Filed under: Culture

The Tattered Notebook: Roleplaying advice for veterans and newbies alike

by Seraphina Brennan Feb 9th 2010 at 5:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, EverQuest II, Culture, Guides, Roleplaying, The Tattered Notebook

Hello there adventurers! Seccia has taken the week off to go visit the remainder of her family in Neriak so I'm stepping in to help out with her column!

This week in The Tattered Notebook, I thought it would be a good time to talk about roleplaying a character. Roleplaying isn't just jumping into a game world and talking in a funny accent. It's also not just making up a character and spamming a scene with emotes.

Good roleplaying skills take both time and practice to learn. And while I can't teach you everything in the space of a single column, I can give roleplayers, both veterans of the craft and newbies, a few tips to polish up your roleplaying skills and enhance the power of a scene.

EverQuest II unveils a new puzzle upon Norrath, and we've got some pieces of it

by Seraphina Brennan Feb 9th 2010 at 4:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, EverQuest II, Contests, Culture, Events, in-game

Once again, we've gotten another package from that strange community Dark Elf, Kiara. This time, however, instead of sending us a set of tablets, we've gotten sheets of paper containing some foreign language!

We're told that once the language is successfully deciphered, it should provide clues to a brand new questing opportunity to those who play EverQuest II. If you've been itching for more information on Sentinel's Fate, then look no further than these various scripts to provide you with information -- if you can crack them.

We've placed our four sections of writing in the article after the break, so be sure to click on the continue reading button to get a glimpse of the stuff you'll need to understand. We hear you'll need a big forehead to beat this one. *wink wink*

The Daily Grind: What made it click?

by Eliot Lefebvre Feb 9th 2010 at 8:00AM

Filed under: Culture, Opinion, The Daily Grind

There's almost always a moment. If you're interested in MMOs beyond just enjoying the game while you play it -- and truth be told, if you're reading Massively you pretty well qualify -- then there was most likely a single experience you had somewhere along the line that convinced you these games were special and interesting. Something beyond just a diversion you could take or leave. There was something the game that made you sit up and say that you were experiencing something unique, something that may or may not be commonplace these days but seemed new and fresh at the time.

Perhaps it was the first time you took part in a major PvP battle. Perhaps it was your first struggle against a difficult monster in PvE, realizing that you actually had other real people at your side fighting the monster. It could have been the first time you crafted something you were proud of, or even just a close friend you made in the game that you wouldn't have met otherwise. Today, we're asking you what moment in an MMO first made the whole idea click for you. And for bonus points, looking back on it now, does it seem like you were excited over something silly, or does it still feel unique?

Only two days left for SOE's ConnectDING event!

by Seraphina Brennan Feb 8th 2010 at 12:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, EverQuest, EverQuest II, Culture, Events, in-game, News items, Free-to-play, Free Realms

Two words for you: cushy pillows. Yes, that's right, you heard me.

There are two days left for the Sony Online Entertainment ConnectDING event -- a marketing event designed to get you and your friends looking at the Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts of EverQuest, EverQuest II, and Free Realms. Each one of the games has its own special reward once it hits so many fans, so why turn down free rewards for doing nothing more than clicking a button?

And that, my friends, is where we get to cushy pillows. EverQuest II is close to their goal -- only 2,000 fans shy! However, the event ends on February 10th! Oh teh noes, right? If EQII can get 2,000 more fans, everyone in the game will get 500 station cash for the in-game marketplace and awesome "Community Pillows" to add to their homes. The pillows not only look stylish and reduce the rent status of your property, but they also let avatars have pillow fights when activated!

So please, reach out and become a fan of EverQuest II today. Follow them on Facebook, on Twitter, or on both! Give these poor, orphaned pillows a home. (Plus the cash isn't too bad either.)

The Daily Grind: Would you play a single-player version?

by Eliot Lefebvre Feb 8th 2010 at 8:00AM

Filed under: Culture, Game mechanics, Opinion, The Daily Grind

Whether we mean to or not, we get pretty invested in the online worlds we inhabit. It's a natural step to go from a single-player setting that's already gotten our emotional investment to a larger one (as proven by, oh, some game or another), but oddly the reverse happens far less often. We only occasionally see a game that takes the setting of an MMO and uses it as the basis for one person's adventure. This despite the fact that we're usually more attached to our characters than we are in a single-player game, since our avatars in an MMO are defined entirely by us.

Of course, part of this is the narrowing of scope, and part of it is the difficulty of marketing to people that they can take a break from their characters online to play the exact same character offline. But for the times when you don't want to log in and deal with assembling a group or competition for farming or any of the slings and arrows of playing online, it could be a nice diversion. What do you think? Would you like to have a single-player game based off of your MMO of choice, or would you rather that the online games you enjoy not creep into your single-player time?

Second Life official forums to be replaced Tuesday

by Tateru Nino Feb 7th 2010 at 10:00PM

Filed under: Culture, Forums, News items, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds

Linden Lab is in the throes of closing the official Second Life forums and is creating alternative discussion spaces in its Clearspace blog/forum hybrid.

According to previous figures from Linden Lab staff, fewer than 700 of 18.1 million registered Second Life accounts ever participated in the official forums provided by the Lab. The partial closure of many of the most heavily trafficked areas of those forums when Lab announcements were migrated back out to the blog in 2006 did little to boost participation in the official forums.

The official vbulletin-based forums "did not scale" according to Linden Lab and were difficult to maintain, even for such modest usage levels as they experienced.

EVE Evolved: The development of Incarna

by Brendan Drain Feb 7th 2010 at 6:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Culture, Expansions, MMO industry, Virtual worlds, EVE Evolved

One of the biggest differences between EVE Online and most other MMOs is the lack of a humanoid avatar. Even when you're docked up in a station, you can't leave your ship and walk around. The detailed avatars we create on starting the game are not so much avatars as passport photos; seen only as little square mug shots in chat channels and the official forums. In their never-ending quest to make EVE the definitive Sci-Fi simulation, this is something the game's developers CCP have always endeavoured to change. The introduction of a full body avatar feature, code-named "Walking in Stations", "Ambulation" and now known as "Incarna", has been undeniably the most anticipated feature since EVE went live. It's been in development since 2006 but has proven a much larger task than CCP originally anticipated. With the expansion tentatively slated for winter this year, new information on it is still harder to find than a sober Icelandic game developer.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I take a look at Incarna's development so far and why it hasn't been released yet.

Star Trek Online reaches one million accounts

by Eliot Lefebvre Feb 7th 2010 at 10:00AM

Filed under: Sci-fi, Culture, Opinion, Star Trek Online

If it's not too dated, you can feel free to do the Dr. Evil voice as you read the announcement in your head. Star Trek Online has reached one million registered accounts, an impressive milestone for any game. The announcement follows in the vein of Cryptic's announcement that players had created over one million characters in Champions Online, which was also an impressive milestone... well, until you started to do the math and ask why they were counting the number of characters created rather than players.

There are similar questions to be asked about the latest Star Trek Online announcement, if you're the suspicious type. In short, we don't know the criteria that is being used to get the figure being thrown around. One million accounts could refer to open beta and head start accounts, or it could refer to everyone registered on the forums, even if they've long since stopped posting. It's an odd metric to use.

Still, it's a sign of how strong the IP of Star Trek still is after all these years, and as one of the few major launches planned for the year it's bound to attract quite a bit of attention. Congratulations to Cryptic, and here's hoping that those million accounts stick with the game after a few months.

Enter the Star Trek universe with Cryptic Studios' Star Trek Online. From hands on reviews of the early levels and space combat, through noob questions and developer interviews, we've got everything you need to know about the game trekkies are dying for. Check out Massively's Star Trek Online page for the latest!

The Daily Grind: What IP do you want to see as an MMO?

by Eliot Lefebvre Feb 6th 2010 at 8:00AM

Filed under: Culture, Opinion, The Daily Grind

There are certainly a lot of intellectual properties out there that would make for an excellent MMO. Running down the list of major games currently running shows no shortage of games based on popular franchises -- Star Trek Online, Warhammer Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Age of Conan, Champions Online -- and the trend shows no sign of slowing. But there are other franchises that could conceivably make a number of people happy -- Transformers, The Dark Tower, Doctor Who, Mass Effect, Babylon 5, and so on ad infinitum.

Of course, there are licenses that are unlikely to ever be adapted for MMOs, either because their heyday of popularity has passed or because they're just not in quite the right market. Still, we can dream, and in our heads we might have an idea for the world's best MMO based off of Macross. What intellectual property would you love to have a chance to play as an MMO? Do you think there's a chance it might happen, or are you fairly certain that it's just going to remain an idle fantasy?

Making it as an MMO blogger: The community manager interviews part 2

by Shawn Schuster Feb 5th 2010 at 5:00PM

Filed under: Culture, Interviews, MMO industry, Opinion, Massively Interviews

If you enjoyed our community management feature from yesterday, we present you with part 2!

What level of honesty should bloggers have regarding the benefits and flaws of your game in balancing the interests of the readers and the interests of your company?

David Bass: Bloggers should always be honest. But they should also be fair. Yes, game X might have some issues, but is the company consistently working to improve the game? Are you seeing excellent communication from the team? No MMO is perfect, that's for certain, but in addition to learning where our flaws are, we're also interested to learn what we're doing right. Bloggers aren't there to cater to us as a company, and if your blog is heading in that direction, most readers will notice that and may choose to shy away from it. If you stick to being honest on your blog, that's what will get the company to notice you.

The Daily Grind: How do you like side applications?

by Eliot Lefebvre Feb 5th 2010 at 8:00AM

Filed under: Culture, Opinion, The Daily Grind

If you're playing World of Warcraft, increasingly, you have options available to keep you playing the game even if you're logged off. With several apps running off the Armory and the recent announcement of a planned Auction House access feature as a premium, there's almost no reason to log in at all. Unless you want to level up, quest, roleplay, raid, PvP, explore... okay, there's plenty of reason to log in, but there are more options than ever to let you handle matters inside the game while not even close to your computer.

It's not unprecedented by any means, as both Fallen Earth (coming soon) and Champions Online also offer applications for the iPhone to help take care of the game's management functions while you're away from your computer. With the continued advent of more functional mobile devices and more robust web environments through services such as Facebook, games can offload many of the more tedious bits of gameplay into applications players just run through quickly on a break at their day job. What do you think of the increasing trend? Are you happy to have the option to take care of administrative tasks when not near your computer, or do you see it as intrusive and unnecessary?

GoonSwarm alliance disbanded in EVE Online political drama

by Brendan Drain Feb 4th 2010 at 8:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Culture, Interviews, Lore, PvP, Endgame, Hands-on, Politics

In the sandbox of New Eden, rival alliances vie for control of vast swathes of star systems. The lawless nullsec regions of the EVE Online universe are home to violent alliances of all sizes and fleets with hundreds of ships clash on a daily basis. The political machinations of nullsec have produced many stories of wars fought over territory, stations conquered and fleets dismantled by force. Over the years, each story has become part of the game's living history. Recently, a new chapter in that history began as the nullsec sovereignty system governing territorial warfare received a complete overhaul in the Dominion expansion. The transition period has been rough on some alliances as a new sovereignty system requires new ways of thinking. Some alliances are falling, new ones are being forged to fill the power vacuum and the race is on for people to adapt to the new sovereignty system.

As we've been watching the EVE galaxy performing its Darwinian reshuffle, it came to our surprise that GoonSwarm, the game's biggest territorial alliance, had been disbanded. In the early hours of Wednesday 3rd February 2010, GoonSwarm CEO "karttoon" kicked almost every corp from the alliance, effectively disbanding it. There's more to this story than meets the eye and in this investigative piece, I delve into the thick of it to discover just what's going on with this troubled alliance.

Anti-Aliased: A Cryptic opinion

by Seraphina Brennan Feb 4th 2010 at 6:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, Super-hero, Culture, MMO industry, Opinion, Star Trek Online, Champions Online, Anti-Aliased

So, wow, what a set the last week and a half has been. There seems to be a very strong theme going on in my inbox recently, and that's, without a doubt, Cryptic Studios. I've read unflattering comments about my integrity as a journalist, the usual statements of how this site is Cryptic's lapdog due to all of the Star Trek Online and Champions Online coverage, and, even more oddly, people want to know my opinion of Cryptic's recent actions -- specifically Star Trek Online and Vibora Bay.

Well, I was never one to shirk from the truth. I've been wanting to give my personal opinion on these events since Vibora Bay hit, so I might as well dedicate this column to my evaluation of Cryptic Studios. But, before we get to Cryptic, I have a few ground rules that I want to go over with you guys. Some facts that I'd like to set straight for, oh, I dunno, the fifth time.

Making it as an MMO blogger: An interview with top community managers

by Shawn Schuster Feb 4th 2010 at 4:00PM

Filed under: Culture, Interviews, MMO industry, Opinion, Massively Interviews

Ahh, that eternal debate about what differentiates a gaming blogger from a gaming journalist. We could go on and on about specifics on both sides, but the fact is, we all have the same goals in mind: writing about what we love.

Ravious at Kill Ten Rats approached us with an idea he's been working on for a few months involving MMO bloggers and their relationship with community managers. We thought this was a brilliant idea as a valuable hub of information for MMO bloggers, and offered to help him get it kick-started. So we sent off his questions to nine of the top community managers in the industry to get their take on how bloggers can establish and grow a favorable working relationship with them. With so much information here, we broke it into two parts: one today and the conclusion tomorrow. Follow along for their answers to part one!

Star Trek Online team seeks world record

by Rubi Bayer Feb 4th 2010 at 1:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, Culture, Events, real-world, Star Trek Online

Namco Bandai and Atari are helping Cryptic keep the hype machine for Star Trek Online at full throttle with this latest event: an attempt to make it into the Guinness Book of World Records.

The team at Star Trek Online is pursuing the record for "largest gathering of people dressed as Star Trek characters", and of course, they want your help. Fans in the London area are asked to join dressed as anything Star Trek related. The gathering will take place on London's Millennium Bridge

Join other fans February 14th (bring your significant other -- it's romantic!) at 1.00pm on the bridge and prepare to be checked out by officials from Guinness to be sure everyone is dressed in full Trek regalia. Best dressed fans can win Star Trek Online prizes, including lifetime subscriptions.

Check out all the details on the event here, and if you attend, have a great time.