When PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) launched in 2017 it catapulted the niche Battle Royale genre into the mainstream. Its success was quickly followed by Fortnite which grew so fast that it transcended the video gaming industry and became a cultural phenomena, not unlike Pokemon in the early 1990s. With so much hype around Fortnite and PUBG, it was easy to assume [...]
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As gaming has gone from a niche activity to a mainstream past time, developers have come up with all sorts of ways to entice players to either keep playing, or to at least make daily play a habit. MMORPGs were some of the first to play with such mechanics. World of Warcraft's rested experience, and later daily quest feature were [...]
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Korea has always had stiffer gaming regulations than the West. For years, account registration on Korean portals like Nexon or NCsoft required users to enter their Korean Social Security numbers, something alien to those of us who often use throwaway emails, names, and birthdays when registering. On November 20, 2011, Korea's Youth Protection Revision Act came into force. Commonly reffered [...]
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G-Star, Korea’s marquee gaming trade show kicks off on November 15 in the port city of Buson. While most of the announcements made at G-Star only immediately effect the Korean market, the out sized influence Korea exerts in global PC & mobile gaming market makes the trade show well worth following for gamers across the world. Odds are the games [...]
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BlizzCon 2018 took place last week, and boy was it one for the history books. The game announcements were nice, Destiny 2 is free to keep if you claim it by Nov 18, and a remastered version of Warcraft 3 titled Warcraft 3: Reforged is coming out next year. But the real story this year was how badly Blizzard bungled [...]
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MapleStory 2 finally had its free to play launch last week on October 10. Arriving on both the official Nexon launcher and on Steam, MapleStory 2 has so far had an extremely successful launch. The steam numbers show a consistent daily peak player count of 30,000+ and while we don't know the official numbers from the Nexon client, they are [...]
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SuperData released their monthly digital games market report earlier today and its filled with good news for the MMORPG genre. World of Warcraft surged past League of Legends and Fortnite to claim the #2 spot for highest grossing PC game for the month of August. World of Warcraft brought in $161 million in August, not counting Battle for Azeroth pre-orders. [...]
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It has been a bruising month for Chinese gaming hegemon Tencent. First, their US based subsidiary Riot Games was accused of sexism which required major readjustments at the studio. These culture problems also brought to light Riot's declining profitability, with the company on course to run a deficit unless something changes soon. Closer to home, Tencent found itself on the [...]
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Bots have been an issue in MMOs since the very beginning. Early MMORPG developers were constantly frustrated by players employing botting programs to farm resources are quickly speed through content. Often the same people using these botting programs were RMTers who were making a buck while destroying fragile in-game economies. Even the biggest titles like World of Warcraft never found [...]
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Its not easy being king. League of Legends, and the studio behind the hit MOBA, Riot Games have been a major leading force in the gaming industry for years. This week, the legendary studio finds itself under assault. One broadside against Riot Games is a lengthy investigative piece by Kotaku alleging rampant sexism at the studio's offices across the world. [...]
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