At MMOs we make jokes at the expense of innumerable mobile games, asking “who is this designed for?” Oftentimes we’re left flabbergasted that some free to play titles still manage to grace the app store. It’s easy to make remarks that it’s a handful of players with unfathomable wallets supporting doppleganger games that fail to innovate. And while we’re joking [...]
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Last week, I sat down with Bjorn Johannessen and Fredrik Tolf of Seatribe to talk about the new version of Haven and Hearth. We talked about what brought them back to Haven and Hearth, upcoming changes, and whether or not they actually intend to troll their users. -- Me: I’m going to start this interview a little further back. What [...]
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Turbine has been a part of the MMORPG landscape since 1999 with the launch of Asheron’s Call (AC). AC was one of the first major MMORPGs, launching two years after Ultima Online and mere months after EverQuest. Set in a fully 3D environment without loading screen barriers, the game offered player housing, a unique magic system, and skill based progression. [...]
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With the Closed Beta Testing date of Blade & Soul (BnS) NA/EU officially scheduled for October 30th, many gamers are scrambling to decide whether or not any of the the Founder’s Pack’s are worth the money. With three deals available—being the Initiate Pack at $24.99, the Disciple Pack at $74.99 and the Master Pack at $124.99—each one caters to a [...]
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Google revealed their hand with the launch of YouTube Gaming, a streaming service designed to compete directly with Amazon's Twitch. According to SuperData Research gaming-related video content is a $3.8 billion industry, with half a billion viewers glued to their screen—content to be player 2. It’s a pie that’s only growing sweeter thanks to the ease of entry for new [...]
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I recently had the chance to sit down with Rob Peall of Domino Effect to talk about their game, Red Awakening, which is currently on Kickstarter. We talked quite a bit about the game's design, Rob's process, and where they're going from here as we repeatedly made efforts to sneak around and kill each other in-game. -- Peall: It’s surprising to me—I [...]
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Something I’ve often wondered, as I see more and more MMO players ask for games with action combat, is if the reason for the move away from traditional tab-targeting systems is that they are simply too stiff, too unrealistic. A holdover from the era of MUDs, the traditional tab-targeting system is the best approximation that could be made for the [...]
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While some players believe the end of subscription games is just over the horizon, there are a number of titles that have fueled servers for over a decade through monthly payments. [singlepic id=26531 w=600 h=338 float=none] Ultima Online Launch Date: September 24, 1997 Monthly Cost: 12.99/mo The spiritual godfather of MMORPG’s, and one of the longest running, I’m routinely surprised [...]
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I had a chance to sit down with Alexander Zacherl of Fairytale Distillery during Das Tal's playtest this past weekend. Das Tal is an upcoming open PvP sandbox MMO that takes a lot of design inspiration from MOBAs. In its desert-themed world, you battle over settlements, camps, resource nodes, and more. Players battle using a system similar to those seen [...]
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My idle thoughts are preoccupied by the day I can finally slide a VR headset over my eyes and ears. Undoubtedly, I will spend my time flying through space in Eve: Valkyrie, sweating with cold palms in Alien: Isolation, and constructing monuments to my prowess in Voxelnauts. But as Virtual Reality headsets prepare for a consumer release some citizens are voicing [...]
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