Let's make it prettier again.

EVE Online sheds some light on… texture lighting

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Players spend a lot of time staring at the hulls of their EVE Online ships, so it makes sense to make those ships as attractive as possible. This was the motivation behind the first complete overhaul of the game's lighting and reflections model, and now the team is doing it all again. Another art rework and update is in...

Uematsu’s Dragonsong is the theme for FFXIV’s Heavensward expansion

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Did you catch that new Final Fantasy XIV trailer that Square Enix released today? It's called Dragonsong and it's the main theme song from the forthcoming Heavensward expansion. Dragonsong is the work of renowned Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu and it features vocals from Susan Calloway, who you might remember from the Answers theme to A Realm Reborn. The trailer...
Tree of Savior

Tree of Savior’s director talks auto attack, mouse controls, and more

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Tree of Savior project director Kim Seyong has published a Q&A about the game's second closed beta testing phase. He covers a fair bit of ground including the development of mouse controls, auto attack canceling, and player perceptions regarding useless skills. "We'd like to focus more on the mechanic of the skill rather than only numbers," he wrote. "I know a...
UO Age of Shadows

Ultima Online seeks players for expansion focus group

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Ultima Online producer Bonnie Armstrong has put out a call for player focus testers. Broadsword is searching for somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 people for a first look at UO's new Time of Legends expansion, after which the devs will expect "constructive feedback." You'll need an active UO account, and you'll also need to fill out a playstyle survey...
Like the Something Awful forums, only probably slightly less cynical? Perhaps.

Crowfall locks down forums for backers only

If you still want to take part in discussions on the official Crowfall forums, you'll have to back the game. The game has locked down its forums for all non-backers, giving new registrations access to a limited forum for 30 days for potential players who want a glance at the community. Other than that, if you want to talk,...

Linda ‘Brasse’ Carlson on ArcheAge, community management, and her new role at Trion

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Linda "Brasse" Carlson is one of the MMO industry's most beloved community specialists, and genre fans everywhere boggled just a bit when Daybreak laid her off along with a number of other high profile employees last February. Carlson landed on her feet at Trion, and Massively OP recently caught up with her to ask about the new gig as...
Neverwinter

Neverwinter’s Strongholds expansion is coming this summer

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Neverwinter's next expansion is called Strongholds, and it's coming to a PC near you this summer. Players will work together with their guild mates to claim an abandoned keep and rebuild it on "the largest map in Neverwinter," according to a Cryptic press release. Strongholds tasks guilds with clearing the lands around the keep of monsters before building structures and...

EverQuest’s new progression server wiped due to launch issues

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It was a less-than-auspicious beginning for EverQuest's highly anticipated progression server. The new server, Ragefire, came up yesterday and was immediately beset by several issues including overstressed login servers and instant level 50 characters appearing. Daybreak spent the day putting out fires, which included locking the server, applying hotfixes, and ultimately performing a complete wipe. Fortunately, most players had not...

Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV’s endgame dungeons, from launch to present

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It's crazy to realize that Final Fantasy XIV has added more dungeons via patches in a year and a half than World of Warcraft has added via patches in the game's decade of existence. Sure, a lot of those are hard modes, but considering that every hard mode completely redoes enemies, maps, and such, I'd say they're functionally new dungeons...

Star Trek Online Iconian War featured episode delayed

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The Iconian War is hot stuff in Star Trek Online these days, but players will need to cool their heels due to a "critical technical issue" that is causing a delay of the next update. Executive Producer Steve Ricossa broke the bad news to players on the official site, saying that the team will need to delay the next featured...