MMOs
I wrote a review of this FPS/RTS hybrid MMOG back in September; a short month later Battleswarm has gone from open beta to full release yesterday as the free-to-play title opens its doors to any and all interested players.
Battleswarm is an innovative title that pits a team of human players fighting an alien horde controlled by another player on competitive maps. The humans play from typical first person perspective while the aliens march towards their opponents' base via an overhead, tactical perspective. Players can earn points in game that can be used to purchase upgrades, or fork over actual cash for credits to accomplish the same thing. Microtransactions are the business model for the title and in my time playing they're accomplished to a respectable degree.
People who play during its opening weekend will have the chance to win an Alienware m15x laptop as well as two thousand in-game prizes. If you're a fan of quick competitive games and interested in an MMOG outside the normal WoW mold then this is definitely worth checking out. At the very least its price of free, free, free means there's nothing to lose if it's not your tastes.
It's the rare commercial that gets a sequel. Let alone one starring Mr. T. As part of this ad campaign, Blizzard has put Night Elf Mohawk NPCs near all the starting zones where you can get your own Mohawk grenade which, when hurled at another character, gives everyone within the blast radius an instant T-riffic haircut.
In the wake of news out of Electronic Arts that the company would be laying off 1500 employees by April 2010, including rumors that Mythic in particular was hit hard by this, an executive with the studio has come forward to assure customers of their MMOGs that the company would continue to support their titles as before.
EA Mythic currently supports three titles: Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online. In the case of Warhammer particularly, layoff rumors have suggested that the game would essentially be relegated to "maintenance mode" with no further content being produced.
Nevertheless, Jeff Hickman has released a public response to the concern, promising that all three titles would continue as usual and both future content and patches would be developed as originally planned.
Warhammer has certainly had a rocky launch, failing to be the World of Warcraft killer it set out to be initially. While the development team has made attempts to fix up a lot of the issues that affected the game at its start, it remains to be seen if their latest attempts towards recapturing players with things like their new unlimited free trial will improve their subscriber numbers.
Cryptic Studios has been working feverishly to shore up content since the release of Champions Online in September. One of the big things I've been looking forward to was the latest content patch they released on Tuesday; a large concern with players has been that Champions Online doesn't provide a lot of incentive for grouping, and one of my own personal issues is that playing as a "healer" has been pretty irrelevant. Between both the lack of viability in the class and the limited abilities you get, creating a super hero focused towards strengthening and protecting allies isn't as important in Champions Online as it is in other games.
However, Cryptic has made steps to change this with the Blood Moon content patch. Among other things, it introduces the Celestial powerset which adds lots more abilities that can either heal allies or damage enemies depending on what you're targeting. I've been looking forward to trying these new abilities out ever since they were first announced last month and so far they go a long way towards addressing the issues I originally had as one of the seemingly rare MMOG players that prefers to be the group's healer.
On top of this, the Blood Moon content patch also introduces Champions' Halloween events, the Zombie Apocalypse and BITE, which will let players resurrect as zombies or werewolves (or werewolf hunters!) for the duration of the event. Also, to entice new players who haven't yet checked the game out, between October 30th and November 2nd the game is absolutely free to play-- both the regular core game and the Blood Moon event.
The full text of the press release announcing this is after the jump. If you are a new player who was curious about Champions Online or someone who checked it out in the first month, this is a great opportunity to see the big improvements they've made since launch.
For those of you who haven't had a chance to check out Champions Online, and have been meaning to, this weekend is your chance. Cryptic is releasing their new holiday event, Blood Moon. The holiday content starts up today, Oct. 27th. and will last until Nov 10th. New powers and the new PVP map of course are permanent additions to the game.
Blood Moon Details:
- New Power Set: Celestial! (Seen Above) The first new power set added to Champions Online, Celestial is a support and healing based set with dual-purpose abilities.
- Dawn of the Undead Heroes! Takofanes has trapped the souls of the Heroes who fell during the Battle of Detroit and are commanding them to spread ruin across Millennium City! Players who can save all 13 Undead Heroes will unlock the Celestial power set two weeks before anyone else!
- BITE! Players will have the chance to join the Wolf Hunters and rid the land of the abominable Werewolves. However, falling to one of the beasts will force you to rise under the curse and become one yourself.
- Rise of Takofanes! The Undying Lord has risen, and is appearing throughout Millennium City. Those who are strong enough to defeat his retinue will receive unique perks and rewards only available during the Blood Moon event.
- Zombie Apocalypse! A brand new PvP map is here to stay! Survive as long as you can as endless waves of zombies approach, but beware, because those defeated will rise as a zombie and become the enemy.
On top of all this content, the game will be free from 10:00 a.m. October 30th until 10:00 a.m. November 2nd (Pacific Time), allowing new players to check out the game. If you are interested, check out their promotional event page and download the client in advance so you'll be ready.
From an announcement on VideoGamer.com yesterday, Cryptic Studios confirmed that their planned release for upcoming Star Trek-themed MMOG Star Trek Online is the first quarter of 2010. This announcement is in-line with a rumor back in May claiming the same thing, and yesterday's news also includes the detail of a closed beta being made available very soon. One of the bonuses for people who purchased six-month pre-orders or lifetime accounts with Champions Online was access to this beta.
A lot of interesting things have come out about STO's combat system which is supposed to be a combination of the usual ground gameplay combined with space combat similar to EVE Online. While Star Trek (as in the television/movie franchise) has always been a guilty nerd pleasure of mine, the thought of the IP coming to a MMOG format is a bit neutral for me-- but I am intrigued to find out what the game is like and I think the MMOG landscape is in desperate need of some more sci-fi titles. I am also mildly curious about how this will affect Champions Online any, if at all, given that by the time of the supposed release their super-hero themed MMOG won't even be six months old. Obviously the two games won't be competing directly with each other but I can't think of any other studio that has released multiple MMOG properties within such a short space of one another.
An upcoming MMOG title I have been looking forward to with a lot of glee is Love, the one-man-band game currently in development by Eskil Steenberg. Everything, from the game's engine to the graphics renderer to the AI, has been developed from scratch solely by Eskil, a pretty monumental achievement when you consider the small armies behind the development of games like World of Warcraft or Warhammer Online. Eskil recently released an alpha client of the game that, while not actually playable, would be used to generate hardware statistics as well as tell him the level of interest for the game. That level was apparently 11, because days later the first playable alpha client was made available to interested customers.
"Customers" is the operative word here because Love boasts what I believe has to be a first (save perhaps outside of Second Life, oh snap); to access the alpha client you have to purchase a 30-day voucher for a fee of 3 euros.
While this is pretty unorthodox, it necessitates repeating: this is being developed out of pocket entirely by one person who has to cover the servers and bandwidth in order to actually offer the game. And 3 euro comes out to roughly six USD, so this is really a pittance. It's also a decision-- either pay to check it out now or wait for the full version. When most MMOG alphas and betas are under NDAs and offered to selected individuals and not the public at large this offers a pretty unique opportunity for players to see the game a lot earlier than they normally would, even if its state is in flux.
Nevertheless the complainers have been out in full swing, "outraged" at paying the price of a Starbucks frappuccino for early access. I wouldn't normally take the time to complain about something like this myself but I really have difficulty with the increasingly pervasive mentality of entitlement that stretches across the internet. It's also doubly upsetting given that Love is entirely the work of one person, a fact that keeps getting ignored by more and more whiners.
One comment on Eskil's blog, in particular, was the most ire-rising for me:
I hope you plan to do something for the players that you are requiring to pay to test your game, even if it is as simple as as not wiping their accounts or giving them name selection priority at live. These testers will likely be your most loyal fans, and you requiring them to pay money to alpha test the game can and will be taken as crass and unappreciative of their time.
Your post about not guaranteeing that playtime will carryover to Beta seems to indicate that you do not plan to do so, and thus that you do not respect the time they are donating to polish your unfinished product. If that is the case, you may want to look into hiring a more experienced business manager to filter your company's interactions with its customers. Maybe you can use the money you earn from the first-ever "paid alpha" (which FYI, you just invented).
Really now.
Personally, I grabbed a voucher the moment I saw they were available, and even though I didn't have the slightest idea of what I was doing and died too many times to count the game is just amazing to look at. The entirety of it is procedurally driven and the art style of the game is deeply impressionistic, like walking through a Monet painting. For six bucks it was worth it to me, if only to finally whet my appetite for a game I've been excited about for months.
Hopefully the people complaining the loudest about this slight get some perspective; hopefully further this unnecessary aggression doesn't dissuade Eskil from continuing development in the face of a hostile minority. I know I'm extremely eager to play the full game and can't wait for its completed release.
Turbine's announced a date for the new expansion pack for Lord of the Rings Online. The digital-only expansion, Siege of Mirkwood drops in North America on December 1, 2009, but several pre-launch offers begin today.
Lifetime Memberships are now available for $199, which is an insane amount of up-front money but turns into a good deal for long-term players who can annualize that figure across three years or more.
Current or former players who re-up with LOTRO or upgrade their subscription to a multi-month plan before October 31 gets the new expansion for free.
Also available for pre-order is the $19.99 LOTRO Adventurer's Pack, with two character slots and one shared storage slot to let your characters on the same server share items, as well as the Harbinger's Cloak and its 8% speed increase, and as a bonus, a free Dusky Nimblefoot Goat mount.
Free goats, y'all - this is better than Oprah.
When World of Warcraft originally opened its doors in 2004, the lair of Onyxia was one of two raid instances it shipped with. A challenging encounter for forty well-geared players at the time, Onyxia presented a monumental struggle of coordination and talent that was a pinnacle of accomplishment for those who managed it, or the fodder for numerous jokes (NSFW language and animated humiliation) for those who didn't. Up until recently, the brood mother has been rather lacking in that department as higher level players routinely farm her for gold and gear. Blizzard announced before BlizzCon 09 that the instance would be revamped as 10 and 25 man raids for current players in honor of the 5th anniversary of WoW, and with yesterday's 3.2.2 patch the retooled dungeon went live.
I got to play it for the first time in its reconfigured state yesterday with my guild, and though we didn't have to contend with forty different people screaming in vent like in the old days, it was still quite the struggle. It was also a lot of fun and made me nostalgic for the "simpler times" and the previous challenge of those raids that aren't all that difficult anymore.
Her loot has been improved to be on-par with current instance drops, and as part of the new instance she also has a (very, very rare) chance to drop an exceptionally fast mount modeled after Onyxia herself. In addition, with the November anniversary of the game, players will be given an Onyxia brood whelpling pet on top of everything else.
If you play WoW, did you get a chance to check her out? We ran the ten man version and successfully killed her on the third try-- how well did you do?
Those of us who preordered NCsoft's Aion: Tower of Eternity have had the pleasure of playing the game for a few dozen hours now, but the rest of the crowd lining up to test out this long, long, long-awaited MMO may officially do so beginning today. (Unless you've been playing the Chinese or Korean game, in which case: kudos!)
My super brief time with Aion thus far has been pleasant, and although I'll hold off before I even begin to judge the game, NCsoft has certainly been hard at work integrating the Western, World of Warcraft platinum gameplay standard with the addictive MMO aesthetic the Koreans do so well and play so ceaselessly.
The world of Atreia has been literally split in two - right across the equator - and the creation of the god Aion has been severed: the goodly Elyos live on the lower half of the globe, which still receives sunlight - while the twisted and objectively cooler-looking Asmodians have adopted to the sunless demimonde they now inhabit.
Character classes are rather less inspired than the setting, but still seem to round out the expected roster: begin as warrior, mage, scout or priest and branch into one of two specialized classes as you develop. The two beginning areas are, as promised, breathtakingly beautiful and, so far, I think fans of Western MMOs like WoW, LOTRO or Warhammer will find plenty of traction in the divided world of Atreia.
[Thanks to Craig for not letting us forget about Aion or why GayGamer is here in the first place: you're not alone out there, Craig!]
When Richard Garriott left NCsoft earlier this year after the disappointment that was Tabula Rasa, he sued his former employers for a cool $27 million. But what of Robert Garriott, Richard's brother, and his NCsoft MMO, the free-to-play Dungeon Runners?
I've enjoyed the game - I find it to be a fun, fast-paced Diablo-esque experience that doesn't take itself seriously at all. I always suspected I was in the minority, however, since Dungeon Runners has been routinely panned by gamers and critics - and now I have proof, since Dungeon Runners will be closing its digital doors at the end of this year.
Producer and Lead Programmer Stephen Nichols delivered the announcement earlier this week with Dungeon Runners' traditional good humor and forthrightness - saying that while the game could be profitable, it hasn't been, and making it so would cost too much money. So on New Year's Eve they're going to detonate a Megaton-style nuke that's been dropped into the game's hub of Townston, and XP gain has been quintupled for the duration.
Nichols also announced a nice package for paying members, who'll get a 30 day game time serial code and free digital copies of City of Heroes: Architect Edition and Guild Wars: Prophecies.
The Boston Globe is reporting that five MMOG developers have been hit with a lawsuit by Paltalk Holdings Inc over patent infringement. The patents in question handle how a piece of software can show the same simultaneous data across multiple connected computers-- IE, if a building explodes, letting all the various players on the map see the same explosion at the same time. Paltalk, better known for their VoIP and messaging services, acquired these particular patents in 2002 when they purchased HearMe to strengthen their internet telephony offerings.
This is not the first piece of litigation Paltalk has brought forth on this particular issue: in March of this year they settled with Microsoft on a similar infringement lawsuit with Halo and the Xbox 360, and many legal analysts are concerned that it's this settlement that will give the current claims more validity.
Named in the current lawsuit are Sony Corp, Activision Blizzard Inc, Turbine Inc, NCsoft Corp, and Jagex Ltd, responsible for developing EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Guild Wars, and RuneScape respectively.
Paltalk has made this claim in the Eastern District of Texas, an extremely favored choice for patent disputes. Late last year Worlds.com also filed a different lawsuit against NCSoft for infringement there in another case that's believed to have wide-ranging repercussions for virtual worlds and MMOGs in general if they win.
And girls who like girls who like rumble packs!
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