Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games have been a passion of mine for many years ever since I logged on The Imperial Fortress BBS in the early 90’s and played Tele-Arena 3.0. All throughout the late 90’s I created and helped run a MUD here and there. I’ve always had that armchair developer in me. I’ve had a few ideas rolling around in my head about how to make a fun MMORPG in the post-WOW era and I want to put them down somewhere. This is more of a mental exercise than anything else, and maybe someone will read them and agree. Many of these ideas are based off of MUDs I’ve played in the past.

I have no idea how long this is going to be, if there are going to be multiple parts, or even if I’m going to finish this post but you’ve been warned. The following is most likely going to be drivel.

Read the rest of this entry »

An internet phisher, who was stealing Runsescape accounts, was hunted down and arrested.

RuneScape developer Jagex has combated the efforts of a cyber-criminal by working with the Police e-Crime Cyber Unit. A UK resident has been arrested, showcasing the effectiveness of the Cambridge studio’s security team.

In the wake of RuneScape users’ account details being stolen by ‘phishing’ techniques, a 23-year-old man in Avon and Sommerset was arrested earlier in the week.

Justice for all those who have been stupid enough to click on a random email link.

If you’re anything like me, you’re not addicted to a current MMOG right now and you’re basically a transient bouncing from game to game. You’re chasing an ideal of what the “perfect game” is and you’re trying to get back some of that magic you had “in the good ole days”. Plus, if you’re a gullible idealist like myself, you probably keep going back to the same games over and over.

Read the rest of this entry »

This weekend many companies are jumping on the “black friday” bandwagon. Many MMO prices have dropped, some nearly being given away. We ventured out this holiday weekend to create a list of all the bargains you can find.

*Note: This post will be updated daily as the weekend continues. Many stores are doing one day sales.

Original World of Warcraft box, or digital download: $5.00

The WoW BattleChest is dropped to $19.99 aswell. That includes the original game, the Burning Crusade Expansion, and both strategy guides from Brady Games.

A good idea of purchasing Blizzard games is finding used CD/DVDs at Amazon.com. Once your CD-key is inputed through Battle.net you can always download the game you purchased online through Blizzard. No need for those old scratched CDs anymore.

11/29 – STEAM: Guild Wars Trilogy $49.99 $24.99 *ended

11/29 - STEAM: Eve Online: Apocryphia $19.99 $4.99 *ended

STEAM: City of Villains Architect Edition: $19.99 $9.99 *ended

Guild Wars is promoting Eye of the North free after purchase of Guild Wars, GW: Nightfall, or GW: Factions.

Nexon America also promises that “players will be rewarded with major discounts on Cash Shop items, in four of their free-to-play MMO’s.” The games supporting these discounts are:

Combat Arms - Offers 40%-off bundled sales for in-game weapons and equipment. Sale runs November 27th-29th.

Dungeon Fighter Online – Offers a 46% discount on “Beginner’s Packages,” including Life Tokens, potions, and a storage upgrade. Up to 30% off Avatar Tokens as well. Runs from November 25th through December 1st.

MapleStory – Beginning 8AM each day from November 27th-30th, rotating sales will be held for a selection of in-game items. The items on sale will change every 3 hours.

Mabinogi – Items from the in-game cash shop are up to 50% off, from November 26th-30th.

* Last update 6:00 pm PST. 11/28

Lance Stites the Executive Producer at NCsoft West has written a new Aion community address. Sadly, he discusses the decision to delay the much awaited free server transfers. He also discusses the challenges of stopping bot users and RMT chat users, along with this he says they’ll be implementing a Game Surveillance Unit (GSU). The primary purpose of this new GSU “is to identify and ban users violating our terms of service: bot users, RMT chat spammers, and the like”. Will this be enough? I doubt it, but it’s a great start. I don’t think they want Aion to turn into another Lineage 2 bot fest. The piece of news that excites me the most, and might get some of us at Rerollz back into the game, is an increased rate in XP. Stites says, “We’re currently testing some game variables to increase experience gain and other factors”. Read the entire community address below and decide for yourself, Is this brightening the future for Aion? I think so.

Read the rest of this entry »

DIKU games have been in existence for a long time now and have reached it’s most mature and accessible form with World of Warcraft. Every DIKU game starts you off at level one where you begin your journey to Max Level. As the genre matures and expectations of games change, the leveling process has become more and more of a burden and hindrance than a fun game element. So why have levels at all?

In recent history we’ve seen a few games launch post World of Warcraft, but for the sake of this article lets take a look at Warhammer and Aion. Both games hit the scene with amazing initial sales, Warhammer had 800+ thousand boxes sold in the first month or so, and Aion has kicked off pretty well in the western market. Where do they stand now? Warhammer is all but canceled. Their retention rate was dreadful. Nothing official has been released about Aion, but if you take the pulse of a few online communities you’ll notice people quitting in large numbers. What was a huge complaint about these games?

The grind.
Read the rest of this entry »