Episode 345 - May 22nd, 2013
Sid Meier's Ace Patrol, Metro Last Light, Slamjet Stadium, Star Command, Finding The Authenticity in Games, Your Emails and More!
All game servers will be down for maintenance on Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013, at 5am PDT / 7am CDT / 8am EDT / 12pm UTC/GMT. Estimated downtime is approximately 4 hours. With this maintenance: The Dragon Rising...
Sony made the first move in the next-gen battle in February, and now, mere weeks before E3 2013, Microsoft has revealed its next console, the Xbox One.
Ludwig and Alexander are in Redmond covering the full goings-on at the Xbox One announcement event, but the home crew of Xav, Dave, and Jess are here to recap all the currently known details. There are still plenty of questions surrounding the system, especially when it comes to software, but Microsoft did spill plenty of details regarding the hardware.
Recent thought-provoking posts have got me pondering whether MMO's got to the mixed place where they are today because the people making them were not sufficiently careful in what they wished for. Specifically:
Rohan wrote a thought-provoking post over the weekend suggesting that communities are too focused on business models. As exhibit A, he noted that even the notorious WoW forums largely stick to complaints about the actual game, while non-subscription titles like SWTOR have forums full of threads complaining about the business model.
Psychochild is continuing his discussions about how MMO's are losing their stickiness, why players may be to blame, and how the resulting impact on revenue may also be rendering the genre financially unsustainable. (Scott Hartsman is also making this case 140 characters at a time on Twitter - someone buy the man a blog? :))
The example that has me thinking is the controversially high number of daily quests in the current WoW expansion. Many people defended these "optional" daily activities at the expansion's launch, but even the developers are acknowledging in hindsight that the model they created may have contributed to burnout. How did this "mistake", if it is one, happen?
A sidenote to Rohan's business model thread is that WoW's business model has changed relatively little since its launch over eight years ago, or indeed even since the older MMO's from the decade prior. The game makes money when people stay subscribed, people cancel their subscriptions when they run out of stuff to do, so clearly the answer to the question is to provide an unending supply of stuff to do. The reasoning is sound but apparently misdirected.
As Psychochild notes, the virtual world style MMO's of last decade were a different beast. These products emphasized long-term goals over short-term fun and community over convenience. On paper, the daily grind brings people into the game every day and thereby increases their interaction with the community. In practice, the sheer repetition of the daily grind de-emphasizes community - people burn out and are forced to lean more heavily on strangers to fill out their required daily groups - and instead emphasizes repetitive gameplay that will always struggle to compete with a crowded marketplace including increasingly deep and online-enabled single-player games.
In short, Blizzard may have gotten exactly what they asked for - people who ground dailies, scenarios, dungeons, LFR, pet battles, etc until they couldn't take anymore. Worse, because the only financial feedback in their model is to quit the game outright, the only feedback they got was when they started losing subscribers by the millions. Under a non-subscription model they might have gotten the message that people were getting tired of dailies before people were irreparably burned out - or at least made more money off of the players in question before they left.
Funny how our spending habits may mirror our response to in-game incentives - it's much easier to get what you ask for than what you actually want.
Diablo III is a year old, and Blizzard's celebratory anniversary gesture is one of those mile-long infographic things featuring selected statistics designed to make you ooh and ahh.
Said statistics include 67.1 million characters created world-wide, 3.3 trillion monsters killed world-wide, and 22.4 million characters that have killed Diablo. Interestingly, Blizzard left off the number of hours lost to launch server login issues, nor is there any mention of D3's much-maligned real-money auction house. You can see the full graphic after the break.
Whoops, the new launcher than came out today had… issues. Which I think makes it an official EVE Online feature! It even got Winterblink to make a Warp Drive Active comic about it. CCP took their old launcher, which just used to show some news and ads, along with checking to see if you game […]
MechWarrior Online's newest map, the Canyon Network, is riddled with slot canyons, steep drops, and high plateaus. As part of MWO's latest update, the Canyon Network is meant to provide a playground for snipers and strategic thinkers.
The Blackjack has been named as the new Mech of the Month, with the Jenner donning the mantle of Champion Mech. As part of the content update, new cobra camo patterns and faction cockpit medallions have been added to the store.
Skip below the cut to check out videos of the new Canyon Network and the Blackjack in action.
Character select and creation music has always fascinated me. OK, maybe not fascinated; it's interested me. I've always viewed such themes as the overture of the game, the interlude between the title theme and the game proper to come.
These themes don't tend to be rip-roaring in their presentation because that's not their purpose. They have to be pleasant enough without being annoying when looped endlessly. After all, sometimes players spend a loooong time making their characters or sitting there at the select screen, and the last thing you want is for their ears to become fatigued by the experience.
So here are six MMO character select and character creation themes that I've enjoyed over the years. And if you saw the title graphic up there and immediately started hearing this song in your head, then you and I probably grew up in the same era.
I don't have many fond memories from Runes of Magic. I didn't play it long, and the thing I recall most vividly is being forced to hunt around Runewaker's cash shop for an item that would let me talk in global chat.
Fortunately, negative vibes like that didn't affect my recent hands-on with Dragon's Prophet's beta, which, in case you're wondering, is Runewaker's followup to Runes of Magic. Unfortunately, I don't think the new game in its present state is quite ready for prime time.
The game was announced just a few weeks ago after numerous leaks, and was shown to the public for the first time today at the Xbox unveiling event. Infinity Ward wanted to stress the improvements the new engine allowed them to make from detailing in animation to customization in multiplayer.
An interview with Cory Jones from Cryptozoic, about their hot new TCG MMO, "HEX". Cory comes from Blizzard, and talks a lot about the ins and outs of making a good TCG game, and I think you guys will really enjoy this interview episode.
When a subscription MMO goes free-to-play, there's always a circus atmosphere surrounding it. The studios use it as an excuse to enjoy a "second launch," players pour out opinions on all sides, and new folks wander into the danger zone out of sheer curiosity.
It's not just about F2P on this week's Massively Speaking; we have game launches, layoffs, previews, and tons of reader mail to cover. Will we have the words to do it? Or will we just end the podcast humming informatively? Jef's on it today, so there definitely will be a song and dance number at some point!
Have a comment for the podcasters? Shoot an email to podcast@massively.com. We may just read your email on the air!
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In looking to trim down some of the menu bloat for EVE Online'sOdyssey expansion, CCP Games is resurrecting and redesigning the radial menu to be a "silver bullet" for this issue.
The updated radial menu will be connected to the underutilized left mouse button and is confined to eight segments that will change depending on what the user is clicking. The studio wrote up a blog post on the subject, promising that the redesign is intuitive and will result in faster access to relevant commands.
Initially, the radial menu upgrade will be for ship flight only, although CCP is willing to expand its domain if players find it useful. This feature is currently available on the test server.
My goodness, that lady's bikini is awfully close to body tone from this far away, isn't it?
If the sun and sandy beaches didn't give it away, I've spent most of the last week or so of Guild Wars 2 time in Southsun Cove. Karka Island! Sunny Orr! Whatever you call it, I hope we can all agree that Southsun Cove is a terrible place filled with awful monsters that nobody in their right mind, in-universe or otherwise, would ever want to visit without the lure of titles and shiny -- literally, one of them glows, and the other glistens -- backpieces.
Tonight Zelmira, my Herald of Xotli, got her final ding and reached level 80 in Age of Conan. This was while starting to do a few of the first missions in Khitai. It is really nice to have reached this point and I am still continuing to gain appreciation for the game – I am […]
ARAM Posted by Kill Ten Rats on 19 May 2013, 10:20 pm
I have been enjoying the new mode in League of Legends. “All random all middle” is even more frantic fun than Dominion, although almost all strategy is gone in favor of tactics. You can reroll your champion every few games, so it is not fully random. This is especially a good thing for people who [...]
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on 21 May 2013, 11:42 pm
Super Joystiq Podcast Special: Xbox One revealed originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 21 May 2013 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Blizzard congratulates itself on Diablo III's anniversary originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 21 May 2013 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
In looking to trim down some of the menu bloat for EVE Online's Odyssey expansion, CCP Games is resurrecting and redesigning the radial menu to be a "silver bullet" for this issue.
