I’ve been taking a little break from WoW lately.  Moving up to school and getting situated for the semester took a lot out of my game time.  Now that I feel ‘at home’ here, I realize that (along with 90% of the guild) we’re sorta waiting for Cataclysm.  There’s no real incentive to grind for [...]

In recent MMO releases, the first 20 levels are often the best that the game has to offer.  This was/is certainly the case with Vanguard, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, an Aion.   Each of these games started off strong then quickly tapered off.  Whether it be a case of the game not being finished (VG/AoC), [...]

Red 5 Studios has finally revealed what they have been working on:  Firefall.  It’s a “ team-based action shooter combining deep character progression with an open-world cooperative campaign that can be shared with hundreds of other players.” That really doesn’t say much though in today’s industry. That’s why I’m very pleased that they have provided [...]

I guess that now is as good a time as any to give you guys my quick thoughts on FFXIV.  I played some of the closed beta… well I guess some is an overstatement.  I maybe clocked a combined total of three hours.  Is that enough time to comment on a MMO?  Honestly, I am [...]

We all know how everything gets compared to WoW.  It’s a given.  It happens.  It’s probably unavoidable now.  When I posted about Rift, and when I post just about everything, there was a big debate over whether it’s a “WoW clone” and what exactly constitutes being like WoW.  It stood out to be yesterday that [...]

Since I’ve been away from the gaming scene for a while I’m probably late to the party.  I’ve been browsing through the K&G community forums’ thread about Rift: Planes of Telara and I wanted to share a video that showcases the talent tree (or Soul class system) as well as a glimpse at an instance [...]

I should have said something before leaving, but I’ve been afk on a mini-vacation/trip to school with time spent preparing for the new semester beginning on Monday. It’s been four days since I’ve touched a computer to do anything but print off directions so it feels like the world has passed me by. I’ll be [...]

Bad idea! This was a really long time coming and I’ve been sharing my distaste over the idea on our forums and with others for several months.  Cryptic is making a D&D Neverwinter multiplayer coop game.  This will be like NWN but set in the new 4th edition rules after “years and years” have passed. [...]

To all the trolls who flamed me when I said that the LotRO Cash Shop would affect gameplay both directly and indirectly, what are your thoughts now that all this information is being released?  I could pick through the comments and start naming people but why don’t you go ahead and read the comments yourself [...]

… sorta.  I’ve been playing the “open beta” as has Graev now for about a day and a half.  I asked around (friends, twitter, forums, etc) and didn’t get an answer about whether or not the NDA was still up for “open beta”.  I went ahead and shot a PM to the CM from SoE [...]

Clone Wars Adventures is the Star Wars version of Free Realms… or so we thought when we went to play yesterday.   When we heard that SoE was taking the popular Star Wars cartoon and turning it into a F2P game, pretty much everyone immediately thought of Free Realms. While the game shares many things with [...]

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is available today on XBLA (and not on PS3 or PC until Sept 28).  Graev and I picked it up for 1200 microsoft points, completing out summer collection which essentially awards us 1200 points so we semi-somewhat justify it as free.  It’s an isometric platformer/action game with puzzles, [...]

Age of Empires is a game that had a large part in shaping the real time strategy genre.  I can remember playing one, two, three, and their expansions; many of which I played while still a kid.  AoE is actually one of the only games that I could convince my Mom to try.  Why?  She [...]

I spent nearly an hour during one of my lunch breaks this past week browsing the official Rift: Planes of Telara website and watching videos of gameplay, interviews from conventions, and production video pieces done by Trion Devs. The game actually looks good.  I think the only thing I’ve ever written about the game on [...]

We have two great games for you in this edition of Game Watch.  Game Watch is our segment where we look into the near future for titles worth playing.  Not just any titles though.  These are games you may not have heard of or simply haven’t been following as much as we think you should. [...]

Last week’s Weekend of Gaming was neglected as Saturday was spent from dawn until dusk cleaning out the garage preparing for it to be finished off with drywall and paint. With that project out of the way, will there be any time to game this weekend? We hope so because we definitely have plans. Keen [...]

Xbox 360′s Summer of Arcade is currently going on and yesterday’s release was Monday Night Combat. I figured I’d download the game and give it a try, but I was not expecting it to be nearly as good as it is. The game essentially plays like a class-based third person shooter, similar to TF2 in [...]

I wasn’t a fan of Guild Wars 1.  I think it was a pretty game with decent gameplay, but the fact that they instanced it all and gave you hub-like towns as the only means of community interaction didn’t fly with me. Guild Wars 2 is coming along and it’s gorgeous.   Watch this trailer and [...]

There hasn’t been a MMO like EverQuest since EverQuest.  Let’s not get lost in the semantics by saying that WoW is like EQ because they’re all “diku” or whatever.  EQ2 comes close, mind you, but even the developers acknowledged that they are two quite different games. The discussions here over the past few days have [...]

I’m reading this more and more about how certain mechanics in a MMO won’t work or how a certain type of game wouldn’t work today because it wouldn’t attract large number of players.  “That would be a niche game and just wouldn’t work”. In yesterday’s entry smthin comments exactly how I feel. “It is hilarious [...]

Lots of additional information coming in from the SoE Fan Faire about EverQuest ‘Next’! These EQ fans are astonishing! They’re amazing! I might actually have to go to the next SoE Fan Faire if it’s going to be attended by players like these. The questions they asked steered the developers to speak directly to the [...]

The Future of EverQuest:  EverQuest Next. The announcement from Smedley at SoE’s fan faire that the EverQuest universe would be expanding is amazing news.  It’s nothing but an announcement right now with a followup coming this weekend though. Time for some speculation.  SoE has defined a very clear trend for their games over the past [...]

In the comments of yesterday’s entry I was asked whether or not I play MMO’s anymore because I have not been talking about or reviewing them (other than WoW).   My answer to that question is definitely a discussion starter. What MMO’s have come out or are coming out, which I haven’t already commented on, that [...]

A bit of good news to read over this morning’s Diet Coke: Torchlight 2 has been announced.  This time there will be some much needed multiplayer via peer to peer and LAN.  I just know there’s probably some comments like “LAN? Already better than Diablo 3!” popping up out there.  The first, since it lacked [...]

Warcraft 3 and StarCraft sparked a remarkable custom map community.   One would assume that StarCraft 2 would continue this legacy by kicking it up a notch as they’ve done with several of their RTS elements.  However, that’s not the case.  There are some serious problems. In WC3 and SC you created a game and it [...]