Everyone has a fighting chance
The folks at Portalarium are getting ready to roll out their 14th release for Shroud of the Avatar, and of course they timed it just as PAX South was kicking off. I’m sure it was a diabolical plot to force me into cramming this article in before I get sucked into the pending media storm that follows any PAX. That’s why I drove up to Austin this week.
By people who pay attention to my gaming habits, I’m accused of being a themepark-only sort of MMO player. And lately, they’re right… but it’s not for lack of desire to get lost in a more free-form MMO experience. No, the problem with sandboxes is a simple one, if you ask me: there hasn’t been a really good one in over a decade.
Star Citizen is one of the most highly anticipated games being developed in years. The game has defied expectation, time and again, and built up one of the most dedicated fanbases on the internet. This week, fans were lucky enough to receive an official path to release, a timetable for what to expect this year and the starry-eyed "commercial launch" of 2016.
I’ll admit it: Borderlands is one of my favorite single-player/multiplayer RPG series du jour. There’s something about Gearbox’s tried and true formula of wacky humor, satisfying gameplay, and insane amounts of loot that gets me hooked and looking forward to whatever kinds of crazy DLC updates they have planned.
Perfect World has announced that the next expansion for Forsaken World will officially launch on February 4th. Called "Freedom Falls", the expansion will bring a new race and class into the game, as well as significant improvements to the player experience according to press information.
During last night’s BAFTA ceremony, Star Citizen’s Chris Roberts revealed the target timeline for each of the game’s components to be released. Star Citizen is a four-games-in-one creation that includes a persistent first person universe, a single player campaign, space exploration and combat and an FPS component. If all goes according to plan, Star Citizen should be in final release in 2016.
Jagex Games Studios has announced the release of Runelabs, an evolved feature built on the Player Power initiative launched at the end of 2013. With Runelabs, players can submit ideas for RuneScape and have those ideas voted upon by the community for possible inclusion in the game.
If SOE had simply said, "Hey. We’ve got this really cool feature in airdrops. These are our plans. What do you think?" the message it eventually got would have been loud and clear and the crisis would have been averted.
A lot of people have been loudly championing the idea that MMOs are a dying breed and that the golden era marked by World of Warcraft, Ultima Online, EverQuest, EverQuest 2, EVE Online and others is over. Yet developers, both ‘big house’ and indies alike, continue to make MMOs and players keep playing them.
BMCO, also known as Bionic Marine Command Online, has been selected for the Steam Greenlight campaign. Fans of the fantasy steampunk genres will want to check it out as the game is described as a mash up of several different game types.