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Steam is having a weekend sale which includes the sci-fi MMO EVE Online, now offered for $9.99. The Steam sale pricing ends on Monday, June 9th. If you're interested in giving EVE Online a go, then grab it on Steam now. That's not a bad way to burn $10 and 6 gigs of hard disk space, take it from a convert to the game. And of course you'll get the free Empyrean Age expansion that CCP Games is rolling out on June 11th. Check out Steam's EVE page -- where they're also offering a free 21-day trial -- and who knows, maybe we'll see you in the galaxy of New Eden soon. Just don't get too attached to that ship...

Via Gaming Today

In an interview with Allakhazam, Vanguard producer Thom Terrazas talked about how his game is going right now, how it is currently being improved, and improvements that can be expected for the future. Allakhazam wasn't afraid to ask the tough questions, bringing up the game's less-than-stellar launch, and asking Terrazas to pinpoint the areas that have held back Vanguard until now.

Terrazas admits that the performance and system requirements of the game during the launch period lost them a lot of players, but promises that these issues are well behind them now, with a lot of optimization to the client. His advice is to get in the game and join a guild, and promises that his team listen do the community and make updates accordingly. But with the next generation of MMOs already upon us, is it too late for Vanguard to recover?

I managed to get my hands on an Age of Conan beta key this morning, so off I went to excitedly download the client. I'm a big fan of Robert E. Howard's original pulps, and I've been looking forward to the grim and gritty world of Hyboria for a while now. Most of what I've read about it so far has been very positive (with a few notable exceptions due to some of the design choices). Our own write-up of the overall beta experience from Michael Zenke was very encouraging with regard to the combat, gameplay, and feel of the world. Overall, it seems like there's a lot to be excited about. There's just one glaring issue that everyone seems to be having: the graphics are choking their machines.

This isn't a new phenomenon. It seems like every new game on the market in the last few years wants to beat our poor, 1-3 year old computers into lifeless heaps of rubbish with their outlandish and ridiculous system requirements. Even World of Warcraft, a game celebrated for its accessibility and ability to be run on older machines, wasn't that way at launch (though it was substantially better than its major competitors at the time, EverQuest 2 and City of Heroes). However, this strategy of supercharged visuals has made things hard for a number of games. Vanguard in particular suffered a lot of criticism for having ridiculous system requirements when it launched, and that's just one example. Given that people would like to actually be able to play these games, why on earth do game designers insist on shoving next-gen graphics down our throats when the vast majority of us have last-gen machines (or worse)?

We're sure that when you think of Age of Conan, you think about ground texture optimization. If that's not the first thing that pops into your head, it should be. All right, so maybe it shouldn't be, but it's still rather important -- we promise. If you don't believe us, just go check out the new AoC developer blog at 1up.com for proof.

We have to admit to being skeptical ourselves until we saw the before and after screenshots. Not only does the ground art look much better, it also takes up less system resources -- which is always a huge plus. We wonder if this kind of dedication goes into the other visual aspects of Age of Conan.

Would we rather see talk about some other topics? Sure, but it's always nice to see some examples of how Age of Conan has been optimized to run smoother. With the release date only a couple months away, the stream of information continues to grow -- with an exception for the occasional trickle now and then.

[via RPGDot]

If you've been waiting with bated breath (much like us) for Funcom to finally release the recommended and required system specs for Age of Conan, then you'll be pleased to hear that the wait is finally over. It's about time too, we were starting to look into the cost of flying to Norway and raiding their offices Barbarian-style. Then when we thought about it, the cost of double-sided great axes and authentic moleskin trousers was just too much when combined with the plane ticket.

It all works out in the end, since you can find the much-awaited required specs after the break.

Anyone who has spent any time around Massively is most likely aware of the One Shots column we run daily that showcases many different user-submitted screenshots like the one above. One of the things that strikes me in running it from day to day is how completely different games look from one person's screenshots to the next person's. Obviously, this comes down to things like hardware, whether or not they're running DX10, and the like.

For today we'd like to ask you this -- would you, or have you ever upgraded your entire machine just to play one game? Perhaps you just turn your graphics down to the lowest setting and get by? Alternately, do you not mind if you're required to turn everything down, or do you feel like you're not able to enjoy the game as much? With WoW being so system-resource friendly, is it wise to try to push into games that have much higher system requirements -- or do developers risk cutting themselves off from part of the new-MMO player market?

Netdevil has launched the website for Jumpgate Evolution, their new space combat MMO expected out in 2008. The site features some new info about the game, new screenshots, a little bit of flash video, and forums for the community.

I'm not quite sure how much of this is new to hardcore JE followers, but I do note that the forums feature spaces for the "Octavian," "Quantar," and "Solrain" nations, so it looks like those will be the three nationalities available at game launch. Unfortunately, the game info page is pretty vague, but it does have System Requirements on there, and they are forgiving to say the least-- you won't need a top-of-the-line rig to fly this galaxy.

If you're hungry for more Jumpgate info, make sure to give our interview with the producer a read as well. The game is currently taking signups for a beta, and it's due out in the second half of next year.

[Via VW]

Accessibility is a big buzz word in the MMO industry right now. After some hardcore titles failed to gain traction, a lot of people are thinking that spending millions of extra dollars to make cutting edge games that only 5% of gamers can or will pay doesn't make a lot of sense.

Among those people is NetDevil's Hermann Peterscheck, Producer of Jumpgate Evolution. He recently wrote up a dev journal post at MMORPG about accessibility. First he talks about making games that are, to quote Einstein, "as simple as possible, but not any simpler." Then he talks about hardware requirements as a barrier to entry.

Looks like NetDevil plans to be conservative on both counts so as to reach a broad market. But that doesn't necessarily mean Jumpgate Evolution will be shallow. Peterscheck uses Chess as an example of a game that takes 20 minutes to learn but potentially a lifetime to master.