As more companies develop for the non-fantasy MMO genre, Thriller Publishing of Austin, TX recently announced the formation of Thriller New Media, which will focus on the creation and operation of MMOs, books, movies and other popular entertainment media. Not only do they plan to launch services within the next year or so, but they also plan to create their own social networking platform for all Thriller content. It is said that this content will focus on "military and espionage-themed topics".
With Free Realms now in closed beta, many are very curious to see how things are progressing in this new family-friendly SOE MMO. We here at Massively have been lucky enough to see it on several occasions, and are thrilled at how this project appears to be coming along. So we were extremely glad to see the Free Realms team released seven new screenshots and a bit of information on one of the many zones we're looking forward to experiencing; Briarwood.
This weekend, several local friends and I have been hosting a number of our real-life guild-mates. (We locals are all guilded together with the exception of one or two of us who have left that particular MMO and moved on.) Originally, it was just to be one or two people, but grew in size until we were a pretty solid rolling force when we decided to head out and catch Watchmen - first for some, second for others. That said, we've been friends for years, traveling to each other's weddings, parties, and all the rest - but most of us met via MMO. This morning we thought we'd ask you - have you ever traveled just to hang out with your MMO friends in real-life? Do you guys make travel plans to take vacations together (like say, a cruise) like some of our group does? Or is it something you really wouldn't ever do, short of seeing them at a convention or meetup for your favorite game that you might attend?
He's baaaaaaack! We catch up on Captain Dynamic and his crew of mission specialists in part two of this hilarious three-part miniseries. This time he's ready to show off some wicked shape shifting abilities and fills us in on what makes him so dynamic and captain-y. Did you know captains can marry two people on a ship? One would think a license would be required to do that, but perhaps being supremely dynamic supercedes the law in this case. We also catch a startling glimpse of his arch-nemesis, the Great Face!
CCP Games just dropped the trailer for EVE Online's Apocrypha expansion, which sets the tone for the storyline players will soon experience. The trailer depicts a cataclysmic event which creates rifts in space-time throughout the New Eden galaxy, affecting all of the races.
As Fallen Earth gets closer to being released, that previously hazy image of what the game will be like sharpens. The latest bit of info we've come across is an interview with Fallen Earth writer and designer Wes Platt conducted by MMO Gamer's Nate James.
When it launched in 2003, space-borne MMO EVE Online wasn't an overnight success. It launched to far less fanfare than newer titles are accustomed to and claimed only 50,000 subscriptions by late 2004. EVE was aimed at a relatively untested sci-fi niche within the MMO market and the number of players in that niche who would be interested was impossible to accurately estimate. To make matters worse, World of Warcraft was released in late 2004 and a large portion of the MMO market latched on to it, spelling disaster for its competitor's subscription numbers. Despite all of these initial problems, EVE Online has been a massive success with consistent subscriber growth. So what has been the secret to their success? With just a few days to go until the Apocrypha expansion and box copies of EVE being released in stores, I take a look back at the choices CCP made and suggest what other developers could learn from EVE's success story.
Tipa is wondering if the upcoming 2009 MMO titles will make this year the best yet for MMOs. EVE Online will be receiving its highly anticipated Apocrypha expansion pleasing the "impact PvP" crowd. Free Realms will soon launch to the delight of families around the world, providing another option in the "kid friendly" category. Champions Online will be zipping up its latex suit to compete in the superhero sub-genre. Cryptic has another potential hit on their hands with Star Trek Online, which may ride the hype wave generated by the blockbuster film coming out this summer.
What's a developer to do when tasked with the creation of a never-before-seen planet in the Star Wars universe? The answer to that question is easy: a lot of hard work. When it comes to places previously featured in movies or games, the creation of a planet -- while not a walk in the park -- isn't too tough. These are places like Korriban or Coruscant where visualization has taken place many times in the past. Then you've got the purposefully polluted Nal Hutta, or Hutta if you like -- home world to those giant slugs with a thing for crime, the Hutts.
Normally we likely wouldn't generally add in a 'screenshot' from a browser-based, primarily text MMO, but we're such huge fans of the Test of Literacy that we simply couldn't resist posting this Kingdom of Loathing screen that was sent in to us by Harmen. Here's what he had to say about this extremely funny screenshot - A One Shot of something completely different: Kingdom of Loathing, browser-based, stick-figures, is hilarious, free, really rather hard and even includes PvP. It has been running since 2003, and is still actively expanded. This is a screenshot of the 'tests' you need to pass when you want to enter the chat channel the first time. One of the tests is the difference between 'their', 'there' and 'they're'. Really, we think more MMOs should have literacy tests.