Be The Gamer

As Christmas recedes into memory, it’s easy to forget about the stress of the various celebrations and just remember the nicer parts of the holiday. For our characters in City of Heroes, of course, the holidays saw yet another onslaught by elemental minions of ice seeking to spread permanent winter. But the pot was sweetened a touch by the addition of the holiday contest, a chance for players to decorate their base or alter their costume in such a way that they became a bit more seasonally appropriate.

Just a bit over a month out, the winners of the contest have been announced, and it takes only a quick glance at the artistry involved to see why. Bases were transformed from fortresses of solitude into… well, they were still sort of fortresses of solitude, but now they had appropriate decorations hanging from the icicles. Meanwhile, characters were transformed into crime-fighting ski bunnies and workshop elves. Giving City of Heroes players a chance to work their creativity almost always results in some excellent material, so feel free to take a look at the official page listing the winners and screenshots of each.

Filed under: Super-hero, Screenshots, City of Heroes, Contests, Player Housing

City of Heroes announces holiday contest winners originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last week, I took a look at a few of the biggest Caldari and Minmatar trade hubs in EVE Online and how to best put them to use. I examined the phenomenon that is Jita and how Motsu persists as a trade hub due to the presence of mission-runners. I went on to look at Hek and Rens, trade hubs which service the two most populated Minmatar regions and provide a handy trade route for pilots to make a profit on. This week, I complete the picture with a look at four of the biggest Gallente and Amarr trade hubs.

Knowing all of the major trading stations can be of benefit to any pilot, whether you’re just looking for a good deal on a new ship or trying to forge profitable trade routes. For traders, listing products in an alternate hub needn’t take much extra time or effort. With good trade skills, you can adjust market orders remotely from several jumps away. You can make a short autopilot route that goes close enough to each station you’re trading in and adjust your prices frequently.

In this final part of a two-part series on EVE’s biggest trade hubs, I look at the biggest Amarr and Gallente trade hubs, what can be found there and how to use them to your advantage as a trader.

Continue reading EVE Evolved: Trade hubs of New Eden – Amarr and Gallente

Filed under: At a glance, Sci-fi, EVE Online, Culture, Economy, Guides, Lore, EVE Evolved

EVE Evolved: Trade hubs of New Eden – Amarr and Gallente originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The latest info about the sci-fi MMO Black Prophecy, currently in development at Reakktor Media, comes in the form of a series of dev blogs from the game’s Technical Director, Cyrus Preuss. As with his two previous blogs, Cyrus gets down into the nuts and bolts of how the game’s physics work, which may be of interest to those who’d like to know more about the underlying systems that will govern Black Prophecy’s space combat.

His rather technical dev blog is all about interaction with the physics engine. It especially deals with balancing the realism that some players want with the need to throw aspects of that realism to the wind, in favor of game mechanics that are simply more fun. He also discusses how the physics engine will relate to space stations, capital ships, and weapon physics. Black Prophecy fans interested in this kind of a look at the game can read all about it in “Interaction with the Physics Engine” on the game’s official site.

Filed under: Sci-fi, Game mechanics, New titles, Black Prophecy

Balancing realistic physics with fun in Black Prophecy originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Picking numbers for a contest always defaults to something familiar – your zip code, your birthdate, the number of times police have been called to your house because you were shouting so much the neighbors thought you were assaulting someone. At least that way you can blame cosmic randomness instead of just guessing wrong. The many residents of Final Fantasy XI can start blaming fate, as the winning numbers for the Moggy New Year Bonanza have been announced, right on schedule.

In ascending order, the winning number for the Rank 5 prize is 8, Rank 4 is 9-6, Rank 3 is 7-3-3, Rank 2 is 1-1-6-4, and the supreme Rank 1 winning numbers are 5-8-8-4-6. The official site has assembled a small chart showing both the winning numbers and the number of winners of each prize category. Over five hundred thousand players won the Rank 5 prize, narrowing to only 43 people winning the top award.

Of course, there’s a limited timeframe to pick up your prize — anything not claimed by February 15th will be lost forever, so it’s best to move in quickly to pick up your reward. Congratulations to those who won, and for those who didn’t, well, a Shadow Lord statue isn’t that cool.

Filed under: Fantasy, Final Fantasy XI, Contests, News items

Mog Bonanza winners announced in Final Fantasy XI originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Back in December, City of Heroes announced that players would be allowed to transfer characters between servers for free until the end of January. Aside from the small but vocal part of the population that was certain this was a prelude to server merges, it was met with praise and good will by the playerbase. Paragon Studios has apparently decided that what’s fun the first time is even better the second, as they’ve decided to extend the free transfers until February 28th for all players.

Of course, there are certain slight catches — as before, you can only transfer six characters from one server to another within a week, as well as not being allowed between American and European servers. You also lose your Supergroup affiliation, any accumulated Prestige, and possibly even your name depending on the server you choose. The full support page details all of the possible wrinkles, as well as warning against trying to transfer characters with names shorter than three letters (unless you don’t mind losing the name). Having more chances to play with friends on other servers is always welcome, so kudos to the City of Heroes team for extending the free transfer period!

Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, News items

Free transfers in City of Heroes extending another month originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While several portions of Allods Online bear some similarity to World of Warcraft, there are places like this beautiful airship where they’ve clearly done their own thing art-wise. Today’s great Allods Online screenshot comes to us from regular Massively commenter Pedro (the other Pedro) who tells us a bit more about this scenic view: This is one the Astral ships of the League. Later in Allods every player will be able to have his own ship, navigate in the Astral (the space of the game) and participate in ship versus ship PvP. Should make for some interesting battles!

Are you in the Allods Online beta? Would you like to share some great scenes we haven’t seen as yet? If so, grab those screenshots, toss them in an email to oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name and a quick description, then hit ’send.’ Yep, it’s that easy. We’ll then take your screenshot and showcase it out here for everyone to enjoy.

Filed under: Fantasy, Screenshots, Free-to-play, One Shots, Allods Online

One Shots: Flying high again originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ok, so, disclaimer: It’s not actually a dungeon in the common definition of the term. The Vigilant is a massive airship used by the Paineel Erudites, abandoned by the Odus Erudites when the void leaked into Odus. The Vigilant sits silently above Paineel and watches the city like a hawk to protect it.

Even though the Vigilant is flying, adventurers will find a way to board it in EverQuest 2: Sentinel’s Fate to brave the challenges within. The ship is broken down into three distinct dungeons — Vigilant: Incursion, Vigilant: Infiltration, and Vigilant: Rescue.

But watch your step when you’re in the Vigilant! The zone designer, Kyle “Kander” Vallee decided to insert a few areas where adventurers will be able to fall out of the ship to their deaths. So be careful up there, walk safely!

We have, as usual, a few screenshots of the Vigilant to show off to those interested. Check out the gallery of shots from the ship below and be sure to visit EQ2Players.com for Kander’s commentary on the zone!

Filed under: Fantasy, Screenshots, EverQuest II, Expansions, Previews

The Vigilant dungeons previewed on EverQuest 2 players originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looking for a way to stock up on some Runes of Magic diamonds, but a bit short on cash? Well, the folks at Frogster Interactive have taken a page from things like Facebook games, and are offering a method to trade a bit of your time for some diamonds.

Through their new partnership with Sponsorpay, Runes of Magic players are able to take surveys and check out products and score a certain amount of free diamonds per offer. All you have to do is to log in to the RoM site, go to the diamond purchase page, select your server, and then select the free diamonds option. From there, you’ll be taken to a page that will offer several different surveys or trial offers you can check out. With that said, as with any ‘lead generation for in game cash’ scenario you run across on the Internet, always make sure you read the fine print. The last thing players will want is those free diamonds hitting them in the wallet later because they didn’t.

Filed under: Business models, Game mechanics, News items, Free-to-play, Runes of Magic

Runes of Magic offering diamonds for surveys originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The upcoming sandbox MMO from Star Vault, Mortal Online, is finally entering its awaited open beta on February 1st. While the game has been in testing for quite some time, getting beta access meant pre-ordering a copy of the game, which turned several people off from the idea. But not only is the game going to become easier to take part in testing starting on Monday, there are two carrots thrown in to help entice players.

First off, any existing beta characters will not be wiped upon the commencement of open beta. That means anyone already playing, whether in the closed beta or as part of the game’s recent stress test, will get to keep their character that they’ve worked on. Second, while in open beta the game’s price will be dropped by five euros (about $7), which means that if you like the game, it’s even easier to decide to make it a full-time home.

Downsides? Only one – as community manager Maerlyn points out, the testing will be based on a single server cluster in Stockholm, so their may be server caps or slight connection issues depending on distance. But that’s hardly enough to take away from the good news. If you’ve been waiting for Mortal Online, your day is almost here.

[ Thanks to Bartillo and David for the tip! ]

Filed under: Betas, Fantasy, News items, Mortal Online

Mortal Online’s open beta starts February 1st originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Everyone is talking about Apple’s latest product: the Apple iPad. Never mind the name – it IS kinda lame, I have to admit – but people all over the world are raving about this cute little thing. Having a screen size that’s even smaller than the smallest netbook around and a very light [...]

Hellgate: London is one of those games that has really divided opinion from our readers. Some brand it as a deeply-flawed game, or were burned by that costly Founder’s lifetime subscription when the game shut down after a rather short life. Others — like some of us on the Massively staff — truly miss the game’s blend of horror and sci-fi elements and have been hoping that Hellgate: London would one day return in some form or another.

Although the future of the game has been murky, the most recent (and most straightforward) announcement is that Hellgate: London is slated to return to Western shores. HanbitSoft has secured the worldwide publishing rights to the game from Namco-Bandai, so now it’s just a matter of time before it returns. We’re interested to hear what you think about this. Would you welcome the return of Hellgate: London? For that matter, how would you feel about playing the game in its current free-to-play incarnation, Hellgate: Resurrection?

Filed under: Horror, Sci-fi, MMO industry, Opinion, Hellgate: London, Free-to-play, The Daily Grind

The Daily Grind: Will you welcome back the Hellgate franchise? originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The first TouchPlay Apps, Ordinary Mary and Peter Rabbit, are now available from iTunes App Store. $1 of each $3.99 purchase will support Haiti relief.Unlike other methods of digital publishing, the Touch Play experience incorporates narration, images, animation and interactive play. Children and adults immerse themselves in the stories, create their own scenes using characters from the story and then share them as email postcards with friends and family members. (PRWeb Jan 29, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/01/prweb3533504.htm

MAG is a PlayStation 3-exclusive MMOFPS title we’ve been keeping our eyes on at Massively. The inevitable debate aside about whether Zipper Interactive’s title is an MMO or not — yes, tanks and guns replace dragons and magic spells — the game accommodates up to 256 players in a zone at a time. The idea of FPS gameplay with that many people at such a high degree of graphical detail is pretty mind-boggling, and it’s something we’ve explored a bit in the MAG beta. Our parent site Joystiq recently sat down with the game now that it’s officially launched and wrote a short MAG review.

Joystiq’s Griffin McElroy gives a brief overview of MAG’s gameplay and his assessment of the title’s merits and flaws. That idea of 128 players per side doesn’t mean you’ll all be charging towards your opponents in one awesome wave, he notes. Rather, you’ll typically be interacting with your fellow soldiers on a squad level (4-8 people) to achieve objectives, with multiple squads comprising platoons, and four such platoons forming an army.

Continue reading MAG review highlights strengths and flaws of the console MMOFPS

Filed under: Game mechanics, Reviews, War, Consoles, MMOFPS, MAG

MAG review highlights strengths and flaws of the console MMOFPS originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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“Get a life”, “Get a first life”, and so on, and so forth. If you’re involved in virtual environments, you’ve probably heard this phrase a lot. Wagner James Au of New World Notes suggests that people who use those phrases are among the least likely to ‘have a life’ themselves.

Well, we’d say he’s half right. It’s more that the people you hear it from don’t really have much of an idea of what life is all about and how it works. It’s not an uncommon theme. Botgirl Questi points out that in order to see something more clearly, sometimes you have to look at it from a very different perspective.

This week, in The Virtual Whirl, we’re going to take a couple perspectives for a spin, and talk about the meaning of life actually is, insofar as the phrase “get a life” is concerned.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: The meaning of life

Filed under: Culture, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds, The Virtual Whirl

The Virtual Whirl: The meaning of life originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While the January edition of the Age of Conan Game Director letter isn’t the flashiest one we’ve ever seen, it is an excellent road-map of just what the team over at Funcom have in their sights for the next little while. They’ve been giving us tons of tasty Rise of the Godslayer news outside of the Director updates, so we certainly won’t complain!

This month, Age of Conan’s Game Director, Craig Morrison, sits down to tell us just what the team has in mind for the future of Hyboria. Patch 1.06 will be coming to the live servers shortly, bringing with it the Guild Renown system, tier three raiding, and a major revamp for the Assassin class. As for Godslayer, he says that more players have been invited into the beta and the feedback has thus far been great. There’s also a good chunk of information on what they’re planning for long-term PvP improvements for those who can’t wait to bash Hyborian brains in. In all, it sounds like Craig and the team have some excellent things in motion for the future of Age of Conan, so be sure to pop over and check it out.

	Having fun in Conan’s homeland? Make sure to check out all of our previous Age of Conan coverage, and stick with Massively for more news from the Hyborian Age!

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, MMO industry, News items

January Age of Conan director letter details the road ahead originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In a move that will no doubt perplex, flummox and befuddle many media commentators and technology columnists who erroneously believed that Second Life was a Web 2.0 social networking tool, Linden Lab has acquired social networking site, Avatars United (and developers of same, Enemy Unknown AB). This also has the side-effect of shooting down any semblance of Wallace Linden’s identity piece last week being an overture of a conversation, instead making it look like the usual introduction to a Linden Lab fait accompli.

We’ve written about Avatars United on a couple of previous occasions, but never really had much call to get involved ourselves. The social networking tool includes a large number of MMOGs and non-game virtual environments, being best known for it’s strong application support of open-ended space-based MMOG, EVE Online.

Continue reading Linden Lab acquires Avatars United, Enemy Unknown AB

Filed under: EVE Online, Business models, MMO industry, News items, Opinion, Second Life

Linden Lab acquires Avatars United, Enemy Unknown AB originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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