel at 9:00 a.m. EDT and Art Panel at 10:00 a.m. EDT. The CSM and Alliance panels are usually filled with hilarious banter, but this year the CSM Panel happens at the same time as the Faction Warfare roundtable and a talk on DUST 514 planet conquering in lowsec. The big event today is of course the EVE Online Keynote at 1:00 p.m. EDT, where we'll find out details of the upcoming Odyssey expansion. World of Darkness is still pretty early in development, so the presentation will be talking mostly about the tools being used to build it. We're unlikely to get a release schedule or any solid gameplay demos, but with developers raving about their internal play-tests I expect to see some serious progress compared to last year. Since the CSM panel is likely being streamed, I'll try to hit up the Faction Warfare roundtable and see what CCP's current thoughts are on how to improve this aging game system.
Make your EVE Fanfest plans with the official program
EVE Fanfest is next week and the faithful are preparing to descend upon Reykjavik, Iceland, for the three-day convention. If you're one of the travelers who are heading there or are just looking to follow along on livestream, CCP has released the full program with the event's schedule. Fanfest will have three keynotes about the past, present, and future of CCP's titles, respectively. There will also be several panels, including one discussing EVE Online's inclusion in the New York Museum of Modern Art. EVE Online also released a new dev blog talking about the team's war on unauthorized client modification and violations of the EULA. Apparently CCP has taken additional steps to beef up detection and prevention, and the team wanted to be clear with players as to what is and is not allowed.
EVE Evolved: Massively's plans for EVE Fanfest 2013
There's just over a week to go until EVE Online's massive tenth anniversary Fanfest, and you'll be pleased to hear that Massively will be there this year to cover the action! CCP is aiming to make this the biggest Fanfest yet, promising huge reveals and announcements about EVE's summer Odyssey expansion and beyond. We can also expect to hear some big news about upcoming console MMOFPS DUST 514, and fans of Vampire: The Masquerade will undoubtedly get to see some of the year's progress toward making the World of Darkness MMO a reality. Tickets to this year's Fanfest sold out in record time, so many players who really wanted to be there for EVE's tenth anniversary celebration weren't able to secure a spot. CCP is running its usual livestream of the main talks for those not in attendance, but only certain parts of the event are being streamed. Here at Massively, we plan to give you an inside look at Fanfest with ongoing news coverage from April 25th to April 27th and in-depth opinion pieces on what each announcement means for players. In this week's short and sweet EVE Evolved, I lay out Massively's plans for in-depth coverage of EVE Fanfest 2013 and ask what you'd like to see reported on.
CCP employees 'losing themselves' in World of Darkness playtests
CCP's MMOification of the beloved World of Darkness IP is still a thing, apparently. CEO Hilmar Petursson tells Eurogamer that a "tiny" glimpse of the horror-themed sandbox will show its pasty white face at this April's EVE Online Fanfest. "We're playing it internally at CCP. It's actually a problem that some of our employees are losing themselves already in the World of Darkness as we go through the playtests," Petursson said. "And we'll be showing a tiny piece of that also at Fanfest. So that is all I have to say about that at this time."
EVE Evolved: Looking back at previous Fanfests
The annual EVE Online Fanfest is a massive event that brings together players from across the world to discuss the serious business of internet spaceships. It's three days of in-depth developer talks, sneak previews of what's to come, and roundtable events that let players discuss their ideas and feedback directly with developers. The EVE communty may not be as large as the community of games like World of Warcraft, but thousands of players pay a considerable sum of money each year to fly to the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik for the event. Fanfest started out as a very small and personal affair with just a few dozen people in attendance, but it's grown to absolutely massive proportions in recent years. This year's event promises to be bigger than ever as it will be celebrating EVE Online's 10th anniversary and the impending release of CCP Games' MMOFPS DUST 514. It's a special milestone for CCP and EVE fans alike, and tickets for the event have already sold out! If you didn't manage to snag a ticket, you should still be able to enjoy parts of Fanfest as key talks and events will likely be streamed live as in previous years and videos will be uploaded after the convention. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look back at the highlights of the past two EVE Fanfests and the social aspect that makes it one of the best experiences and EVE player can have.
EVE Evolved: Bring on the big expansions!
I don't normally jump out of my seat shouting "hell yes!" to an EVE Online dev blog, but this week's announcement on the direction of future expansions has me a little bit excited. In two somewhat dry and lengthy posts, Executive Producer Jon Lander and Senior Producer CCP Seagull detailed the approach they intend to take to ongoing development in 2013. Instead of announcing any big headline features or making vague promises, the developers looked back at the success of 2009's blockbuster Apocrypha expansion. Apocrypha was hands-down the best expansion EVE has ever had, adding 2500 hidden solar systems accessible only through shifting unstable wormholes. We saw a renaissance of exploration, collaborative research, and colonisation efforts that defied EVE's war-like reputation, and moreover, we saw a rebirth of small-scale PvP. The magic sauce that made Apocrypha work was lateral design: Rather than add one massive vertical feature, the expansion offered a little something for everyone. Apocrypha was EVE at its best, and hearing that developers are going back to that style of expansion honestly makes me a little giddy! In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the future for EVE's expansions, why the Apocrypha model works, and why I'm optimistic for 2013 and beyond.
EVE Evolved: Has EVE Online boxed itself in?
When I was first introduced to EVE Online in 2004, it was an empty shell of a game. There were only three classes of ship, no alliances or starbases, and neither exploration complexes nor level 4 missions existed yet. EVE consisted of 5,000 systems of almost completely empty space populated by less than 50,000 players. The user interface was an order of magnitude worse than it is today (if you can imagine that), and the tutorial just dropped you in the middle of space with the ship equivalent of a pea shooter and a less-than-enthusiastic "good luck!" Though much of the game was empty, it sat before players like a blank galactic canvas. Not only could players paint their own stories into the game world, but EVE's highly active development team was updating the game at lightning speed. Players instinctively filled the voids in the game with their hopes and dreams, projecting all the things that EVE could be into the gaps. People shared ideas on the forum directly with the developers, and practically anything was possible. Things aren't quite the same today, as new ideas have to be compatible with over nine years' worth of updates, and developer CCP Games really can't afford to rock the boat and potentially lose subscriptions. In this week's EVE Evolved, I consider whether the past nine years of development has boxed EVE in, forcing the gameplay down an ever-narrowing branch of choices.
CCP wins Best Indie Studio award at Develop
CCP took home some hardware at last night's Develop 2012 awards ceremony. The indie outfit responsible for EVE Online and DUST 514 was recognized as the best independent studio in the biz. CCP CEO Hilmar Petursson accepted the award on behalf of the company and thanked Develop and his industry peers in the process. He also hinted at CCP's full plate, which includes the launch of DUST on the PlayStation 3, the 10th anniversary of EVE, and a World of Darkness event scheduled for September in Atlanta. [Source: CCP press release]
World of Darkness information revealed in open letter to fans
Outside of confirmation that CCP Games is still working on World of Darkness, news on the game has been hard to come by. Some of the reasons behind that were revealed by senior producer Chris McDonough in a recent letter to members of the Mind's Eye Society, a fan group devoted to the tabletop and LARP games in the same IP. While the focus in the letter was not on the MMO, McDonough did still discuss the state of CCP as a company and what it means for the game. In short, after a difficult financial year, CCP is devoting the lion's share of its resources to ensuring that DUST 514 is a successful game on launch. That doesn't mean that World of Darkness is being shelved -- McDonough stresses that development is still ongoing -- but it does mean that the company's first priority is elsewhere. How long that will be the case remains to be seen, but if you're hoping for more substantial news on the game this year, the odds are low.
World of Darkness creative director talks design and the MMO mainstream
A new interview at Gamasutra posits that CCP is gunning for mainstream success with its upcoming World of Darkness MMO. The EVE Online developer has cornered what's left of the hardcore sandbox market, so now it's looking to marry EVE's emergent gameplay with more familiar MMO staples. "The way to drag people in will be traditional themepark-style PvE play. Once players get into the setting, they'll see the appeal of the sandbox play," says WoD creative director Reynir Hardarson. Despite the concessions to mainstream accessibility, EVE's influence on World of Darkness will be more than superficial. "The live-action roleplayers of the Vampire the Masquerade tabletop game play this way," Hardarson explains. "It's really about politics and power plays." Why don't more MMO developers try their hand at sandbox mechanics? Hardarson says designing for emergent play is difficult because you can't test it. It's worth it, though, because MMOs that hand-hold and limit players to a linear path miss the point. "I'm not a five-year-old. If I want to go in the cave and I want to die, that's my problem," Hardarson says.
The MMO Report: Big news edition
The MMO Report has some big news this week, and no, it's not about the fact that it's secretly carrying your baby. Nor is it even tied to all of the various big news that the show has this week, and there is quite a bit of that. Obviously, there's the new patch for Star Wars: The Old Republic, and there's also the first in-game footage of both World of Darkness and Defiance, but those aren't the big reveal in the news. So what is it? Well, while we'd normally promise that there's going to be a new episode next week from G4 and Massively, this week it's not quite so clear-cut. The show is going on a brief hiatus for reasons that we'll allow the show itself to explain. So hop on past the break for more MMO news, and tune in when the hiatus ends for another episode. You can keep checking back here forlornly, however. We won't hold it against you.
The MMO Report: Shut up about Mass Effect edition
This week on The MMO Report, Casey tells everyone to stop whining about Mass Effect 3's ending, laments the loss of the "online" part of Warhammer 40K: Dark Millennium Online, touches on the World of Darkness keynote, and outlines The Secret World's preorder plans. He also reveals the identity of one of TERA's key voice actors: Michael Hogan (of Battlestar Galactica fame), who will play Samael in the final game. Finally, he pulls one measly letter from the mailbag and debates which class he represents in TERA. Enjoy the full MMO Report after the cut!
