It seems that the Holiday Fever has taken over all of our favorite MMOs.
Sony has a list for all of their games posted here.
WoW has Winter’s Veil, as well as WAR and their drunken games. What have you thought of it all so far? Post your thoughts and comments here! I’ll be posting mine as the week goes on.
As most of you who read my blog already know, I like to keep up to date on MMO News and Happenings. Well, an interesting story hit the blogosphere over the past day or two that really got me thinking. If Cyan can do it, why not other companies.
If you don’t like to click links and wonder what the hell I’m talking about, Cyan Worlds, who own the Myst IP, have completely open-sourced Myst Online. Now, I’ve never played Myst Online, but I have played the entire Myst series of games, and loved every mind-wrenching minute of them. But I’m more concerned with the possibilites of what this information and source code may have on the MMO World.
Since Cyan Worlds is willing to open source their project, maybe other companies will follow suit. And while Myst Online is a dying game, of sorts, it has a very dedicated fanbase which is what is keeping their one remaining server alive. With users now able to make content for the game, I can definitely see a spike in their server population coming soon, as well as a whole bunch of user run servers.
Open sourcing has always been a touchy subject amongst developers. This is mostly due to the fact that once a source code is widely available, it doesn’t take long for someone looking to make a buck for someone else’s work comes along. This was a major pitfall in the MQ2 community. MQ2 (which I’ll go into more detail in another post about what it is and how I know about it) source code was being stolen left and right at one point and people were selling the work of others for $300-$400 a pop, and more, making hundreds of thousands of dollars from not doing a single bit of their own work.
Who knows what will happen with this information, I hope it turns out for the better, and that other companies can follow suit and really help start a new era of MMOs.
I know that SOE says they are not effected by the layoff announcement, but it makes you wonder if they’re grasping at straws to not be thrown into the mix.
While it may not be new news to some of you, NCSoft announced yesterday that it will be closing down its’ game Tabula Rasa. With Richard Garriot’s departure from the company earlier this month, it has not come as much of a surprise to most of the gaming community.
I feel they are being completely rediculous with this decision. While the game is only currently toting about 17,000 subscibers, it is bringing in a net revenue of about $3 million a year. I have an idea, instead of shutting it down, sell it (or hell, give it to me! =p). I’m sure that there are plenty of small, private companies who would love to work on and expand this game for $3 million a year. They may even be able to build up subscribers.
In my opinion, NCSoft needs to take a page out of Sony’s book. Sony has declared tha they will never shut down a game as long as there are players playing it and those players are bringing in enough revenue to pay for the servers. I highly doubt that Tabula Rasa costs a heft $3 million for upkeep. I truly feel they are not only pissing off 17,000 (and potentially more) subscribers, they are making a huge mistake.
So, according to a recent news article, a 15 year old boy collapsed after a two day WoW binge.
NOW his father says he’s going to monitor his computer use closer and make sure he doesn’t play too much. So, what I get from this is that it took his son ALMOST DIEING for the father to pay attention? How horrible of a parent can you be? This is the perfect example of a parent who throws money, cars, and computers at their kids in order to keep them out of their hair.
Did we not learn anything from Columbine or other horror stories? It wasn’t games and music that causes incidents like that, it’s the parents. I don’t care what anyone says about what kind of pop-culture influences were being referenced or were the supposed cause, negligent parents are to blame.
Hell, if I started playing games for too long when I was younger, my mom would stand there yelling until she was blue in the face until I got up and went outside or did something else. It showed she cared. This kids dad (and others out there) need to grow a fucking set of balls and show an interest in what their kids are doing. Don’t worry, I’m sure it’ll get thrown around that this incident was the fault of Blizzard and WoW, and not the true parties that are to blame.
This also reminds me of the boy who commited suicide years ago over Everquest. The mom tried to sue Sony and the media played it off as it being Sony’s fault for making such an addicting game. They failed to mention in most articles that the boy had serious social problems and was clinically depressed and bi-polar (if I remember the whole incident correctly, it’s been a while). And where was the mom in that? No where to be found, she parked him at the computer and only cared once he was dead. And even then she was just looking to make a buck off of her son’s death…what she needed (and this father needs) is to take a long look in the mirror.
I have an idea…how about requiring a liscense to reproduce…if your too stupid to know you have to actually do some work in raising your children, you’re not allowed to have kids…dumbasses…
/end rant
Not really a blog post tonight, but just some info I thought I’d pass along to those that read. If you are playing WAR and want all of the info you need for the current “Witching Night” live event, then the following link is for you.
Click Here to head on over to Massively’s guide to Warhammer’s Witching Night.
Everything you need to know, all in one place. I look forward to being able to really delve into the event tomorrow night.
In an attempt to combat the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, Mythic has pulled a rabbit out of a hat. An in game event, entitled Heavy Metal, will start on November 17th and will end with the arrival of the Knight of the Blazing Sun and the Black Guard classes into the lands of Warhammer.
The coolest part of the event? You can play the classes a week early if you complete a daily Tome of Knowledge Unlock that will be unveiled during the event. Damn, I’m starting to sound like a fanboy.
My biggest problem? I still play both games, and definitely don’t want to be struggling to decide which to focus on. This was a smart marketing move by Mythic. While I don’t think that WoW will actually be hurt by it, but I think some will think twice about picking up WotLK right away and may wait a month. What do you think?
It seems that it wasn’t only my week that was busy. There has been a ton of news to hit the blogosphere and the MMO News sites in the past few days. No, I’m not going into everything. That would just be an unruly post. But there are a couple I would like to highlight.
First, and probably the biggest story of the week, is the official announcement of Star Wars: The Old Republic. I wrote about my thoughts on this a few posts ago, but now that I have some details, I have to say that I’m more interested now than ever. There are a few things that concern me though.
While I’m excited to check out the game (as I am with anything Star Wars related), the few details that LucasArts gives about the gameplay make me wonder how much replay value the game will have. It sounds so far like it will be a story driven game that has an ending, you just play it with other people. They even mentioned about playing the game from beginning to end as a Jedi and then again as a Sith and having completely different story lines. Well, that’s great and all, but if the game has an ending, how long are people going to keep paying you so they can keep playing? I for one know that I would play it once for each, and then probably cancel my subscription until they released an expansion so I could continue the stories. I would feel no draw to continue logging in with out actually advancing my characters in some way, shape, or form.
The second biggest story in my eyes this week, was the story of the woman who logged into her “Husband’s” Maple Story account, and killed his character off because he divorced her…in game. Yes, that’s right, they’re not married in real life. They were married in Maple Story and he divorced her avatar. Not only that, but she became so made at the virtual divorce, that she logged into game, killed off his character, and, get this, is going to jail for it! And no, she’s not going to jail for “murder”, she’s going to jail for hacking his account. While I can see them taking action against her Maple Story account, I can’t believe that the authorites would get involved in such a petty dispute, especially over virtual goods. It worries me more and more about how much “big brother” is going to start cracking down on other in-game occurances. I’m not saying that what she did was right, because it’s not, but does she really deserve 5 years in jail? I don’t think so.
And finally, I’ve continued on my Warhammer crusade. The more I play the game, and learn about it, the more fun I find it to be. I will be joining my first guild tomorrow as well. It is a guild that will be started at 7pm CST at the Flight Master in Altdorf, on the Phoenix Throne Server. The guild leaders will be Sister Julie and Sister Fran from the No Prisoners, No Mercy Podcast. If anyone else is playing on the PT Server, Order Side, feel free to come and join us tomorrow night for the start of what I’m expecting to be an amazing guild, and group of fellow gamers.
Also, even though I mentioned them a few lines ago, I want to give a shout out to Sister Julie and Sister Fran for putting out, what I consider to be, one of the best Podcasts on the internet. Much love for the show ladies! It was listening to the first couple episodes of that show that inspired me to actually start writing more seriously and to get off my chest what it is that I have to say about our world of MMOs.
Anyway, I plan on trying to keep this blog a little more up to date. I was doing good with every other day for a while, but I’ve been slacking lately. Bad Jmo!
Wrath of the Lich King is just over the horizon, and the “Echoes of Doom” can be heard throughout Azeroth; it’s denizens waiting eagerly in anticipation to board the transports to the new lands of Northrend.
The time is almost here, and Blizzard has sprung the first major content change of many at us. Whether you were ready for it or not, it is here. This patch included a slew of class changes which has torn up the communty. I for one like what they’ve done.
They’ve made many long past due changes to most of the classes. Blizzard also introduced the new achievement system, which keeps track of different milestones in the game. While this is not a new development in the gaming world, it is a fun little addition to WoW. The pet and mount changes were also needed. It saves tons of bag space not having to haul around mounts and vanity pets…yes…I’m a pet whore too!
For the bad news though, most of the Addons are broken. I never really realized how many custom addons I used until I tried to log into the game, only to find a very empty screen. I’ve always been a custom UI whore, even in EverQuest. I could never be satisfied with the norm. Who knows what nifty new addons that WotLK will bring.
What do you think of the newest patch and the soon to be released WotLK?
I’ve been trying to follow the news coming out of Blizzcon, as I am admittedly a big fan of Blizzard’s games. While my biggest hope of their announcement of their still unnamed MMO project never came to light, there was a lot of cool news to be had in their WoW class panel discussion.
I’ll let you read the article for yourself, but I think one of the coolest announcements came at the end of that article. They want to implement a Dual-Spec system so that classes can switch between two different Specs. I know I’d heard it rumored before, but never thought they’d actually do it. I for one cannot wait for this feature to hit the Live servers. There’ll be no more “Sorry, I’m specced Shadow” or something similar. If you play a priest (as I do), you can spec Shadow to do your dailies, quests, or PvP, then have a Dual-Spec set for those groups or raids in need of a healer! Great news in my opinion!
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