Everyone has a fighting chance
Recently I have been taking a look at Triad Wars, a new "asynchronous MMO" from Square Enix. I won’t get into every aspect of the game and how it is in no way a "real" MMO – I’ll let William Murphy cover that in his video – but I would like to use Triad Wars as an example to ask: "Can a multiplayer game survive on such a limited set of mechanics?"
As I write this on Sunday, March has already brought quite a bit of interesting news, information, rumors et al. Right off the top, we had the latest iteration of the Game Developers Conference, which overlapped with the first day of PAX East. Other notable happenings included researcher SuperData’s release of some thought-provoking new tidbits of market data, and more F2P conversions from NCsoft.
The Landmark team posted a nice wrap up of last week’s news with the fantastic news that copper used for maintaining one’s ownership of a claim has been removed. The contention was made that it was never the intention to support the copper mining industry within the game. To replace "rent", players will need to log into the game at reasonable intervals to keep their claims active. As long as they do so, claims will remain ‘as is’ without reverting to available status.
The Defiance team took to the airwaves today to answer a grab bag of questions from players. Topics included whether or not more mutant animals like Pows would be added (not at this time), why player characters literally flip out of vehicles (not on purpose!) and whether or not the PvP requirement for maximizing EGO rating was going to be addressed.
This week, Jason ponders the social repercussions of Mordremoth’s rise and how the other races of Tyria could or should react to the "threat" of rogue sylvari.
Last year Wizards of the Coast aligned their league play, game releases, books, and the MMORPG Neverwinter to support a single event that spanned most of the year. Continuing that trend earlier this month beginning with their adventure’s league WotC started the Elemental Evil season. Elemental Evil will make its way to Neverwinter in April and we had the Cryptic team answer some questions regarding the lore behind Elemental Evil. Read on to see what they had to say.
With hundreds of titles available and in development, the MMOG space is more competitive than ever. Accordingly,
most don’t gain much attention from either the player community or the media. Even for those that do, maintaining visibility, awareness and brand image over the long term can be a struggle, especially after the shiny newness wears off. Listed in order of age, here are some still-live games that retain little or none of the market mojo they once had.
Later this week, Pillars of Eternity launches after over 77,000 crowdfunding backers demanded it to happen. The spiritual successor to the Infinity Engine RPGs of old (Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment), Obsidian’s game has a lot of hype and hope riding on it. Here are our first thoughts after several hours with the review copy.
Triad Wars is a F2P asynchronous MMO currently in closed beta from Square Enix and United Front Games. Taking place in the same universe as open world cult hit Sleeping Dogs, Triad Wars blends a lot of RPG elements with city management and other forms of progression to create a unique blend of genres. But is it any good? Read on for our full impressions from the Closed Beta.
Though the Asteroids: Outpost Community Team calls the game "very much in the alpha state" of development, the game is looking pretty amazing according to new screenshots that are now being posted on a weekly basis. There are also plans for alpha player streams and more screens yet to come as the game works its way to release.