I recently had a chance to sit down with Drew Jones and Larry Hummel of V²Leagues to talk about their current Kickstarter project, Realm Adventure League. They gave me a tour of the game and I asked questions as we went. Topics covered include the amount of characters, mashup leagues, the world model, and much more. Considering that the tour [...]
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Every time I read a comment proclaiming “the MMORPG genre is dead” I’m reminded of doomsday prophets proudly revealing some unspoken truth. But soothsayers don’t function in the present. And the market is far from dead—it’s booming. We are drowning in MMORPG’s and my swimmies are running out of air. But admittedly most titles fail to innovate, motivating commentators to [...]
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MMORPGs belong to a unique genre. We don’t just ‘play’ them, we get lost in them. A sense of immersion is not just a welcome extra but a key feature of a successful MMORPG. This sense of immersion is achieved through many means including art style, lore, a persistent game world, and can even be aided through a game’s soundtrack. [...]
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Thanks to debilitating internet speeds and a 4GB hard drive I arrived late to the MMORPG scene. A brand new Dell Pentium II one Christmas finally let me join my friends in Ragnarok Online. But we didn’t slaughter porings together on Gravity’s official server. A friend hosted a private server from his basement, where we each competed to see who could [...]
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In sandbox games one feature that seems to be held in particularly high regards is open world housing. The idea that in a seamless world players can just walk out of their house and go about their daily hunting is uniquely fascinating. However, I often find myself wondering if it really works. Between land rushes and empty shells of houses [...]
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Less players head to the store in 2015 as worldwide digital game sales reach $5.4 billion in September, according to SuperData Research. The market analyst firm provided an overall screenshot of the industry, revealing some fascinating facts. As expected the pay to play MMO market dropped to $213 million, an 8% decrease—reinforcing the MMOs.com assertion that free to play will become [...]
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With the popularity of the competitive eSports scene rising through the sky countless numbers of professional players have made a fortune claiming victory spoils. In the history of eSports Dota 2 has awarded the most prize money with over $50 million and League of Legends comes in second place awarding over $23.5 million. Thousands of players have reaped the rewards, [...]
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I recently had the chance to sit down with Josh Grafton of Strangely Interactive to discuss their FPS Angels Fall First. We talked a bit about the previous Angels Fall First game, the mod that Angels Fall First evolved out of, and development philosophies. Me: Is Angels Fall First a direct evolution of Angels Fall First: Planetstorm? Grafton: It is [...]
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I’m on a grinding spree, purging Elwynn Forest of wildlife to assert humanity's dominance in the virtual world. But my rampage comes to a groaning halt. My bags are full, littered with junk items titled in smoky grey—a color reserved for only the most useless garbage. I have no choice. Opening my bag I destroy with the same ferocity I [...]
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A staple of traditional MMORPG combat is the use of a large number of buttons. More recent games, such as TERA, Skyforge, and Elder Scrolls Online. have streamlined the system down to a core set of skills—closer to those of MOBAs—but they also make use of action combat systems. More traditional MMORPG combat systems still maintain hotbars of ten [...]
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