Massively: One Shots: Getting used to her wings
Filed under: Fantasy, Screenshots, Aion, One Shots
While there is some swirling controversy about various things within Aion, many people are still thrilled with how beautiful the game is. While it isn’t the next step in MMO innovation, it does combine gorgeous graphics like the ones above with well-known game mechanics and an interesting story. Today’s Aion One Shots comes to us from our regular contributor, Veng, who snapped this shot just before release. She writes in: [This is a] player character hovering in flight at Altgard Fortress, one of the first areas a young Asmodian travels to after ascending to be a Daeva.
Screenshots from all games from small to large, and MMOs of all genres are welcome! Just email those in to us at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name, the game it’s from, and a quick note about what we’re seeing. We’ll post it here and give you the credit for sending it in.
Gallery: One Shots
Massively: Linden Lab to alter third-party Second Life viewer policies
Filed under: Business models, News items, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds
Yesterday, Linden Lab made an announcement regarding third-party (or after-market, if you prefer) viewers that has so far elicited a vociferous response from some of the more outspoken Second Life users, and those involved in after-market viewer-development. The announcement largely revolves around upcoming policies that have yet to be decided.
This is compounded partly by there being two announcements. One directly emailed out and one on the blog, both of which carry somewhat different information. The announcement is a lead-up to a series of “brown bag” sessions which are advertised to determine the details of the scheme.
Continue reading Linden Lab to alter third-party Second Life viewer policies
Massively: Crafting in Final Fantasy XI: A few tips to achieving success
Most games give crafters the shaft. There’s no real art to pushing a button and having an item pop out, especially when today’s modern MMO design heavily favors “quick crafting.” Crafting is an afterthought to most games, or something that players can do to both pass the time and perhaps offer an alternative to buying items from the shops.
Then there’s Final Fantasy XI. The game equipped with a crafting system so complicated, people still have arguments about how the game calculates success 6 years after its American launch. A crafting system so complicated, some people like to refer to it as “voodoo crafting.”
The ins-and-outs of the system may be hard to grasp for the starting player, but we here at Massively want to give everyone a fighting chance at what is a very interestingly designed crafting system. So if you want a few tips on how to leverage the crafting system in your favor, or if you want to find out what makes crafting in this game so difficult and draw so much debate, then this is the guide for you.
Continue reading Crafting in Final Fantasy XI: A few tips to achieving success
Filed under: Fantasy, Final Fantasy XI, Game mechanics, Guides, Crafting, Tips and tricks, Consoles
Crafting in Final Fantasy XI: A few tips to achieving success
Massively: Champions store getting new costumes, character slots and more
New costume pieces, additional character slots, retcons and more are all being added to the Champions Online C-Store this Tuesday. Using this exchange rate chart for Cryptic Points the price of a full retcon is $12.50, which isn’t too high considering that a retcon allows a player to completely remake a character from the ground up. Costume pieces seem to cost around three dollars, which seems pretty reasonable considering that the Cyborg Beast and Epic Samurai are both rather impressive looking at that price. Lastly, buying four additional character slots costs the most at 1200 points — which looks to be about $15 or so.
Overall, the pricing is lower than what we expected for costumes. Sure, the points system isn’t ideal but generally speaking there’s not a lot to be overtly upset about here.
Filed under: Super-hero, News items, Champions Online
Champions store getting new costumes, character slots and more
Massively: Missing something in our MMOs, part II: Electric Boogaloo
A few days ago, we posted about Brian Green’s musings over what’s missing in our MMOs. Steve Danuser has taken the time to take a look at both that post and further incidents of ennui through the MMO blogosphere, and come to a similar but slightly different conclusion — that what’s missing isn’t the fault of what’s already there. The problem isn’t the quests, it’s that so few of them feel heroic or individual, and they’re more or less your only option for progressing through the game. The problem isn’t the exploration, it’s that there’s no real incentive to bother. In short, that we don’t need to penalize people who enjoy these parts of the game, we simply need to stop penalizing the people who don’t.
It’s an interesting and astute observation that gets at the heart of the real problem — that game design has moved forward, and by and large this is a good thing. All of the improvements in design we’ve seen over the past several years, even in games sometimes derided as clones of World of Warcraft, is evidenced that the game industry has a clearer idea than ever of how to do effective achievement-based progression. What needs to be addressed is not the formula, but the scope and the specifics. Something is missing, but there’s no sense in throwing out what’s there and well-polished to try and find it.
Filed under: Culture, Game mechanics, Opinion, Virtual worlds
Massively: Five new Star Trek Online screenshots
We’ve got five new Star Trek Online screens for you, hot off the computers at Cryptic Studios. Usually we have an exceedingly difficult time picking a favorite, but the above image contains Klingon warbirds and so it wins our hearts. Our love of the Federation isn’t gone, but if you hadn’t been able to tell yet, we’re very happy to finally start seeing more of the Klingon side of Trek — even if it’s only a screenshot and video.
Telling you how the other screens show off amazing space battles and cool interiors is probably unnecessary. So in lieu of that, we’ll mention that we can’t wait to see Klingon interiors and all their angular, red and green glory.
Gallery: Star Trek Online Gallery
Filed under: Screenshots, New titles, News items, Star Trek Online
Massively: Codemasters gives planned launch date for Siege of Mirkwood
European Lord of the Rings Online fans are anxious to get their hands on Siege of Mirkwood, especially after Codemasters told them about the great pre-order deals being offered. Players who purchase the expansion will receive the Harbinger’s Cloak, and players purchasing the expansion and the Adventurer’s Pack add-on will receive the cloak and an extra mount. So they’ve heard the story of Mirkwood, seen the screenshots, watched the trailer, been offered some extra items with their purchase and are just left with the big question: when?
Sam “Satine” Russell, the Director of Community Relations for Codemasters, answered that question recently when she commented that Siege of Mirkwood “is currently tracking 3rd December for launch”, two days after the scheduled December 1st release date for Mirkwood in North America.
It’s important to note the phrasing “currently tracking”, meaning that this isn’t an engraved-in-stone date. However, that date isn’t too far off, so we feel pretty good about Satine’s statement. We also feel pretty anxious to get our hands on Siege of Mirkwood, so it’s great to have some dates to look forward to!
Filed under: Fantasy, Lord of the Rings Online, Launches, News items
Massively: Eye on the Aion community
See what they did there? Aion Community Manager Sebastian “Ayase” Streiffert admits it’s a “shameless pun”, but it’s still fun. Eye on Community is a chance for you to share questions, accomplishments, and information about what’s going on with Aion fans. As with any game launch, NCSoft has had issues to deal with since the game went live just under a month ago, and to give them due credit they seem to be handling the big issues fairly well.
With some of the larger issues on their way to being solved, it looks like NCSoft is hoping to interact with the players a bit more. Hopefully this is a step toward being in tune with the Aion fans to keep the game moving in a direction that everyone is happy with. Well, as happy as a group of thousands of people can all be at once, anyway.
Eye on Community begins with a question about community in EU Aion and the Legion system, so enjoy the read while we watch to see where NCSoft goes with this new feature.
Massively: Star Trek Online player progression dev chat October 20th
If you’ve got any additional questions on player progression in Star Trek Online, Cryptic will be holding a 30 minute dev chat next Tuesday, October 20, at 11:30 a.m. Pacific time. The topic’s been covered previously — particularly in the ongoing Ask Cryptic feature — but as always the developer is more than happy to open itself to follow-up questions from the community.
There’s a Java client you can access from the web right here, just make sure to type “/join #STO” in the text input field. If you’ve got IRC, simply point it at #STO on coldfront.net and you’re in business. Also, anyone who’d like their question answered but can’t make it should post it in this official thread on the Star Trek Online forums. Cryptic will be selecting questions from there as well.
We hope you guys have questions, because we’re kinda stumped on anything but Klingon specific stuff, which we’re sure they’re not going to answer right now.
Filed under: Sci-fi, New titles, News items, Star Trek Online
Massively: All Points Bulletin closed beta has begun
Urban crime (game) enthusiasts, rejoice! The All Points Bulletin closed beta has begun, according to reports at both Eurogamer and Kotaku. It was rumored that the beta would begin this month and it seems there are presently three windows of gameplay a week in the All Points Bulletin CBT — Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday evenings, says Eurogamer’s Oli Welsh. Those interested in ripping up the streets as either a Criminal or an Enforcer can still apply to become an All Points Bulletin beta tester at the game’s official site.
APB is in development at Realtime Worlds in Scotland, and aims to bring a new level of online interaction to multiplayer urban crime games. Check out Massively’s coverage of All Points Bulletin for more on what Realtime Worlds is creating.
Filed under: Betas, MMO industry, New titles, All Points Bulletin, Crime
