three-rings posts

Whirled and deviantART announce design contest winners

by Shawn Schuster Dec 23rd 2008 at 8:00PM

Filed under: Contests, Culture, Fan art, Events, real-world, MMO industry, Browser, Casual, Whirled

Three Rings, the developer of the Flash-based casual MMO Whirled, has just announced the winners in their new "Design your Whirled" art contest. In conjunction with deviantART, the largest online social network for artists, this contest challenged members to create the best individual or multiple rooms for the game. Because of the success of this first contest, Three Rings has already announced that they're accepting entries for the second contest of the same name.

The top winner was awarded a new 15-inch Macbook Pro and one year subscription to deviantART, while the second and third place winners were awarded Wacom tablets and other deviantART subscriptions. You can view the winning entries by visiting the main Whirled site, and register your own entry for the next contest at the Whirled wiki.

Tags: casual-mmo, contest, deviantart, flash-based, three-rings, whirled, winners

Puzzle Pirates celebrates five years of puzzley skulduggery

by Kyle Horner Dec 11th 2008 at 4:00PM

Filed under: Puzzle, Puzzle Pirates, News items

It's hard to imagine that Puzzle Pirates launched five years ago, but it's true. The online game from Three Rings has seen quite a lot over the years, too. In fact, according to Three Rings there have been over 250 million hours of puzzling, 4 million Puzzle Pirate accounts and one and a half million forum posts. That's a ton of puzzle skulduggery, not to mention the laundry list of past game updates. We can only hope for the same kind of content in Whirled.

As part of the celebration for five years going, Three Rings is recognizing all their longtime pirates with a special in-game trophy to show off. We hope Puzzle Pirates and its players see another five fine years of updates, pirating and puzzling on the high seas!

Tags: anniversary, pirate, pirates, puzzle, puzzle-pirates, three-rings, trophy

Three Rings officially launches Whirled project

by Michael Zenke Nov 10th 2008 at 8:00PM

Filed under: New titles, Virtual worlds

Whirled, an ambitious web/virtual world hybrid from Three Rings, launched into Beta early this year. We were incredibly impressed with the project even back then, bouncing pieces of tofu or not. From there the project has only grown by leaps and bounds, and word now comes down that Whirled has officially launched! The interactive web environment now offers a microtransactional system where you can make money directly from your content. You can make or play games, chat with a wide array of players, or just enjoy the numerous and creative rooms players have generated over the last eight months.

We had the pleasure of speaking with Mr. Daniel James about the new vision of Whirled, and you'll be able to read that discussion tomorrow. For the time being, go check out Venturebeat's analysis of the project or (if you're so inclined) read upon the full press release below the cut. PS: If you play, we recommend Brawler Whirled or Corpse Craft. They're both fantastic!

Gallery: Whirled

Tags: breaking, daniel-james, puzzle-pirates, three-rings, whirled

One Shots: Birthday fun on the Puzzle Pirate GM seas

by Krystalle Voecks Aug 8th 2008 at 2:00PM

Filed under: Puzzle, Screenshots, Puzzle Pirates, Free-to-play, One Shots

As some of you may remember, we recently sent out a call for different GMs to send along some of their favorite screenshots. The above screenshot was in response to that call, and comes to us from Ocean Master Eurydice. She helps players out in Three Rings' incredibly addictive, free-to-play game Puzzle Pirates! Here's what she had to say:

I'm a GM on Puzzle Pirates, although over here we call them Ocean Masters. I saw your call for GM pictures and got this OKd with a supervisor. (Always good to check first...) [This] is a screenshot of my first ship, called the Queen of Shadows. It was colorfully decorated a couple years ago for my birthday by wonderful co-workers -- on their off time! It is where I stand when on duty on the Midnight Ocean (a server). We stand on ships so that we can have quiet while we answer petitions, but we can pop off at a moment's notice and be with the players if we need to. As you may be able to make out from the faint messages in the lower left-hand corner, there are parts of the ship not pictured here that are so decorated that I can't walk around them.

That seems like it's definitely a fun place to work if your co-workers decide to pull silly pranks like crowding your ship full of flowers and blocking you from moving around too much! (You know, especially when you also have awesome GM-type powers and can just move the flowers around.) Are you a GM who would like to show off something fun from your game? Send those screens in to us here at oneshots AT massively.com, along with whatever you'd like to say about them. It's almost as much fun as a ship full of flowers.

Gallery: One Shots

Tags: eurydice, GM, ocean-master, ocean-masters, one-shots, puzzle-pirates, screenshot, screenshots, three-rings

2008 Worlds in Motion Summit schedule announced

by James Egan Jul 20th 2008 at 9:00AM

Filed under: Business models, Events, real-world, News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds

The 2008 Worlds in Motion Summit schedule has been announced, along with a synopsis of this year's speeches and panels. The conference on virtual worlds and social gaming will be held on September 16th and 17th, during the Austin Game Developers Conference.

Worlds in Motion bills the 2008 Summit as a conference geared toward those who wish to better understand the business opportunities offered in the expanding social game networking space, and who plan to leverage their content and brands into interactive online worlds. Early bird registration ends July 31st; details can be found at the Austin GDC homepage. Read on after the jump for highlights of the upcoming 2008 Worlds in Motion Summit.

Tags: areae, austin, bunchball, business-models, conference, double-fusion, electric-sheep, electric-sheep-company, game-mechanics, gdc, metaverse, nbc, neopets, numedeon, opportunities, opportunity, raph-koster, second-life, social, social-gaming-network, sulake, summit, three-rings, virtual-worlds, whyville, worlds-in-motion, zwinky

The subscription debate continues

by Kyle Horner Jun 5th 2008 at 4:30PM

Filed under: Business models, MMO industry, News items

Ah, the ever-debated subject of MMO subscription models. We've seen a lot of discussion on the subject, some good and some bad. Gamasutra just so happens to be running a pretty good discussion featuring SOE's John Smedley, Three Rings' Daniel James and EA Mythic's Mark Jacobs all chiming in with their opinions on the matter. The selection is also a good one as Smedley represents a company hybridizing its models, while James is from a company that's more or less full-on microstransactions and Jacobs is firmly for sticking with subscriptions.

Each of the three mens' reasoning for their companies' model choices all make sense when you consider their reasoning. From what we can gather, all three viewpoints have their merit and really no one subscription model is going to win out anytime soon. Subscription models were a hot topic this year at ION and of course Massively discussed it as well in one of our podcasts. So if you'd like to dig deeper on the current state of the argument we highly recommend those features to you.

Tags: daniel-james, ea-mythic, gamasutra, ion08, john-smedley, mark-jacobs, massively-speaking, soe, sony-online-entertainment, three-rings

More details on the Whirled online games platform

by Michael Zenke Apr 3rd 2008 at 1:30PM

Filed under: At a glance, Betas, Puzzle Pirates, Bugs, Business models, New titles, Free-to-play, Browser, Casual

Icon for indie games businesses and designers alike, the piratical Daniel James has more details on the recently beta'd Whirled available on his blog. Whirled is, as we've previously discussed, a social games platform in development for some time now by Three Rings, makers of Puzzle Pirates and Bang! Howdy. The large investment Three Rings landed last year has assisted in the further development of their existing titles, and has pushed Whirled to the tantalizing position it exists in now.

Daniel's blog has numerous tidbits on the platform's background, for the curious. At the moment the service is still kind of resource intensive, and you'll need Flash 9.0.115 and FF 2/3, IE 7/8 or Safari - Firefox 3 beta 4 might help. They made most of the games, and implemented an 'attention-based' currency that can be obtained from playing those games. Most of the avatars, furniture, and pets, though, have already come from the community. Plenty more details (esp. those for the technically inclined) are available at the Whirled Wiki.

A few thoughts on the project below.

Tags: beta, daniel-james, three-rings, whirled

Three Rings' Whirled now in open beta

by Akela Talamasca Mar 31st 2008 at 12:45PM

Filed under: At a glance, Betas, Launches, New titles, News items, Browser, Virtual worlds

Three Rings, the makers of Puzzle Pirates, has just gone live with the open beta of its browser-based, 2D social space, Whirled. Whirled has all the features that have become de rigeur for a virtual world these days: minigames, a personal page-embeddable room for your avatar, purchasable objects, and basic creation tools.

Also, how can you not love a VW where the default avatar is an adorable piece of tofu? Yes, tofu. And it dances. Expect a First Impressions post for Whirled in the near future, boogieing soy critters and all!

Tags: breaking, open-beta, puzzle-pirates, three-rings, tofu, virtual-world, whirled

Puzzle Pirates creators land a big sack of booty

by Michael Zenke Mar 6th 2008 at 11:00PM

Filed under: Puzzle Pirates, Business models, MMO industry, News items, Free-to-play

The Venture Beat site is reporting that Three Rings, the developer of the fantastic Puzzle Pirates and the unique microtransaction title Bang! Howdy!, landed a big chest of gold this past summer. I imagine the gold was given to them in the form of American currency, as the company negotiated for some $3.5 million in venture capital money. The site also notes that the company's unique virtual currency platform is enormously successful, with $4 million in revenue reported by the company for 2007.

Though the site's article on the investment is light on what that VC money will be used for, they do briefly discuss Three Rings' work on the Whirled platform: The success of [the virtual currency] model has helped propel the company to 30 employees and is planning its new social networking game world, Whirled, where users will be able to create their own avatars, games, rooms, music, and pets.

[Via Next Generation]

Tags: daniel-james, puzzle-pirates, three-rings, venture-capital

The top 5 free MMOs

by Akela Talamasca Feb 21st 2008 at 8:30PM

Filed under: At a glance, Fantasy, Puzzle, Galleries, Screenshots, Dungeon Runners, MapleStory, Puzzle Pirates, Business models, Game mechanics, MMO industry, Pirates of the Caribbean Online, Opinion, Mythos, Free-to-play, Casual, Massively highlights

It's been said that the best things in life are free. Whoever said it probably didn't have MMOs in mind, but it's certainly true that there are many quality games out there that are completely free to download and play. Here's a list of the top 5 free massively multiplayer online games.

Now, to pre-empt the equally massive glut of angry emails and comments I'm sure to receive for leaving someone's favorite title off of this list, I'm going to state right up front that these choices are based completely on the number of times I've heard them mentioned with favor by a variety of different sources. I make no guarantees of having played any of these MMOs, so they're not necessarily my personal picks. But if I keep hearing people mention them in different contexts, there must be something to them. In short, these games are popular for a reason, and if you haven't played them, you might find that they're worth your download. We begin after the jump!

Tags: disney, dungeon-runners, featured, flagship-studios, free-to-play, maple-story, mythos, ncsoft, nexon, pirates-of-the-caribbean-online, puzzle-pirates, three-rings, top-5-free-mmos