CCP Cancels WoD MMO

Sadface.  Via Gamespot:

The studio says it was "falling regretfully short" in its goals of creating an vampire-themed MMO. Following the cancellation, 56 employees at the Atlanta, Georgia studio have been laid off. Some of the team are said to have been offered other roles within the company, with the remaining staff at the studio now working on games set in the EVE universe.

WoW 6.0 Patch Notes

WoW Alpha 6.0 Patch Notes are up.  Here they are on MMOC.

Meet the Hunter

Wildstar Beta Trailer

Warhammer Online: Five Things It Did Amazingly

EA's closure announcement for Warhammer Online comes at no surprise to me.  It was strong at the beginning, largely due to the strength of the IP, the hope of a PVP-driven MMO, and glorious promises of besieging cities that went unfulfilled until well after release due to bugs, lag, an unforgiving endgame, and graphics requirements.  Its initial strength was enough for Blizzard to re-imagine multiple zones at the end of Wrath of the Lich King's development into something simulating the major promise of the game -- PvE development in PvP lakes, and siege mechanics.  Despite Blizzard's best effort being largely ham-handed and leaving Wintergrasp as a poor knock-off of the RvR zone mechanics, its frustrations led the player base to bleed subscriptions until its death was largely inevitable.  There were many innovations, however, that Mythic did bring to the table in a manner that Blizzard simply would not or could not cannibalize.

EQ Next: The Holy Grails

Sony didn't just drop a trailer for this.  SOE posted a series of videos explaining precisely what made EQ next unique.  Here's a summary:

• Unlock classes that you can free-swap abilities/features from.
• Weapons add/change abilities.
• A fully destructible game world that's been fleshed out as deep as the core of the world.
• AI that creates public quest-type scenarios on the fly, with monsters that don't respawn, but instead seek out a specific type of environment.
• Large-scale "Rallying Calls" that work like a PQ on a larger scale, vary by server, and lead to a constantly evolving game world.

Follow the clickthrough for the videos.

A (MMO) Tree Falls In the Forest

This weekend, Bethesda rolled out 30 minutes of footage at Bethcon Quakecon. This was intended to be a massive reveal, with some of the first live video of The Elder Scrolls Online.  Here it is:

Watch live video from Bethesda on TwitchTV
Bethsoft was very proud of its MMO rendition of the Elder Scrolls series, which ultimately appears to match the visuals of Oblivion on a Low-Res machine (or a high-res mod pack for Morrowind), traditional ES gameplay, and multiple players.  Unfortunately, they were completely blown out of the water by an announcement out of left field by Sony Online Entertainment.

WoW, Now With More Microtransactions

Courtesy of MMO-Champion: Blizzard has microtransactions coming to WoW.

Solution for Secret World Situation Room ARG

Given the amount of hits I'm still getting for my comments on the Secret World End of Days Situation Room ARG, I figured I'd throw up solutions for those who might be looking for them.

Threat in Tabletop RPGs

I was a bit intrigued when I saw a post on Penny Arcade about the Edge of the Empire beta of Fantasy Flight's new Star Wars title.  Of particular note was the dice mechanic.  It appears that the game is played with the standard polyhedral dice well-known to D&D players, but with a twist -- they are custom dice, in the same way Dragon Dice were.  They're measuring success using a threat mechanic, which is an interesting twist.  I'm not certain I'm particularly sold on custom dice, and I haven't tried the beta, but threat is a mechanic I've been considering implementing in my own games.

Secret World End of Days Situation Room ARG

Funcom is at it again, running a Secret World ARG that follows the standard Secret World mission structure. For existing players, it's easy to dive right in, but this ARG is open to all players -- and given Secret World's new No Subscription Fee model, new players are very well welcome to fight against the coming end of the world.

It's Official

After not being surprised at all, it's been announced:

The Old Republic will be free to play next week.

The Secret World Has Petered Out

Guild Wars 2 launched at the ideal time.  The most recent MMO release was The Secret World, and Pandaria was a bit off.  The population of Secret World has steadily declined, and developers have commented that they are prepared for a Free-to-Play transition:

"...we definitely have the tools to turn The Secret World into a free-to-play game -- or even hybrid -- should we decide to do that somewhere down the line."

I love the depth in the Secret World, but I've been playing Guild Wars. What elements other than Guild Wars contributed to TSW's decline, and how can they right the ship?

My Thoughts on Mists of Pandaria

After watching a quick recap video about Mists of Pandaria, here are my impressions of the real new features of Mists of Pandaria -- not what they're advertising.

How to Spot a Botter

Over the past two weeks, I've noticed specific repetitive patterns of peculiar players in Guild Wars that aren't particularly involved in the game world.  Because GW2 bots are not particularly advanced at this point, they're rather easy to notice.  Here's how.

MMO 2.0: Part 2

After my analysis of what defines a generation of MMO, the question still remains: are we on the cusp of a new generation? Have the first titles of a new generation been released, or have they yet to be conceptualized?

MMO 2.0

In passing conversation, a friend recently remarked that he felt we were on the cusp of a new generation of MMO, referring to this as the beginning of MMO 2.0, beginning with Secret World and following through with Guild Wars 2. I was a bit surprised, and then I thought about it -- was he right? To define this further, we need to look at the history of the MMO.

Labor Day

It's Labor Day, and I'm stuck at work.  Here are a few things you can look forward to in the near future.  Enjoy a few games on your day off.

 
In the meantime, say goodbye to City of Heroes/Villains. Paragon studios is closing.  CoX continues to provide the best character variety and creation in the MMO biz.  I'm sad to see it shuttering.

World vs World in Guild Wars 2

For years, I'd been hoping for a good world-based PvP game. Mythic promised it with Warhammer Online's Realm vs Realm (RvR), but their open-world PvP devolved into objective-swapping, an inability to play due to poor computing resource management, and an inability to play due to stacking spammable AoE and creature control.  Now, NCSOFT hits back with Guild Wars 2 in what amounts to the most polished structured open-world PvP in an MMO.

The Obsolete Endgame

The approach of a new expansion is a problematic one.  Not only do game developers have to prepare content for the hardcore players of their particular game, but they have to consider the casual person, who may not have been engaging in raids, end game dungeons, or even have completed all of the quests leading to the new expansion.  Even more problematic, there are players that have not even reached zones from the last expansion, or players returning to the fold from years before.  As Blizzard gears up to Pandaria, I look back at the Cataclysm and Lich King launches for these players.