After 8 years and
over 23 Issues released,
City Of Heroes, the first Super-Hero MMO, will be shutting down for good at midnight tonight. Heroes has seen a tremendous amount of support not only from it's fan base, but from
the industry as well, it's unique position as the only major Non-Fantasy MMO in the market helping to keep it standing out among the Goblins and the Panda Kung-Fu Fighters. But if the game is so beloved by its customers, why is the game shutting down tonight, even with
the newest issue all but released in the Beta Server? Well that's where things get interesting.
[more inside]
posted by WeX Majors
on Nov 30, 2012 -
74 comments
Friendship is Optimal is not a "My Little Pony" fanfic, but a SF story that starts with a procedurally-generated MLP MMO, and crescendos to what could very well be the Best Possible Outcome if self-optimizing algorithms are given /almost/ the right goals.
Some readers are horrified by the implications; some want to move into "Equestria Online" anyway. Whichever camp you fall in, you'll never forget the phrase "satisfy human values through friendship and ponies".
posted by DataPacRat
on Nov 28, 2012 -
41 comments
It's All Games Now: The Convergence of Games and Social Media (video, 61 minutes), is a talk given by Raph Koster, one of the lead designers of the MMO Ultima Online, at the 2011 Game Developers Conference Online in Austin Texas. In it he looks at how digital games have changed as a social experience from MUDs to World of Warcraft, where they are going in the future, and the bleed between games and the real world. Koster has posted a summary
here on his site.
[more inside]
posted by codacorolla
on Nov 7, 2011 -
15 comments
Illustrator
Nate Simpson was a longtime veteran of the video game and concept art industries. Back in 2009, he opted to take a year off from work to work on
Gordon and the Stareater, his first attempt at sequential art.This week, Simpson's first major-publisher creator-owned comics project,
Nonplayer, hit the stands courtesy of the folks at Image. How'd the experiment work out?
[more inside]
posted by fairytale of los angeles
on Apr 6, 2011 -
17 comments
In this way, Lu Yang became one of the "RMB gamers" she disdains. More than 10,000 RMB was quickly and nearly imperceptibly spent. In the game, the "queen" possessed fearsome power. She carried out vengeance for herself and her friends, she accepted entreaties, and she protected the caravans of the kingdom. At the same time, she went out with the heroes to invade other kingdoms. Her reputation spread far and wide. [...] "Long live the Queen!" People bowed to her in submission. That was the high point for Lu Yang on ZT Online, and for that one fleeting moment, she felt that the time and money she had spent was worth it.
The System is a translated Chinese article examining ZT Online, an MMORPG that has taken fleecing gamers to a new level.
posted by Kattullus
on May 6, 2008 -
34 comments
The Straylight release of
Nexus War, a browser based PvP MMO in the vein of
Urban Dead (thought significantly more complex) and
Kingdom of Loathing (thought significantly more serious in tone), occurred today. It brings with it a host of changes, new skills, upgrades, and expansions, shaking things up for the old player base and making it an ideal time for new players to join, both because the status quo is being rewritten and because of a vastly expanded in game help menu.
[more inside]
posted by Caduceus
on Apr 26, 2008 -
22 comments
Well,
it's official. After numerous rumors, leaks, and even someone with a sharp eye for
trademark searches, it was revealed this morning with the first entrants to
BlizzCon in Anaheim, California that the next World of Warcraft expansion will be called Wrath of the Lich King, complete with new areas to explore, new hairstyles and character customizations, level 80, and the first new class to be introduced to the game since it opened.
posted by thanotopsis
on Aug 3, 2007 -
76 comments
Raising for Ryzom. Saga Of Ryzom's parent company is having some sort of undisclosed trouble, and a group of users are raising funds to purchase the source code and art assets. So far, they've raised 60k in euros.
posted by ®@
on Dec 1, 2006 -
3 comments
Get your game on with Kaneva. Billing itself as
"The world’s first digital entertainment marketplace!" Kaneva is a beta launch of a concept that maybe interesting to gamers, media creators, and consumers as well. An Atlanta based company, Kaneva.com aims to be an exchange/market portal for game and media creators, who can directly create Massively Multi-player Online (MMO) games using the Kaneva Framework, and for digital media creators seeking distribution. The business model is innovative, and has been described as
"a kind of multi-media flickr (pre-fame) meets eBay on steroids, or an online marketplace for folks hyped on digital entertainment. An Intertainment Hub. A platform and host." The company recently presented its concept at the June meeting of the International Game Developers Association, and back in April
Computer Gaming Magazine had an article. During the beta test phase, the site's tools are free to all comers, and there is already a limited amount of content available for those who just want to play something new.
posted by paulsc
on Jun 18, 2005 -
8 comments
