Shroud of the Avatar

Shroud of the Avatar’s Starr Long on gameplay vs. graphics

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Shroud of the Avatar executive producer -- and original Ultima Online director -- Starr Long was interviewed by The Escapist this week. Long discusses his early Origin days, where he worked on everything from the Wing Commander series to a long list of Ultima products. He also talks about Tabula Rasa, Kickstarter, and of course his newest project as well...
Going for the one.

Elite is getting wings but not wing commanders

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Elite: Dangerous lead designer Sandro Sammarco spoke with PC Gamer this week about the sci-fi title's upcoming 1.2 patch. The major feature is of course wings, which will allow four players to patrol Elite's vastness in a group. In addition to receiving telemetry data on their wingmates (targets, hull status, etc.), grouped pilots will encounter "larger, more dangerous signal sources...

Otherland beta test focuses on server stability

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Otherland continues its trek back to public consciousness and notability after being dropped by Real-U and picked back up by Drago. Currently, the multi-world MMO is heading into its second closed beta test. This time around the team says that the main focus is on server stability. "Based on this data, we have made changes to the server in an...

Working As Intended: ‘Multiplex monotony’ and the death of the mid-budget MMORPG

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Back in December, film editor and author Jason Bailey wrote a piece on Flavorwire called How the Death of Mid-Budget Cinema Left a Generation of Iconic Filmmakers MIA. He spins a tale of the booming movie industry of the '80s and '90s, when mid-budget films were commercially feasible and commonplace. By the turn of the century, however, the movie industry had...

Kickstarter Overpowered: Week two’s new video

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The Massively Overpowered Kickstarter campaign is now half over: two weeks in, two weeks left to go. We're tickled to now have over 1400 backers who've busted through our goal, Kool-Aid Man style. Oh yeah! In honor of the occasion, we have a new video! I present to you the Massively Overpowered Kickstarter Mid-Point video, once again crafted by our very own Jef...

Defiance switches up leads while ArcheAge and RIFT elaborate on game worlds

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Trick Dempsey is out as Defiance's creative lead, but he's pleased to pass the project on to his successor: Carble Cheung. Cheung has been with the team since 2013 and has grand plans for Defiance going forward. "Speaking of the future: 'YES!' we are planning for Season 3 and beyond," he said. "This includes updates to arkfalls, sieges, expeditions,...

Star Citizen developers respond to feedback on Rental Equipment Credits

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When Star Citizen recently announced its plans to sell temporary rental equipment this week, the online response was pretty mixed. While most backers seemed happy with the idea of adding some much-needed progression to the Arena Commander dogfighting module, questions were raised as to how much grinding would be involved, why equipment needs to be temporary, and how the...
Camelot Unchained

Camelot Unchained teases alpha start, ‘major feature’

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Yesterday's Camelot Unchained update delivered quite a bit of good news to fans of the fantasy RvR sandbox. City State boss Mark Jacobs revealed the fourth iteration of the pre-alpha test checklist, several items of which have already been addressed, leaving the dev team in a good spot relative to its end-of-the-month alpha goal. Jacobs says that potential snags may...
FEEL THE NOISE

WoW’s Iron Docks have been delayed to patch 6.2

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Are you looking forward to the Iron Docks quests in World of Warcraft's patch 6.1? Even though they haven't been mentioned in any patch notes or by developers or shown any signs of materializing? Because despite what was expected by players, they're not in there. Community manager Bashiok confirmed that the Iron Docks, which were expected to be a...

Old School RuneScape releases permanent F2P servers

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Originally released back in 2001 when the MMO genre was in its infancy, browser MMO RuneScape has endured through over a decade of development and two complete game reboots. Today's RuneScape bears little resemblance to the game many of us grew up with, and naturally not everyone thinks the game has been changed for the better. In an effort...