David Jagneaux / David is a freelance writer and full-time nerd. He loves to play, write about, talk about and think about all things gaming. It's dangerous to go alone, so follow him on Twitter at @David_Jagneaux
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When people can hide behind an avatar and fake screen name, it’s easy to indulge in your darker tendencies. Sure, everyone engages in a little new-player grieving, or hogs the loot for themselves every now and again, but some people take things way too far. They may not always be annoying, or even something that you really notice, but the types of people that make up this list are the types that can slowly contribute to the poisoning of an otherwise flourishing community.
Over the years MMOs have become well-known for lots of different things. Endless hours of grinding, epic battles on a massive scale, and deeply immersive worlds immediately come to mind. One thing that you probably don’t think of however, is User Generated Content. By nature of the inherent design and network challenges associated with persistent online worlds, it’s difficult to create User-Generated content systems that actually work well.
For a lot of people, logging on to their favorite MMO isn’t about raiding, or PvP, or dungeon runs – it’s about creating great items and contributing to the backbone of an MMOs economy. I’ve never personally been a huge proponent of crafting in MMOs, but there is undoubtedly a certain type of players that loves the art of creation and trading.
With hundreds and maybe even thousands of MMOs on the market, it’s extremely difficult to be competitive and stay profitable. With the move towards free-to-play structures, the genre has seen a revival as of late for many games that would have otherwise been shut down.
Black Gold Online is not a good MMORPG. If that’s all you clicked on this review to find out about, then you can consider yourself informed – you may move along now. However, for those so inclined, let me go into a bit more detail. While the scene is set respectably enough, the lack of execution holds back what otherwise could have been a relatively memorable experience.
By design, MMOs are more fun to play with your friends. Most of them encourage or even require grouping for a lot of the best and most rewarding content, which necessitates either being social in the game world, or coming into the experience with a pre-determined group of friends to play with. Sometimes though, it can be hard to find people. Whatever the case may be, every MMO player wishes X friend would play in their favorite virtual worlds with them.
Leading up to the launch of any game is both exciting and stressful for a development studio. The excitement stems from the obvious relief associated with a game finally reaching its goal, but the stress is sourced in the anticipation of how it will turn out. While both could be sensed when I visited Red 5 Studios in Laguna Hills, CA last week, the excitement definitely overshadowed all else.
If your first reaction to reading the title of this article was, “Wait, Firefall hasn’t been released yet?” I don’t think anyone would blame you. Originally announced way back in 2010, this MMO shooter has been struggling for the past few years to finally grasp hold of its original vision. From the overly convoluted original progression system, to a hampered PvP mode, nearly all facets of the game have undergone extreme renovations in the past couple years.
Steampunk has been an obsession of gamers for a long time, but it’s criminally underrepresented in most MMORPGs. Snail Games aimed to partially alleviate that concern by smashing both steampunk and fantasy flavors together into one massive and varied free-to-play MMORPG called Black Gold Online. BGO has a lot in common with one of its developers other titles, Age of Wushu, both in terms of visuals, mechanics, and underlying systems.
As has become customary here at MMORPG, this week's list is the reverse of last week's! Previously, we covered five MMOs that we think could be turned into great singleplayer games. Now, we want to look at five singleplayer games that could be turned into great MMOs. With the extreme level variety the genre we know and love experiences in today's industry, there is plenty of room for new concepts. Read the full article at MMORPG.com.
As has become customary here at MMORPG, this week’s list is the reverse of last week’s! Previously, we covered five MMOs that we think could be turned into great singleplayer games. Now, we want to look at five singleplayer games that could be turned into great MMOs. With the extreme level variety the genre we know and love experiences in today’s industry, there is plenty of room for new concepts.
So many MMOs nowadays have evolved into an amalgamation of game modes and content – some stuff you can play alone, some of it requires strangers, some of it is best with friends, some is friendly, some is just for fun. Even though these experiences seem to be getting farther and farther away from what made the genre so exciting to begin with – adventuring in epic online worlds – it has led to creation of a term with both good and bad connotations: solo friendly.
Let me start right off by saying that Divinity: Original Sin is unlike any Kickstarter game that I have ever personally played before and I mean that in the best way possible. Throughout my experience with the game, I never once caught myself thinking, “Yeah, this works well…for a Kickstarter game.” Divinity: Original Sin is, thankfully, a high-quality product in all aspects and deserves to be judged among the upper-echelon of isometric RPG greatness, from Ultima to Baldur’s Gate.
The surge in popularity of indie games, particularly crowd-funded ones, has spear-headed this movement, and Legends of Persia is the latest project born from a successful (albeit modest) Kickstarter campaign. Unfortunately, its origin story and subsequent gameplay mechanics are one and the same: boring and predictable.
There are lots of awesome MMOs out there. So many in fact, that in my previous list about the best hardcore MMORPGs, I felt like I wasn’t quite able to list them all. Sure, I stand by the 5 that I picked to grace that first list and they are undoubtedly the best, but what about the other games?