EA's chief financial officer says the company is making Wii U games, but is focused on the Xbox and PlayStation brands.

View Article

Right Click Here and 'Save As' to Download!
(Couples Retreat! 37.3 MBs, 1:05:11)

This week Shawn, Elysium, Julian and Rob Zacny cuddle up and talk about finding authenticity in gaming.

read more

Media Link

All game servers will be down for maintenance on Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013, at 5am PDT / 7am CDT / 8am EDT / 12pm UTC/GMT. Estimated downtime is approximately 4 hours.   With this maintenance:   The Dragon Rising...

Filed under: Podcasts

Sony made the first move in the next-gen battle in February, and now, mere weeks before E3 2013, Microsoft has revealed its next console, the Xbox One.

Ludwig and Alexander are in Redmond covering the full goings-on at the Xbox One announcement event, but the home crew of Xav, Dave, and Jess are here to recap all the currently known details. There are still plenty of questions surrounding the system, especially when it comes to software, but Microsoft did spill plenty of details regarding the hardware.

Facts, opinions, speculation - it's all here.

Listen to the Super Joystiq Podcast:

• Subscribe to the Super Joystiq Podcast in iTunes
• Add the Super Joystiq Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator
• Download the MP3 directly

Details about each segment are available after the break.

Continue reading Super Joystiq Podcast Special: Xbox One revealed

Super Joystiq Podcast Special: Xbox One revealed originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 21 May 2013 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Recent thought-provoking posts have got me pondering whether MMO's got to the mixed place where they are today because the people making them were not sufficiently careful in what they wished for.  Specifically:

• Rohan wrote a thought-provoking post over the weekend suggesting that communities are too focused on business models.  As exhibit A, he noted that even the notorious WoW forums largely stick to complaints about the actual game, while non-subscription titles like SWTOR have forums full of threads complaining about the business model.  
• Psychochild is continuing his discussions about how MMO's are losing their stickiness, why players may be to blame, and how the resulting impact on revenue may also be rendering the genre financially unsustainable.  (Scott Hartsman is also making this case 140 characters at a time on Twitter - someone buy the man a blog?  :)) 

The example that has me thinking is the controversially high number of daily quests in the current WoW expansion.  Many people defended these "optional" daily activities at the expansion's launch, but even the developers are acknowledging in hindsight that the model they created may have contributed to burnout.  How did this "mistake", if it is one, happen?

A sidenote to Rohan's business model thread is that WoW's business model has changed relatively little since its launch over eight years ago, or indeed even since the older MMO's from the decade prior.  The game makes money when people stay subscribed, people cancel their subscriptions when they run out of stuff to do, so clearly the answer to the question is to provide an unending supply of stuff to do.  The reasoning is sound but apparently misdirected. 

As Psychochild notes, the virtual world style MMO's of last decade were a different beast.  These products emphasized long-term goals over short-term fun and community over convenience.  On paper, the daily grind brings people into the game every day and thereby increases their interaction with the community.  In practice, the sheer repetition of the daily grind de-emphasizes community - people burn out and are forced to lean more heavily on strangers to fill out their required daily groups - and instead emphasizes repetitive gameplay that will always struggle to compete with a crowded marketplace including increasingly deep and online-enabled single-player games. 

In short, Blizzard may have gotten exactly what they asked for - people who ground dailies, scenarios, dungeons, LFR, pet battles, etc until they couldn't take anymore.  Worse, because the only financial feedback in their model is to quit the game outright, the only feedback they got was when they started losing subscribers by the millions.  Under a non-subscription model they might have gotten the message that people were getting tired of dailies before people were irreparably burned out - or at least made more money off of the players in question before they left. 

Funny how our spending habits may mirror our response to in-game incentives - it's much easier to get what you ask for than what you actually want. 

Filed under: Fantasy, Culture, MMO Industry, Diablo III, Anniversaries

Diablo III is a year old, and Blizzard's celebratory anniversary gesture is one of those mile-long infographic things featuring selected statistics designed to make you ooh and ahh.

Said statistics include 67.1 million characters created world-wide, 3.3 trillion monsters killed world-wide, and 22.4 million characters that have killed Diablo. Interestingly, Blizzard left off the number of hours lost to launch server login issues, nor is there any mention of D3's much-maligned real-money auction house. You can see the full graphic after the break.

Continue reading Blizzard congratulates itself on Diablo III's anniversary

Blizzard congratulates itself on Diablo III's anniversary originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 21 May 2013 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

• Source: PC Gamer

Commander Sackboy and the Normandy Crew are ready to mine for iridium across the LittleBigPlanet-Verse.

View Article

In this special bonus podcast, we discuss the reveal of the brand new Xbox One!

View Video

A "season pass" for four pieces of future Metro: Last Light downloadable content has turned up on Steam.

View Article

An overhaul of Xbox Live includes a brand new matchmaking system, and a new generation of achievements.

View Article

Star Wars Rebels will take place between Episodes III and IV and focus on the growth of the Empire and birth of the Rebellion.

View Article

Whoops, the new launcher than came out today had… issues. Which I think makes it an official EVE Online feature! It even got Winterblink to make a Warp Drive Active comic about it. CCP took their old launcher, which just used to show some news and ads, along with checking to see if you game […]

Filed under: Sci-Fi, Video, Patches, News Items, War, Free-to-Play, MechWarrior Online

Continue reading MechWarrior Online introduces new map in which players can die painfully

MechWarrior Online introduces new map in which players can die painfully originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 21 May 2013 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: City of Heroes, EverQuest II, Final Fantasy XI, The Chronicles of Spellborn, Vanguard, Miscellaneous, WildStar, Jukebox Heroes, Music

Character select and creation music has always fascinated me. OK, maybe not fascinated; it's interested me. I've always viewed such themes as the overture of the game, the interlude between the title theme and the game proper to come.

These themes don't tend to be rip-roaring in their presentation because that's not their purpose. They have to be pleasant enough without being annoying when looped endlessly. After all, sometimes players spend a loooong time making their characters or sitting there at the select screen, and the last thing you want is for their ears to become fatigued by the experience.

So here are six MMO character select and character creation themes that I've enjoyed over the years. And if you saw the title graphic up there and immediately started hearing this song in your head, then you and I probably grew up in the same era.

Continue reading Jukebox Heroes: Character select music

Jukebox Heroes: Character select music originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 21 May 2013 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Fantasy, Classes, Game Mechanics, MMO Industry, New Titles, Previews, News Items, PvE, Opinion, Free-to-Play, Hands-On, First Impressions, Dragon's Prophet

I don't have many fond memories from Runes of Magic. I didn't play it long, and the thing I recall most vividly is being forced to hunt around Runewaker's cash shop for an item that would let me talk in global chat.

Fortunately, negative vibes like that didn't affect my recent hands-on with Dragon's Prophet's beta, which, in case you're wondering, is Runewaker's followup to Runes of Magic. Unfortunately, I don't think the new game in its present state is quite ready for prime time.

Continue reading Massively's Dragon's Prophet first impressions

Massively's Dragon's Prophet first impressions originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 21 May 2013 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

The game was announced just a few weeks ago after numerous leaks, and was shown to the public for the first time today at the Xbox unveiling event. Infinity Ward wanted to stress the improvements the new engine allowed them to make from detailing in animation to customization in multiplayer.

View Video

Harass the enemy into madness with the new Canyon Network map and some sweet new mechs.

View Article

After already moving 3 million copies, ArenaNet is looking for a little bump before thinking about expansions to GW2.

View Article

An interview with Cory Jones from Cryptozoic, about their hot new TCG MMO, "HEX". Cory comes from Blizzard, and talks a lot about the ins and outs of making a good TCG game, and I think you guys will really enjoy this interview episode.


Media Link

Filed under: Podcasts, MMO Industry, News Items, Massively Meta, Massively Speaking, Miscellaneous

When a subscription MMO goes free-to-play, there's always a circus atmosphere surrounding it. The studios use it as an excuse to enjoy a "second launch," players pour out opinions on all sides, and new folks wander into the danger zone out of sheer curiosity.

It's not just about F2P on this week's Massively Speaking; we have game launches, layoffs, previews, and tons of reader mail to cover. Will we have the words to do it? Or will we just end the podcast humming informatively? Jef's on it today, so there definitely will be a song and dance number at some point!

Have a comment for the podcasters? Shoot an email to podcast@massively.com. We may just read your email on the air!

Get the podcast:
[RSS] Add Massively Speaking to your RSS aggregator.
[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.
[iTunes] Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.
[Stitcher] Follow the podcast on Stitcher Radio.
Listen here on the page:



Read below the cut for the full show notes.

Continue reading Massively Speaking Episode 249: Captain Grumpypants

Massively Speaking Episode 249: Captain Grumpypants originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 21 May 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Sci-Fi, EVE Online, Expansions, Game Mechanics, Dev Diaries, Sandbox, Subscription

The updated radial menu will be connected to the underutilized left mouse button and is confined to eight segments that will change depending on what the user is clicking. The studio wrote up a blog post on the subject, promising that the redesign is intuitive and will result in faster access to relevant commands.

Initially, the radial menu upgrade will be for ship flight only, although CCP is willing to expand its domain if players find it useful. This feature is currently available on the test server.

EVE Online redesigns radial menu for Odyssey originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 21 May 2013 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

• Source: Radial menu redesign

Filed under: Fantasy, Events (In-Game), Game Mechanics, PvP, PvE, Opinion, Guild Wars 2, Flameseeker Chronicles

Continue reading Flameseeker Chronicles: Catching crabs in Guild Wars 2

Flameseeker Chronicles: Catching crabs in Guild Wars 2 originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 21 May 2013 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Tonight Zelmira, my Herald of Xotli, got her final ding and reached level 80 in Age of Conan. This was while starting to do a few of the first missions in Khitai. It is really nice to have reached this point and I am still continuing to gain appreciation for the game – I am […]

Pft. Eighth-gen game console? Halo TV series? Forza 5? I'll just sit here and enjoy my free copy of the HD remake of a 2002 game. So much better.

View Article

One part Tower Defense, one part FPS, and a sprinkling of RPG for flavor.

View Article