Star Wars: the Old Republic Ilum PvP After Patch 1.1 and Faction Imbalances
With patch 1.1, Star Wars: the Old Republic discovered that faction imbalance can really wreck open-world PvP and by offering incentives for players to play open-world, but without a mechanism that permits regrouping really amplifies the problem. As a result, BioWare discovered with SWtOR culture that some things come with unintended consequences.
As a relatively new property, SWtOR is still growing up.
Link, via MMO Anthropology and YouTube.
Star Trek Online and the Social Implications of Becoming Free-to-Play
In the newest MMO Anthropology the transition from subscription services to free-to-play for the video game Star Trek Online. Over the past three months Cryptic Studios and Perfect World Entertainment have been preparing their MMO property for this transition and there have been numerous changes to the game world. The most significant of which the addition of dilithium—a commodity/reward currency that overtook other reward currencies and melded them into one—and the addition of a pay-currency called Cryptic Points.
Other changes have been the addition of a virtual item shop and a tier system between Silver (free-to-play) and Gold (subscription) accounts with access to different bonuses and additional game enhancements such as more character slots, ship slots, inventory, and etc. for subscribers.
The introduction of a sudden rush of free-to-play users
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BioWare Responds to Bans/Suspensions Involving ‘/getdown’ Exploit and Looting Boxes on Ilum
You too can become invulnerable in Star Wars: The Old Republic but just getting down and grooving — with the /getdown bug — although BioWare has fixed this exploit as of the 5th of Jan 2012. Also, keep in mind that looting boxes on Ilum could lead to getting suspended (or banned) from the game.
Link, via MMO Anthropology and YouTube.
EverQuest 2 Sees Registered Users Leap 300% After Moving to Free-to-Play
Free-to-play scum is advancing across the MMO scene with the steady march of zerg creep. The reason for that? Because it works–at least in the short term. The free-to-play enterprise has been breathing new life into ailing subscription games over and over and now Sony Online Entertainment’s president has come out on Twitter to tell everyone that EverQuest 2 has seen nothing but sunshine since they went free-to-play. Amid the data points released, registered users jumped by 300% after the move away from subscription only. SiliconANGLE has the story.
Paragon and NCSoft Plan a Host of Content Updates with City of Heroes Issue 22
NCSoft’s favorite MMO the-mighty-in-tights City of Heroes superhero MMO is planning the biggest expansion of content that they’ve had since they went free-to-play with Issue 22: Death Incarnate. Amid the additional content, the MMO studio plans to add numerous tweaks to Dark Astoria—a mostly ignored hazard zone that contains flying masks and extremely upset zombies. Also planned is a new trial aimed at bringing heroes together to stop the rise of an evil sorceress… Hopefully we’ll see this content soothe the aging content of this amazing game. Massively has the story but you may want to see it on the official site.
When Nothing in the ‘Verse Can Stop You–What Stopped the Firefly MMO?
For Browncoats everywhere the cancellation of Firefly from national TV syndication really struck home for a TV series that really hit home when science fiction programming seemed fairly lackluster. To continue to hammer home that what looked like a good Western-styled science fiction show it’s also fallen flat when it comes to RPG games, video games, and even its potential MMORPG fell through the cracks and into the waiting embrace of cancellation. I guess we can all just hang on with Internet meme’s about misbehaving and leave it at that. In what seems to read like a comedy of errors, the Multiverse title for what would become the Firefly MMO slowly ground itself to a nub over mismanagement, odd decisions on what platform to put it on (Flash-based?) and finally with the IP being reverted back to the same people who cancelled the show: Fox Entertainment. VentureBeat’s GamesBeat blog has the sad story.
What Happens When Amazon.com Overstocks EA Games? They Start Discounting Them Dramatically
Next Sunday, Amazon.com will be discounting EA games currently overstocked in their warehouses. If you haven’t played these games but want them today you can grab past-year titles for quite cheap. As in coming in under $10. Look for Crysis 2, Alice: Madness Returns, Bulletstorm, Dead Space 2, etc. These prices will start this week Sunday, Jan 15, and continue until the end of the week. So if you’ve been putting off playing various past-years EA games now’s the time to reach into Amazon’s shovelware bin because here they come! Joystiq has the story.
Razer Debuts Neubula-class “Project Fiona” Gaming Tablet PC at CES 2012
In their drive to deliver the most interesting and strangest products to the market, Razer tends to lurch out of their mad scientist lab each year for Consumer Entertainment Show with some new potential product. This year, they conveyed a strange starship-like gaming tablet PC that looks as if someone took Nintendo Wii nunchucks and bolted them onto the sides like nacelles. Overall, it’s a powerful gaming device, but does it really need the floatation-device controller attachments, Razer? SiliconANGLE has the story.
League of Legends Publisher Riot Games Stands up Against SOPA, Representitive Who Plays LoL Comes Out of the Woodwork
Big and bright in the news today is that the Riot Games, the publisher of the extremely popular MMO, Riot Games, came out to the US political arena as being squarely dead-set against the Internet censorship bills SOPA and PROTECT-IP. They’ve even sent a representative attorney to Reddit to solicity the community there about how they should go about proceeding with their advocacy against these bills…
But it gets better!
In the very thread that they published about their opposition to the bills, a United States Congressman, Representative Jared Polis of Colorado, posted a comment explaining his position on SOPA
“As a member of the League of Legends community (partial to Anivia and Maokai),” Rep Polis writes, “and as someone who made his …
Dungeon Defenders Etherian Holiday brings us Christmas cheer and Mega Snowmen
The winter holidays bring out the best in video games and if the game is already good—say if it’s Dungeon Defenders by Trendy Entertainment—it only makes it that much more interesting. In this case, MMO Anthropology sought to look into what the Etherian Holiday Extravaganza DLC for DD had for us and it appears to be not just more-of-the-same, but a majestic Christmas-themed winter wonderland of items.
The most striking change is that the environment has a warm glow with red, green, and white dominating the color scheme of objects in the room. Nutcracker dolls in trios are seen standing against the walls in several places as a reference to the Russian play The Nutcracker[1], a two-act ballet originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score
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