Massively^™

A bit over a month since we saw Update 60, The Matrix Online has been patched with Update 61, and there are two main reasons for fans to be excited. The first is a continuation of TMO's storyline, with Chapter 10.3 and new critical missions, and the second is the opening of a new construct called Sati's Playground. At the playground, you will be able to spawn sequences of enemies by using special items, and some new vendors and collectors relating to this construct have also been added.

There has already been one critical mission during the week relating to Chapter 10.3, and there will be another one each Thursday for four more weeks. You can get the full patch notes at TMO's community site.

Sony Online Entertainment is responsible for quite a number of MMOs, and they've got a useful system in place to allow communication with people across their game worlds. However, many people either don't know about this system, or simply don't know how to wrangle it into doing what they want. To help with this, SOE has written a guide illustrating how EverQuest players can chat to their friends in other games.

The games that EQ players can send both private messages and in-game mail to are EverQuest II, Planetside, Vanguard, The Matrix Online, and Star Wars: Galaxies. It's also possible to communicate with players on different EQ servers, but many of the servers have abbreviations that must be used in the commands -- these can be found in the guide. Now don't go acting all surprised when you're hiding from a guild raid on another server and your guild master sends you a tell!

I'll be blunt -- I hate grouping. Nothing pains me more than grouping up with four of the "internet's finest" and going into a dungeon to kill some monsters. 95% of the time, it seems I'm doomed to find 4chan (NSFW) rejects or screaming 10-year-old kids (NSFW). Of course, these are the parties that take an hour and a half to assemble and only last two rooms into the dungeon. Someone inevitably screws up and gets six mobs on them, and then they instantly turn around and blame the priest for "not being able to heal properly". Of course they don't actually say "not being able to heal properly"; it comes out more like "u suck n00b priest".

"Greetings, programs." These are the first words you hear as you enter the vast, coldly glittering chamber, prodded forward by a hulking, cowled figure wielding a shockstaff. You glance nervously around you. Your companions seem equally confused and frightened. High above you upon a raised platform, glowing redly, is an Enforcer -- one of the Master Control Program's elite warriors. "You have been chosen to compete against each other for our amusement. Failure to compete is rewarded with deresolution. A victory ensures another day of life. You shall compete until you lose. A loss is punished with deresolution. Today you will receive training. Tomorrow you shall compete. End of line."

One of the cowled figures roughly thrusts a glowing blue disc into your trembling hands, which you hold to yourself like a lifeline, which it is. Your training begins.

Released into theaters in 1982, Tron is a movie about computers, written before the emergence of the World Wide Web. It posited a world inside the hardware, occupied by anthropomorphized programs. Though some of its ideas bear little resemblance to reality, the story and themes still hold up to repeated viewing, and it's a fun ride with interesting visuals. Despite the numerous adaptations into videogame form the movie has endured, the world of Tron could make a fun and engaging MMO. We'll take a look at how its mechanics might work after the jump.

SOE deployed Update 60 on The Matrix Online's servers this week. The update doesn't just fix bugs. It also marks the beginning of Episode 10.2 of the story, introduces some new enemies in Datamine, and adds a reward for players who complete live critical missions.

If you're looking to earn the new reward items (a consumable of some sort), said missions are scheduled every Thursday up through the 12th of June; the first of those occurred yesterday, but a recap has been published. The update also introduces a whopping 342 new level 50 weapon variants, some of which will drop during the high level critical missions.

We're glad to see that MxO is still ticking despite the announced departure of Paul Chadwick, the esteemed comic book writer who had worked on the story until recently.

In honor of the Matrix Online's third anniversary, the development team has let a genie out of a bottle: the insidious Agent Smith virus. As foretold by the Oracle, he's returned more powerful than ever -- and operatives on both sides of the Machine war are needed to stop him. The old lady has put together a team of virologists all around the gameworld of MxO, all near key city monuments. Seek them out to get access to quests and information about stopping Smith (again).

For a real treat, log into the game on the exact anniversary: this Friday, March 21st. Between 3pm and 5pm PST (6pm and 8pm EST) the familiar faces of the MxO team will be online to chat and have some fun. Seek them out on Syntax server, in the Camon Heights Park area. Anniversary wishes, cookies, and cool in-game t-shirts are in the offing for both questers and party-goers alike. Just make sure to take the red pill in time.

Recently, Daniel "Walrus" Myers popped his head out of The Matrix (or into, depending on which side you think this is) to give all the Redpills out there some great information on what's been planned for The Matrix Online in the upcoming month. Most of it, for those of us who play MxO, know that it involves evolving the storyline as we move from Chapter 8 (which just ended on November 15th -- hooray chapter and arc rewards!) to Chapter 9. Also included in the next batch of updates is the fix for Bullet Time animations and finishing moves.

Also returning to The Matrix Online is the third annual Winter Holiday Event. More hats and snowballs (and new clothing pieces) please! We've been extra-good Redpills this year, we promise.

You know how it goes. You hear about a great idea for an MMO -- perhaps based on a book, movie, or game you loved. You devote time and effort to following forums, reading up on developer notes, and trying to get into the beta. But somehow, the idea translates poorly. Even if it's a good solid MMO, it just doesn't click with you for some reason. Or maybe they looked at the source story/information and then ran screaming in the totally wrong direction with the game's storyline.

Personally, such was the case for me with The Matrix Online. I remember chasing every scrap of information I could get about it, watching videos and all of that. I did manage to make it into the beta, and what I saw there both exhilarated me and saddened me. The game was so very cool looking. The ability to decompile items into code and recompile the code bits into other items struck me as being perfect for someone truly aware that they are living in the world of MxO. But despite all the things I loved about it, I just couldn't handle the combat system; I'd describe it as rock-paper-scissors with Bullet Time. I understand they've since reworked it, and I'll probably give it a try again before long knowing how much I love MMOs. Of course, I'd counter with the fact that had they just used a more traditional MMO combat system from the word go, I'd probably never have left in the first place.

How about you? Were there any games that you were excited about but just didn't work out for you? What things about them made you step back? What would you change if you could?

As the holiday season approaches and our favorite videogame genre bulges with new titles, it seems like many of them are intellectual properties (IP) that have been made massive: that is, an IP that somebody, somewhere thought would be cool (or profitable) to turn into an online experience. Past MMOGs based on well-known IPs have had mixed success. Star Wars Galaxies, for instance, converted arguably the world's best known IP into an MMOG but fizzled. The Matrix Online tried to take advantage of a pop-culture phenomenon but that didn't work out either. City of Heroes/Villains cashed in on our love of comic books – not an IP exactly, but close. Lord of the Rings Online has had some success, as well, but not overwhelmingly so. In the near future, Games Workshop's Warhammer IP will be making its MMO debut as Warhammer Online (developed by EA-Mythic), along with Age of Conan (Funcom's ambitious interpretation of Robert E. Howard's barbarous world). Even MMOGs based on other videogames could fit into this 'make-massive' trend: Blizzard Entertainment turned its own real-time strategy Warcraft franchise into an online world, as did Square-Enix with Final Fantasy.

That got me thinking: if I had the power to make an MMOG, what would it be? A series of books, or a movie? Personally, I think that Perpetual Entertainment's Star Trek Online has great potential, but that could be due to the fact that I always thought I would look really good in a red and black uniform commanding a starship. Maybe Harry Potter? Though who knows how that one would work. As Matt points out, fans don't always make the best game developers, and it's certainly true that converting a big, complex IP into an MMOG can have its pitfalls. But ideally, in your most secret heart of hearts, which world would you love to see be made massive? Where would your dream MMOG be set?