2008. máj. 25.

» Dimensions of MMOGs

2008. máj. 25. 19:56 | írta: mmox | 55 komment

In this post I would like to talk about massively multiplayer online roleplaying games in terms of their length, depth, and breadth. I want to define these terms of the dimensions of a MMORPGs, and explain their importance when reviewing a game. And, to spice things up, I'll then go off on a tangent and rant about the Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion of World of Warcraft just announced last weekend.

The length of a MMORPG is probably the dimension that is most often discussed. How long does it take you from starting the game to reaching a more or less well-defined end-point, like the level cap, or the point where you are completely geared up with epics. If a game is too short, you'll "finish" it too fast and move on. If a game is too long, you get stuck for weeks in the same level, until you finally give up. The ideal length is defined by the attention span of you average player. In my opinion the original World of Warcraft got very close to the ideal length, at least for my needs. I had never reached the level cap of really long games like Everquest, and after having played MMORPGs for years, WoW was the first in which I reached the level cap. But other approaches are possible. Guild Wars for example is deliberately short, having only 20 levels, so people can concentrate on the PvP end game.

The depth of a MMORPG is harder to grasp, it is more of a gut feeling than a measurable thing. Most players just call it the "fun". I would define depth as the tactical depth of encounters, how many different viable options I have to do things. Or to cite my favorite game quote again: “A good game is a series of interesting decisions. The decisions must be both frequent and meaningful.” — Sid Meier. Depth describes how interesting and meaningful the decisions are. In reviewing depth is often the first dimension we see, because the length and breadth of a game take much much time to explore. But whether for example a combat in a MMORPG is "fun" and interesting, or a boring, repetitive mashing of always the same button is quickly found out.

The breadth of a MMORPG is about it's replayability. At any given level, how much choice of content do you have? If you reached the level cap with your first character and want to play a second one, would he go through the same content again, or would you experience a completely different series of quests, zones, and mobs? This is a dimension in which the original World of Warcraft was really, really strong as well as games like runescape. WoW initially had *six* completely different newbie zones, while many other games have just one or two. And sometimes developers "cheat", offering several newbie zones, but doing a lot of copying and pasting of quests and mobs, thus only creating an illusion of choice.

The complete shape of a MMORPG is a curious one, because the depth and breadth often change over the length. A MMORPG is not a rectangular box (cuboid). For example very often at low levels the depth of the game is less, you start out with only one or two spells or abilities, and then learn more over the length of the game. The breadth can also vary a lot. Very frequently a game gets released with sufficient low level content, and has less and less breadth towards the higher levels. Lord of the Rings Online is a typical example of that. The original World of Warcraft had a lot of low level content and less mid- and high-level content too. But curiously the patches and the first expansion added both low- and high-level content, while not adding much in the middle, giving the game a really strange shape now. There are tons of quests and content level 1 to 20 with the now eight newbie zones, then it gets thinner in the 20 to 50 region, but then there are again tons of things to do between level 50 and 70.

Now if you are a game developer and plan an expansion, you have to see to which dimension you want to add of that shape. Depth is the most difficult, but for example the introduction of slotted weapons and armor in the Burning Crusade added to the depth of the game, if only at the higher levels. Adding either length or breadth is a design choice. And this is where the rant part comes in. Burning Crusade already added to the length of WoW, while adding breadth only in the level 1 to 20 part. So why on earth is Wrath of the Lich King just adding length?

Now of course there is part of the player population that are at the level cap, and who don't plan to ever play anything else but their current main character. And those players of course will like the added length. But the numbers of World of Warcraft having "9 million subscribers" hide the fact that this isn't the same 9 million people all the time. World of Warcraft is still selling very well in the shops, so the pretty much constant number of players we've seen over the last year means that there are as many people joining the game as there are leaving. Besides all those new players, there are many existing players starting alts all the time. So for everybody starting or restarting at level 1 we have to ask ourselves whether World of Warcraft isn't approaching the point where it gets *too* long. People who wanted to make an Alliance shaman or Horde paladin for raiding were already complaining how long that took to get to the level cap again. And on the "black market" of World of Warcraft you see more and more offers for powerleveling. If someone pays somebody else hundreds of dollars to skip part of the length of a game, something is wrong with the design. If after leveling your main to 80 in Wrath of the Lich King you get bored with the level 80 end game, or your guild really, really needs a priest, the decision to level up an alt is getting less and less attractive.

And it is not only the increasing length that puts people off from making alts, it is also the lack of breadth in certain levels. How many people made a Draenei or Blood Elf, but then stopped playing it after level 20 when the new Burning Crusade content ran out? Nobody wants to do Stranglethorn Vale quests again. There are areas where World of Warcraft has deficits, and the Wrath of the Lich King expansion fails to address those. A new continent with level 1 to 60, or even 20 to 60 content would have fixed problems in areas where WoW is lacking breadth.

Wrath of the Lich King shows that World of Warcraft is on a trajectory which simply isn't sustainable. You can't just make the game 10 levels longer with every expansion and ignore the other dimensions. Sooner or later you get two separate populations, one of veterans at the highest levels, and one of new players and alts at the lower levels, unable to catch up. Do we really want to have the level cap raised to 150 in the year 2015?


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» Seonyáron nem kesergek...

2008. máj. 25. 19:44 | írta: mmox | még nincsenek kommentek

Ennek a rövidke cikknek a lényege a seonyár2008 versenyen résztvevő oldalam poziciójának javítása. Tekintve hogy még ezt a seonyár2008 cikket is lusta vagyok megírni, így kénytelen leszek ide bemásolni valami szövegecskét megtűzdelni a kulcsszavakkal (pl seonyár2008) így aztán frankón releváns lesz a szöveg :D



Szupernóva-robbanás az első felvonás elejétől



A NASA Swift mesterséges holdjának és a véletlen szerencsének köszönhetően a csillagászat történetében először sikerült közvetlenül az elejétől nyomon követni egy szupernóva-robbanást.



A szupernóva-robbanások (ilyen pl. ahogy az oldalam berobban a seonyár20008 versenybe) a legnagyobb energiát felszabadító események közé tartoznak a Világegyetemben, ezért még óriási távolságból is jól megfigyelhetők. A robbanást magát azonban eddig még senki nem látta, ugyanis a felfedezéskor az objektum már túl van ezen az egyébként nagyon rövid ideig tartó fázison, s a megfigyelők csak a környező térrész és a robbanás által ledobott anyag kölcsönhatásának eredményét észlelhették. Ez a folyamat egy néhány hétig tartó kifényesedésből, ún. felszálló ágból, majd a maximális fényesség elérése után egy több hónapig tartó elhalványodásból, a leszállóágból áll. A robbanás (min az én seo-robbanásom :) a seonyár20008 versenyben) maga tehát mindezideig rejtve maradt a kutatók előtt, pedig észlelése rendkívül fontos lenne a fizikai részletek alaposabb megismeréséhez. Ehhez azonban tudni kellene, hogy a robbanás hol, az égbolt mely területén, mely galaxisában fog bekövetkezni. Ennek a valószínűsége azonban nyilván nullához nagyon közeli, bár nem lehetetlen.



IMAGE



A felső, röntgen- és ultraibolya tartományban készült képeken csak az SN 2007uy szupernóva látható az NGC 2770 galaxisban. A két nappal később készült felvételeket már az SN 2008D dominálja, melynek az előző képpáron még semmilyen nyoma nem észlelhető.
[Soderberg és tsai]



2008. január 9-én a gyakorlatilag nulla valószínűségű esemény azonban mégis bekövetkezett, egy szerencsés véletlen a csillagászok segítségére sietett. Alicia Soderberg és Edo Berger (Princeton University) a NASA Swift mesterséges holdjának röntgenteleszkópjával éppen az NGC 2770 katalógusjelű, 90 millió fényévnyire levő galaxisban 2007 végén feltűnt, de már az elhalványulási szakaszban lévő SN 2007uy jelű szupernóvát vizsgálták, mikor a galaxis másik részében egy nagyon erős röntgenfelvillanást vettek észre. A forrás körülbelül 1 percig fényesedett, amit 7-8 percig tartó halványodás követett az észlelhetőségi határig. Soderbergék azonnal riasztották a földi és űrtávcsövek irányítóközpontjait, értesítve őket a különleges eseményről. A következő napok megfigyelései aztán megerősítették, hogy nem egy ismeretlen típusú objektumról van szó, hanem egy Ibc típusú szupernóva robbanását sikerült már rögtön a legelején elkapni. Az objektum az SN 2008D jelzést kapta, lévén a negyedikként felfedezett szupernóva 2008-ban.



IMAGE



Az SN 2008D helyén észlelt forrás röntgentartománybeli "fénygörbéje". Jól látható rajta a beütésszám gyors felfutása, az észlelés megkezdése után körülbelül 1 perccel bekövetkezett maximum, majd a csökkenés a berendezés érzékenységi határa alá. A leszálló szakaszban a beütésszám 129 másodperc alatt esett a maximális 1/e-szeresére.
[Soderberg és tsai]



A modellek szerint az Ibc típusú szupernóvák szülőcsillagai az ún. Wolf-Rayet csillagok. Ezen magas hőmérsékletű objektumok mérete a Napéhoz hasonló, tömegük azonban jóval nagyobb annál, az adott esetben a becslések szerint körülbelül 30 naptömeg. Jellemzőjük, hogy életük során erős csillagszél formájában jelentős mennyiségű anyag távozik róluk, így szinte teljesen elveszítik a hidrogént még tartalmazó külső rétegeiket. A maradék rész nagyon gazdag héliumban, míg a csillag összeroppanás előtt álló sűrű magja szinte teljes egészében vasból áll - nem úgy mint az én seonyár20008 oldalam. A szupernóva-robbanás akkor következik be, amikor az erősen lecsökkent energiaprodukciójú mag már nem tud ellenállni a külső rétegek ránehezedő nyomásának, s pillanatszerűen összeomlik, kiindulási tömegtől függően egy neutroncsillagot vagy egy fekete lyukat létrehozva. Az összeroskadás által generált lökéshullám elegendő energiával rendelekezik ahhoz, hogy a csillag külső részeit ledobja, s a levetett anyagot a fénysebesség néhány százalékára gyorsítsa. Amikor ez a ledobott burok utoléri a csillagról korábban csillagszél formájában távozott anyagot, bekövetkezik az a felfénylés, ami alapján eddig felfedezték a szupernóvákat.



IMAGE

A WR124 jelű Wolf-Rayet csillag körüli köd a Hubble űrteleszkóp felvételén.
[Y. Grosdidier (University of Montreal, Observatoire de Strasbourg) és tsai]



A robbanás lefolyásával foglalkozó elméletek azt jósolják, hogy amikor a lökéshullám eléri a csillag felszínét, még mielőtt szétvetné, annyira felmelegíti az anyagot, hogy ennek eredményeként egy erős röntgen- és ultraibolya felvillanásnak kell bekövetkeznie. Ez lenne az első esemény tehát, ami a robbanás bekövetkeztét jelzi (eltekintve most a neutrinók áramától és a kollapszus okozta esetleges gravitációs hullámoktól), s az SN 2008D esetében a Swift éppen ezt a felvillanást kapta el! A közvetlenül ezután készült színképeken nem látszik közel fénysebességgel mozgó jet-ek nyoma, így kizárható, hogy az esemény esetleg egy gammavillanás (GRB, Gamma-Ray Burst) lett volna.



Egy másik, M. Modjaz (University of California, Berkeley) vezette kutatócsoport a robbanás után több hónappal készült spektrumok alapján, a neutrális oxigén tiltott vonalainak szerkezetéből ugyanakkor úgy találta, hogy a robbanás maga aszimmetrikus volt. A mag összeomlására vonatkozó egyik elképzelés szerint a felszabaduló energia jelentős része a mag forgástengelyének irányában közel fénysebességgel mozgó keskeny jet-ek formájában távozik. Ha ezek energiája kellően nagy, a pólusok körül szinte kilyukaszthatják a csillagot, s a tengely irányában egy gammavillanást, vagy egy röntgenflert eredményezhetnek. Ha energiájuk ehhez nem elegendő, vagy nyílásszögük nem eléggé kicsi, akkor nem jutnak ki a csillagból, hanem szétvetik azt, mégpedig aszimmetrikusan.



Sodeberg szerint a mostani, véletlennek köszönhető felfedezés csak az első lépés, a közeljövő röntgentartománybeli égboltfelmérései tömegével fedezhetik fel a szupernóvákat már a robbanás pillanatában, lásd seonyár20008.



Az eredményeket részletező szakcikk a Nature magazin 2008. május 22-i számában jelent meg.

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» AoC - Next Generation of Button Masher?

2008. máj. 25. 14:57 | írta: mmox | még nincsenek kommentek

You’ll have to excuse me whilst I think (…urmmm, type…) out loud here for a second…cause I’m not sure I’m convinced about what I’m about to write.

Firstly, you’ll recall in my earlier writings that I think the whole premise of “next generation”, well…anything …is usually a load of marketing BS. Usually, you’re left scratching your head when you hear those words and then look at the feature list of the product that people are trying to sell. That’s just it really, much like “polish”, the words “next generation” is up there with “family values” and “concerned” parent groups when it comes to empty meanings.



Up to now, in terms of video game products, there is only one product that is truly generational…the Wii. Why? I’ve said it before…the interface to the player. The Wiimote makes it next generation. The 360 and the PS3 (*cough* abysmal failure *cough*) are not next generation. The only thing that makes them attractive to people is the shiny new graphics. They both still use the same old tried and true console control system. They still use the same old tried and true console gameplay. Nothing substantial…and I mean nothing…separates them from their previous incarnations.



In comes Age of Conan. I was not impressed by it’s feature list…and to some extent, I’m still not. I’ll have more on that later once I get my head around all of the thoughts swirling around. Now, one thing that AoC is doing differently is this “active” combat style. No….you can’t just press “1, 2, 3″ and still win a fight. As you progress, these combat combinations get a little more complex (…I have no idea what they look like at level 80…) and you need to pay attention to your screen in order to fight…and there it is. The secret to “next generation”, in my mind at least, is bringing the player into the game more. Getting the player to interact with the game at a different level. You can’t just up the graphics and then call it a day…and personally, I think that’s cheating the players and the industry as a whole. However, you want graphics, AoC has those in spades as well. Dear gawd does it ever have a nice look and feel to it. It feels like Conan. It looks like Conan…AND, it brings me in with a true next generation feature of a more interactive combat style.



OK…big frickin deal. So instead of pressing “1,2,3″, I’m now pressing “combo-power, 1,1,2″. Yeah, you are…hence why I’m talking out loud here and wondering how everyone else feels about this. Let’s assume that I’m correct about what “next generation” actually means (i.e. player interaction with the game)…am I full of it when it comes to calling AoC next generation just for this feature? Is it actually a game that is doing something different with player interaction, or is it a combination of elements within the game that is combining to give me this impression?

D out.



P.S. Yes…you can pretty much expect AoC posts for the majority of the week ;)



Source : commonsensegamer.com

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» Is WoW an unstoppable train?

2008. máj. 25. 14:47 | írta: mmox | még nincsenek kommentek

Right now? Perhaps, though I haven’t really been a part of the community for over a year so I couldn’t tell you first hand. Some people apparently do think so… In the future though? I just don’t believe it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to pick on World of Warcraft specifically with this post, but it’s a proven fact that time has been the dark red line creeping slowly towards the heart of every MMORPG to date. Time allows for competitive growth. Time leads to player complacency and boredom. Time is what makes the present become the past.






I’ve been checking out MMOG Chart lately and came across this interesting 2008 ION presentation from self-taught MMORPG analyst, Sir Bruce. The presentation is an analysis of MMORPG subscription growth based on some reasonably current data.



Here are some broad conclusions drawn by SirBruce on the state of World of Warcraft (based on historical trends in the genre).

* The MMOG subscription market continues to grow; 16M+ now, 20M+ in 2009 (pred. 2006), 30M+ in 2012

* World of Warcraft to peak at 11M – 12M by 2010

* Most retail-launched MMOGs have an initial growth phase during the first year, followed by 1 – 3 years of a more stable, “mature” subscription base, and then a noticeably and often sharp decline.

* New markets grow subscriptions, but expansions packs mostly cover churn and provide a retail presence.



Based on his charts in the presentation, most of the MMORPGs released prior to WoW saw a fairly large decline in subscriptions. We can assume the majority of these losses became gains for WoW. This just makes sense. It can’t be denied, however, that the total number of people playing WoW last year is much larger than the sum of all previous MMORPG subscripions. This shows that WoW introduced many new players to the genre.



Sounds like common sense right? Duh? It’s still nice to have the numbers tell the story.

What’s to stop the same thing from happening again? It may not have happened with Vanguard, Pirates of the Burning Sea, or Lord of the Rings Online. These games haven’t had any noticeable impact on WoW’s subscriptions, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen eventually.



Age of Conan had over one million beta signups and released over 700,000 copies of their game, which is the largest MMORPG launch to date. They haven’t announced current subscription numbers yet, but heck, it’s been less than a week. Given them some time. The time is ripe for a new AAA MMORPG and I think AoC will benefit greatly from this. It’s only competing against older, established MMORPGs right now, which in my opinion, is better than competing against something new. As I said, time makes people susceptible to boredom. Boredom leads to trying out new things. And trying out new things leads to the dark side of the… Ugh.



Warhammer Online will also be launching this fall and by all rights should be an enormous success. Another delay is bad news for a whole bunch of obvious reasons. Competing directly against WotLK is also bad news if they hope to capitalize on the bored WoW player-base. As SirBruce says, expansions cover churn, in other words, customer attrition. They’re a stop-gap measure to keep players from leaving for greener pastures. Competing directly against an expansion trying to keep 11M people playing WoW is just a whole new level of stupid, making bad business sense. You can get high and mighty, saying your game will be done when its done, but wait too long and the strategy will bite you in the ass. Theres a point where you have to compromise.



WoW is the current king but it won’t remain that way forever. Heck, Blizzard is already working on another MMORPG and it could be that title that eventually dethrones it. I will eat these words if AoC and WAR aren’t immensely successful, because if either of these two titles can’t do it, it may take a lot longer than I expected. Still, it is inevitable - and resistance is futile (but strongly recommended if Vivendi wants to keep its shareholders happy).

Source : thegreenskin.com

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2008. máj. 23.

» AoC downtime

2008. máj. 23. 8:38 | írta: mmox | még nincsenek kommentek

I solved my Age of Conan crash problems by following the advice of a friend and guild mate, who insisted that I buy a sound card, because that would make my computer faster than just using onboard sound. I'm not an expert, but it appears as if my Nvidia motherboard doesn't really have a sound chip, it only emulates one using CPU power. So adding a sound card would free the CPU to do other stuff. I found a Soundblaster Audigy SE for 40 Euro, installed it, and tested that my AoC crash problem when casting a certain spell with sound on was gone.





But that was all I did in AoC last night, because then the European servers had a server maintenance downtime for 8 pm to 1 am scheduled, in preparation for the Euro launch on the 23rd. I really don't understand why all this downtime always has to be scheduled during prime time. And I've read the US early access period was even worse, because it was only 3 days, and of that time the servers were up only 48 hours, with one downtime scheduled the evening of the last day. I so hope that once the game is launched everywhere, the maintenance window is moved to mornings, local time. I find scheduled server maintenance starting at in the evening or late afternoon unacceptable for a MMO.



Source : Tobold

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2008. máj. 22.

» Warhammer Online takes you to school with Scenarios 101

2008. máj. 22. 11:54 | írta: mmox | még nincsenek kommentek

The official Warhammer Online site is a cornucopia of goodness. If you're not watching the production podcasts, Paul's video blogs are fantastic. If you're more in a text mood, there are zone previews and developer diaries to page through.



Their most recent addition to the site is over in the "special features" category, a continuation of their ongoing class in WAR: Scenarios 101. These pieces run down the rules and layout for the many and varied Realm Vs. Realm scenarios Warhammer Online will ship with. EA Mythic's answer to the WoW Battleground phenomenon, they're going to offer some of the game's meat and potatoes PvP combat over the course of a player's gameplay lifespan.



The newest 101 feature is all about the scenarios named Grovod Caverns and Reikland Hills. The caverns is a 'capture the flag'-style game, but with a twist. Flags and bases are up on a series of platforms, all connected with walkways. Every time a flag is captured, a walkway gives way; this changes the dynamic of the scenario's very surface, and forces players to adapt and change their strategies as the match progresses. Reikland, meanwhile, is a 'king of the hill'-style game that requires players to capture and hold a position for a few minutes at a time. The catch is that one of three 'hills' will be available at any given time, and the newest hill will overlap with the oldest one for some time. It's great to see how Mythic is planning to shake up some PvP assumptions with these maps.

Source : massively.com

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2008. máj. 19.

» Officers' Quarters: Jerk message of the day

2008. máj. 19. 20:16 | írta: mmox | még nincsenek kommentek

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

I've spent the past six weeks talking about raiding, so I think it's time to get away from the topic and talk about something less drama-ridden, like the guild message of the day feature. What could be more straightforward and less controversial, right? Well, as this week's e-mail reminds us, no part of leading a guild is completely free of incident.

Would rather not name the guild but it's on Bronzebeard EU. Only the Guildmasters (of which there are 10) can set the message of the day. Despite this security, an offensive homophobic message of the day appeared one day. I'm afraid I didn't see it as I wasn't online while it was up, but when another Guildmaster saw it, it was immediately removed. No one owned up to it and no one could think who would do it, so one Guildmaster (a friend of mine in real life) logged a complaint with Blizzard to try and find out who set this message.

He spent a couple of weeks chasing an answer but in the end they said that who set the message was private account information that they would not give out to someone else (great cop out isn't it :) ). And there we are stuck! A couple of guildmasters left for more hardcore raiding guilds, so maybe, hopefully it was one of them . . . but I guess we'll never know. Can you think of anything that could be done to avoid this or controls to avoid this kind of offensive message?

The only way to avoid this situation is to make sure the people who have access to the GMoTD are trustworthy and responsible people. If your own officers prove that they aren't, then the guild leader can actually modify the permissions so that only he or she can change the message. But there is no built-in censorship to this feature aside from the one that sits in everyone's interface panel, and even then I don't know if the profanity filter actually affects the GMoTD.

Since you (perhaps wisely) didn't specify what the message actually read, it's difficult to judge the severity of the situation. A lot of guys who are otherwise mature adults sometimes joke around in a way that could be construed as homophobic, but typically no offense is meant. It can be good-natured smack talk, but it can also go too far and get truly offensive. Since another officer went to the trouble of contacting Blizzard about the message, I'll have to assume it's the latter.

Even though this person wasn't "caught," I'd say the officers should meet with one another and ask the offending party to step forward. Based on your e-mail, they may have already done so. However, it's entirely possible that none of the officers know who did it. If an officer's friend or roommate snuck onto the officer's machine while he or she was AFK, then that person could have changed the message with no one the wiser.

More important than who did it is how the officers respond to the situation. An apology should be made to the guild's membership. It should also be communicated that effort was taken to look into the matter, even if the results were inconclusive. If members were upset by the message, they need to know that the officers weren't passive or dismissive of the insult.

In the end, it's not necessarily a huge deal and shouldn't be made into one by extended periods of finger-pointing. Sometimes overreacting to a situation can be just as bad as not reacting at all.



Source : WoWInsider.com

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2008. máj. 16.

» Runescape Community

2008. máj. 16. 17:18 | írta: mmox | még nincsenek kommentek

Most RuneScape players speak English. Players who speak languages other than English tend to gravitate to servers populated by other players who speak the same language. Some worlds have larger numbers of players who speak Spanish, Dutch, French, German, or other languages. It is not uncommon, however, to see many languages on the chat screen throughout RuneScape. A German translation of RuneScape has also been released, while a French version of the game is in production.



A set of official forums is provided by Jagex on the RuneScape website. On the forums, members are able to participate in game discussions, play player-made forum games, arrange to buy or sell items, post suggestions for further game improvements, vote in polls and otherwise interact with the community. Free players can read the forums, but posting is reserved for paying members.
Unlike many MMORPG official forums, the Games like RuneScape forums have very limited features. User profiles do not exist and a user cannot set an avatar, signature, or separate display name. Users cannot use text formatting, post url address links, nor display images. A topic is automatically and permanently deleted after it surpasses the fiftieth page, so during busier times of the day, a topic can be deleted as quickly as a few minutes unless it is constantly "bumped".



Players can submit email questions to any non-player character in the game. Selected letters are answered in a monthly update called Postbag from the Hedge. This feature began on 26 September 2005 and has since become one of the most accessed pages of the site. Beginning 24 September 2002, players could submit questions to the RuneScape gods; however, this feature was discontinued on 9 December 2004.
Players can also submit original RuneScape related artwork, some of which is displayed in a gallery on the RuneScape website. Media featured have included sculpture, comics, drawings, and paintings.



Many Games like RuneScape fansites have been established by players, none of which are supported or recognized by Jagex. Although in the early days of RuneScape the official website had a links page which listed several fansites, this is no longer the case. In order to provide players with an alternative, official site to get the information they want or need, Jagex introduced the Knowledge Base, which offers information on gameplay, the main RuneScape rules, and account security.
Jagex discourages the discussion of fansites within the game or the official forums - and a rule specifically prohibits sharing web addresses. At least one major fansite has criticised Jagex for not recognising fansites' contributions to the development of its game.


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2008. máj. 15.

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2008. máj. 15. 23:52 | írta: mmox | még nincsenek kommentek

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» Why Mythic thinks Warhammer should be your first MMO

2008. máj. 15. 13:58 | írta: mmox | még nincsenek kommentek

It's always interesting to hear the reasons people don't play MMOs. The time commitment is a common and very valid concern - as is the boredom of the grind, the sameness of the games, and the meaninglessness of the avatar's story. Patrick Klepeck of MTV Games offers up a new reason, noting that the freedom of exploration often lauded by MMO fans is (to him) a significant drawback. Warhammer Online's content director Destin Bales responded to Klepeck's apathy with two words: public quests. At the MTV Multiplayer site they have a great description of the PQ Bales used to show him what the genre has to offer. A hydra attack on a Dark Elf sea vessel tops off the event, a setpiece battle we also touched on in our WAR update from a few weeks back.




Another recent rundown on EA Mythic's in-development title is available from Gamespy; they offer players unfamiliar with MMOs their own intro to the genre, with a description of the newbie Dark Elf and Dwarven areas. Despite some reservations that the game's new player area doesn't highlight many of Warhammer's standout features, writer Miguel Lopez was impressed with the 'sense of place' the starter zones impart. Says Lopez: "[WAR] quest areas don't seem to be places that wandering monsters simply arbitrarily inhabit; at least in the two areas we checked out, there was a definite rhyme and reason for mob X to be patrolling site Y. The effort to build the environments like this go a long way toward negating one of the most common criticisms levied against MMOs: that they feel like static wax museums inhabited by staid 3D models."

Source : massively.com

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2008. máj. 9.

» Massively.com interviews Star Wars Galaxies producer Lorin Jameson

2008. máj. 9. 5:57 | írta: mmox | még nincsenek kommentek

In the wake of the Chapter 9 publish for Star Wars Galaxies, we had the chance to pass a few questions to the game's producer. Lorin "Deadmeat" Jameson has been with the project for some time, weathering the storms as they've come and gone. Today we have his responses, looking back at the impetus for the new Chapter and Update system of patches and ahead to future plans.



Read on below the cut for Mr. Jameson's take on the success of the Exar Kun instance, hints at a new expertise subsystem on level with the Beast Master, and hope for a better future in the Galaxy Far, Far Away. "We have fixed a number of long-standing issues and have added some dynamite new systems and a slew of new content. It is our intention to continue this trend and I expect to be saying the same thing about 2008 in mid-2009. We know we have a lot of work to do to meet our players' expectations for Star Wars Galaxies, but it is a fun challenge to have and we are lucky to have such a committed and loyal fan base."






Massively.com Interview with Lorin Jameson

How do you feel the player response has been to the Exar Kun instance?



Lorin Jameson: The reaction has been great so far. There is no doubt that this is the most challenging heroic encounter we have released to-date and it sets a very high visual bar. Players won't simply be able to go in and just blast away. Rather, you will really need to think about the encounter and come up with tactical strategies to win.



Now that you've had the chance to offer your first content update, after moving to the "Game Update" vs. "Chapter" system, do you feel like the concept has 'delivered'? Were you able to get what you wanted out of the Chapter despite working on the game updates as well?



LJ: The chapter and Game Updates alternating strategy has actually been going well for us. It is definitely a trickier process to manage from a production standpoint, but the ability to keep new and exciting game-play content and improvements coming at a constant rate definitely outweighs the challenges. In some respects I believe we have upped the quality and quantity of game-play enhancements overall with this new approach and we plan on keeping this system for a while.



The Storyteller system is almost unique in MMOs, and you've made great strides supporting it. Where did the idea for the blueprints come from? Can we expect more feature additions to the Storyteller system like this in the future?

LJ: A player had posted a 'battle arena' that he had constructed from storyteller parts which was just amazing. There were so many pieces used in interesting ways that it boggled my mind. When I spoke with the designers about the possibility of adding something like the arena to the game as a pre-made item, they said, "Why not just give the players a system to save what they have already made?" It always works best to give the players tools and let them [the players] be much more creative over time rather than limiting them to one item or option. We hope to add more elements to the Storyteller system with each new Chapter.



With the addition of the Exar Kun and Star Destroyer encounters, what lessons do you think the designers have taken away? Without giving anything away, is there anything we can expect to see in future instances?



LJ: With each new heroic encounter, we have increased the level of sophistication. With Exar Kun we added a lot of dynamic behavior and divergent gameplay based on strategy. There are a couple of interesting puzzles in that heroic encounter that really force the player to think about what they are doing and understand what they are seeing when an NPC's behavior changes. In the future, we are hoping to add some even bigger encounters that have multiple 'viewpoints.'



You've indicated a connection between the collections and other new content, and how that is enhanced by the tools you're using. Can you broadly talk about what tools improvements you've made that allow this?



LJ: The collection system itself is relatively straightforward and data driven, which makes adding new collections fairly easy compared to systems of the past. Having the collection system in place allows us to use different methods in addition to questing to allow players to earn rewards and get interesting loot in the game. Players are also recognized server-wide for completing many of these new collections first.



The game was not originally designed for themepark-like content, so adding new quests, etc. has always been a challenge. We still custom script most content in the game.

The idea of server merges has been on the table but not in the plans for some time. In response to player discussion of the population issue, the next Chapter Update will have a number of advanced search functions. Can you give us a few more details about what that will entail? Do you see this as a stopgap measure? Are there a set of criteria in the works that will give you a firm idea of when server merges are a must?



LJ: We are very sensitive to the population issues that exist on a few of the servers. It is our hope that this new community search interface will help players who are actively out looking to find groups as well as helping to facilitate players finding others that share similar interests in-game. The new search mechanism works server-wide and will allow players to more precisely pinpoint what they are looking for with respect to player groups and shared interests in-game.



Our goal is to help players on the lower population servers by actively identifying the issues and challenges they face and presenting ways to remove obstacles to increased game-play satisfaction. We are looking at a number of ways to help mitigate these population issues. With a game like SWG, which has player housing and cities along with server unique resources, it is difficult to use a standard merge approach without causing a lot of controversy and inconvenience. Quite honestly I want to avoid that by adding positive, experience-enhancing systems to the game that address the challenges by offering positive solutions in a way that adds something for everyone.



The collection system continues to see development and additions through this Chapter release. Can we expect to see new collections in every Chapter? Do you have any sense of what 'types' of collections we might see in the future?



LJ: I think it is safe to say that there will probably be new collections included with each Chapter, although perhaps not as many as we have added lately. I am truly amazed at the variety of unique types of collections our team has designed and implemented in the recent chapters. It is our hope that we can continue to come up with innovative and fun new collections as we move forward in the upcoming chapters.



We found the Rattletrap ITV collection really interesting, in that the item itself is a major break with Star Wars Galaxies' original thinking. The collection was very simple, essentially making this item available to every character. What philosophy or development goal did you have in mind with this collection? Do you see other 'quality of life' improvements being released to the players this way in the future?

LJ: In the past, instant travel vehicles have only been available as a premium with the purchase of one of our retail products, and it has been a touchy subject that such a useful item was only available as a value-added bonus with the purchase of a compilation pack or digital download bundle. We wanted to eliminate the perceived inequity but at the same time we did not want to undermine the value of the premium items. We set the instant travel vehicle up as a collection reward because we get feedback from our players that they get more enjoyment and value and have more fun from earning items as a reward than to just have it handed to them.



Recently there was a reference by a player on the boards to the concept of a "Droid Commander", with the official response from your team being that it's on the table for later this year. Would this be something similar to the Beast training system, only with droids? Can you elaborate on what it might include and when we might see it?



LJ: We have wanted to revisit the droid system and add Droid Commander to the game since last year. While not exactly like Beast Master, since building droids would still be the responsibility of droid engineers, it would share some aspects. Like Beast Master it will involve choices. To be a powerful Droid Commander you will have to sacrifice expertise in your profession. But also as with Beast Master, a high-level Droid Commander will have a lot of powerful options.



Moving into the middle of the year now, how do you feel SWG is compared to April of 2007? What do you hope you can say about the game in April of 2009?



LJ: I think the game has shown tremendous improvement in the past year as we have added new enhancements, collections, heroic adventures and upgrades. We have fixed a number of long-standing issues and have added some dynamite new systems and a slew of new content. It is our intention to continue this trend and I expect to be saying the same thing about 2008 in mid-2009. We know we have a lot of work to do to meet our players' expectations for Star Wars Galaxies, but it is a fun challenge to have and we are lucky to have such a committed and loyal fan base.



Many thanks for your time, sir.

Source : massively.com

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2008. máj. 8.

» Solofication of Massive Multiplayer RPGs

2008. máj. 8. 2:24 | írta: mmox | még nincsenek kommentek

Once upon a time there was a MMORPG called Everquest, and it forced players to group to progress. For most classes you could only solo the newbie zones, and starting from about level 10 or so you would discover that the lowest level mob that still gave experience points to you was already too hard for you to kill alone.
But a few classes could use special tactics to solo anyway, druid were kiting mobs after them, and necromancers were fear kiting mobs away from them. (I played a quad kiting druid.) And it turned out that soloing was popular: far more people played druids or necromancers than playing any other class.

So every new generation of free MMORPGs made soloing easier and easier, because that was what the customer wanted, until we arrived at World of Warcraft, where every single class is basically expected to solo all the way up to the level cap. There are differences in the speed at which the different classes and talent trees can solo, but even least soloable class can kill mobs and do quests of his own level. And soloing is still popular, with classes that solo faster being played more than classes that solo slower.

And as soloing was what the customer wanted, some unknown developer at Blizzard came up with a brilliant idea: What if PvP could be made soloable too? That sounded crazy, because by definition you need at least 2 players for PvP, and if you wanted more than just duels you needed large groups on both sides of a battle. But that unknown dev realized that it wasn't necessary to have players actually form pre-arranged groups to do PvP. It wasn't absolutely necessary for players to cooperate in PvP. Sure, a group that cooperated would beat a group that didn't, but you could very well create a balanced battle between two groups as long as both of them were equally unorganized. And thus battlegrounds were born, and once Blizzard tweaked the PvP reward system they were extremely popular. And the majority of people basically solo battlegrounds, that is queue up for them alone, and then do whatever they want once inside. I call that pseudo-solo. This goes so far that people actually complain if they end up against an organized group.

I don't know if that unknown developer switched from Blizzard to EA Mythic, or whether EA Mythic had their own developer realizing that this solofication strategy could be applied to PvE raid content as well. Because what they did was they invented the "public quest". Which works basically like a battleground, just for PvE instead of PvP. People just join, without arranging groups, everyone does what he thinks is best, while a few frustrated players try to shout orders and are generally ignored. Pseudo-solo large group PvE content, where everyone gets rewarded, I'm sure people will love it. Soloing is what the customers want.

But a free MMORPG has a large and diverse base of customers, and not all of them prefer solo play. As early as Everquest some people noticed that a group is stronger than the sums of its parts. The larger the group, and the better it is coordinated, the greater the challenges it can overcome. Moving from open world to instanced content, developers were able to limit how many players could attack a specific challenge. But they couldn't prevent players from organizing themselves better and better, training each encounter for hours and hours, until even a large raid group moved with a coordination that would make the bolshoi ballet green from envy. And thus an arms race evolved, on the other side of the MMORPG from the solo content, a race in which developers would design harder and harder challenges, and raiders would again and again prove that these challenges could be beaten with perfect coordination. To understand that arms race, Blizzard hired one of Everquest's top raiders as lead designer, and consequently spent a lot of development effort on designing ultra-hard raid content.
There were clearly *some* customers that wanted this, and not solo content. And while the number of top raiders wasn't large, they were deemed to be influence leaders, the kind of people that other players looked up to, and also the kind of players who were most likely to post a lot of comments on game forums or other places of the internet. And it worked! While the number of players actually experiencing the highest level of raid content is still tiny, the desire to be a raider is certainly far more wide-spread.

The problem is that these two parts of the game are drifting further and further apart in World of Warcraft and the MMORPG genre in general. Soloing becomes easier and easier, the need to group during leveling up has been nearly completely removed, elite mobs turned into soloable non-elites, and the rewards for pseudo-solo PvP have been much increased. It is now possible to go from level 1 to level 70 and full epic gear in World of Warcraft without ever joining a group once. And the classes who are best at soloing fast or best at PvP are the most popular and most played. Meanwhile raiding remains hard, because that is the very reason of being for it, and even harder raid content as added to the end with every content patch. But to overcome these challenges, people need to learn how to play rpg games in a coordinated way. And the mix of classes, talents, and gear required for raiding is very different from what is most popular and easy to achieve in the soloing part of the game. Slowly but surely the two modes of gameplay drift so far apart that cracks begin to appear, threatening the whole model. From a raider's point of view the leveling game now fails to fulfil it's function of getting people ready to raid. Sure, they might be level 70 and have epic gear, but they might still be totally useless for a raid: they have not even the most basic training of how to play their class in a group, and they are of the wrong class, wrong spec, and wearing gear with the wrong bonuses to succeed in raids. If the 40 people in an average Alterac Valley group decided to kick out the 15 least suitable among them and take the remaining 25 to any one of the 25-man raid dungeons, they would not be able to get past the trash mobs. The average player who soloed up to 70, invested some effort in PvP to get epic gear, and now wants to raid, will find himself rejected and laughed at by the top raiding guilds on his server. He'll complain about them being elitist, but in fact it is game design that created the gap between average player and raider. The solofication of MMORPGs creates a large number of characters who simply aren't viable for the top end raid game.

What needs to be done is to rethink the concept of solofication. Why is soloing popular? A part of it is due to Real Life ® contraints, if you solo you can play in smaller bits and bites, group play needs longer periods. But another part of it is just a Skinner box: people like soloing because the game teaches them that soloing is the easiest way to advance. So even if they would have the time for a group, they rather keep on playing solo, because setting up a group is so not worth it. Assembling the group is made complicated by a bad LFG system in WoW. Doing quests that aren't marked a group quests in a group is often bringing less experience points per hour than soloing them. And WoW's concept of teaching players how to group is equivalent of throwing them into deep water to teach him how to swim: some people learn it that way, but many get hurt and frustrated in the process.

Solofication not only opens up a gap to end game raid content, it also moves MMORPGs in a direction where they become vulnerable to competition from single-player games. When I recently asked whether people would play a single-player version of WoW without monthly fees, I was surprised of how many people would prefer such a game over an online MMORPG with monthly fees.
If game design minimizes your interaction with other players, then why pay $15 a month for that interaction?

I think that it is time for the pendulum to swing back towards MMORPGs being more about groups again. Not enforced grouping, nobody wants that. But to a situation where even during the leveling process forming a group would actually be easy and the incentives would encourage it. Where people would learn to cooperate, because it would be to their advantage, and where due to that cooperation they would make more friends and develop stronger social bonds. Where players would arrive at the end game and already know how to play well in a group. Where playing a "support class" like tank or healer was a reasonable choice, and not a niche way for raiders to gimp themselves for the rest of the game. Where MMORPGs would be massively multiplayer again, and not massively singleplayer in parallel, as they are now. Here's hoping.


Source : tobolds.blogspot.com

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2008. máj. 6.

» Exclusive video of updated Vanguard GU5 spell effects

2008. máj. 6. 20:26 | írta: mmox | még nincsenek kommentek

Adding a few dozen new mounts to the game and improving the performance would be enough to fill up any ordinary patch, but the Vanguard: Saga of Heroes devs decided to buckle down and improve the spell and combat ability graphics. With a good group casting and using special moves, all with their own flashy graphics, it could get a little hard to see what was going on. Game Update 5 brings new spell animations for druids, sorcerers, disciples and others, which are both faster and better-looking than the old ones.





Click on through to watch the video, and get your fill of the new spell graphics. Then, stop by later today for an interview with Vanguard game designer Lenny Gullo. He'll talk about quests, mounts, hitching, factions, and ten easy recipes for cooking battle lobster.

Source : massively.com

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2008. máj. 5.

» Guide to Woodworking in Lord of The Rings Online

2008. máj. 5. 22:27 | írta: mmox | még nincsenek kommentek

Woodworking in Lord of The Rings Online (LOTRO) is a profession with a few special areas of emphasis. It has ranged weapons, which is sometimes useful, and it has instruments, in addition to some melee weapons. Instruments are probably the most important part of the woodworking profession.



Why not ranged weapons? Because often better ranged weapons are available to hunters from their class quests. At level 30, hunters gain a bow that is (counting it’s damage type) better than tier 4 bows because it does Westernesse damage.


Melee weapons are a valid part of woodworking, and some of the weapons you can acquire are interesting, especially spears (since they tend to do damage over time) but they are not particularly good compared to weaponsmith weapons. Metal weapons tend to be “flashier”, and are sometimes slightly better. Woodworking weapons do have staves, one of the major weapons of the loremaster, but again, loremasters can get better long term weapons in the quests of the Great Barrows (in Bree-land) and then in the loremaster quest.



Instruments, however, are always good for minstrels. They reduce costs for minstrels, it is always important for minstrels to worry about power availability, and this is the only way for a minstrel to control costs or gain similar benefits.

Woodworking Basics

Woodworking is done fairly easily. First and foremost, you need treated wood. For almost all the woodworker recipes, in general, you are going to need weaponsmith components or ingots from the prospector profession. While wood is not as expensive as the same tier ore and ingot in LOTRO, it isn’t cheap, and you will not be able to purchase your wood if you wish to be able to break even or make a profit with woodworking.



Stand near a workbench, simply make sure to have all the items listed in your recipe in your inventory (they will be highlighted if you do, grayed out if you don't), and have a woodworking saw near you. Then just click make and you will make one of your items. There are quite a few recipes you will need to find,



Collecting RowanKeeping yourself stocked with wood is not always easy. The wisest choice to make sure you have enough wood is to have a character with the explorer vocation, who then stockpiles treated wood, ingots, and earns money for components by using sold ore. Once prepared for woodworking, make a second character who is your woodworker. That takes a lot of effort to do, but often is worth it. Even more value is added if you also have other characters who use the ore for their professions, such as jewelers or metalsmiths. To keep you stocked, you also can make a woodsman vocation character, create boiled leather from skins (and sell those) and then prepare your own wood, buying components with your skin profits. Leather and skins are always needed, and the money can pay for those pesky components.



Once you have prepared your treated wood from a forester professional, you need to decide what you wish to make. Almost always, you are going to find you don’t need all the things you make. Which means selling your products.

Selling Your Products

An approach to improving your woodworking ability is the “long way” (which earns you money) by making items people need. A level 10 quest includes prepared rowan bowstaves (auction them in groups of 3). These take a while, but will get you some money as people buy these for the auction house. You also can make some money off basic bows for hunters, but usually this isn’t overly profitable.

For tiers 2 and 3, you will want to make instruments, and you won’t want to make a special effort to make critical items, these items do not provide enough of a difference to be worth it unless it is for your own use. For tier 3, consider making crossbows, some classes gain access to ranged weapons (though not a primary ability) and a lot of guardians and similar will want shiny new crossbows to use. Crossbows often do better than regular bows, because these are “shoot once and then enter melee” type attacks, meant for pulling opponents rather than drawn out damage (such as with hunters).



The short way to raise your woodworking ability is to simply pick the lowest component item and make a lot of them, selling them when you can, but basically just doing the best you can on simplicity. In the higher tiers, ranged weapons and instruments are the way to go to keep your woodworking profitable.

Woodworking Rules

Items you can makeOne rule of thumb for woodworking: never throw away wood, the only time you should walk past a node of wood is if you are in a party and in a rush, or if it would be rude to take it. Never throw away crit items. The crit items for woodworkers are particularly rare, and you should always bank those items when they are available. For woodworking, you need 3 treated rowan, on average, to make a tier 1 item. You need 10 treated black ash to make a tier 5 item, so make sure to collect your wood!

Woodworking Overall

Overall, woodworking is a simply somewhat easy profession, but this goes hand in hand with less profitable sales, and perhaps a less broad area of products than in other professions. You definitely can make a profit using woodworking. It is a good profession for a hunter or minstrel (because of the instruments, spears and bows). You will want to consider having a way to gain treated wood before making a woodworker.. either by having access to forester through being a woodsman, or by having an alt explorer.



Source : tentonhammer.com - Darkgolem

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2008. máj. 4.

» The Digital Continuum: Single-player MMO

2008. máj. 4. 1:26 | írta: mmox | még nincsenek kommentek

Injecting the single-player special sauce into MMOs is hardly a new idea. In fact Phantasy Star Online has done it more than once in the past. It's also been done in small amount, though. Nobody has taken the chance to go all out and merge the single-player and massively multiplayer styles of gaming together like a tasty digital version of peanut butter and chocolate.



My recent excursion into the Age of Conan closed beta has made me realize that I really enjoy having some singleplayer flavor in my massively multiplayer online games. There is definitely something to be said for a game that can give you the best of both worlds: solo story and grouping experiences.






Let me put it in another way. When recounting my exploits in the recently released GTA IV, I can have different types of amazing experiences from the offline mode versus the online multiplayer mode. I think that MMOs can harness this as well.



The recent purchase of Diablo3.com by Blizzard was perfect in its timing, as it got me thinking about what that game could be like. I really think that if Blizzard was going to make Diablo 3 at this point, it wouldn't be anything like the last two games. Diablo is dead, Baal is dead -- so what else can be done at this point?

A new world with new characters could be one thing. Maybe even a new storyline involving Diablo himself would be worth exploring. The big difference could be in the way the game is designed: as a single-player MMO.



It's simply, really. If you've ever played the first two Diablo games then you remember how much fun the single-player experience was. Just keep the singleplayer side of the game while throwing out the multiplayer aspect for more of an MMO experience. Blizzard could use an upgraded version of their Battle.net service to have players login to the play the single-player game (as to avoid cheating and such) and then if players wanted to they could jump into the MMO version of the game at one point or another. Of course, in Age of Conan you have to wait until you're level 20 to get into the full-blown MMO aspects of the game. I suppose a similar restriction would have to be put into place for Diablo 3.



All it really comes down to letting people choose the kind of experience they want from an RPG. Nobody has really done a full-on single-player RPG that dovetails into a complete persistent online RPG. There are all sorts of chances to blend together different gameplay experiences with a single-player MMO. You can have the traditional solo experience, play with a friend co-op style or even play the entire game like a big story-focused instance with five or more friends. Just imagine the kind of water cooler-style discussions you'd be able to have with friends about all your shared exploits. There are some very cool possibilities here.



Allowing people to play in the way they want with the people they want is what's most important about this idea, that's the single-player MMO at its core.



Source : Massively.com

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2008. máj. 3.

» Neverwinter Nights 2: Mysteries of Westgate Lore #9

2008. máj. 3. 6:40 | írta: mmox | még nincsenek kommentek

You underestimate us, just as the Night Masks did before we uprooted them from the Harbor Loop. We may not be as strong as they, but we are many - and we have powerful allies that they do not know of. Yes, yes, very powerful and very well-placed allies.



- Altama, Ebon Claw Guild Member




With only the briefest moments of exception, the Night Masks have dominated the underworld of Westgate for the past twenty years. Recently, however, a new group has arisen: The Ebon Claws, and while such rivals are usually quickly and brutally dispatched by the followers of the Faceless, the Claws, unusually tenacious, have not only survived the Night Masks' assault, but have thrived and prospered. So confident are they now in their position that they have begun to openly war with the Night Masks, many times as the aggressors. Shockingly enough, it is often the bodies of known Night Mask operatives found in the morning streets, their domino masks mockingly stuffed in their own mouths and four dark, gangrenous, filthy lines - the eponymous "ebon claw" of the new guild - dug like trenches into their pale cheeks.

The origins and hierarchy of the Ebon Claws are obscure; they are still too new for much solid information to yet be widely known, but it is obvious that even the Night Masks are unsure. Their agents, normally discreet in their pursuit of information, have become ever more insistent in their interrogations, and large amounts of reward money are offered to any with solid information. The rumors circulating the local beer halls are mostly fantastic, for it is argued that only a fantastic origin could have taken the Masks - masters of stealth, spying, and intrigue - so completely by surprise.



There is, however, one persistent rumor circulating regarding the Ebon Claws. There have been enough sightings of their deformed agents to suggest that it is a guild heavily - if not completely - plagued by the disease of lycanthropy, though the specific variety of the infection is not that of the more legendary werewolf, but is instead that of the more common - in cities, at least - wererat. If true, it would explain their success against the Night Masks. Extremely agile and aided by preternatural strength, a squadron of wererats would make tenacious foes dangerous even for the hardened rogues and thugs employed by the Masks. However, such stories, as yet, are still just rumors, though one concrete fact lends credence to them. Recently, the Night Masks have begun spending an enormous amount of coin with the local merchants on the acquisition of silvered swords, daggers, and rapiers, weapons known to have an uncanny ability to harm lycanthropes of all kinds. It is therefore obvious that the Night Masks, at least, believe the stories to be true.



The honorable citizens of Westgate have learned to duck and seek cover when the two groups begin warring in the streets, and the prevailing wisdom seems to be that when two evil groups are in the process of killing each other, get out of the way and let them. Still, those with a keen sense of perception would probably discern that the average citizens, tired of the abuses of the Night Masks, are quietly rooting for the Ebon Claws. After all, they might argue, the Claws can't be any worse than the Masks, but it is a short-sighted view, for once the Masks are dispatched, only the truly naïve would expect the Claws to just fade into the sunset. To the contrary, they would almost certainly set up shop in the resulting power vacuum, and any group cunning and brutal enough to dispatch the Night Masks would make a truly horrifying successor indeed.



Source : WarCry

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2008. máj. 2.

» Final Fantasy XI 2008 Edition hits stores May 28th

2008. máj. 2. 19:35 | írta: mmox | még nincsenek kommentek

Square Enix has announced that they plan on releasing the 2008 edition of Final Fantasy XI at the end of this month on May 28th. The box will come with the original game plus every expansion released to date. That means players will get Final Fantasy XI, Rise of the Zilart, Chains of Promathia, Treasures of Aht Urghan, and Wings of the Goddess all in one purchase.






This is nothing new from Square Enix, as they've done this the past couple of years. We would just like to thank them for keeping all the expansions purchasable in a single box, as it makes things a lot easier on newer players trying to get into the game -- or even returning players who've lost their original boxes.



[Update] May 28th is actually the release date for the EU version of Final Fantasy XI 2008 Edition. The US version of this bundle was released on April 15th, 2008.

Source : massively.com

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2008. ápr. 29.

» 9 Free MMOs Worth Playing

2008. ápr. 29. 2:05 | írta: mmox | még nincsenek kommentek

Today I got my latest issue of PCGamer where they played over 60 different free MMOs and selected 9 as worth playing. I figured you guys could get some good use out of this list so here it is.

Crime Craft

Sort of like GTA except with more crime and less driving around. It uses the Unreal Engine 3 and isn’t set to be released until Spring of 2009, so its about a year away but it’ll be free to play.


www.crimecraft.com

Mythos

No suprise to see Mythos making the list. We’ve covered Mythos before, but if your not familiar with it it’s a Diablo2 clone, but a MMORPG instead of a regular RPG.




www.mythos.com

Requiem: Bloodymare

An extremely gory and bloody horror MMORPG that lives up to its name. Originally created in South Korea the game has made its way to western audiences. Currently the game is in Beta, but will be released shortly.


www.playrequiem.com

Dungeon Runner

A comical MMORPG that is a lot of fun to play and is free as long as you allow them to run an ad banner while your playing. However for only $4.99/month you have the option to remove that.


www.dungeonrunners.com

Sword of the New World: Granado Espada

An MMORPG with an anime look that at one point had a monthly fee but is now free to play. Sword of the New World allows you to control up to 3 characters which separates it from all the other MMOs out there.


swordofthenewworld.com

Holic

Currently in open beta, Holic is a MMO with a very cutsie look. What seperates this game from others is that users are able to create there own dungeouns and quests once they get far enough into the game.

holic.netgame.com

Shaiya: Light and Darkness

We covered Shaiya before so its no suprise to us that PC Gamer selected it as one of the best free games out there. Shaiya concentrates on long term development of your character and heavy PvP action. If you ever played Lineage, this game is right up your alley.




shaiya.aeriagames.com

Fiesta

Another anime inspired MMORPG from Korea, however this one suffers from horribly translated dialog. Aside from the bad translations, Kiesta is a good looking game with solid game play.


fiesta.outspark.com

Cabal Online

A solid fantasy MMORPG that doesn’t really make any breakthroughs, but features good gameplay, story and PvP via duels. Considering its free to play, if your looking for a casual free fantasy MMO, this could be the one for you.


www.cabalonline.com

Source : www.mmocrunch.com


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2008. ápr. 28.

» The lifecycle of an EverQuest 2 hotfix

2008. ápr. 28. 12:11 | írta: mmox | még nincsenek kommentek

EverQuest 2 Associate Producer Jennifer Gerull posted an entry on the official EQ2 developer's blog the other day, discussing the process involved in pushing out a hotfix to the game. Though she equates herself to 'George Jetson with longer hours', endlessly pushing buttons all day, it's an interesting look into Sony Online Entertainment's revision process.


As Gerull describes it, code fixes are pushed to an internal server, where the QA department can take a look at them. If the build of the game compiles nicely, it's reviewed by Quality Assurance to ensure the changes are working as intended. If the build doesn't compile nicely, some poor developer gets saddled with "a really ugly doll named 'BoB' that gets to sit on their desk until the next coder gets the "Breaker of the Build" title."



While most of the time the team waits patiently for QA to do its work, important hotfixes result in rushed phone calls and nervous waiting. Inelegantly applied solutions can have the QA team sending one or two of the items on the hotfix list back to the coding team, which in turn requires Jennifer to start a new internal update. She notes that each internal update is labeled with a letter, starting with A and working down. "A few times I've gotten all the way to L, M and N builds, but that is usually the exception rather than the rule on the number of iterations in one day. By the time we get to N, its usually time to go home and try again the next day." Make sure to read on for the full view of this process, and hints of future developer updates to come.



Source : Massively.com

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2008. ápr. 26.

» Character planning in World of Warcraft

2008. ápr. 26. 5:30 | írta: mmox | még nincsenek kommentek

The building of a character in World of Warcraft can be just as painful as balancing a budget by hand without a spreadsheet. The number-crunching side of the game where you have to figure out hit ratings and mana regeneration rates and dodge percentages is something that few people can say they really enjoy. This is especially true when you are nearing the end-game in WoW and you can't just count on your fingers anymore. What if there was a tool that let you play "what if" games with your character (or your planned character) to see how different combinations of gear, talent points, gems, enchants, and even buffs would affect your character? Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, that day is here.


Chardev.org is not only a fantastic web application, it also has a gorgeous user interface that is simple to use. You can either build a character from scratch or import your existing character from the Armory. Once you've made it that far, it's as simple as pointing-and-clicking to swap out gear, switch gems, redistribute talent points and add or remove buff effects. The display of thirty-five essential statistics remains fixed on the left side of your screen during most phases of editing process. At the present time, it only supports gear from level thirty and up but that's no real drawback. There are way too many customization options on this site to describe every one. You really need to experience it for yourself.



The Chardev site is a dream-come-true for people who enjoy playing with numbers, but hate doing the math. Check it out!

By : Massively.com

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