Tagged News: mmorpg

You have to give Flying Lab Software credit for their dusk shots in Pirates of the Burning Sea. These two images show ships in the purple hue of the day's end.

While the stage demo of The Agency at CES may have been slightly underwhelming, a three part developer walkthrough is now available at GameTrailers, and it's looking pretty good. Hal Milton, Lead Designer on The Agency claims the footage shown is pre-alpha, but the game is looking quite polished for such an early stage of development!

Don't believe me? Click here to see for yourself!

What began as a year in review editorial, morphed into an analysis of the evidence 2007 gave us that the subscription model was on its way out in North America and Europe. In this article, I look at the historic evidence and where things might head in 2008 and beyond.

All the evidence suggests that World of Warcraft is not the harbinger of an expanded marketplace, but an aberration, a lightning strike at the right moment. Among Western audiences - as it was among Eastern audiences years ago - the subscription based MMORPG is at best on life support and more than likely on its way out the door.

The one-two punch of WoW and Guild Wars in 2004 has delivered a significant blow to the prospects of any company that has the audacity to charge their subscribers a monthly fee. Guild Wars showed that a high quality experience can be free and WoW redefined what people expect for that $14.95 a month.

Read more after the click.

In Las Vegas, CES has kicked off and the usual panels are underway. Gamasutra chimes in with an especially interesting summary of one that features a wide cross section of development personalities, including people from Turbine and SOE.

Rowe asked the panelists about how to build an online game's global relevance. Said Christensen, "WoW has done a great job of localization, but in some ways they're almost thought of as an Asian company because of their long history of success in Korea. We're working Asian and Indian companies and developers to help us localize our development."

"We've had to learn that too," Ferrari agreed. "They're completely different business models, retail models, governmental regulations. Now you have to put technology in our games for the Asian markets to time players out after a certain amount of time."

Read more here.

EA Mythic, makers of Warhammer online, has released a new video. In this video Paul Barnett, the Creative Director for the game, talks about the newest class for the Dark Elves. The Disciple of Khaine, is not your normal healer/buffer. He not only gets life taps, but can send the life he taps into allies as well as himself. Paul promises he will be cool, and not your average heal bot.

Click "Read More" to see the video.

The holidays are gone and it's back to work for the devolopers. It seems the Devoplers have been hard at work with a new patch, 1.4, being released. This patch includes bug fixes, new features, and much more.

Gold Selling/Advertising
We are aware of current issues involving "credit/gold" sellers and advertising in the chat channel. We have already made several improvements to crack down on these players and are currently working on other options to prevent them from disrupting game play

Read the full 1.4 patch note after the click!

An update to the official site contains a new FAQ on POTBS' servers and what went into determining how many would be needed. This FAQ also includes the final server list.

The FAQ can be found here.

Continuing the trend of player submitted screenshots the latest entry to the Screenshot of the Week gallery is submitted by player Keiko Owens. The screenshot is scenic and fairly somber in tone, in remembrance of those fallen during the Bane invasion.

The screenshot of the week can be found at the Official gallery here. Or click the thumbnail above for the mirrored version.

None of us can predict the future, so why do we waste our time guessing about things that might come?

"We have this uncanny ability to break-down every single word Funcom utter and jump very quickly to our own conclusions. There's a soothsayer in every single one of us, it seems."

This fortnight the question is asked, "Is this our way of dealing with the wait?" and an opportunity for you to get your questions answered by Funcom in the weeks to come.

In Sean Bulger's latest column, he looks at the idea of competition between players as part of building an MMO community. Every other Wednesday, Bulger chimes in with a new community focused column here on WarCry.

One of the most controversial topics you'll run into with online game development - but certainly far from the only one - is competition between players. The very idea of Player versus Player (PvP) content can scare off a number of players and make plenty more question the potential community of any game with it. It would seem that a fairly large amount of MMOers believe that PvP is detrimental to their enjoyment of the game, that it draws in a fairly bad crowd, and it hurts the community for a game. Between the PvP severs of most games and the popularity of primarily PvE games and PvE content, tends to showcase this mindset.

Read more after the leap.