moba

MOBA stands for “multiplayer online battle arena.”

The MOP Up: Warface heads to PlayStation 4 (August 19, 2018)

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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 Final Fantasy XIV, Soulworker, Elder Scrolls Online, Pokemon Go, Hellion, The Cycle, MU Online, Warface, Battlerite Royale, Dauntless, Worlds Adrift, SMITE, and Prosperous Universe, all waiting for you after the break!

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A fluffy casual’s starting perspective on World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth

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Let me tell you a bit about me and how I play MMORPGs. Between two jobs and a family, my gaming time is relegated to the deep evening hours where peace descends upon our household. If it’s a good night, I can get in two full hours of adventuring through virtual worlds before I grow too tired to continue. Some nights it’s less.

It has been a long time since I was able to sprint alongside the pack when a new expansion or game launches, so you have to picture me as the slowpoke waaaay in the back who keeps getting distracted by small details, stops to read the quest text, and takes screenshots like I’m putting together an art book.

That’s me, the fluffy casual, and while plenty of folks have devoured vast swaths of World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth this week (including our own excellent Eliot), I’ve been rotating through my roster of characters and experiencing this engaging expansion at my own tempered pace. Does that mean that I lack a perspective or any observational details? Absolutely not! In fact, here are some things that I’ve been thinking about and looking at this week from the position at the far back of the pack.

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Massively Overthinking: Would you want to play a League of Legends or Diablo MMORPG?

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Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve had some tantalizing rumors and teases that both Riot Games and Blizzard are building something new: Riot’s dangled some questions about maybe making an MMORPG – might it be a League of Legends MMO? – and Blizzard’s outright said it’s returning to the Diablo franchise for multiple projects (one of which is the Switch port announced this morning). Can we hope for an MMO from one of the big studios again – and should we?

That’s what we’re pondering in this week’s Massively Overthinking. Do you think either of these companies is actually working on a new MMORPG using an old IP, what might it look like if so, what are they working on if not, and what do you actually want to see happen? Read more

Hi-Rez’s Realm Royale playerbase and reviews are way down on Steam

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Yikes – Realm Royale is apparently struggling, proving once again just how hard it is to break into one of these new runaway subgenres. GitHyp (via GIbiz) has a report this week on the size of Hi-Rez’s battle royale playerbase after just two months of life.

“At the time, we thought Realm Royale could be PUBG‘s first serious competition on Steam with no other recent battle royale game coming close to 100k players,” GitHyp writes. But since then, the game’s activity level has apparently sunk to around 7000 concurrent players, which as the analytics firm notes is a loss of 93%. Streaming of the title is down too, aside from the ongoing $100K weekly tournaments. GitHyp attributes the downslide to Steam’s mixed reviews, which focus primarily on balance concerns.

Earlier this week, Hi-Rez reorganized into into three core studios, one apiece for SMITE, Paladins, and Realm Royale, as if to emphasize GitHyp’s assertion that the game isn’t dead yet and the company’s not giving up on it any time soon; it’s still in alpha on PC, and it has yet to launch on console.

Source: GitHyp via GIbiz

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Riot and Tencent appear to be on unpleasant terms with one another

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Some fans are still probably a bit miffed that Riot Games (maker of League of Legends and that’s all) teased them about the possibility of an MMO. But it seems like the studio’s parent company is pretty miffed at Riot in general. Gamasutra cites a report from several anonymous sources (which is unfortunately behind a paywall) that China’s Tencent (owner of Riot) and Riot are not on cordial terms due to differing opinions about mobile titles and the reported decline of LoL‘s playerbase.

The short version is that Tencent wants more mobile titles (which Riot does not wish to develop) and has shopped out something just short of a clone to other studios, while Riot is dealing with dropping numbers as other games move into the spotlight. An official statement from Riot disputes this report, stating that the company is happy with LoL at its current numbers and it remains a vibrant community, and relations with the studio’s parent company remain positive and supportive.

It’s also worth remembering that the studio does appear to be working on something new. Equally relevant are the issues surrounding any new games in China, with Monster Hunter World running into trouble and Korean developers unable to publish there.

Source: Gamasutra

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Hi-Rez reorganizes SMITE, Paladins, and Realm Royale teams as newly renamed substudios

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Hi-Rez Studios is making bold moves today: It’s just announced that it’s splitting up the band, unbundling its games teams into separate but joined substudios. Titan Forge Games will run SMITE, Evil Mojo Games will operate Paladins, and Heroic Leap Games will steer Realm Royale, all under the First Party Studios banner. And they’ll all run alongside Skillshot Media (focused on e-sports) and Alacrity Arthouse (technical art services) and presumably anything else Hi-Rez ultimately brings into the fold.

Confused yet? The good news is that the people actually working on all the games aren’t actually changing.

“Our new Hi-Rez Publishing Group is designed as a service organization, whose sole mission is to enable each of our partner studios to reach their full potential and best serve their respective gamer communities,” Hi-Rez President Stewart Chisam says in today’s press release. “By structuring ourselves in this manner, we allow the organization to scale to multiple games more easily, while ensuring our existing game communities receive a better, more focused service than ever before.”

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EverFeud’s Kickstarter has been canceled, but the devs say they’ll ‘pursue other options’

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At the tail end of July, we covered the Kickstarter of EverFeud, a PvP-focused MOBA/MMO hybrid that sought $105,000 to fund development. Unfortunately, the Kickstarter lasted only a week, as developers canceled the effort with just four backers and $81 pledged.

“We have decided to cancel the Kickstarter due to lack of interest,” the PSB Entertainment developers wrote on Twitter. “We are pursuing other option[s] including partnering with other developers.”

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that development will continue, as the Kickstarter originally noted that the game’s founder had already invested $100,000 in the project and that he wouldn’t “stop until EverFeud is a reality.” PSB had described the sub-hopeful title as a hyper-competitive “arena and battleground-styled multiplayer PVP game set in a fantasy world where might and magic hold sway,” a game “built by PvPers for PvPers,” with no levels and no grinds; instead, it is set in an MMO-like world with battleground factions rather than FPS-style lobbies with gobs of customization, classes, and races.

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The MOP Up: Worlds Adrift makes room for PvE servers (August 12, 2018)

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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 Old School RuneScape, Worlds Adrift, Destiny 2, Starfall Online, Survived By, Hyper Universe, Elsword, Pirate101, War of Rights, Ragnarok Online, Perfect World Mobile, OrbusVR, SMITE, and Prosperous Universe, all waiting for you after the break!

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League of Legends Lead Designer Ghostcrawler moves to an unnamed project

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Let’s play connect-the-dots today and see if we can see a picture forming over at Riot Games, shall we? Back in July, its co-founder dropped a befuddling tease about the studio creating an MMO, which was then somewhat refuted a week later. Then the studio continued to talk way too much about MMOs to anyone who would listen.

Now there’s a new dot in the shape of Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street, who announced that he’s leaving the League of Legends team to work on one or more projects in development. One of these couldn’t possibly be an MMO that need the help of a former World of Warcraft dev… could it?

“My new position at Riot is head of creative development,” Street said. “We’ve been up front that we want to put the ‘s’ in Riot Games, and I am helping with that effort. In addition, we have been taking Runeterra as a world more seriously, as you’ve probably realized with the release of the Ryze CG and the world map.”

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Path of Exile’s Delve launches August 31 with an infinite dungeon; here’s our chat with Grinding Gear’s Chris Wilson!

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Picture this: an underground dungeon that gets progressively more challenging — and rewarding — the deeper you go, and there is no end. Not no end in sight, but no end. An infinite dungeon. Does this sound like a dream come true to you? Well go ahead and smile because Path of Exile is delivering just that on August 31st (unless you play on Xbox One, then you have to wait until September 3rd). The next league is aptly called Delve, and its all about descending into a never-ending mine shaft, reaping rewards while staving off the dangers in the darkness — with the darkness itself being one of those dangers!

While that info alone might be enough to keep you entertained for a bit, we know you want more. So I had a little chat with Producer Chris Wilson to learn more about this intriguing idea with its new mechanics and features to pass it all on to you. And who knows? This might be just the beginning: Wilson called this “Path of Exile’s first infinite dungeon,” which would lend you to believe that more numbers could follow.

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Perfect Ten: 10 MMO features that deserve widespread adaptation

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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.

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Extensive Kotaku exposé uncovers a ‘culture of sexism’ at League of Legends developer Riot Games

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The internet is ablaze over an in-depth report at Kotaku that uncovers a “culture of sexism” that is allegedly running rampant through Riot Games. Over two dozen women, both formerly and currently employed by the League of Legends developer, opened up to share their stories of subtle and blatant gender discrimination that weaves its way through Riot’s “bro culture.”

While Riot released a statement for the story claiming that it upholds a “zero tolerance policy on discrimination,” the tales and quotes shared by these employees indicate that at the very least Riot has an unchecked problem going on that needs investigation. The studio is heavily male dominated with 80% of its employees being men and only two of the 23-person senior leadership consisting of women.

“The ‘bro culture’ there is so real,” said one former employee. “It’s agonizingly real. It’s like working at a giant fraternity.” Several women pointed out how they were unfairly passed over for promotions, considered “too emotional” to be taken seriously, and treated as sexual objects. Another issue is that Riot places a great premium on all employees being hardcore gamers, a label that some of these women struggled with convincing the leadership that they were.

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Vainglory brings its mobile MOBA fun to PC after becoming richer than kings

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With so many MOBA games out in the field, it’s pretty easy to overlook ones that happen to be on mobile. That would be a mistake in the case of Vainglory, because this game has kind of become the king of mobile MOBAs over the past couple of years. In fact, one industry analyst has estimated that the game has made over $50 million since its 2014 release.

That impressive sum is going to only get bigger in the future, especially now that Vainglory has announced that it will be porting the game to PC and Mac in the coming months. And before you ask, yes, it will feature cross-platform play.

The studio is inviting PC players to try the early alpha version right now as it prepares to expand the game’s reach: “Please note that we still have a lot of work to do–proper text input support, preference settings, UI improvements and custom key bindings, bug fixes, and control input tuning are all in progress. But we’re excited to get started. We want you to be part of this journey and would love your help in making Vainglory for Windows and Mac every bit as good as it is on mobile.”

Source: Gamasutra, Vainglory

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