RIFT: The Planes of Telara Announces Free-to-Play for Levels 1-20
Trion Worlds, the developer of Rift: The Planes of Telara, has officially announced that they game will be going free-to-play for levels 1-20. This is similar to when Blizzard opened up World of Warcraft for levels 1-10 (now -20) free as well, but with massive restrictions. Rift is far less restricted and makes a game certainly worth its merits. Interested? Then check out MMO Anthropology, they have the story.
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
…
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.
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.
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 …
Star Wars: The Old Republic Coruscant Datacron Sneakthrough Guide
If you’ve been playing Star Wars the Old Repulbic long, you’ve either found or heard of datacrons. World objects that give you stat boosts that are hidden across all the different maps. Some are easy to access and some are extremely difficult; all of them provide a worthwhile reward and some bragging rights.
Look no further than this walkthrough: here’s the datacrons available on the 10-16 level city-world of Coruscant.
Old Galactic Market – Shipping and Receiving Docks, +2 Presence Datacron
Not that difficult to locate, but it’s guarded by an elite (11) enemy and his pals. After entering the area, and picking up the first few missions, head immediately north through the firefight in the double-bridge. Turn west (do not use the elevator in front of …
APB:Reloaded First Impressions
GamersFirst just recently re-released the game APB:Reloaded to much critical adversity in the MMO community. It’s original incarnation, the pay-to-play APB didn’t do so well, and it was crushed beneath the grimy boot heels of cheaters and hackers before its community imploded. This reincarnation is free-to-play and has already netted a population of over 3 million users in the first 8 days after launch on the Steam platform.
Kyt Dotson over at GameOgre brings us a review of this rags-to-popular-acclaim story:
The city is overwhelmed with thugs; gangs roam the streets with impunity and endanger the lives of everyday citizens with their criminality. The only answer? Deputize the entire population and give them guns—lots of guns. …
Tavelogue Azeroth: The Darkmoon Faire and Patch 4.3 The Hour of Twilight
The Darkmoon Faire had some upgrades come World of Warcraft patch 4.3 and now it has its own island. With the advent of the Hour of Twilight patch, you can now visit the Faire out in their strange recesses–but you can’t fly there–and there’s a great deal of weird things going on.
Get tokens, get shot out of a cannon, have your fortune read.
A lot of things for any anthropologist to get up to.
Star Wars: The Old Republic Gameplay and Impressions
The Star Wars: The Old Republic beta weekend has finally drawn to a close and now there’s a plethora of information spreading across the net about the game. By and large, it looks like the game is pressing the cut scenes and the storytelling very hard.
The game has been described as a “solo MMO” with powerfully excellent voice acting and a strong themepark element. In fact, much of the game feels like it pressures the player to remain solo except for the intermittent “HEROIC” quest.
Also: Lightsabers.
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