Gazimoff

Last week, NCSoft announced it was “restructuring key operations” across Western properties, with WildStar’s Carbine Studios hit particularly hard. In this week’s column, Gareth Harmer takes a closer look at the possible impact of the layoffs.

Loremageddon has come to WildStar, revealing many secrets of Nexus and the wider fictional universe. In this week’s column, Gareth Harmer rounds up the news, gets the latest on Drop 3-4, and finds out how the community is coping with Megaservers.

In a recent interview, Carbine Studios explained how it hopes to turn WildStar around. For this week’s column, Gareth Harmer explains why this won’t happen overnight, but instead marks the start of a longer series of improvements.

WildStar has come under a lot of fire, but it’s criticism that developer Carbine is eager to address. In a deep interview, Product Director Mike Donatelli and Creative Director Chad Moore reveal their plans to turn the MMO around.

Over the last seven days, Carbine Studios has outlined its plans to bring WildStar back on track. In his column this week, Gareth Harmer reviews all the revealed changes and when we can expect them.

WildStar had all the hallmarks of a promising launch: promising reviews and widespread critical acclaim, queues of players waiting to log in, and a burgeoning community that was excited by Carbine’s new IP. It’s difficult to imagine a better environment in which to fire up a brand new MMO.

World of Diving aims to unite the peaceful exploration of ocean depths with entertaining group play. But its secret sauce is Oculus Rift support, transforming this from an interesting diversion to an immersive adventure. Columnist Gareth Harmer went hands-on to find out more.

Since WildStar’s launch in early June, Carbine Studios has been focusing heavily on quality of life updates and bug fixes. As a result, Drop 3 looks like the biggest update yet, with a number of changes in the works. But what happens when it’s time to start on shiny new stuff? Columnist Gareth Harmer details what he’d like to see arrive on Nexus.

WildStar’s story is changing. Everything that we’ve played up till now has been a prologue to the Nexus Saga, a multi-chapter epic adventure involving iconic heroes. Chapter 1 begins with Journey to Omnicore 1, and Creative Director Chad Moore was on hand to tell columnist Gareth Harmer all about it.

Seen as a spiritual successor to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series, Survarium aims to rekindle that feeling of exploring a post-apocalyptic wasteland. In a recent interview, Vostok Games’ Joe Mullin explained why the studio had focused on team-based PvP first, before expanding out into a brutal open-world PvE experience.

Our friends over at Ubisoft had us over to the Assassin’s Creed suite during PAX Prime. Normally we would not cover a game like this here at MMORPG.com, however with some great co-op play in Unity and also adding in skill trees and other RPG elements it was about time we took a good look at the game. AC is known for intense story, great characters, and super stealth game play. Fans are worldwide and the franchise is a huge success.

Technologically speaking, servers are dead. During yesterday’s livestreamed Nexus Report, Carbine Studios confirmed that existing realms will be thrown out and replaced with four giant megaservers – two for each region. The idea is that it will concentrate players together in the open world

After a turbulent beta, FireFall has finally launched, surprising us all with a much improved MMO shooter. During Gamescom, columnist Gareth Harmer caught up with Red 5 designer David Williams to get an update on the current state on the game, and a couple of hints on what’s coming down the pipeline.

Did you know that Nexus, the focal planet of WildStar, used to be called Meridia? Or that a player-created addon is now pivotal to Carbine’s debugging process? During Gamescom, I got the chance to sit down with three of the studio’s development supremos: Lead Client Engineer Jon Wiesman, Lead Content Designer Megan Starks, and Technical Design Lead Nick Roth.

Did you know that Nexus, the focal planet of WildStar, used to be called Meridia? Or that a player-created addon is now pivotal to Carbine’s debugging process? During Gamescom, I got the chance to sit down with three of the studio’s development supremos: Lead Client Engineer Jon Wiesman, Lead Content Designer Megan Starks, and Technical Design Lead Nick Roth.