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.

Continue Reading

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

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.

Continue Reading

Continuing with giving you a teaser of photographic content to keep you thirsty for more as we polish off the content we have for you to grasp onto until release dates happen, here is Day 1 of PAX Prime 2011.

Day 1 was filled with a busy schedule as we ran as a pack of wolves with delicious prey to each booth to meet our appointments, ultimately in the end missing a few. Our schedules booked all day, we found only little downtime to meet with our old friends at Hi-Rez Studios and Riot Games, creators of Global Agenda and League of Legends .

Beararms managed to hop on a  DDO station as we were in the area for an appointment, to recreate his infamous D&D character, Adam Grizzlys, visually. Along with a surprise of Batman: Imposters booth babe, and the bright lights, we Lorehounds managed to see a ton of things this year in one day. Continue Reading