ALL THE POSTS
Diablo’s David Brevik lambastes Blizzard over elimination of employee profit sharing
With the Diablo franchise taking heat from players over its mobile ambitions, Diablo II creator David Brevik decided to add more fuel to the fire. On his wife's recent Path of Exile livestream, of all places, a somewhat tipsy Brevik blasted Blizzard for eliminating its profit-sharing program in October, which helped employees make up for the sub-standard salaries...
Warframe hits the Switch tomorrow – here’s the tea on migration, Fort2na, and Baruuk
One of the reasons I'm excited that my family's getting a Switch for Christmas (don't tell my kids!) is that Warframe is gonna be on it by then, and I'm gonna give it a go. In fact, it's launching on Nintendo's platform tomorrowday. PC players, if you want to play on both, you'll need to decide whether you...
Digital card game Artifact hurries to address player consternation over its business model
You may remember Artifact as Valve's entry into the digital card game market, with plans to have no moderation and no way of obtaining cards for free. That did not seem like a smart idea, but the game went into its beta testing after delays, and it turns out players were... oh, no, they weren't on...
Wisdom of Nym: The first reactions to Final Fantasy XIV’s fan festival
Well, gosh. That was sure a lot of news for Final Fantasy XIV over a weekend, huh? Expected news, sure, but therein lie some of my positive feelings, as the big announcement reveal on Friday was something we all knew was going to happen, with a title that we had found out months earlier, and with a dearth of...
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds declares the successful end to the ‘FIX PUBG’ campaign
Good news, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds fans, the "FIX PUBG" campaign is over and was successful! Sure, that doesn't mean that PUBG has actually been fixed, but it does mean that the developers have identified many of the places where it remains broken, or the places where previous fixes broke it worse, and that was... apparently the goal? Maybe?
It...
Hi-Rez Expo 2018: Realm Royale is coming to both consoles, plans more fantasy features
Back in August, Realm Royale was struggling. The free alpha game soared then fell, with players and stream coverage both dipping way down. Some players didn't like the rash of changes as Realm Royale went through early development, and others believed that not having the game on any other platform hurt it. As for the former, devs...
Cliff Bleszinski states he’s never making another game
If you had been hoping to see what Cliff Bleszinski (Cliffy B to those who don't like typing out surnames) was going to do next in the game industry, the bad news is that he appears to be done completely. Last week, a new Twitter account expressed anger at him for not refunding the money players had spent on...
Elite: Dangerous guild adopts sea cow, presumably plans to take it to space
The manatee, commonly known as a sea cow, are herbivorous marine animals known mainly for being so ugly that they're cute, coming into conflict with speedboats, and making all of us wish that we had one. Naturally, it stands to reason that an Elite: Dangerous guild up and adopted one.
Wait, what?
The story behind this starts a couple of...
Star Citizen’s Chris Roberts: ‘No one is attempting to do what we are doing’
As we noted on Saturday, Star Citizen his $200 million in crowdfunding - and that prompted a letter from the chairman penned by Chris Roberts himself, who says "the amount is the highest total for any project in the history of crowdfunding and is beyond anything I could have imagined in my wildest dreams."
"To reduce Star...
Fallout 76 is working on a bigger stash size, game stability, and push-to-talk
Fallout 76's multiplayer adventure hasn't been the end of the world for the franchise, but neither has it been an unparalleled success. Numerous bugs and server stability issues arrived with last week's launch, and Bethesda is fighting those fires first to bring the game up to par.
A "large" November 19th patch is going to add "many performance fixes...
The Daily Grind: Do you consistently pick the same classes and playstyles in MMOs?
Justin and I kicked off last week's podcast discussing our favorite character class playstyles, and I... kind of got carried away gushing about my proclivities.
"Somebody get Bree a Bard tank with shields who does preventative and reactive healing and is constantly charging around all over the place and has pets!" commenter Mr. Bigglesworth teased me after the...
MMO Week in Review: Final Fantasy XIV knows how to throw a fan event
Let's just stipulate right here that Final Fantasy XIV knows how to freaking throw down a fan festival. Patch info, expansion info, juicy teases, no mobile junk, and no condescension. Oh yeah, and the devs are also the band. If you've missed Eliot's in-person coverage of the Vegas event, you've missed out indeed.
Of course, other stuff also...
Anthem previews character customization in latest developer livestream
As many MMO fans will attest, extensive character customization can be a big draw for a game. After all, what gamers don't love making a character that's uniquely their own? The folks at BioWare seem to recognize this, as the latest Anthem developer livestream focused primarily on the game's character customization system, and boy does it ever...
The MOP Up: Free Overwatch this Thanksgiving
Don't have Thanksgiving plans past gorging on dead bird carcasses and mashed-up roots? Blizzard has just the thing for you: Free Overwatch!
"From November 20th through the 26th, we're calling on all prospective agents: assemble your teams and dive in during the Overwatch Free Trial on PC, PlayStation®4, or Xbox One!" the studio said. "For this free trial, we're...
The Stream Team: Healing and leveling in Final Fantasy XIV
With the Final Fantasy Fan Festival's reveals fresh on his mind, Massively OP's Chris is ready to play a whole lot of catch-up on his Astrologian character in Final Fantasy XIV. After all, those Shadowbringers aren't going to be able to heal themselves! It's a stream full of dungeon delving and HP pool monitoring, which should be a...
Din’t miss our Final Fantasy XIV Fanfest 2018 and Shadowbringers coverage
Massively OP's complete coverage of Final Fantasy XIV's 2018 Fan Festival.
FFXIV Fan Festival 2018: Q&A with Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida
The question and answer portion of the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival actually came before the Letter from the Producer, and as a result it was pinned in a spot wherein players could neither ask about 4.5 content (which would be discussed shortly thereafter) nor about Shadowbringers content (which would not be further discussed at this time). So you might...
FFXIV Fan Festival 2018: Naoki Yoshida explains patch 4.5 and Blue Mage in the newest live letter
After Friday's keynote, Naoki Yoshida made it fairly clear that Final Fantasy XIV fans would not hear anything further about the contents planned for the game's third expansion, Shadowbringers, through the rest of the fan festival. Luckily, patch 4.5 was on deck to be a meaty update anyhow, especially when... oh, right, it contained a new freaking job on...
One Shots: Take me home, country roads
I can't tell if Deekay Plus' headlining shot from Fallout 76 here is that of a gorgeous West Virginia sunrise -- or an in-progress nuclear blast. Either way, props for taking a quick screenshot before a light tanning or severe fallout enuses!
Of course, he couldn't resist getting that song stuck back in our heads: "Country roads west virginia...
The Daily Grind: What are your reactions to this year’s Final Fantasy XIV Fanfest?
Game-specific conventions are always a wild ride. Square-Enix didn't have to spend the past few days wowing people who had no idea about what Final Fantasy XIV is; the fan festival is an event in which the developers want to impress the players and fans, and that was clearly on display over the weekend. Presumably. See, I'm writing...
