Rock, Paper, Shotgun

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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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.

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.

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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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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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.

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Actually, I’ll let you off for skipping this one, because it’s really not all that interesting to anyone other than the Planetside hardcore. It’s a trailer for the New Conglomerate faction, and as such shows nothing in the way of in-game stuff, and instead delivers a bunch of spinning schematics of pistols, kneepads, and aircraft. Tsk. Get with the real trailers, Sony!
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As promised back in September, DC Universe Online is now free to play. While the combat isn’t quite as smooth as Mr Wayne’s moves in his Arkham adventures, it’s a lot more punchy than what passes for fisticuffs in most massively multiplayer efforts. Playing for free only provides two character slots and there are limits on inventory size among other things, including an inability to trade. You can see all the difference between paid and free subscription at the site.

I’d say it’s well worth a look for anyone interested in the characters and world, and it’s an entertaining solo game for a while if nothing else. I’m hoping this helps to repopulate Gotham since DCUO is the only online RPG I actually play. It’s lonely in there with no one to watch me brooding in the shadows. Get it here.

Game continents: noticeably smaller than the real thing. Anyway, more details are emerging about what to expect from Planetside 2: “We have enormous, enormous gameplay space,” lead dev Matt Higby told PCG. “One of our largest development efforts on this project has been hand crafting every single area of those eight-by-eight kilometre continents.” Artillery will have a range of up to a kilometre. The official site is also starting to post regular updates, with some details about the factions.

The PCG article talks about 200-man battles. I can’t wait for this to arrive.

According to IGN, DC Universe Online is dropping subscription charges next month. The article quotes SOE executive producer Lorin Jameson as saying, “this was our preferred business model from day one”. Well, it’s taken seven months to implement that day one plan but it’s finally here. It does make sense. While SOE are claiming that a drop in subscriptions is not behind this move, anyone who has visited Gotham City lately can tell you it’s a bit of a ghost town. Is this enough to entice anyone in, or back in? Full details below.

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