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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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.
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 …
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.
GameOgre: Review of Rusty Hearts; Castlevania Meets MMO
For everyone out there who happens to be a fan of Castlevania, there’s a new humorous “vampires, werewolves, fishmen oh-my!” MMO out there called Rusty Hearts. Kyt Dotson over at GameOgre has taken the time out of a busy schedule to up a review about it.
Here’s some of the highlights:
Rusty Hearts is a free-to-play game developed by Stairway Games for Perfect World Entertainment and it represents a different type of 3D brawler reminiscent of Castlevania and stand-up arcade games. Its Gothic-and-comedy feel give it a lot of character and the cell-shaded animé-eqse animation style produces a profoundly different effect than is delivered in any other game
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SiliconANGLE: Free Realms Hits 20M Registered Users
It looks like Sony Online’s Free Realms is doing really well for itself, recently, they’ve hit 20M registered users. According to Kit Dotson over at SiliconANGLE, though, this doesn’t say very much about the overall health of the MMO game:
This may be a wonderful milestone, but it’s still not as useful as the monthly user count. The reason is because Free Realms happens to be a free-to-play MMO, which means that users can fire-and-forget their accounts and it will build their registered user base. Subscription-based MMOs, such as World of Warcraft and RIFT both continue to charge participants whether they play the game or not (thus generating revenue even
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GameOgre: WonderKing Online
In a world dominated by 3D MMORPGs, there’s still a few out there that represent the 2D side-scrolling arcade style and one of those is WonderKing Online. If this has you interested,you should check out Kyt Dotson’s review of the MMO over at GameOgre,
WonderKing Online is a free-to-play 2D side-scrolling platformer
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