If WoW players hit endgame after a bunch of hours spent leveling and EVE players hit it after only a few hours of tutorials, as I suggested previously, perhaps we need to pin down just exactly what we mean by “endgame,” anyway. Discarding EVE’s approach for the moment, the endgame for traditional MMOs like WoW [...]

So after five years in EVE Online — off and on, of course — I find myself with just north of 9 million skill points and 8 million ISK. Which is not bad as a starting point, as we may as well regard this. I do have a decent established infrastructure, with about ten ships [...]

I’d been meaning to post about this already, but I somehow missed doing so; it seems The Nosy Gamer has picked up the baton on tracking XFire numbers for MMOs, and in a most persistent way. In his latest round of reporting there are some interesting, if expected, figures: With the expansion release, WoW is [...]

Having EVE Online be your first MMO is probably an unusual occurrence. That’s probably why EVE magically stays off the radar of even dedicated MMO enthusiasts who continue to pine for the very elements it offers. EVE has a culture and ciommunity that’s very different, and largely segregated from, other MMOs. I don’t know if [...]

More or less on a lark, but probably more because I find myself very interested in space games at the moment, I fired up a new trial of EVE Online, really the only space game (note that I didn’t say “sci-fi game”) in the massive multiplayer space, with the exception of Black Prophecy, which closes [...]

The video embedded below is about two months old now, and is part of CCP’s promotion for the Inferno expansion, parts of which have been live for a month or so. It’s the kind of graphical improvement that CCP has been doing for some time; in this example the Angel (and NPC faction) ships are [...]

I have an inchoate idea for a game design, riffing on some of the things I have talked about in the past, and I will be occasionally making posts about some of the ideas behind it for the sake of public brainstorming. Right now it’s best to think of this an a thought exercise for [...]

I’v been pretty inactive for the last few weeks, given non-gaming demands on my schedule, though I have still managed to squeeze in a little game time in Champions Online and in Guild Wars 2. As my games drive stands at a whopping 227 GB of instaklled games, however, I’ve decided that it’s time to [...]

Another weekend has passed and again I spent as much of it as could be managed in Guild Wars 2. Which wasn’t that long, actually. I’m still working on Lornar’s Pass, which contains a staggering 43 points of interest; I’m nowhere near done with it, although I’m closing in on the hearts, skill challenges and [...]

I was aware of this before the Massively story released, but fans of City of Heroes are attempting to rally to save their game. There’s an online petition (which I signed,) and talk on the City of Heroes forums about “discussions” between Paragon management and both NCSoft and investors, and additional calls to action elsewhere. [...]

Over a week into Guild Wars 2 play I’m just as impressed with the game as ever… possibly more. Although there are some niggling problems and the occasional bugged event, the biggest issues appear to have settled out, and with the Trading Post finally up and running an in-game economy is starting to take shape. [...]

I have castigated NCSoft for cancelling City of Heroes, just as in the past I ripped them for the demise of Tabula Rasa, AutoAssault and Dungeon Runners. This is the post where I am more forgiving. A little. Maybe City of Heroes was losing money. I might point to Paragon’s 80 or so employees as [...]

I got the news from Massively, but it’s everywhere: NCSoft is sunsetting City of Heroes< before the end of the year, folding Paragon Studios and letting go of all staff, due to a "realignment of company focus and publishing support." While City of Heroes has always been a game I respected more than liked, there [...]

Guild Wars 2, as of just a bit ago, is officially launched. I’m not sure I’ll do a “review,” but here are some thoughts with quite a bit of time invested in the headstart plus more in beta. The Good The game overall is very strong. Barring the occasional bug or borked event, all of [...]

Pointing out the problems with an MMO launch makes one a hater, of course. But despite the label I am enjoying Guild Wars 2 thus far, no matter the issues — at least once the dealbreaking issue of not being able to log in was fixed. That’s the one unforgivable issue you can’t overlook. And [...]

Lest I go another several days without posting and leave everyone thinking that Guild Wars 2 was a crate of ass during the whole prelaunch, here are some additional points gathered so far. The servers have been up, as far as I’ve seen. since about 11 AM Saturday. Some people are still having launcher or [...]

Let’s take Joe. Joe’s not a night shift worker used to staying awake at all hours, but he wants to get as much Guild Wars 2 in as he can. So he opens up a can of caustic energy soda and sits down at his PC right before midnight. At midnight sharp, the earliest time [...]

I have to assume that, given the severe misbehavior of the Guild Wars 2 servers thus far during headstart launch, that the many-times-a-week “stress tests” that ArenaNet was doing leading up to this day were nothing more than a marketing gimmick. The servers went up a full three hours early, which was nice. For the [...]

I’ve been having trouble on the video front of late; my hour-long kickoff to the Vanguard Let’s Play series failed to render more than once, and I’ve been having trouble owing to limited upload bandwidth with uploads failing after 6+ hours of wasted time. So even though I have a few vids in the can [...]

Over the last couple of days I stocked up a bit on videos. I have two more Vanguard vids in the can plus a new one from the recent Guild Wars 2 stress test; it’s just a matter of getting them uploaded, which has been problematic of late. Nevertheless, they will appear as quickly as [...]

I didn’t try every class during the various Guild Wars 2 beta events (there’s another stress test tomorrow, by the way,) but it occurs to me that the classes I liked the best — Elementalist, Ranger and Engineer — are all predominantly ranged classes. I liked the Warrior, as in Guild Wars 1, more in [...]

The new episode of Ardwulf Presents is up and available: Part 2 of my Let’s Play from the Isle of Dawn. The hour-long first episode proved pretty unweildy when it came to rendering and uploading, so I’m shooting for 30 minutes or a little less for the rest; I hope to have Part 3 available [...]

Today begins the final week before the launch of Guild Wars 2. Many expect big things from it, and surely some will be disappointed, but many others know what they are getting into and given the lack of a monthly commitment will be happy with the game in the long run. The three days of [...]

First up, we have a brief (for a change) addendum to the last epsiode concerning Vangurd’s free-to-play transition, with a couple of clarifications and corrections. For today’s more substantial second course, I keep promising a look at Vanguard’s actual gameplay, and here it is — an hour-long look at one of the four current starter [...]

As of today the Mists of Pandaria cinematic trailer is up for perusal on YouTube. As such things go (I like to try to judge these things as short films in their own right,) it’s very nicely done. But I doubt it will change anyone’s mind. WoW is starting to slide in a big way, [...]