Posts Tagged ‘Guild Wars 2’

The Upcoming MMOGs of 2012

30 December 2011 | 5 Comments » | LHStaff

It’s not quite over yet, but 2011 was not a banner year for the MMOG genre. There was no massive success, no breakaway hit. Players did receive their handful of expansions and new content patches, but with the exception of the just-released Star Wars: The Old Republic – a title which may become that massive success – most events were a blip on the radar.

Perhaps 2011 will be remembered not for its lack of breathtaking releases in the genre. No, no, the Year of the Rabbit may go down in history for a paradigm shift in the genre itself. Yeah, you guessed it, a continued aggressive shift to the free-to-play model.

What started with a last-ditch effort by Turbine Entertainment to save Dungeons & Dragons Online has continued to spread through the industry like wildfire. From dieing titles to titles that would have surely been paid-to-play years ago to upcoming AAA games, escapisms from every subgenre, every part of the world and catering to every type of game were released, entered beta or teased during the year. It’s getting to the point that drawing the line between what is an MMOG and what isn’t is becoming increasingly difficult.

Below you’ll find the titles that have us here at LoreHound.com the most excited. There’s a little bit of everything, AAA to F2P, MMORTS to MMORPG, casual to hardcore. An exhaustive list of expansions, content patches and releases? No, but the post is choke full of excitement, previews and information.

We’ll kick it off with the prediction for Star Wars: The Old Republic’s seemingly bright future. More after the cut.

Star Wars: The Old Republic: BioWare has definitely set themselves on the right track with this game, going full blown into production. They have stated that they have a years worth of content already in back log before launch, giving them a year’s head start worth of content as they still work on more to come. Add to the fire the fact they’ve watched every MMO that was released in 2011, and took notes, along with everything the head megabeast, World of Warcraft, has done for the last 5 years. The game is only just over a week old (officially), and besides the hiccups with a launch of any new game, the game is going pretty solid with 1 million subscriptions already created on December 22nd (before people who got it for Christmas could subscribe).

Is the game perfect right now? No. Give it a few months, and all the kinks will be found and ironed out, with some new content. Yes, yes, that statement could be recycled for almost every MMOG release in modern history. That doesn’t make it any less true. The fully voiced story gives a very cinematic feel. Check out the Lore Cast Episode 5 in the coming days to hear how Mordil, Beararms, and perhaps a few others are feeling about the game.

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PAX Prime 2011: Day 3 – Freestyle Interviews and Bored Booth Babes

3 September 2011 | No Comments » | Mordil

PAX Prime 2011 is now at a close after day 3, but not without some last executions for skipping lines, getting torched by a flamethrower, and cool statues coming to life.

While filming the Rayman interview at the very vibrant and colorful Ubisoft booth, the Just Dance 3 music was playing and Mordil couldn’t get enough of it to resist from dancing. Just like Beararms who couldn’t resist picking up a “pimp” cane and hat to pose for a profile picture.

Finally, as the last homage to PAX, as people were getting kicked out and lights turned on, the employees at the Hi-Rez Studios booth had a little fun with extra promotional stickers by placing them on none other than unsuspecting Mordil. Toting around stickers everywhere in random places on his body, Mordil showed his Hi-Rez love by doing free advertising for 3 blocks to the car for the drive home.

Check out the gallery and FireFall’s animated statue after the break. Stay tuned for a full FireFall interview later this week.

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Know Thy Blogger: iTZKooPA’s MMOG Timeline

14 June 2011 | 15 Comments » | iTZKooPA

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

WoW Loses 600k Subs; Solution? More Paid Expansions

9 May 2011 | 8 Comments » | Amatera

Sometimes it helps to take the honey with the vinegar, but not even the announcement for an impending third-quarter Diablo III beta test could soothe the sting of losing around 600,000 World of Warcraft subs over the past couple of months. It is now around 11.4 million, down from over 12 million. Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime had to break the news during the company’s quarterly conference call earlier today.

Like anything else, popularity ebbs and flows and the spikes and valleys on the sales charts can usually be linked to periods of new content or players losing interest in the old. The real problem is that the peaks aren’t lasting as long as they used to. Losing 600k is one thing, but the fact that it has happened faster after Cataclysm than it has following any previous expansion is the real kick-in-the-pants.

Undoubtedly, everyone will have their own take on the news and opinions as to why precisely people are leaving the game in such sizable chunks, but what it comes down to at the end of the day — the one idea that seems to remain constant — is fatigue. I don’t believe that people are tired of MMORPGs or even the story of Azeroth itself, but rather the way that Blizzard conducts itself and the ever (d?)evolving philosophy that shapes the game’s continued development.

World of Warcraft would not have reached such insane numbers of subscriptions if it weren’t for the casual players and as the Farmville-addled masses flooded the channels with their girth, Blizzard was forced to compensate. Always pushing towards equalization and homogenization; making things simpler and easier to understand; removing those elements from the formula that, while perplexing, also made WoW interesting. And we, the fans and media, are complicit.

Why? Well, we encouraged it. For better or worse, this is kind of what we wanted, but we didn’t know any better. Changes to the game over the past few years have been a double-edged sword, and Cataclysm has proven to be the sharpest, shiniest double-edged sword yet. Allow me to elaborate with a broad example: we’re tired of leveling through the same old vanilla content, so we get a vastly modified 1-60 game. Zones are more engaging visually, travel is streamlined, quests are given a spitshine to ensure that not all of them are simple “kill x/gather y” affairs (though many still are). And yet, for a better and more polished game, we also get a less “fun” experience. It’s okay one time through, but it becomes so damn easy and there is no sense of exploration left.

How else have we done it? We’ve killed any difficulty with boss encounters and completing quests beyond pure execution. We’ve created mods and posted comprehensive strategies on very high-profile websites, which has in turn prompted Blizzard to incorporate elements of such helpful third-party resources into the game itself. And yet that does not absolve the company’s reliance on casual players of blame, because an absolutely amazing number of players, even with all this help, still do not understand how to play. Continue Reading

Falling out of Love with Azeroth. Again.

6 April 2011 | 12 Comments » | Amatera

I’m going to type this out, and then I’m going to look back on it, go “oh, how dreary…” and wonder why I didn’t write some dark poetry about the matter instead. I don’t intend to be so melodramatic, but the fact is that I feel I’ve been at this juncture many times before. Sure, the universe waxes and wanes; months or years pass; I’m on the wagon again, I’m off the wagon again. I don’t dislike World of Warcraft, or Blizzard, or generally most of what they’ve done with it, but like any long-term relationship, Azeroth and I are bound to hit some rough patches along the way.

That’s not to say that outside forces have not been actively intruding on our alone time, because they have — I’ve been working my day job a lot more than usual, while seeking to regain my social life several nights a week and dealing with lots of other more personal problems and stresses brought on by the rigors of just… well, trying to live. But that’s not the crux of it, and I’m not here to say that I feel my life is that much better for not spending a great deal of it plunked in front of my computer screen.

It’s more that I don’t feel that “alone time” is as interesting or valuable as it used to be. For all the content added in Cataclysm, I honestly find fewer and fewer aspects of the game that continue to appeal to me. Maybe that’s because so much of it has been streamlined — there’s a difference between increased convenience and catering to the lowest common denominator, a tightrope I feel Blizzard isn’t quite able to walk as well as it used to. With no challenge, no exploration, most content in a game (MMO or otherwise) is only fun the first time through by sheer virtue of its shiny newness.

This is the unfortunate downside of its current state: bulldoze through all the quests in a zone until you’re prompted to go the next one. There might be a lot of quests, but if you’ve done ‘em once, you’ve done ‘em a million times. I think the only entertainment I’ve ever really been able to squeeze out of leveling an alt is attempting to optimize my path to the level cap — how can I max out my XP bonus and what quests/activities will offer me the most experience in the least amount of time?

PvP? A big, fat meh. I enjoy competitive gaming to a degree, but I’ve never liked it enough in World of Warcraft for it to remain a selling point and my disappointment with the most recent additions to this side of the game is evident.

What else is there? Archaeology? Professions? Rare pet hunting (and, yes, I actually resorted to that for a couple of days recently, to no avail)? The one thing I hold any remaining interest in at the moment, raiding, is something I’ve been unable to do in at least a month. As much fun as a small, tight-knit guild can be, you’ve got to deal with the distinct possibility that losing just one key player completely destroys your setup. This person leaves, you can’t raid. You can’t raid, people lose morale, and even less start showing up. Eventually, you lose morale, too, and with it, all desire of playing World of Warcraft. Continue Reading

Hi-Rez Slashes Global Agenda Price, Sales Going To Japanese Relief; NCSoft Donates $6.3M

18 March 2011 | No Comments » | iTZKooPA

Normally, Lore Hound doesn’t act as a PR siren. We strive to start discussions, highlight the highs and lows of the industry, ask tough questions, showcase upcoming escapist activities and entertain. Even posts on general MMOG news come with Op-Ed tropes. But what happened in Japan last week is anything but normal.

To that effect, we’re here to inform you that Hi-Rez Studios, the new owners of the Tribes intellectual property, is donating all of its sales for Global Agenda to the American Red Cross relief fund for the next few days. The charity goes both ways though, as Hi-Rez has slashed GA’s price by 66%, down to a paltry $9.99. This makes it a great time to buy the enjoyable shooter if you’ve neglected it so far, or purchase a copy for a friend. Or hell, just buy a second copy. It’s a more enjoyable alternative to texting ‘Japan’ to some faceless entity – Skynet – that runs our cellular networks.

The deal ends on Sunday, March 20 and applies to all regions where Global Agenda is available. Hit the link at the top of the page to purchase and then head to the official relief page for the full details.

The structure of the donation means you won’t have to have this conversation with your self-satisfying friends.

Update:

In related news, NCSoft, developer of Aion and Guild Wars (among others), also is donating a huge heap of cash to the relief efforts. NCsoft announced today that it will donate 500 million Yen (approx 4.5 million Euros/3.9 million GBP/6.3 million USD) to restoration of damages in the region. They’re definitely going all out — Even a tenth of that amount would be considered huge.

Let’s keep showing the world that gamers also can make a big difference — here’s hoping that other game companies who have the means to give, do, and that Hi-Rez’s special pricing drive is a huge success.

We don’t plan to document all the charitable efforts made by the companies we generally cover, but these two definitely stand out as a good start.

PAX East 2011: Guild Wars 2 Live Demo/Developer Interview

14 March 2011 | 2 Comments » | LHStaff

We’re back with another live recording of the latest Guild Wars 2 demo! You might recall we got our first sneak peek at the game during last year’s PAX Prime, and the folks at Arenanet were kind enough to invite us back for a second go. Of course, a lot has been revealed about the game recently, content that has been reflected in the footage below. We take another trip through the character creation process, then move into exploring the Norn starting area, before jumping into a higher-level zone to score some Thief action (note that the class was officially unveiled at the event).

It’s a bit of a lengthy chat, so we’ve split it up into four parts for you, three of which you’ll find after the jump:

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PAX East 2011: Guild Wars 2 Introduces Thief Profession and New Playable Demo

11 March 2011 | No Comments » | pixiestixy

Just in time for the shenanigans at PAX East this weekend, NCsoft has released a whole hodge podge of information, plus some dandy screenshots and even a video on the thief class in Guild Wars 2. Check it out:

Now, I’ve always been a fan of melee classes. Assassin, rogue, thief — whatever you want to call them, they’re my idea of fun. The GW2 thief is about what one expects when thinking of these classes: masters of surprise, stealthy on their toes, good with daggers. But what else?

This weekend, these new thieves actually are on target to be one of the playable professions in NCsoft’s PAX demo, so we’re hoping to bring you some insider insight on just how well they play, and maybe add in some details on what sets these guys apart from the other classes we’ve already played in previous MMOs.

Speaking of the playable demo, here’s what else iTZKooPA and Heartbourne will have their hands full with this weekend at the GW2 booth:

  • Debut of the guardian as another playable profession
  • New Profession features, from an expanded selection of pets for rangers to new weapon capabilities for necromancers and warriors
  • Norn opening experience, including your own character biography, the introductory cinematic and starter areas
  • Access to Gendarran Fields, a mid-level area
  • New UI, with reportedly new functionality, new chat features and “hints of things to come.”

Check out the official site for all the juicy details on the thief class, and check back here soon for more on what iTZKooPA and Heartbourne have to say about the new demo.