This is a guest article written by Sephalon.

Earlier this week, a Community Manager announced on The Secret World forums that Funcom will be having a “Founding Cabal” lottery. Just in case you didn’t know, a Cabal is just a guild called… well a cabal.

As Famine, the CM who made the announcement, said it:

Attention Guild Leaders!

You and your guild now have the chance to become one of the privileged few that have a unique opportunity to secure your guild’s prominence in The Secret World as a Founding 50 Cabal(cabals in The Secret World are equivalent to guilds in other MMORPGs). Leaders of guilds that are already in existence and who seek to have a presence in The Secret World may apply for one of alimited number of reserved spots.  Continue Reading

I’d just like to take the time to thank the developers and PR team behind Elder Scrolls Online for letting me know ahead of time that it’ll be horrible, and that I don’t need to waste my time, nor get my hopes up.

It seems Zenimax is taking a page out of BioWare’s playbook, but didn’t realize BioWare’s lost the game. Fully voiced NPCs, solo story-line, typical MMO tab-targeting combat system, and a separate zone for PvP; can someone please alert Zenimax to tell them they’re making a horrible mistake? This design formula is the expected ruler (the measurement one, not the monarchist one) by the market for the industry. What makes the “next WoW’ is something that bends the ruler to make another, different formula.

What’s even worse is that game director Matt Firor just did an interview with Edge-Online talking about public dungeons as if they were some ancient game mechanic that hasn’t been seen in MMORPGs for years.  Non-instanced dungeons!? Geez, this sounds like the greatest MMORPG ever made (/sarcasm)! Is he serious? There are literally dozens of MMORPGs that released in the last few years without instanced dungeons.

From a team made-up of some ex Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot developers, I can’t believe how horrible ESO sounds so far. They don’t even have a hook yet. What separates ESO from the pack? Is their big selling point, “Hey, it’s an Elder Scroll MMO“? I haven’t heard one thing that’s unique yet; and in this market, the first impression is everything.

Having been an Elder Scrolls fan for over a decade – I only missed experiencing TES 2 - my excitement for this title shot-up through the roof, only to plunge down within minutes of reading the details; but at least they’re upfront about it. So again, thank you for letting me know that ESO will suck, Zenimax.

Wedbush Securities, a financial services and investment firm, today commented on the recent collapse of 38 Studios and the general status of the MMO industry stating that “Nobody is buying MMOs after Star Wars fizzled“. The analyst, Michael Pachter, went on to say that THQ learned this first hand when they could not find a publisher for the Warhammer 40K MMO.

Now this isn’t necessarily bad news, depending on who you are and how you’re looking at it. As a MMO developer, this is probably horrible news for you, but as a gamer, I think it couldn’t be any better.

You see there’s a reason for all of this; there’s a reason why SWTOR players are leaving in droves and why MMOs can’t seem to reach and hold that elusive one million subscribers/player mark. It’s a little game called World of Warcraft. You might have heard about it.

Until developers and publishers realize they’re never going to beat WoW by creating a clone of it, they’re all going to fail. But don’t tell that to the guys behind the Elder Scrolls MMO, it seems they’re as clueless as BioWare was and from the list of features that have been released so far, it seems we’ll have another dead-on-arrival MMO late next year.

Sure there are indie MMO developers creating gems like Pathfinder Online, Embers of Caerus and Dominus, which is now canceled, but they’re under funded, unpolished, and graphically out-dated. The second a developer creates a Kickstarter project, that tells me the game will either never see the light of day or will be released well before it should be. I have no interest in games like that.

The failure of SWTOR is undisputed. While it might be profitable for a long time, it’s once optimistic view that it can compete with WoW has been shattered and it’s left to fight for the scraps off the WoW table amongst the dozens of other “wow killers”.

The failure of SWTOR should be a wake up call to the entire industry that it’s time to try something new, but it seems with games like WildStar, Elder Scrolls and others on the horizon, were going to have to go through a few more failures before it sinks in.

Eeek! I’m late I’m late! I must beg forgiveness to anyone looking forward to my weekly summary; a vacation combined with the opening of The Secret World‘s beta weekend sent me spinning off into the land of distractions. But it’s been another pretty exciting week here at LoreHound! We’ve got item giveaways, MineCraft goodies, news about a few betas and several lengthier pieces that go into more detail than just providing news. I love the longer pieces, as an unabashed MMO addict there’s very little that I love more than long talks about gaming. Game theory, character building, analyses of subscription numbers and playerbase makeup, how to guides –  I love it all.

And of course, my favorite topic – The Secret World! The open beta! Yes, it’s here at last! I have a ton of screenshots that I’ll be posting up later as well as a preview. I’ve been spending way too much time with this game, wanting to squeeze out every possible moment while the servers are up. I think I was up playing until 5am, my eyeballs feel like they’re about to fall out, but I’m still looking forward to later this afternoon after I’ve finished up my errands when I’ll be able to play again! Here’s a screenshot to keep you all entertained until I’m able to put up the full review:

And now, on with the show!
Continue Reading