Massively^™

The first official patch to Lord of the Rings Online's Book 14 has arrived today, and with it comes mostly bug fixes, gameplay balance issues and crafting improvements. However, some of the most pressing changes were ironically added at the very bottom of the patch notes page.

In order of awesomeness: Summer Festival music boxes now work properly, the Summer Festival horse's blanket has been "toned down" and the Auction House has been fixed! Yes, that's right, the annoying bug that prevented spaces and dashes to be entered into the AH search box (except for dragging and dropping the name from an existing item) has now been fixed. This means we can all go back to searching for items that we didn't already own, which was not fun and caused many players to forego the AH completely until this bug was fixed. Rejoice! It is now fixed.

All of the most popular and successful MMOs have an auction house of some sort, but Rohan Online's recent addition of their Trading Center introduces players to some interesting features. Despite the fact that their basic in-game economy is based on the RMT purchase of Rohan Points, there are many options available.

The three main parts of the Trading Center are the Item Mall, the Exchange Market and Special Services. In the Item Mall, you can purchase in-game items from the company itself, but with the Exchange Market, you buy, sell and trade with other players. This is a great way to make your own Rohan Points instead of buying them yourself. In the Special Services section, you can buy changes to your characters from a new name to a new gender. All item purchases are conducted through a safe and secure environment and will be immediately added to your account.

How many times have you wanted to check on your game stats, switch skill training, or buy something at an auction house while you were nowhere near your computer? We have a host of mobile devices and services available to us with speed increases every year, but still connections to our online social networks are quite limited when we're not in front of our computers.

Shouldn't more companies focus on allowing our mobile devices to act as extensions of our computers and consoles? That's what Tom Sperry, CEO and President of Exit Games Inc. thinks. He lays out his vision for how things can improve, in this scenario:

Who needs pesky graphics and immersively realistic environments anyway? Estiah is a new browser-based MMO that is completely free and approaches the usual online gaming experience from a bit of an "old school meets new school" angle with the fact that it is mostly a text-based adventure. Aside from the battle animations which take on a card game feel, and the world map, the rest of the game is strictly text-based.

Now you may be wondering why we would cover something like this here at Massively, but let's take a look at just a few of the game elements to determine how massively multiplayer it really is.

• PvP: Check! Battle other players in your daily traveling adventures, or head out to the arena looking for a fight. There's even an achievement ladder.
• Auction House: Check! You can travel between cities to buy and sell goods to other players.
  
• Raid Grouping: Check! You can actually join up with your friends to take on dungeon raids for that very best loot.

Hell is about to get even hotter, as Flagship Studios prepares to unleash fresh content for Hellgate: London. Our sister blog Big Download has some posted new screenshots of the upcoming Abyss Chronicles for HG:L, as well as info on the 2.0 and 2.1 updates to the title. Patch 2.0 will be Hellgate: London's second major content update, and brings with it a host of new features and changes to the game. The build is likely to go live on the Test Server in the next week, but until then, here's Big Download's breakdown of the 2.0 changes:

• A new quest line that covers the spread of the Abyss through Parliament Square and the survivors' efforts to fight back

• A major rebalancing of the Blademaster class

• A complete PvP overhaul, including achievements, rankings, rewards, and a new CTF team gametype

• Changes to the Shared Stash, such as a separate pane for each difficulty

• Addition of two new trinket slots for players to add rings and such to their characters

• An attribute respec NPC that allows players to remove points from an attribute for a fee-per-point

• Three new skills for each class

• A consignment house (read: auction house) where players can sell stuff to other players without direct trading

Beyond rolling out The Abyss Chronicles with 2.0, the next area Flagship Studios is focusing on is PvP through Patch 2.1. The patch will 'open up an entirely new side to Hellgate: London' by introducing five cohesive elements of PvP in a single update: ranking, matchmaking, rewards, achievements, and Capture the Flag. The end result is what Flagship describes as 'a robust PvP experience.'

There's a person out there who claims that all they need to know about business can be learned from World of Warcraft. A fine sentiment, to be sure, but I take issue with its accuracy. Today we are discussing the first of their eleven business topics: value chains – and why they don't work.

In brief, value chain analysis states that for any good requiring multiple stages of production (meaning you don't just rip it out of your backyard and eat it), value is added at each level of refinement. Therefore the price should increase along its path to becoming a finalized product.

... And we're not talking about selling accounts on eBay.

One of the most frustrating aspects of being a new player in an established game, to my mind, is the cost of start-up crafting materials. Hit up any public market area, auction house, trade square or similar as a newbie and you will see what I mean. Even low-level items of any use (i.e. not vendor trash) are sold for seemingly absurd amounts given the time that would be required at early levels in order to generate the money. It can make the start of a new character infuriating and the game too taxing (pun fully intended) to continue. Why does this happen? What makes these things so costly? Why can't we all just get along...? (Oh wait, that's another column entirely)

It's hard to imagine a massively game without some sort of auction house system in place. For Tabula Rasa players last year during launch it was an actual reality, but that changed in time. Eventually Destination Games added the Military Surplus system, which is essentially an auction house but with a properly themed name. A lot of players were happy to finally have a marketplace (even with bugs), but many people weren't quite sure how to price their product.

So when the subject of whether or not the Military Surplus system is needed in TR, out ears definitely perked up a bit. The article in question is over at Ten Ton Hammer, and actually covers ways to improve the economy present currently in the game more than anything else. Although there are plenty of different ways the economy could be improved, everyone benefits from it one way or another -- we think it's here to stay in Tabula Rasa.