Every once in a while we celebrate great – and sadly, not so great – achievements in the MMOG industry. Today, we congratulate Hi-Rez Studios’ Global Agenda for turning two-years old. As most of you may know, Global Agenda is Hi-Rez Studios’ award winning Sci-fi MMO Shooter that was launched on February 1st, 2010. Since then Global Agenda has had over 1,000,000 registered players, over 12,000,000 PvE missions, and over 1,400,000 PvP missions. It’s been a bumpy road, with the game seeing multiple transitions, often for the better of the title, the company and the associated communities. In 2011 alone, GA made the transition to becoming a free-to-play MMOG, became the first of such games to launch on Steam, and saw its first completely free expansion the “Recursive Colony.”

Not one to miss an opportunity to celebrate its community, Hi-Rez Studios is offering a special thanks for playing the game to new and old players alike. Securing the awards is simple, play in any instanced PvE or PvP matches this week, January 30th to February 6th, and you will receive a limited edition pet, a miniature edition of the boss Switchblade. The second gift takes a bit more to earn, as in you actually have to do something. Players that participate in the special player-managed PvP tournaments will receive a dragon-themed helmet in celebration of the Year of the Dragon. The winning team of the tournament will receive exclusive flair and even a cash prize! If that isn’t enough for you, Hi-Rez has even added appearance and flair item from the past to the ‘Burning Fashion’ vendor in Dome City, so get them at a discount while you still can!

Global Agenda has reached a grand milestone for any MMOG. If you haven’t tried Global Agenda there’s no better time than now to give it a whirl. It’s free, so what’s stopping you?!

Once again, Happy Birthday to you, Global Agenda, and congratulations on the achievement Hi-Rez. We hope the next two more years are even better. I would have sent you guys a cake, but I didn’t know what flavor you guys would have liked. So I just ate it.

/nomnomnom

On September 21st, Hi-Rez Studios released the much-anticipated free expansion Recursive Colony onto the live servers for its popular MMO shooter, Global Agenda. Recursive Colony is Global Agenda’s largest content update to date and its first major expansion since the game went free-to-play.

Recursive Colony is centered around the idea that the  humans of Dome City are being attacked by a hive-minded army of robot-building robots bent on the destruction of humans, and yes, I am very close to making a reference to the Terminator series. The new hive mind doesn’t just add a few new instanced missions and some flairs. That wouldn’t do for the cluster’s grandiose plans. Instead, an entire new zone, PvP maps, and daily repeatable missions will keep players coming back for more.

Good thing the resources are apparently infinite.

“North Sonora,” the new zone added to Global Agenda’s map, holds the shooter’s major new content. By popular demand, the developer added in a series of chain quests and repeatable quests to give players something to focus on besides the grind of instanced PvE/PvP missions. These quests can either be done by solo agents or in teams. Depending on the mission, players may find themselves exploring the open world or sent with a band of your friends into a Skyne- I mean Recursive Colony -hive to take the fight to the machines. Continue Reading

Halo MMO - It would have been on the list had it ever come out.

Ladies and germs, you’ve likely been following the writers of LoreHound.com for quite some time (If not, welcome aboard!).  We’ve introduced ourselves, talked about our time in World of Warcraft, discussed our past and even revealed the origins behind our now-familiar names.  But what we haven’t done is reveal how we got here.

How is it that we went from players to bloggers?  Was World of Warcraft our first drug, or just the latest taste?  Exactly how long have we been in the MMOG scene?  Are we newcomers with a penchant for deep discussion, or are we long-standing players well-versed in the genre?  Perhaps we’re casual sight seers, whetting our palate with a smorgasbord of flavors and diverse textures.  You’ll gain insight and answers from my personal timeline (dates are when I played). Continue Reading

EVE Online, probably the most visible sci-fi/futuristic MMO out there, has always benefited from the attention of gaming journalists and bloggers that are attracted to the various shenanigans going on in space. Needless to say, the actions of players are supported and granted additional meaning when you consider the cold, harsh universe that EVE has developed thanks to a successful combination of lore and game mechanics. This is further extended with the recent re-introduction of live events that rely on the same mix of lore and gameplay in order to engage players on a deeper level.

So, it is quite sad to see that other games in the genre, such as Global Agenda and Perpetuum, haven’t had the opportunity to devote resources for proper storytelling just yet. The lore of these games is largely static and only serves as a backdrop for the actions of users. The situation is somewhat remedied when you consider the various fiction submitted by fans. Set in the same world that players know and inhabit, these stories help develop the universe of a beloved game further.

Today, I’d like to give you a teaser for a story I wrote back in the beta days of Global Agenda. It was a competition created by fans for fans, and most of us were eager to participate. My entry started off as a short story that followed the template given to us – the Commonwealth has designed a powerful mech, the construction of which could endanger the livelihood of nearby agencies. However, the narrative quickly went off in a direction I never planned for it. The end-result was quite different to what I originally expected. Continue Reading