Filed under: The Digital Continuum

The Digital Continuum: LotRO's feature future

by Kyle Horner Nov 17th 2009 at 6:00PM

Filed under: Lord of the Rings Online, Expansions, Opinion, The Digital Continuum

There are many wonderful features within Lord of the Rings Online, especially with Siege of Mirkwood edging upon the horizon like a merchant's ship carrying treasure chests full of shiny new features. However, for many a person, the game just doesn't click into place. Whether it's because of a missing feature or the pace of combat, some people find themselves unable to acclimate a groove.

So let's talk about features and changes that would help attract fresh blood while keeping the old guard happy -- because changing the core of an MMO is never truly a good idea, but bring in fresh blood doesn't hurt.

The Digital Continuum: LotRO's feature future, part 2

by Kyle Horner Nov 17th 2009 at 6:00PM

Filed under: Lord of the Rings Online, Expansions, Opinion, The Digital Continuum

The Digital Continuum: Five exciting MMOs in 2010

by Kyle Horner Nov 9th 2009 at 12:30PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, Opinion, The Digital Continuum

Space, car chases and heroic fantasies lie in wait, plotting the demise of our nights and weekends. 2010 will soon be upon us and with it a whole new set of MMO releases, which means it's time to look at some of the most exciting ones. Some are obvious, while others are surprises even to me. Overall, however, this next year is going to be pretty crazy for fans of the genre.

These are my five most exciting titles that the coming year has to offer, whether it wants to or not.

The Digital Continuum: Five exciting MMOs in 2010, part 2

by Kyle Horner Nov 9th 2009 at 12:30PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, Opinion, The Digital Continuum

The Digital Continuum: Torchlight my fire

by Kyle Horner Nov 2nd 2009 at 1:00PM

Filed under: Opinion, Free-to-play, The Digital Continuum

For the past week I've been delving deep into the dungeons of Runic Games' Torchlight and found the experience to be nothing short of joyous. Granted, like many other people I also wish some kind of co-op shipped with the game (even over LAN) but thankfully the developer's next project will be an MMO built upon the foundation laid down by last week's release.

My joy for this game most definitely bleeds into its MMO incarnation, which has led to far too much thinking on additions I'd like to see made. So this week, I'm going to get them all off my chest in the hopes that I'll stop obsessing over them. Of course, there's never a guarantee with these things.

The Digital Continuum: Torchlight my fire, page 2

by Kyle Horner Nov 2nd 2009 at 1:00PM

Filed under: Opinion, Free-to-play, The Digital Continuum

The Digital Continuum: 'Comfort' grind

by Kyle Horner Oct 26th 2009 at 3:00PM

Filed under: MMO industry, Opinion, The Digital Continuum

Often times grind is lambasted as the worst part of this genre, something to be minimized and removed to any and all extent. I understand all too well why; hundreds of hours of brain melting repetitiveness. Only here's the rub: the very nature of MMOs -- persistence -- creates a grind. Unless you keep it under a reasonable number of hours played, it'll turn into a festival of grind.

I used to think this was a colossal problem, yet lately I'm beginning to rethink my stance.

The Digital Continuum: A week with Aion

by Kyle Horner Oct 19th 2009 at 3:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Aion, Opinion, The Digital Continuum

After spending a week playing Aion over every other game in my library -- a feat considering I've got Brutal Legend and Uncharted 2 -- I'm feeling ready to discuss the game in a meaningful fashion.

It's hard to gauge what kind of game you're dealing with when an MMO launches, largely because the reality is that, often times, much of what an MMO is designed to be will change over the course of its first half year or so of development. With Aion, we're dealing with a deliberately designed concept that's been mostly well executed on -- more on that later.

The Digital Continuum: In pursuit of immersion

by Kyle Horner Oct 12th 2009 at 1:00PM

Filed under: Game mechanics, MMO industry, Opinion, The Digital Continuum

Some folks feel that immersion should trump game mechanics in a way that other find uncomfortable. Should we parley mechanics for the 'greater good' of some mystical all encompassing concept of improved immersion? Good question, and perfect for today's The Digital Continuum.

Immersion vs. mechanics, it's a theme that grabs you by the shirt collar and smacks you around a little bit -- or a lot, depending on how serious you take the discussion.

The Digital Continuum: Champions Online's first content lap

by Kyle Horner Oct 6th 2009 at 1:00PM

Filed under: Opinion, The Digital Continuum, Champions Online

October is here and with it comes Champions Online's first month of heavy content updates. There's all sorts of improvements and additions hitting in the coming weeks to discuss, let alone what to expect for November and beyond. Plus, the Blood Moon update sounds like a whole lot of seasonal fun. I'd be lying if I said I didn't wish there was a repeatable mission where I got to kill moping vampires.

The Digital Continuum: Champions Online needs...

by Kyle Horner Sep 28th 2009 at 12:00PM

Filed under: Opinion, The Digital Continuum, Champions Online

Champions Online is a fun game, but it still needs work like any recently released MMO. Some of these needs are purely subjective on my part, but others are definitely a necessity. The way I see it, if Cryptic can work these changes in before the end of the year they're well on their way to keeping my subscription into the far, far future.

The Digital Continuum: Conflict evolution

by Kyle Horner Sep 21st 2009 at 3:00PM

Filed under: MMO industry, Opinion, The Digital Continuum

Conflict is at the core of just about everything. This is particularly true of MMOs, and why almost each and every single one of them is driven by conflict of some variety. For the most part that conflict is or results in combat, and as we all know, combat is probably the one thing you do most in your game of choice.

So where's it all headed?

The Digital Continuum: Champions Online launch edition

by Kyle Horner Sep 14th 2009 at 10:30AM

Filed under: Opinion, The Digital Continuum, Champions Online

It's been about a couple weeks since Champions Online launched, and I've been enjoying the game through the good and the bad. Yes, there have been some rough patches – particularly for early start players whose characters were designed before the big launch-day patch. So let's talk about a few of the issues some people are having with the game. Namely, I want to address the difficulty complaints that some people have been voicing, because they're not entirely wrong.

The Digital Continuum: Outrageous outcomes

by Kyle Horner Aug 31st 2009 at 9:00AM

Filed under: Culture, Opinion, The Digital Continuum

Sometimes I can actually hear the barking, crowing and general upheaval of a community to the extent that my knee jerk response is to consume the cacophony of squawking in a great ball of churning fire. Thankfully, I always resist that urge, and much for the better. That doesn't mean I'm unwilling to share those initial feelings here, though.

There's a good reason I'm sharing an otherwise personal knee jerk reaction. Too many people don't deny the evil voice growling incessantly from the back of the mind. They allow that pure id impulse to take the journey from their -- quite temporarily deranged -- minds, down their limbs, through their fingertips and into the comments section of many a website.

The Digital Continuum: Expanding horizontally

by Kyle Horner Aug 24th 2009 at 10:30AM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, Expansions, Opinion, The Digital Continuum

The worlds we live in are always expanding some way or another. In our real world, we get promotions or new career opportunities. In our virtual equivalents, it's level cap raises and new classes. Yet for years and years, too many expansions have overlooked what they're truly capable of accomplishing.

In real life, we can't go back and make our teens, twenties and thirties better than they once were because that's physically impossible. So why in these worlds of infinite possibilities, have countless developers scoffed at the chance to do this very thing?

Lucky for us, Funcom and Blizzard recently both asked themselves this very question. While the latter may be doing something much more grandiose than the former, both deserve our praise for finally turning around and swimming upstream in a current of same old grind goals. Plus, it doesn't hurt that Blizzard is sitting on the Mt. Everest of money hills.