By Alec Meer on January 31st, 2012.
I can’t help but wonder how many of today’s crop of MMOs will manage to last 13 years. Running expenses are surely so much higher than they were in dear old EverQuest’s day. The major precursor to the dark age of grinding and number keys that we know so well has indeed managed a baker’s dozen-sized lifespan, and while its days as a subscription game are not yet numbered, it now also wears a free to play coat on its aged frame.
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From The RPS Archives
By Quintin Smith on December 30th, 2011.
Next up from the dusty annals of prehistoric RPS is a 2008 barnstormer of a tale from our all-too-quickly-departed gentleman caller Quintin Smith, and probably the best thing you’ll ever read about the one-time greatest videogame in the history of existence, Planetside.
Planetside, then. Do I have any veterans in the audience? At ease, gentlemen.
It might not have dredged up the subscribers Sony were hoping for, and you personally might have found it a disappointment, a bully, a bastard, or most unforgivably, a bore. The developers were perhaps overambitious, and in any case they managed to screw up both on paper and in practice. But their game has achieved one beautiful thing, and that’s the creation of the same invisible veterans’ club that results from a real life war. If you played Planetside you might have already encountered this phenomenon- the mutual respect that instantly exists once you find out someone’s an ex-Planetside player. Since I can’t think of a name for this whole process, I’m going to dub it “I WAS THERE, MAN” syndrome.
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By Jim Rossignol on December 22nd, 2011.
Planetside 2‘s launch creeps steadily closer, and SOE have quietly gone and relaunched the website to contain a bunch more information and the beta registration page. You need an SOE account to sign up, of course. Thanks to Planetside Universe for this, who also note this phrase from the new details on the revamped official site: “With air, ground and seaborne combat, the battles will be larger and more intense than ever.” Could there be boats this time? Or are they just referring to the odd hovertank? We shall see!
By Alec Meer on December 21st, 2011.
So that one might live, another must die. And so it was that Star Wars Galaxies went the way of Mark Hamill’s leading man status last week, having been ushered out of existence by the dark forces of licensing in order to make way for The Old Republic. We’ve already posted news of the closure, but it’s well worth having a look at the below player videos of its final moments. As well as all the epic space battle stuff, the death of an online world makes for a strange, and sad affair, where the evident outpouring of emotion is so often hampered massively by the constraints of the game. Yet for all that the stiff animations and looped emotes somehow make these farewells all the more poignant.
Also: watch Luke Skywalker get murdered by Ron Burgundy.
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By Alec Meer on December 20th, 2011.
If you can’t or won’t afford The Old Republic but are grumpily hanging around comments threads wishing you too were off on online adventures, it’s worth remembering that exactly 312,129 MMOs have now gone free to play. No lightsabers, but also no queues. One of the more recent of these is Everquest II, the at-the-time ambitious fantasy world that’s probably slightly annoyed that its precusor still co-exists alongside it. Below is a narrated video tour of some of the new stuff in the free to play to play update, the Age of Discovery expansion, the new class Beastlords, a dungeon designer tool and a major overhaul of key city Freeport. This is actually my first peek at the game in quite some time – it’s really quite pretty, in a slightly austere way.
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By Jim Rossignol on December 16th, 2011.
Presumably sucking the life-force from SWG in some way, SOE’s lightweight (and extraordinarily popular) Star Wars MMO for the youth, Clone Wars Adventures, has expanded this week to include open-world PvP, according to Massively. Players will apparently now be able to use the force on each other when they visit the planet Umbara, home of the Shadow People. What do the Shadow People think about all that? No one seems to have bothered to ask. There are a bunch of other new features for the game, too. Like the ability to jump. Heh.
By Jim Rossignol on December 16th, 2011.
There’s always something a little melancholy about a game world being shut off for the last time, but this goes doubly for the ill-fated Star Wars Galaxies, which ran its last Kessel run yesterday. The MMO, which was first launched to much fanfare in 2003, was shut down as SOE’s contract with LucasArts expired, and to make way for EA’s The Old Republic, which is now imminent. Galaxies was always a troubled beast, of course, being controversially simplified and reduced in scope by 2005′s “New Game Enhancements”, an attempt to expand the appeal of the MMO which left it a shadow of its former self. I will always remember it most fondly for my time working on PC Gamer, where the guy who sat at the desk behind me became a ruthless and enormously wealthy architect, and also for having playable Ithorians, least commercial of all the alien races.
Rest in peace, brave Galaxies.
By Alec Meer on December 5th, 2011.
Poor old Star Wars Galaxies will sleep the dreamless, eternal sleep in just a couple of weeks, not entirely uncoincidentally around the time EA’s The Old Republic fires up its servers. For the valiant few who’d remained with SOE’s bizzare, ambitious, messy, remarkable MMO, it will be an unhappy day. As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in annoyance and were suddenly silenced, then went to a forum to complain.
However, an enterprising few mean to keep the game alive – specifically, in the form it was before the controversial Combat Upgrade that so upset many of the faithful.
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By Jim Rossignol on November 24th, 2011.
If I run an RPS Planetside 2 outfit (and I vaguely plan to) then it will be with the Vanu Sovereignty. Yes, the purple tech-worshippers are my faction, and so it’s with some delight that I feast on the neither-red-nor-blue goodness of the Vanu faction trailer, below. It’s just some rotating weapons and armour, but it promises so much! PCG also have a bunch of Vanu screenshots. Floaty! Glowy! Purpley!
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Fancy Stealin'
By Dan Griliopoulos on November 14th, 2011.
The heist genre seems to have been arrested before it even got going: Subversion is serving a ten-year stretch as the new Prison Tycoon; Monaco’s team is keeping its head down and hoping for an early release. Only Payday: The Heist is at large, having stolen the nascent heist genre blueprints from under their noses. Here’s Wot I Think.
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By Adam Smith on November 14th, 2011.
Another day, another gobbet of news about pricing options in an MMO. This time it’s Everquest II, which has been running two parallel worlds, one for subscribers and a lesser world for those who want their fantasy for free. Confusingly, the slimline free world is called Everquest II Extended, presumably because Everquest II Shrivelled didn’t focus test well. Soon, that world shall be no more and subscribers will find themselves playing alongside all manner of freeloaders as the playerbase is merged. Non-subscribers will find some features limited, including access to the new Age of Discovery expansion. More details and a trailer below.
