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.

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 with the game opening up to non-subscribers has generated quite an influx of new users and this may have consequences for the culture within the game.

Link, via MMO Anthropology and YouTube.

Jerks are ubiquitous in the video game community and PvP servers additionally self-select for their sort of behavior.

It’s impossible to have a community the size of World of Warcraft and not having at least one guild willing to ruin someone else’s day on any single shard that permits PvP. In this case, a Horde guild holding an in-game funeral learned the hard way that when you stand around in no armor, in a contested zone, a small band of people can totally bring ruin and sorrow onto you. And also, at the same time, many people condemned the actions of the attackers of taking advantage of the ritual.

In the end, Serenity Now got their "fifteen minutes of fame," but Fayejin — the dead PvP player memorialized in the "bombed" funeral — will be remembered for how her funeral led to a flashpoint in griefing and the MMO community.

Link, via MMO Anthropology.

Fiveshot is an avid poster to YouTube –visit his channel gregory06– and also a World of Warcraft player. Through his activity in MMO games — such as WoW, League of Legends, Modern Warfare 3, and others — he has made use of YouTube to deliver a cross-section of his experience and others.

The interview highlights the social aspects of MMO gaming but also reveals how YouTube changes or enhances that experience. He has gained quite a following and many of his videos reveal a great deal of comments. These are individuals who may play only one or two of the games that he takes footage from; but they’re all coming together on YouTube to comment.

Community-wise, games like WoW and such do not have a forum for video so YouTube becomes its proxy by allowing footage to be taken from these virtual worlds and transplanted here for commentary.

Through understanding how YouTube and MMO games interact in this fashion we can gain a better analysis of the emerging use of rich media by players to connect with the world beyond the internal cultures within the games themselves and their immediate community.

Link, via MMO Anthropology on YouTube.

As if everyone here didn’t already know–we voces play the violin; perhaps someday we’ll also achieve the coveted violin overload limit break!

Making the rounds of the video game blogosphere, a music video by the hopefully now-famous online drama show “The Guild.” Featuring World of Warcraft game humor and a guild of equally maladjusted, but adorable, characters, we’ve always had a great deal of fun watching these and look forward to it continuing for some time.

We are gigantic fans of adventure games in general. We play them a lot. See The Experiment, The Longest Journey series, Syberia, Bad Mojo, and more—but this one totally takes the cake on the worst teaser ever.

Words do not describe how terrible and not compelling this video is. If I were going to purchase this game at the store because I liked what it said on the box, this would probably turn me off. What did they make this in? Windows Media Maker?

It starts off too slow, pulsing between text and short-shot flip animation graphics. Then it leaps into these inexplicable falling letters that don’t actually create the title words, they rather fall into darkness, and that’s that. Finally we get the title.

And to top it off. It suddenly switches from these crude panel animation drawings directly to obvious, and uncanny valley, 3D animation of who I expect is the main character. Her mascara is smeared. So sad.

What. The. Fsck?

For those of us who are American voces, though, we may not have to worry about this one anytime soon. It’s only slated release date is listed for Japan.