free WAR?
Well, not all of it is free, but apparently now you can play the first tier (12 levels, I guess?) for free. I may have to add this to my list of 'games I finally get around to trying out'!
Labels: free to play, massive games, mmorpg, WAR
Well, not all of it is free, but apparently now you can play the first tier (12 levels, I guess?) for free. I may have to add this to my list of 'games I finally get around to trying out'!
Labels: free to play, massive games, mmorpg, WAR
So first, the post I was going to write - Kill Ten Rats recently had a post which made me laugh out loud, making the (real life) daily grind into an MMO daily grind. I won't give away the punch line, but it's really quite wonderful.
Labels: cox, massive games, milestones, mmorpg, WAR
Well, I took a little break from the crazy Lich King overload, though I read there are scads of world events taking place, which I approve of. It's too bad they're so technically difficult to do - I had expected WAR would have a more fluid feel to its world, but everything resets there, too. Anyway, some non-Lich news:
Labels: APB, expansions, Free Realms, Jumpgate, massive games, mmorpg, new games, WAR, WoW
So I tend to think of the way people deal with a new MMO release in the same way I think about culture shock - it runs in phases. Phase one happens before the game is released. Phase two would be your initial release run (or in the case of culture shock, the first two months of living in the new culture), and phase three is the hate phase. Those who survive the hate phase will mellow over time, the rest will quit/go home. We appear to be in phase three for Warhammer Online, as a number of bloggers have now decided it isn't fun anymore. To be fair, there's also the levelling question, although to my understanding this shouldn't be a concern in a PvP game. The theory there is that if you build stuff for levels 1-20, once people hit level 21 you either need to churn out more content, or they'll get bored.
Labels: FAIL, massive games, mmorpg, new games, WAR
I can't believe BlizzCon is here and gone! When they first started trying to sell it, I was huge into WoW. Now I can barely muster enthusiasm for [unnamed beta]. WAR seems to have stolen a little bit of thunder with their 750K announcement (and really, why else would you announce a weird number like that, other than trying to get WoW's thunder?) I'm a little surprised at the numbers, actually - I would have thought a huge number of people would have tried it out (or is 750K huge? Maybe WoW has screwed up my perspective).
Labels: massive games, mmorpg, WAR, WoW
I think the big stuff happening right now in MMO-land is the Austin Game Developer's conference. Raph has some sexy statistics up (I love numbers!) from one of the presentations.
Lots of exciting stuff in gaming, the biggest of course being the WAR Open Beta. I tried to get in a couple of times but so far, no luck - I don't know where my invite went - maybe my email ate it. At one point MMORPG.com had 300K beta keys, then 7K then 10K. If they aren't making stuff up that means 317K people at least are playing the beta. Not counting the pre-order people. That's a whole lot of people. You can check here to see if they've opened more keys.
Labels: beta test, massive games, mmorpg, new games, WAR
...and speaking of Tobold, he's managed to do something I didn't really think could be done: make me think I should try WAR. The description of how groups work in WAR that he gives sounds positively exciting. A whole pile of folks have noted that public quests are one of those head-smack type ideas where everyone goes 'that's so obvious - why didn't anyone do that before?!'
Labels: groups, massive games, mmorpg, new games, WAR
Oh lordy - the NDA for Warhammer has apparently been lifted (at least, so says Tobold). I expect it's going to be tough to find folks talking about anything else for a while.
Labels: massive games, mmorpg, new games, WAR
So it seems really real now that Warhammer will launch on September 18th. You all know what you can buy me as a present now, don't you?
Labels: massive games, mmorpg, new games, WAR
Wow! I turn my back for one second, and all kinds of news breaks! Flagship Studios goes under, and apparently citibank will have the rights to hellgate:london? And then WAR announces major cuts to the game at release.
Labels: business strategy, massive games, mmorpg, new games, WAR
Massively has a, erm, 'massive' overview of Warhammer Online, which links to the articles they've written on all major gameplay elements. In looking it over, I'm interested to see if it works - the PvP seems... complicated. But it may be that all the playtesting has led them to the conclusion that it needs to be. We'll see come release.
Labels: massive games, mmorpg, WAR
Massively is reporting that a new content release (Book 13) for LotRO will include fishing trophies for player houses. This is the kind of crazy, bizarre social stuff that I think all of the MMOs should be doing. If it's an RPG, how the heck can you RP without housing, dancing, whatever. WAR's comments that they wouldn't have dancing because of the grim nature of the game is bologna.
Labels: LotRO, massive games, mmorpg, role playing, social features, WAR
By way of tobold and the greenskin I found a terrific overview of the forthcoming Warhammer MMO. It has lots of flavor text mingled with incredibly detailed descriptions of the game, and reveals lots of fun things being planned that I hadn't heard about before. One that really caught my eye:
Your WAR character will not be staring blankly ahead, but will instead express its emotions with a range of facial animations. As a player you will be able to set your character's mood, and everyone else will be able to see it - meaning you can give your character a brooding, sad or happy temperament (among others), and the world will know it. As you do things, your character grimaces and looks excited and otherwise changes expression to react to the activity.
Labels: massive games, mmorpg, new games, WAR, web20
Taunting is one of those things that has always bothered me about massive games - it works against the computer, and not at all against other players, even though in theory it is a power your character has to attract attention. Aggro management in general is very different in PvP, which is fine except where an ability that should be able to affect it, doesn't.
Labels: gaming technology, massive games, mmorpg, new games, WAR
Random events: WAR has been delayed until at least April, for more polish (not 'more DoTs!'). Also today, the Weblogs Inc people launched a new massive gaming news site called... Massively. I guess they couldn't come up with a good name either. Oh well - it gets the point across.
Labels: gaming blogs, massive games, mmorpg, WAR
Keen and Graev have more info on the Warhammer beta shutdown. One of the people with the game made a long post. Me? I'm all for a shutdown - that's why it's called beta!
MMORPGdot linked to a Warhammer Herald note that the WAR beta will be closing for a while, to revamp the game. This is probably good news - do some major rehauling, and not have to worry about the beta people while you do it. At the same time, there is some concern in my mind about how messed up things must be to need to shut the system down altogether - it seems like, in a beta, you can jerk almost anything around. It could be a community management thing - you could build up a lot of ill will during an overhaul if you keep screwing with core elements. In the note, they say they close the beta periodically, and perhaps this really is just SOP.