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Plan 8 is a scrapheap shooter MMO from the co-creator of Counter-Strike
Stare at the abyss, they say, and the abyss stares back. Stare at Korean publishers Pearl Abyss, and they'll announce a handful of new MMORPGs. The company behind Black Desert Online unveiled no less than four new online games at Korean convention G-Star this morning. While two high-fantasy adventures keep well within their wheelhouse, Pearl Abyss also announced two radically contrasting games: a high energy…
Feature: Beasts of burden
Every MMO has to have a mount. Mounts are a reward, a step in the endgame that helps you feel like you’ve finally mastered an MMO’s world. Finally you can get around quickly. No more of that plebeian walking. And with the game feeling like it’s in your grasp at last, you even get to show off your achievement with the flamboyance of your steed.…
Project C is an MMO from the folks behind Dishonored, Thief, Half-Life 2
One of my favorite parts of getting a press release is getting a press release that doesn't reveal any information about the game itself. You get a vague promise about a game that might happen someday if some people get together. Normally, I don't give that much of my time. This announcement is different. There's a new MMO and the folks behind it represent some…
Feature: Online siege warfare from some ex-Bungie dudes
Siege warfare MMO Conqueror’s Blade is Total War vs For Honor vs Planetside
I've been playing the closed beta of Conqueror's Blade, a lavish medieval warfare MMO from a team led by assorted Halo alumni. It arrives with eerily similar timing to that other big-scale medieval game Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but entirely multiplayer rather than singleplayer, and is all about bundling together hacky-slashy third-person tropes with a massed-army siege mentality. Total War has made its own attempt to…
When Brendan last took a look at Dual Universe [official site], the sandbox civilisation-building MMORPG was populated only by robots. That's all changed with the launch of the pre-alpha for people who've already backed the game, with the new trailer featuring honest to goodness real life humans running around Dual Universe's ambitious sci-fi world. If you're a fan of swooping spaceship panoramas and tingly sci-fi…
Feature: A conspiracy of currencies
The Secret World was always a game struggling to crawl out from under the weight of its own genre. Many have attempted to build a story-led MMO - and it's a noble pursuit - but no one has ever quite figured out how to do it, not least because an MMO is a terrible setting in which to tell a story. The Secret World got…
Feature: Digital archeology
There's no better way to cause trouble than to talk about 'firsts'. Say for instance that King's Quest IV featured the first female adventure character, and you're probably going to be drowned out by some pedant waving a copy of Infocom's Plundered Hearts in your face. That pedant may even be me. Of course, that's nothing compared to the folly of calling, say, Everquest the…
Feature: Thanks for the mammaries
If you can't be famous, you can at least be infamous. Scarlet Blade is pretty much proof that while sex doesn't necessarily sell, it certainly gets attention. It's one of the most famous MMOs that pretty much nobody will admit to having played, which shuts down this month with rather less bang than whimper. Essentially, and by publisher Aeria's own admission, it just isn't worth…
Feature: The devil's in the details
Trion Worlds have been churning out MMOs for so very long now that one seems to blur into the next. Their latest to appear on Steam, a translation of the South Korean free-to-play original, is Devilian [official site]. It said it was a Diablo-ish action RPG, so I thought - HMMMM? IS IT THOUGH? And took a look. Well, it sort of is. And it's…
Things I never expected to hear myself say: "I'd quite like to go back to Star Wars: The Old Republic" [official site]. This SHOCKING turn of events is in the wake of news that its new expansion, Knights of the Fallen Empire, restores a little of the KOTOR-era Bioware magic that was sadly lacking from the majority of the base game. I suspect most of…
Worlds Adrift [official site] is a game I primarily knew as "the thing with skyships and grappling hooks". There's a new trailer, though and it has bits and bobs of gameplay footage in amongst the sweeping camera shots of clouds and floating islands. I've also had a little look at the lore of the game so here's what I now know:
Sounds pretty straightforward to me - I mean it's just a jump to the left and then a step to the right, with your hands on you hi... oh. My bad. "Timewalk". Blizzard want you to do a "Timewalk" in World of Warcraft [official site]. The WoW devs are setting up a couple of weekend events dedicated to letting players attack old-school dungeons. It looks…
Transformice [official site], arguably the world's first MMO mouse simulator platformer, arrive on Steam this week. It's not a new game - believe it or not, there's been a dozen or more of them living in your wall cavities for, ooh, I'd say about five years ago looking at the damage they've done. *sucks air through teeth* Yep, it's going to cost a few bob…
Word has sneaked out that Blizzard are introducing a new trial account type provisionally dubbed 'Veteran Edition' in World of Warcraft's update 6.1. MMO Champion turned up patch notes mentioning the Veteran Edition, leading folks to speculate away and some to start doomsaying about a free-to-play shift. Relax, it's all fine. Blizzard stepped in to explain it'll simply be a trial open to lapsed subscribers…
Feature: Fire Bolt
In theory, MMORPGs are my favourite PC games in the world. Exploring strange new worlds, dressing up in shiny armour, and kicking butt are my primary gaming motivations and MMORPGs have those in spades. Richard Garriott sold me the dream of a living fantasy world to inhabit in my early PC gaming days and it's a dream I've never quite given up on. Yet the…
Panda Knife Tree understand what partying is really about: friends, fantastical beings, and the ability to gut these rare and precious beings so you can rifle through their entrails for loot. Mwa-ha-ha-ha. Er. Their upcoming browser-based game Ultimate Party promises to bring you exactly that, and then some. It won't just be your standard isometric ARPG, oh no. It's supposed to be an MMO ARPG,…
To my eye, Star Wars The Old Republic was an awkward marriage of BioWare's singleplayer storytelling and World of Warcraft-derived MMO mechanics. It's a marriage which seemed to satisfy no one, dooming SWTOR to a brief honeymoon and a slowly diminishing life of quiet desperation. A sad, science fiction Revolutionary Road. Nice of BioWare to throw the game and its players a little lovin' then,…
Feature: Hatworld!
We always feel that MMOs are difficult to review in a single article, and Wildstar is even larger than most. To give a broader sense of what playing it is like, we asked Philippa Warr to venture inside and report back in three parts (part one). Part two covers more combat detail, and getting to grips with PvP and dungeons. In a piece of advice…
Feature: But Is It A Star?
We always feel that MMOs are difficult to review in a single article, and Wildstar is even larger than most. To give a broader sense of what playing it is like, we asked Philippa Warr to venture inside and report back in three parts. In part one, she covers the first 18 levels of combat, questing and exploration. "Help! Bees! Bees everywhere! HELP ME!" This…
If there was one winner at this year's E3, it was fans of open worlds. The industry has become so efficient at creating beautiful places that there's half a dozen games coming in the next year that I want to play in spite of their mechanics, not because of them. Skyforge is on the list. It's an MMO likely to be a grind to play,…
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