Global Chat: Everybody’s burning up about that Sylvanas thing

everquest

Official Site: EverQuest
Studio: SOE, now Daybreak Game Company
Launch Date: March 16, 1999
Genre: Fantasy Themepark
Business Model: Hybrid F2P (Cash Shop, Optional Sub)
Platform: PC

Global Chat: Everybody’s burning up about that Sylvanas thing

August 14, 2018 Justin Olivetti 3 comments

Yes, just about every MMO blogger was sharing heated opinions about last week’s World of WarCraft WarCrime. “It’s such a sad event and I’m particularly mad at Blizzard at the way they chose to write this,” wrote Aeternus.

Moonshine Manor was equally appalled, saying that she was “not sad at the story, but at having to mourn my fandom.”

“The storyline strips players of agency, it’s not a good feeling,” wrote Mmosey.

And Leo’s Life couldn’t make sense of it: “The lore nut in me sees no logic in this.”

In An Age sympathized with the outrage but noted, “This cinematic short is amazing in isolation.” And Atheren doesn’t want this to be the beginning of the end of Sylvanas: “I hope she gets a redemption arc.”

And Wolfy felt that the community reaction was too much for an outsider: “The level of the freak-out was above and beyond what I’ve had the misfortune of experiencing as someone barely remotely associated with the WoW playerbase.”

Leaderboard: Must MMORPGs revolve around grouping to be MMORPGs?

August 14, 2018 Bree Royce 54 comments

It would be easy to dismiss Saga of Lucimia’s pervasive “group-based or go home” ideas as mere rhetoric, but the reality is, there exists a small segment of the veteran MMORPG population that genuinely believes an MMO is not an MMO if it doesn’t focus exclusively or near-exclusively on grouping, and there are going to be games that cater to those folks.

I wanted to bring up that recent tweet because it seems like an extremist, maybe even revisionist position to take for a game in our market, and I don’t just mean in 2018 when plenty of non-MMOs have called themselves MMOs and even more MMOs have shunned the term. I mean in terms of the historical games being used as a touchstone for these ideas. Yes, some early MMORPGs like EverQuest emphasized group content; while you could level up on some classes and in some cases alone, for the most part, you needed to group up to get things done, whether you were taking down a dragon or just trying to squeeze out a few more bubbles of level in the midgame.

One Shots: Selfie school

August 12, 2018 Justin Olivetti 37 comments

I certainly did not have to twist readers’ arms to get them to bring out a mountain of MMORPG character selfies set against interesting backdrops. Of course, everyone had their own definition of what that should mean…

“When it comes to character selfies the backdrop becomes less important if there is an important lore character in your picture,” said Ryuen. “Case in point: My humble Monk managed to snare Firiona Vie herself in EverQuest II for a quick pic before she had to attend to more pressing matters.”

She had more box art modeling to do. It’s exhausting, being one of the last of the Midriff Elves in the game.

Perfect Ten: 10 MMO features that deserve widespread adaptation

August 8, 2018 Justin Olivetti 22 comments

You know what gets me excited about upcoming MMOs? It’s certainly not the list of expected systems and features that have since become standard for most games in this genre. Good-looking fantasy online RPG? Neato, that’s terrific, but what else are you selling?

No, what truly grabs my attention is when a dev team uses its imagination and comes up with a creative feature that makes me sit back and say, “Wow, I wish they all had this!”

It’s a shame that we have seen plenty of these systems over the years that were tried maybe once or twice but never adapted into the greater sphere. Today we’re going to come up with 10 examples of such features that truly did try something revolutionary (or at least pretty cool) but haven’t seen follow-ups in games since.

Saga of Lucimia’s epic quests will take ‘time, effort, and teamwork’ to finish

August 7, 2018 Justin Olivetti 32 comments

What defines an epic adventure? This is the burning question that Saga of Lucimia is tackling this week, starting with the derisive analysis of current MMO questing as “grocery runs.”

Instead, the dev team has looked to larger adventures for inspiration, including the ring and shawls quests from EverQuest and the quest to destroy the One Ring in Lord of the Rings. This is the kind of scope and involvement that Saga of Lucimia is striving to attain.

“You’ll have your major quests that require you to form a group or be in a guild to complete. The ‘destroy the One Ring’ type of adventures and campaigns,” the team wrote. “And along the way you’ll branch off from time to time and work on side quests and adventures with other people who aren’t part of your main group […] But at the end of the day, the campaigns and adventures that we want players to explore in our world are those which require time, effort, and teamwork to complete.”

Source: Saga of Lucimia

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Global Chat: The ‘We Don’t Play World of Warcraft’ Club

August 1, 2018 Justin Olivetti 28 comments

What do you do when you don’t play World of Warcraft but everyone else all around you does and won’t stop talking about it because there’s a new expansion coming out? You try to find like-minded souls and start up a club, that’s what!

“If you do not play WoW or at least have some sort of history with it, you can find yourself in some kind of quasi MMO community minority group. It’s an ‘odd’ phenomenon,” said Contains Moderate Peril.

“I really don’t even know what the story other than Alliance vs. Horde,” admitted I’m Not Squishy. “Sometimes it can feel like I’m there’s a big gap in my gaming vocabulary.”

Believe it or not, this whole column isn’t just about World of Warcraft today, so dive in to read some gamer essays on Wizard101, Dark Age of Camelot, Elder Scrolls Online, and more!

EverQuest II launches Return to Guk

August 1, 2018 Eliot Lefebvre 5 comments

Play EverQuest II Now

As it turns out, a lot of adventurers in EverQuest II’s world have traveled to the ruins of Guk over the years. Sure, the name sounds funny, but considering that none of them have ever returned it’s not exactly funny ha-ha. But that’s a problem that can be solved by throwing the main characters at the problem, so players are encouraged to strap on their weaponry and take part in the game’s latest patch, Return to Guk.

Hopefully you will also return from Guk, because again, kind of a goofy name. You’ll feel silly if you die there.

To encourage people returning to Guk, players will earn doubled status and currency through August 6th, so you get a little more out of your adventures in and around the ruins. Players on live servers can also earn doubled ethereal coins, and All Access members will get a special ancient ability scrolls for level 110 characters. So you get lots of free stuff in addition to having someplace to explore and hopefully return from.

Source: Official Site

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The Game Archaeologist: Digging up the history of City of Heroes

July 28, 2018 Justin Olivetti 17 comments

For the longest time in the early 2000s, MMORPGs scared me off. They looked too obtuse, too grindy, too ugly, and too unapproachable for my tastes. It took a special title to really draw me in with its more casual friendly structure and colorful graphics. In early 2004, I found myself entranced with this superhero MMO that let me be whatever type of caped (or non-caped) crusader I wanted to be. From then on, there was no going back with my interest in these types of games.

I assume that many MMO gamers owe a great debt to City of Heroes for the way that it introduced, encouraged, and excited them about MMOs. It was a new type of online game, one that boasted an unbelievably flexible character creator and invested in the fantasy of playing as a superhero fighting villains all across Paragon City.

Today we’re going to kick off a Game Archaeologist series looking back at City of Heroes. And as with any remarkable superhero, we have to begin with its origin story. Where did it come from? How was it made? Let’s find out!

Perfect Ten: The best expansions for specific MMOs

July 25, 2018 Justin Olivetti 17 comments

Looking over the past two decades or so, MMORPGs have grown by leaps and bounds with regular releases, events, and (of course) expansion packs. Hundreds of expansions have now flooded the scene, with some of the longest-running titles seeing upwards of two dozen or more.

That got me thinking: Which expansion was the best? Not overall, I mean, but the best for each game that it serviced? Every MMO player harbors strong feelings about which was the best expansion for the titles they enjoy, and I have read many articles in which expansions were ranked, reviewed, and debated.

For this week’s Perfect Ten, we’ll be trying to put a finger on the best expansion for 10 specific MMOs. I’ve taken the additional step of polling the Massively OP staff to give me input on MMOs that they have played extensively over the years. So what’s the best? Let’s find out!

The Daily Grind: Rank the top three housing MMOs ever made

July 25, 2018 Justin Olivetti 31 comments

WildStar. RIFT. EverQuest II.

If I had to choose three MMORPGs that contained the best housing systems and then rank them, that list up there is probably the titles and order in which I would arrange it. All three of these games have hugely robust systems that offer a lot of flexibility and personal creativity. Of course, that list is heavily weighted toward my experience and personal observation in games, so I’m much less familiar with other touted housing systems found in, say, Star Wars Galaxies or Elder Scrolls Online.

For fun, come up with your own ranked top three and explain in the comments why you picked those titles and ordered them the way you did!

The MOP Up: Gnomeland Security orders EQ2’s Tinkerfest (July 22, 2018)

July 22, 2018 Justin Olivetti One comment

The MMO industry moves along at the speed of information, and sometimes we’re deluged with so much news here at Massively Overpowered that some of it gets backlogged. That’s why there’s The MOP Up: a weekly compilation of smaller MMO stories and videos that you won’t want to miss. Seen any good MMO news? Hit us up through our tips line!

Maybe you’ll discover a new game in this space — or be reminded of an old favorite! This week we have stories and videos from Hearthstone, DC Universe Online, Elsword, EverQuest II, Wild Terra, Riders of Icarus, Dauntless, Realm Royale, Pokemon Go, Escape from Tarkov, War of Rights, and EVE Online, all waiting for you after the break!

The Game Archaeologist: Kesmai’s Air Warrior and Legends of Kesmai

July 21, 2018 Justin Olivetti 12 comments

Most studios would be overjoyed to have pioneered one significant advancement in video game history, but then again, most studios aren’t Kesmai. While it’s not a household name today, it’s reasonable to say that without the heavy lifting and backbreaking coding that this company shouldered in the ’80s and ’90s, the MMO genre would’ve turned out very different indeed.

Previously in this space, we met two enterprising designers named Kelton Flinn and John Taylor who recognized that multiplayer was the name of the future and put their careers on the line to see an idea through to completion. That idea was Island of Kesmai, an ancestor of the modern MMO that used crude ASCII graphics and CompuServe’s network to provide an interactive, cooperative online roleplaying experience. It wasn’t the first MMO, but it was the first one published commercially, and sometimes that makes all the difference.

Flinn and Taylor’s Kesmai didn’t stop with being the first to bring MMOs to the big time, however. Flush with cash and success, Kesmai turned its attention to the next big multiplayer challenge: 3-D graphics and real-time combat. Unlike the fantasy land of Island of Kesmai, this title would take to the skies in aerial dogfighting and prove even more popular than the team’s previous project.