 | Blizzard revealed last week that their upcoming MMO which is currently under development will not be based on an existing intellectual property.
Read more here. |  |  | On May 12th, news broke that Studio Head Dan Elggren would be leaving Firesky, the company making Stargate Worlds
Read more here. | |  | Cryptic Studios announced that they have pushed the expected release date of their upcoming MMORPG Champions Online from July 14th to September 1st of 2009.
Read more here. | | | | Get more news on our site here! | | |  | |  | | Current Offer From Our Rewards Program | |  | |  | |  | | | | | Blog Spotlight: Global Agenda Dev Blog Update | | | | | | In early 2005, when we first opened the doors of Hi-Rez Studios, we were asked to describe our team's philosophy in making games. Our answer was "a minute to learn, a lifetime to master". Erez (our company founder & Lead Designer) and I grew up in the coin-op arcade era, where if the game did not grab your attention and give you a taste of victory within the first 5 minutes it wouldn't earn another quarter from you. Yet the best games also managed to engage & challenge the best players for hours, and sometimes on that same quarter! You can read the blog entry here. More developer blogs can be found on our site here |  | |  | | | | | | Featured Column: Why Not Well Animated MMOs? | | | | | | It's been a decade since MMOs were done in 3D, but for some odd reason, no one seems to mind that they're not animated much better today than they were in EverQuest. It's been a decade since the first 3D MMOs rolled into the mass market. Since EverQuest debuted, poly-counts have multiplied, particles effects have appeared every time a character waves his arm, and graphics cards can now probably solve the global energy crisis. Unfortunately, even the shiniest of characters still moves like an automaton. Animation in MMOs has not progressed in a decade and in this week's column, I ask why not animate MMOs properly? Now, I understand there are some obstacles. Fact is, MMOs are unpredictable, and there is some validity to the argument that if they push the graphical boundaries as far as top tier console games, the whole thing could explode in a fiery cloud of TeamSpeak cursing. Read the entire article here. Visit our boards today! |  | This week's Game of the Week is Star Trek Online.
Back in 2008 Cryptic Studios had announced that they had picked up the license to make the MMO incarnation of the popular science fiction franchise after the folding of Perpetual Entertainment, the game's previous developer.
Since then Cryptic Studios has been busy releasing information about this incarnation of the Trek Universe, picking up on galactic events where the three television series and four movies set in the TNG time-frame left off.
Cryptic has been publishing a year by year look at events in in the Federation and beyond, starting with the years 2379 and 2380 where the last Trek movie of the TNG era ended. Currently they're up to 2487.
So far the events have focused mostly on the fallout of the coup on Romulus from Star Trek: Nemesis, and the post war recovery of the Federation and Cardassia after the Dominion War of Deep Space Nine. The most recent edition revealed links to the new Star Trek movie with the destruction of Romulus by a supernova.
Learn more about Star Trek Online, or check out our game list here. |  |  | | The Week that Was | Monday, May 11
EVE Online - Apocrypha 1.1
Tuesday, May 12
General - Five Marketing Campaigns You'll Never See
Wednesday, May 13
The Chronicles of Spellborn - A Look at TCoS
Thursday, May 14
World of Warcraft - Musing on Buying Gold
Friday, May 15
Project Powder - Project Powder Review | |  | | | That's all Folks! | | | | |
