ALL THE POSTS
Vague Patch Notes: The games industry arrogance cycle, in MMOs and elsewhere
Unity has fallen. Oh, sure, the company has rolled back the worst parts of its incredibly boneheaded "give us money for your successful game" nonsense, but not all of it... but frankly, it doesn't matter. Once the company started floating the idea of doing it, the gloves came off. All of the goodwill that Unity had built up as...
Pantheon Rise of the Fallen defends its art direction shift as more performative and less generic
Followers of Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen know by now that the game has a new lick of visual paint as Visionary Realms pulled back the curtain on a new "hand-painted" art style for the PvE sandbox MMORPG. The reveal raised some mixed reaction from our readers and a number of furrowed brows from fans, who went on to...
Lord of the Rings Online previews its upcoming Outer Gondor region
Lord of the Rings Online continued to show off the landscape coming with this fall's Corsairs of Umbar expansion. In this week's developer tour, Matt Elliot took players through Outer Gondor, which is a new post-war landscape region. This will be the second of four zones being added in the expansion.
According to the LOTRO public events schedule page, November...
Wayfinder teases Grendel and the Call of the Void live event in weekly rundown
Wayfinder has got another preview of Grendel queued up for you to enjoy in the wake of the Tokyo Game Show, and it seems to imply that he may or may not be very good at the things he does, which are not particularly nice things. Bub. It's a nice animated preview of the game's next playable character, joking...
Sony Interactive’s Jim Ryan steps down next March after three decades of PlayStation
Last night, Sony Interactive Entertainment's Jim Ryan announced he's stepping down from the CEO role after 28 years with the company - the last five as its president and CEO. And we do mean he announced it; following a formal press release revealing that Sony Group COO and CFO Hiroki Totoki will assume the role in his stead until...
The Daily Grind: How often do you change your character’s outfit in an MMO?
It's funny to think that back when I started doing this job, the idea of having cosmetic outfits in an MMO was actually not universal. Not every game had them, including the biggest MMORPG on the market at the time! Now, of course, the idea of fashion being anything less than the real endgame is laughable, but there is...
The Stream Team: Exploring more Conan Exiles roleplay-friendly mods
Massively OP's Larry is still on a mission to convert MJ to using mods in Conan Exiles. This week, he will be introducing her to Roleplay Redux. With all the cool tools it offers for creating roleplay scenarios, will MJ be swayed? Tune in live at 8:00 p.m. to check out what you can do with this mod!
What: Conan...
Battle Bards Episode 228: Cheery MMO dungeons
Not every dungeon has to be a drab and dour affair — a fact that sent the Battle Bards searching for the cheeriest tunes from MMO instances! Join Syp and Syl as they recount a good half-dozen upbeat tracks from online RPG dungeons. If you’ve got to loot… loot with a smile.
Battle Bards is the world’s first, best, and only...
Wurm Online’s owner Game Chest Group sees negative profits but says it’s ‘on the right track’ in Q2 financial report
Yesterday we reported on Wurm Online's end to a two month-long bout of radio silence, which saw corporate owner Game Chest Group detail efforts to bring in new players and improve comms. Part of that communication between the company and fans came in the form of a player Q&A that, among other things, answered a question about Wurm's financial...
Post-apoc survival shooter The Front confirms early access launch date of October 11
Over the course of this year we've been following the development track of The Front, a post-apocalyptic "survival open-world crafting" shooter that was introduced in February and held closed testing earlier this month. Developer Samar Studio has now confirmed its next major iterative step by way of a trailer, which announces early access on Wednesday, October 11th.
The early access...
Valheim highlights a couple of creatures that will inhabit its Ashlands biome
Valheim's development of the Ashlands biome once again is the primary feature from Iron Gate's latest dev blog, this time with a focus on a couple of the critters that players will encounter in the biome. Though perhaps critter is the wrong term; maybe it's best to call them spiky spicy skeleton things.
The preview is generally small, with a...
Embers Adrift adds crafting dyes and patterns while readying its alchemy system
As Embers Adrift works on a new alchemy system for the near future, its September patch arrived with a whole lot of bug fixes and small quality-of-life improvements. These latter include sub-zone identification tech, a better /who command function, and teleport buttons on maps for the ember rings.
Another nice addition is crafting patterns and dyes: "These are optional components...
TERA Console cycles dungeons, launches a new battle pass, and improves its pet system
The de facto maintenance mode-like updates for TERA Console continue on, with the latest patch performing another dungeon access cycle, launching a new battle pass, and tweaking its pet system overall - or as the notes put it, "pet system will be improve completely."
Dungeons opening up this patch include the hard version of Catalepticon and normal and hard versions...
The Stream Team: Low levels but slightly high challenge in Lord of the Rings Online
MOP's Chris has rediscovered Lord of the Rings Online recently, appreciating the MMORPG's more measured pace but also enjoying the difficulty slider option. And since he's all about sharing things he likes, he's sharing some time with his High Elf Champion today at 2:00 p.m. EDT!
What: Lord of the Rings Online
Who: Chris Neal
When: 2:00 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, September...
Elder Scrolls Online players might score a free house – if the community wins the Secrets of the Telvani event
Elder Scrolls Online is about to set off a whirlwind of events - and that's without counting the impending season of Halloween. Starting tomorrow, ZeniMax Online Studios will begin the Secrets of the Telvanni event for Necrom expansion owners; it runs through October 10th and offers rewards for content you were already doing, as well as a server-wide challenge...
Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis gets more quests, story, events, and level cap raise in October
It's the final week of September, and that means Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis is looking ahead to the slate of October updates that are coming for the anime MMO, including more quests, more story, more region activities, and more levels to earn. Also Halloween, but that is probably a given considering the month.
October's content begins on the...
Old School RuneScape opens the Scar Essence Mine, RuneScape kicks off a PvM buff event
It's another week of Jagex game news, or at least the games that are still running, anyway: Both RuneScape and Old School RuneScape have some content updates to share.
We'll start with OSRS and its latest weekly patch, which is headlined by the Scar Essence Mine, a new source of runes for players to utilize. As one might expect this...
Perfect Ten: The 10 unsung heroes of the MMO user interface
If we ever think of an MMO's user interface, it's either when we're getting settled into a new game or when a title decides to streamline or improve its UI elements. Otherwise, it's something that's in front of us all the time that we don't really "see," as we're looking beyond that to the play field.
However, I'm going to...
The Cycle Frontier sunsets today as studio YAGER says goodbye to players, literally
Back in June, we learned the sad news that Tencent-backed YAGER would be sunsetting its PvEvP shooter The Cycle Frontier, owing in part to the game's wild early success. As the studio explained, its insanely strong launch overwhelmed the company's infrastructure, and it wasn't able to scale up to handle bugs and cheaters fast enough to keep people from...
Casually Classic: Six reasons hardcore servers make WoW Classic worthwhile
The first time that I heard about the unofficial "Hardcore Classic" scene for WoW Classic, I didn't get it. The idea of voluntary permadeath play seemed so at odds with how MMORPGs are designed and the immense amount of time that you sink into a character. It took a whole lot of effusive praise by friends for this system...
