featured posts

Asheron's Call lead designer talks 10-Year anniversary, the MMO market, more

by Tracey John Nov 6th 2009 at 5:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Sci-fi, Asheron's Call, Interviews, MMO industry, The Matrix Online, Casual

Not many MMOs last a decade, and this week marks 10 years since the launch of Asheron's Call, the fantasy MMORPG by Turbine Entertainment. Releasing several months after EverQuest, the game held its own and found its way to becoming one of the top MMOs of its time, providing fond memories for many players.

"I'm very proud of Asheron's Call, even today," said former AC lead designer Toby Ragaini in an e-mail to Massively. "It really broke a lot of new ground and I still have people come up to me saying what a great time they had playing. That's a pretty wonderful compliment after 10 years."

Ragaini, who has since worked on Sony Online Entertainment's The Matrix Online and is now working on a casual web-based MMO called Faunasphere, reminisced about working on Asheron's Call and spoke about what it's like working in the MMO market after 14 years of being in the biz.

Tags: asherons-call, faunasphere, featured, the-matrix-online, toby-ragaini

MMO Family: Parental control tools

by Lisa Poisso Nov 6th 2009 at 3:30PM

Filed under: Kids, MMO Family

MMO Family is your resource for leveling a gaming-specced family ... From tips on balancing gaming with family life to finding age-appropriate niches for every family member, MMO Family offers you advice on MMO gaming of the family, by the family and for the family.

If you've been following along here at MMO Family, you'll know we keep a pretty big toolbox. What works for one family won't fit another, so we believe in offering a lot of different options. You can't possibly use every tool at once -- or maybe you could, although you probably shouldn't. You'd be one busy parent if you attempted to wield all 17 internet safety tactics at once for every child, every day. You'd never have time to actually log in and play if you ran every game screening technique known to man ... Treat all these tactics like a buffet, and load up your plate with the ideas you think fit your family's taste.

That said, we've got another big tool for the box this week: parental controls. These settings on your computer, game consoles and individual games let you limit access to game features you don't want your children to use. You can use parental controls to determine what games your kids play (and block those M-rated games borrowed from the friend at school), who they're playing them with and when they're playing them.

Tags: children, family, featured, monitor, parental-controls, parents, schedule

MMOrigins: MUD on the tires

by Shawn Schuster Nov 6th 2009 at 12:30PM

Filed under: Real life, Culture, Opinion, MMOrigins

Welcome to MMOrigins, a new weekly series here at Massively where we take a look at what makes us who we are as MMO gamers. Much in the style of our Redefining MMOs series, several members of the Massively team will have their chance to take a look back at their influences, favorite classic games and what got them to where they are today. Then, as we've done before, we'll ask you to compile your own blog posts on the same topic and we'll showcase it for the finale.

So I thought I would kick this new series off with my own influences and origins in gaming and what molded my current enjoyment of MMOs. As anyone who grew up in the 1980s might know, the dawn of personal computer video gaming was an exciting time. With inexpensive hardware such as the Atari 2600 and the Commodore 64 and 128, you didn't have to always get your mom to drive you to the arcade to play some good games.

Tags: featured, influences, mmorigins, opinion, origins

Anti-Aliased: It pays to be paranoid

by Seraphina Brennan Nov 5th 2009 at 5:30PM

Filed under: Super-hero, Business models, Culture, MMO industry, Opinion, Champions Online, Anti-Aliased

Blame Shawn Schuster. No, really, it's applicable this time and I'm not just pulling your leg.

Many of you were wondering why we hadn't talked about the Champions Online failures this past weekend -- The "Blood Moon Blunder." Well, it was because pretty much the second we started getting reports from you guys about the client not working on Steam, or subscribing players complaining of the lag that the servers had over the weekend, Shawn turned to me, slapped the story on my desk and said, "All yours for Anti-Aliased."

And I sat there, smiled, and politely responded, "Oh crap. This is going to drive them all up the wall even further than last week's article. I'll do it."

So was the Champions free weekend a failure? Absolutely, but not for the reasons you may think. Come on, follow me after the break, and we'll go into yet another (and hopefully the last for a while) opinion column on Champions.

Tags: anti-aliased, blood-moon, business, champions, champions-online, cryptic-studios, featured, free-weekend, halloween-event, mmo-industry, opinion

Exclusive interview with Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon

by Tateru Nino Nov 5th 2009 at 10:00AM

Filed under: Interviews, Second Life, Virtual worlds

Mark Kingdon, Linden Lab's CEO, has been a bit of a mystery figure since his appointment about a year and a half ago. While he has not been uncommunicative, it's been hard to get a very good sense of the man at the helm of Linden Lab, his passions, interests and direction.

We were very pleased, therefore, when he took the time to sit down with us and answer a whole grab-bag of questions, about himself, about Linden Lab, and – of course – about Second Life. Bear with us, because we've got a lot of ground to cover.

Tags: cyn-linden, cyn-skyberg, featured, fj-linden, frank-ambrose, hamlet-au, interviews, linden-lab, m-linden, mark-kingdon, open-source, opensim, organic, philip-linden, philip-rosedale, PricewaterhouseCoopers, second-life, second-life-viewer, sl-version-2.0, slcc, tom-hale, virtual-worlds, wagner-james-au

Choose my Adventure: The Marketplace

by Shawn Schuster Nov 4th 2009 at 5:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Culture, Free-to-play, Hands-on, Roleplaying, Choose my Adventure

Join me as I brave my way through lands unknown in an adventure dictated entirely by you, the Massively readers! Vote for everything from game played to character creation to ultimate goal and watch it unfold in a series of journals and galleries here on the site. Then, as the ultimate goal is reached, we'll do it all over again in a new game!

This week, we've made our way through the rest of the Waterworks quests in Dungeons and Dragons Online and into the Marketplace and the Cerulean Hills. Despite our limited time together, the Critical Mass bunch are really making headway through these quests.

We've finally brought back the polls for this week, as you'll have a chance to not only vote on where we go from here, but also enjoy a revisit to the use of Turbine Points earned so far. Follow along after the jump for Fahryn's in-character journal, my impressions and the return of the polls!

Tags: choose-my-adventure, ddo, dungeons-and-dragons-online, f2p, featured, free-to-play, turbine

Massively Speaking Episode 75

by Shawn Schuster Nov 4th 2009 at 1:00PM

Filed under: Podcasts, Culture, Opinion, Massively Speaking

Massively Speaking Episode 75 is back this week as Rubi Bayer once again joins Shawn for talk of MMOs news, including Star Trek Online Eurogamer impressions, Jagex's cancellation of MechScape, WAR's free trial and much more.

Have a comment for the podcasters? Shoot us an email to podcast AT massively DOT com. Maybe we'll read your letter on the air!

Get the podcast:
[iTunes] Subscribe to Massively Speaking directly in iTunes.
[Zune] Subscribe to Massively Speaking via the Zune service.
[RSS] Add Massively Speaking to your RSS aggregator.
[Digg] Like the show? Digg it.
[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.
[VW] Listen at VirginWorlds.com
Listen here on the page:

Read below the cut for the full show notes.

Tags: featured, massively-speaking, podcasting, podcasts

Star Trek Online lore: 2379 to 2384

by Adam Holisky Nov 3rd 2009 at 3:00PM

Filed under: Star Trek Online

It's rare for an MMO to bring with it a history as rich and generational as Star Trek. The Trek universe is as deep and rich with lore as Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, and just like both those titles the lore has been passed down from parent to child over generations now. This leaves any game which attempts to encapsulate that lore in a precarious situation of both having to remain close to the canon, yet leaving enough creative room for the player to feel like they're making a true difference in the universe.

And while we have yet to see if Star Trek Online lives up to the second part of that criteria, we can take a look at how they are moving the lore forward and dealing with the canocial events of past Trek incarnations. The main conduit for this lesson in lore has been through the sporadic postings of The Path to 2409 on the official STO website. However, there's a lot of information there and it's quite easy to get lost in it all.

So, let's take a look at the Star Trek Online timeline Cryptic has released thus far. To begin with, we'll go over the years 2379 through 2384.

Tags: alternate-timeline, bajor, cardassian, cryptic, cryptic-studios, featured, federation, jj-abrams, klingon, reman, romulan, spock, star-trek, star-trek-movie, star-trek-online, star-trek-timeline, stark-trek-movie, sto, sto-timeline, timeline, vulcan

GameX 2009: Our hands-on with Global Agenda

by Seraphina Brennan Nov 3rd 2009 at 2:30PM

Filed under: Betas, Sci-fi, Game mechanics, PvP, PvE, MMOFPS, Global Agenda, Massively Hands-on, Massively Event Coverage

It's an MMO, it's a shooter, and we stealthily gathered enemy intelligence on it at GameX 2009. It's Hi-Rez's Global Agenda, the "spy-fi" team based shooter that has lots of people talking in excited whispers.

We sat down at Hi-Rez's gaming rigs once again for a look at the game, and this time we went beyond the PvP matches. We got to have some personal time with Global Agenda's PvE mode, getting an inside look at how secret agents deal with insane governments that utilize robots to the Nth degree.

So what can you expect from Global Agenda, both PvP and PvE-wise? If our looks into the game were any indication, you can expect lots.

Tags: beta, featured, gamex, gamex-2009, global-agenda, hands-on, hi-rez-studios, mmofps, pve, pvp, spy-fi

Welcome to Massively's third year!

by Shawn Schuster Nov 2nd 2009 at 6:30PM

Filed under: Events, real-world, News items, Massively meta, Massively Event Coverage

Massively.com officially turns two years old today, and while that may be quite young for an MMO news site, we'd like to think we've really made a name for ourselves in that time. Starting out as the secret love child of Second Life Insider, WoW Insider (now WoW.com) and the rest of the Joystiq network, we've come a long way in our 730 days.

As we fondly reminisce about the good times we've had, we thought it would be best to not only compile our own favorite content, but also reach out to our readers for their own favorites. After all, without you, we would be nothing. Literally. No, seriously, we love you all. Even Graill and Mr. Angry!

So we reached out to our Twitter followers earlier today to grab a few opinions and combine them with our own. Follow along in the gallery below for our showcase of best content, and feel free to add your favorites in the comments below.

Gallery: Two years of Massively features

Tags: anniversary, birthday, featured, two-year-anniversary

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.

Tags: blizzard, diablo, diablo-2, diablo-ii, featured, mythos, perfect-world, persistent-world, pve, pvp, runic-games, the-digital-continuum, torchlight, world-of-warcraft, wow

Massively's pre-launch interview with Alganon

by Shawn Schuster Nov 2nd 2009 at 12:00PM

Filed under: Betas, Fantasy, Game mechanics, Interviews, MMO industry, New titles, Massively Interviews, Alganon

After a newly-announced launch delay, we now have just under a month before Quest Online's Alganon releases to the public. Now in its beta stage, Alganon has enjoyed mixed reviews since the NDA was lifted two weeks ago. We thought we'd take this opportunity to ask some of the questions floating around about this new fantasy MMO, and how it sets itself apart from existing fantasy MMOs.

Quest Online's president and co-founder, David Allen, was kind enough to answer our questions, which include everything from those of PvP content to his thoughts on being compared to World of Warcraft. Keep reading below for the complete interview.

Gallery: Alganon

Tags: alganon, david-allen, featured, interview, pre-launch, quest-online, world-of-warcraft

EVE Evolved: Postcards from EVE: Reader Submissions

by Brendan Drain Nov 1st 2009 at 6:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, Galleries, Screenshots, EVE Online, Culture, Wallpapers, Hands-on, EVE Evolved

As a tribute to EON Magazine's "Postcards from the Edge" feature, last week I started this two-part series of postcards from all around EVE Online. In last week's first part I presented a gallery full of postcards from my own travels in EVE. I then asked readers to email in any of their own screenshots that they wanted to appear as postcards. This week, I finish the series with a mixture of reader submissions and my own remaining postcards. As with last week, they're all high-resolution shots suitable to be used as widescreen backgrounds. Feel free to save them out from your browser to get them at full resolution.

Thanks go to Massively readers "Mike", "Mark Pittam" and my corpmate "Retalus" for their submissions. Included are some shots of the new planets coming with the Dominion expansion in December and a lot of pictures from Sleeper space. Hope you enjoy!

Gallery: EVE Online Postcards, part 2

Tags: ccp, ccp-games, dominion, eon, eve, eve-evolved, eve-online, featured, gallery, nyphur, planets, postcard, postcards, sci-fi, screenshot, screenshots, wallpaper

Massively's Star Trek Online beta interview

by Kyle Horner Oct 31st 2009 at 11:00AM

Filed under: Betas, News items, Star Trek Online, Massively Interviews

With beta now beginning, we shot some relevant questions at Cryptic's Craig Zinkievich, executive producer on Star Trek Online. He gave us his insight on what the team's goals are during beta and what some of their toughest challenges were from their point of view. Plus, we even got him to spill the beans on when Klingons would be entering the fray for beta testers -- hopefully the rest of us get to see and hear more about the warrior race soon thereafter.

It's a short interview, mostly because we kept our questions on topic and well, also because we didn't want to distract Craig from working on his game for very long. Someone's got to work on fulfilling our childhood fantasies!

Tags: atari, beta, closed-beta, content, craig-zinkievich, cryptic, cryptic-studios, featured, federation, klingon, klingons, ship-combat, space-combat, star-trek, star-trek-online, sto

GameX 2009: Inside Global Agenda's PvE and AvA persistent content battles

by Seraphina Brennan Oct 30th 2009 at 6:00PM

Filed under: Betas, Sci-fi, Video, Business models, Game mechanics, Interviews, MMO industry, PvE, MMOFPS, Global Agenda, Massively Interviews, Massively Event Coverage

As we've said before, we got to see many, many people at GameX 2009 this year. But one of the main reasons we went to the expo was to catch up once again with the team from Hi-Rez Studios and ask them some more questions on their "spy-fi" MMOFPS, Global Agenda.

On the top of our burning question list was what exactly made Global Agenda into an MMO, so we set out to ask associate producer Michal Adam all about what made their AvA and persistent world battles so special. Along the way, we also inquired as to what their PvE content will hold, and what rewards players could expect to find from participating in Global Agenda: Conquest.

For our full video interview with Michal, look no further than after the break!

Tags: alliance-vs-alliance, ava, featured, gamex, gamex-2009, global-agenda, michal-adam, mmofps, persistent-world, pve, pvp, spy-fi