I just had a flashback of Interplay's messy end-of-days saga a few years back... What a mess that was. Seemingly stepping in the footsteps of that once legendary game company, the Japanese group Gonzo keeps on cracking and shattering, in the midst of escalating corporate "restructuring". Just yesterday I was pitying them for their rumored loss of the Strike Witches 2 anime project. And today ANN brings word of another major, self-inflicted blow: the "divestment" of Gonzo's online game development studio Gonzo Rosso.



By the way, since it's April 1 in Japan already, we can stop using the parent company's obsolete GDH name. So as I was saying, Gonzo will cut off its game subsidiary in an attempt to further consolidate whatever resources is still has, entirely abandoning the gaming scene in order to focus on its anime business.

Some of Gonzo Rosso's best known MMORPGs include (...)

 Continue reading 'Gonzo Cuts Off Game Division, Gonzo Rosso'...

Ever wanted an all-in-one game engine for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, DX9/DX10 PC games and MMOs alike? And had a crapload of money to spend on it? Well I guess the second part may be a bit tricky, so just for the sake of curiosity, the devs from Crytek will be introducing their new CryENGINE 3 game development solution at this year's GDC Expo (March 25-27) in San Francisco.



The package advertised in Crytek's announcement includes the CryENGINE 3Sandbox level editor - a 3rd generation "What you see is what you play" (WYSIWYP) tool designed by and for professional developers - and significant new features specifically designed for (...)

 Continue reading 'CryENGINE 3 To Be Revealed At GDC Expo'...

Because you can't have an MMO in this day and age without expanding it during the first few months after release (and bug-fixing it throughout its entire lifetime), Warhammer Online, too, is set to receive its first live expansion soon enough. Titled "Call to Arms", it will be rolled out - for free - in early March, and will be running through the beginning of June. At which point, presumingly, another one of these "live expansions" might follow.



Copy-pasting from GOA's announcement, Call to Arms will introduce an array of new content for WAR players, including two highly anticipated new careers - the Orc Choppa and the Dwarf Slayer - and a new dungeon zone called "Land of the Dead", set in the desert realm of the Tomb Kings. It will also include 3 in-game live events, a new Realm vs. Realm (RvR) Scenario, added functionality to the Realm Wars section of the WAR website, the opening of the official WAR Forums, and a new free trial version of the game.

In the announcement, Mark Jacobs from Mythic refers to this huge new Tomb Kings dungeon as a "spiritual successor to the Dark Age of Camelot dungeon, Darkness Fall", and restates their commitment to keep on delivering a massive amount of free content "now and in the future".

Below you'll find the full schedule of the Call to Arms live expansion, (...)

 Continue reading 'Warhammer Online Expands With Call to Arms'...

After leaving his trademark on the gaming industry via the Ultima series (and also producing Tabula Rasa), Richard Garriot has sent an open letter to the said MMO's community, informing the fans of his plans to leave NCsoft in the near future. Why, or where, it still remains an unknown issue to us, but the certain thing is that it has something to do with his recent voyage into outer space. Or outer limits.



Hopefully, his plans will still involve gaming, since this guy is one of the bastards I will always remember, from childhood until now. May luck shine upon you whatever you do, Lord British, even if you have discovered a race of horny Japanese teenage girls and you don't want to share it. Click further for the letter:  (...)

 Continue reading 'Garriot To Leave NCsoft'...

Since Blizzard said a bing no-no to the idea of creating (or porting) a MMO to consoles, Turbine took up the flag and announced, recently, its intentions to explore this yet... unexplored market, to establish a stronghold in this virgin land, where the hands of human beings have yet to set foot on. Turbine has a fair and decent history regarding MMOs, with its Lord of the Rings Online still living and breathing (and, in my humble opinion, the second best MMO out there), so chances are that they will not screw things up.

More details about this are said to come early next year, but do remember that Turbine has the license to create Tolkien-based MMOs until 2012, with the possibility of extending this deadline until 2017. If this was not enough (and we all know nothing is ever enough, except maybe the beating we took when we were kids), Turbine is working on a technology that allows players to create self evolving worlds, as in self-made content. Interesting concept for a MMO, we are eager to see how well it is implemented without completely ruining the game balance.

Source.

MMO players can be divided into two categories: the ones who play World of Warcraft and the ones who WILL play World of Warcraft sooner or later. A sad fact it may be, but it seems that the only way to actually quit playing Blizzard's massive milk cow is to quit playing MMOs alltogether. Just like I did.


During a recent earnings report, Blizzard's president Mike Morhaime has shown us a few very uninteresting numbers, also mentioning that, unlike some enthusiasts may have predicted, large numbers of players that have “quit” WoW recently, in the light of would-be competitors like Age of Conan and Worhammer Online, are slowly, but steadily, renewing their WoW subscriptions. Because the other games just plain ol' suck.

So, according to him, 68% of those dumb enough to think Age of Conan will be a big hit are coming back to WoW with their tail between their legs, while 48% of those who listed Warhammer Online as reason for cancellation... are doing the same. See any pattern here? Because there is only one pattern. There is no way in Hell a MMO game can challenge WoW at this moment, and win.

Source.

If you happen to be playing MMOs, then you also live in fear of the constant General spam, Whisper spam, Mail spam and various other kinds of spam regarding in-game money selling. I am (but, hopefully, used to be) a World of Warcraft player myself, and if I were to count all those messages I've got involving “PLX BUY OUR GOLDZ!” or “WWW.GAYSITE.COM SELLZ BEST!”, I would probably be losing (another) 4 years of my life.

And we also know that most gold farmers are “Chinese”. So we gank them. A lot. Well, the Chinese government has actually found a way to gang them in real life also, by collecting a 20% tax on all revenues from the redistribution of online, virtual currency. And why not? The market so far is growing, has still great potential, it it suffers from no taxes (until now) and it is a pain in the large asses of decent players who try to play a game without suffering insane, buffed, AH prices.

The Wall Street Journal has more on this.

What a time I found for quitting WoW... again! Not only is the Lich King unleashing his Wrath in less than a month, but today the big-bad patch 3.0(.2) is being deployed, giving players a taste of things - and inevitable patch-fixing patches - to come.

As any WoW player and his lolpet knows by now, this latest major update is called "Echoes of Doom" and brings more changes and additions than you can read while downloading it; no matter how bad your connection, or how huge the patch. And it's HUGE, like 1.6 GB worth of porn downloads. Not to mention the patch notes are longer than a Wednesday morning maintenance; and we've all had those... So you might want to start reading those official patch notes for v3.0.2 right away.

You won't be seeing this screen for much longer.

Below I'll only slap the "General" section of said patch notes - should be enough to get you through a pack of cigs. So enjoy the read, and I'll see you in-game. Oh... wait... wasn't I quitting WoW? Again? (...)

 Continue reading 'World of Warcraft Patch 3.0 Deployed'...

In the dawn of Mines of Moria, the fine ladies over at Turbine decided “Hell, it was about time” to open a new development office, right in the heart of Redwood City, California, U.S. Of A., Earth. And, since opening new businesses usually involves new job spots, some ex-Flagship employees were keenly lured to join forces, in whatever future project (or projects) the company has in mind.

The first one to join Turbine's military is Dave Brevik, “ex-chief visionary officer” at Flagship, followed by Jeff Lind and Matt McKnight. All these guys were involved with Flagship, while previously Brevik was president of Blizzard North and Lind did some nasty things over at Electronic Arts, involving franchises like the The Sims and The Lord of the Rings.

We wish them luck. And most of all, we wish they can actually do a better job here than that craptastic Hellfail: London, that nobody played.

The time has come for us to polish those shotguns and dial that Stargate secret access code, because, here it is, a closed Beta Test begins on Wednesday for FireSky's Stargate Worlds, the very much anticipated sci-fi MMO. Interested in this? I bet you are, well, at least, I am. If your breakfast consisted of immense quantities of shit and your luck has skyrocketed faster than George W. Bush can count to ten, pay a visit to the game's official website and sign up for a chance to get a spot into the Beta.



It seems like the developers are also planning some Open Beta in the near future, more exactly somewhere early in 2009. Stargate Worlds should also launch in 2009, that is, if nothing bad happens.

Oh boy! I'm pretty excited, this will finally be my chance to kill that son of a bitch Daniel Jackson, I hate that helpless idiot almost as much as I hate Bethesda.