It’s a big galaxy. 400 billion stars big. There’s room enough to make your fortunes, room enough to find your fights and room enough to see things most people won’t pass by if you really work at it. In a galaxy like that, what you make of it is up to you. You… and others. It might be the little action of a few players bringing in the goods or it might be the larger actions of empires.
While Lord of the Rings Online hasn't been around quite as long as other AAA MMOs, it's still been around long enough for the short attention span of the internet to proclaim it 'forever'. Launched in April 2007, the game has taken the Lord of the Rings story all the way to Gondor, with players getting to help Aragorn take on the Corsairs of Umbar. Update 15 also brings Beornings to the table, the first new class added to the game since 2008.
Last time in this review in parts, I realised that I needed a flight stick. Fortunately I happened to have one buried in the house, left behind by my brother. Maybe I'll invest in something a little more fancy, but it did the job. It finally made me feel like a pilot, like I was competent. I went from viewing each docking with a mix of fear and dread to hotdogging them. From fitfully trying to slam my ship onto the pad and pray to gliding in on pretty fine vectors if I do say so myself.
Fast forward the intervening 21 years to last week. Elite: Dangerous officially launched. Is there a credit bug? I doubt it. Is there the wormhole bug? I have no idea yet.... but I hope so. Where my first exposure to Elite was wide eyed wonder and my first experiences with it amounted to a lack of foresight, I decided I was going to take this easy. Work my way into the experience. Learn. Do it right.
It’s been a few months since Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor launched and shocked everyone with how good its action-RPG open world gameplay could be. In the space since, Warner Brothers and Monolith have put out a slew of minor DLC runes, free upgrades, and other doodads. But this week marked the launch of the first $10 story-driven DLC campaign: Lord of the Hunt. We’ve had a chance to play with Torvin’s new beasties, and this is what we think.
Despite protests and endless traffic we made it into Brooklyn this past Thursday for the NYU Seminar on storytelling in Dragon Age: Inquisition. The panel included Creative Director Mike Laidlaw, Lead Writer David Gaider, and actor Freddie Prinze Jr. who does the voice of Iron Bull. The panel ran the full two hours and surprisingly the crew on hand gave a ton of information and advice to the students and press in attendance.
Ubisoft’s The Crew might be a good overall indication of what we can expect from MMOs in the next several years. How you look at that statement could be a good or a bad thing. I spent the better part of last night and this morning delving into the live service of Ivory Tower’s racing MMO. Though I don’t think we’ll need the usual 4-5 weeks to come to a conclusion about The Crew’s performance, because there are only so many different things you can do behind the confines of a car.
As the third week of the World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor expansion has come and gone, many people like me are approaching the end game, the thing to which we are all supposed to aspire. Raiding guilds have their teams busily working through heroic dungeons to gear up to meet the item level requirement for the first raid set to hit the live game on December 2nd. It's an exciting time for many players.
When we were introduced to Citadel Studios’ Shards Online, it immediately made us think of Ultima Online’s heyday, which should come as no surprise as Citadel Studios is comprised of designers from UO and DAOC. Following the recent quick success of their Kickstarter campaign (which still has about 20 days left to go), we caught up with Derek Brinkmann to talk about the game and what the team’s been up to since the announcement in March.
As I made meandered through Draenor in order to level from 94 to 100 this week, I was astonished at the way that all systems seem to feed into one another. Each quest seems to stack upon the next in this at times overwhelming chain of adventure designed to gradually see characters grow to max level and see them geared at least moderately well by the time they hit 100. That's not to say, of course, that the journey is over at 100, but it is the focus of this week's article.
It’s been roughly two years since I last played World of Warcraft. A run of disappointing expansions and ageing gameplay mechanics drove me away from Blizzard’s MMO, and into a nomadic search for something new, exciting and satisfyingly deep. But then, like a siren’s call, Warlords of Draenor tugged at me. Although I was deeply skeptical about returning, could WoW’s latest expansion turn me around?
Despite the one minor hiccup I experienced getting from level 64 to 65, I was thoroughly enjoying myself. Then I began what I call the "endgame experience." RIFT has always had a lot to do at max level. The artifacts have always been a favorite of mine, as they give me a reason to go out and explore this huge world. There's probably thousands of artifacts out there for you to find. It's almost a bit daunting actually. Thank the lord for minions, who have made this a bit simpler.
There's nothing that kills procrastination on writing an article more than the fact that the game you're supposed to be writing about is, well let's just say "non-functioning". Yes, I'm talking about the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Warlords of Draenor and, yes, it's been one of those days.
On Wednesday November 12th, hours before the launch of World of Warcraft’s fifth expansion Warlords of Draenor in Europe and the rest of the world, Lead Game Designer Ion Hazzikostas and Lead Class Designer Kris Zierhut from Blizzard took part in a live Q&A hosted on Twitch by WoW Community Manager Josh Allen.
Today's news will probably seem to be a purposeful theme, an assessment that isn't far off the mark. Today marks the beginning of Blizzard Entertainment's (mostly) annual fan convention, Blizzcon. Attendees from all over the world have made their way to Anaheim, California, usually renown for Disneyland but for this weekend, all eyes are on the convention center and the news that is likely to rock the MMO and general games space that will emerge from it.