Over in Everquest II, they're trying an experiment at the moment - what's that? Yes, Everquest II. People are still playing it. The original as well. I know, I'm surprised too, but never mind. Specifically, they've created a prison server called Drunder. The idea is that instead of banning trolls, griefers and cheaters (presumably up to a certain point), they can simply throw all the troublemakers in server jail and let them play together with no possibility of escape. Nothing can possibly go wrong! If you want to indulge in the anarchy then you can request to be sent there, but again, it's a one way trip for your account. Has Daybreak finally discovered the ultimate fix for bad online behaviour, though? Let's ask our special ethics correspondent, a snowball in Hell.
...
Well, while we wait, I thought it'd be fun to take a look at how a few other RPGs have decided to have a little fun with their dodgier elements, both online and off.
]]>Guild Wars 2 [official site] launched with a promise – to fix MMOs. Strident, attention-grabbing, patently doomed schtick that was nevertheless suffused with just enough gosh-shucks-darn-it-I-want-to-see-them-try zest to make it a journey worth tracking. That was two years ago.
The mission met with mixed results, as lead designer Isaiah Cartwright admitted to me when we spoke in Brighton during a hands-on with the game's first expansion, Heart of Thorns. We were among the first to play the expansion and all of the details are below.
]]>Gigantic pretty clearly wants to be a big deal. It's from the former lead designer of StarCraft and Guild Wars, it has $20 million in backing, and its team size is kind of, er, gigantic for an indie studio. So it can talk the talk, but can it justify a series of costly expenditures on the part of shadowy investors and/or see why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch? That's the $20 million question, but it certainly looks like an intriguing prospect. Gigantic includes MOBA elements (teams of five facing off in a big ol' battle arena), but the difference is you're not on defense. Rather, both teams have a hulking colossus that accompanies them into combat, with defending/destroying them serving as your main objective. Meanwhile, the whole thing is action-based, with physics-based abilities and WASD controls steamrolling over the classic top-down approach. Impressive debut trailer below.
]]>Rare is the MMO that continues to thrive alongside its direct successor - or, for that matter, get a direct successor at all. By all accounts, the original Guild Wars lived a good, long life. It loved, it lost, it learned violin, it saw the ocean one last time. Also, I don't know why I'm talking about it in the past tense, because it's not dead yet. True, ArenaNet's already itsy bitsy GW1 live team is moving on to bigger, less eight-year-old things, but unlike NCsoft stablemate City of Heroes, these guilds will war on. How? Robots. Find out more about your imminent ice-cold oppression after the break.
]]>I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve walked into a room with a monitor and a nervously-smiling man at one end and been told I’m about to see the future of MMOs. I smile back politely, and the same old dance begins. Too often, I feel a numbness, a struggle to reconcile professionally wanting to know what's going on with personally despairing of the idea of giving over dozens of hours of my life to what's so often a mess of cloned features and over-sold, under-realised promises. My most recent sighting of Guild Wars 2 really did break through that numbness, made me sit up straight and pay full attention. I still don’t know how much of what it’s trying to do will be practicable and effective over long-term play, but seeing it took me back to a time before my awful genre ennui, back to when every time I sat down to see a new MMO my mood was excitement, not cynicism. Here’s why.
]]>Courtesy of BigDownload we get to see a little of the history behind Guild Wars in a 15-minute video (below) produced by its creators, ArenaNet. Various members of company talk about their beginnings, their inspiration, motivation, the changes required to become a major studio, and so on. During the talking head interviews they claim to not be a videogame company, but a "community-building company, we just have one of the coolest ways to build a community." Bold words. There's a bit of back patting going on, clearly, but it's worth a watch.
]]>Have you HEARD? ArenaNet's started releasing free content updates for Guild Wars under the title of Guild Wars Beyond, updates that are gently guiding the world through the events preceding Guild Wars 2.
]]>This is excellent. ArenaNet just launched what it's calling the Guild Wars 2 Hall of Monuments Reward Calculator. Guild Wars players will remember the Hall of Monuments, where their characters amassed trophies and rewards spread across five different categories. Well, depending on how much you collected, the Reward Calculator tells you what those achievements will gift you with in Guild Wars 2, and it can be anything from animal companions, to pets, to special weapons and armour. Guild Wars veterans! Go and see what you're entitled to.
Such generosity demands answers. The gift horse must be looked in the mouth, because who knows what could be in there? It could be a bomb. We had a quick word with ArenaNet game designer John Hargrove about how and why this scheme came about.
]]>Stew Wilson twittered this at me very excitedly. And rightly so, as it's very exciting. Or, at least, splendid. Massively has the full story, but in short, the Guild Wars God of Death has been teleporting around the world and striking people down with a hefty scythe. Why? Well, it's the animation to go with the mass-banning of players who've transgressed against the User Agreement or Rules of Conduct (i.e. Cheating). It's a terribly stylish way to do a player-cull, at least. Footage of DHUUM'S FURIOUS ANGER follows...
]]>LORE EXCLUSIVE. I don't think we've had one of those before. Lore! Pure lore! Big proper info on long-awaited MMO sequel Guild Wars 2 is bound to hit during E3, but until then here's a scoopette on how it's going to link up to the first game. Including a couple of Big Fat Hints about what kind of world GW2 will be. Lumped under the Guild Wars Beyond umbrella, there's going to be a series of updates that setup the world and the narrative for whatever goes down in GW 2. In other words, a storm is coming. And, judging by these screenshots, it's a robo-storm... Your first details on the War In Kryta are below, chums.
]]>Tip-tap-tippy-tap-tap-tap. That's me treading carefully so I don't wake the vicious, slumbering Litigation Beast. Not that it'd necessarily wake up anyway, but some people have accused NCSoft's response to a recent security scandal (related to MMO player accounts) of having a slight whiff of porky-pie about it. As those accusations aren't proven, I'm wearing my Ballerina Shoes of +4 vs dangerous sweeping statements.
These are the key facts to this story: 1) There's been a sudden, large spate of apparently hacked Aion, Guild Wars, City of Heroes et al accounts. 2) there've been reports of an apparent security hole in the NCsoft master account (an umbrella login for multiple NCsoft games), which has caused some players to find they'd somehow logged in as other players. Could these two things possibly be related? NCsoft says no. Hmm. Where's Poirot when you need him?
]]>It's an anniversary. Four years today the original Guild Wars: Prophecy came out. Seeing this day approaching, we grabbed the chance to have a quick e-mail exchange with designer Eric Flannum about all that time and even let him include "®" symbols in his answers, as the birthday boy can do such things. We also resist trying to make Eric talk about Sacrifice, the other splendid game he was involved with, because this is Guild War's special day and it's hardly the time or the place. Questions and answers are found below in an instanced area below.
]]>Possibly winning some sort of award for longest time between a game's release and it getting the demo treatment, Guild Wars now has a free trial wotsit. While you need to sign up for NCsoft's mildly irritating PlayNC master account thinger, you don't need to give out credit card details. So if you've yet to sample Arenanet's well-received subscriptionless, PvP-heavy fantasy MMO, now's your chance. Don't let the fact that only one member of RPS thinks Guild Wars isn't oddly characterless and overly mechanical stop you. (Pauses for angry protestations). It's fine! Just not my cup of elf-tea, y'know?
]]>My, what a lot of colons. Wouldn't it be nice to see a game mix up its punctuation a little, a throw in a semi-colon even an interrobang? I digress. PC Gamer have lobbed my review of the first real Guild Wars add-on pack online. In it, I say things like...
]]>Until you read this anyway.
]]>You may be pleased to know that it hasn't been all intricately documented whining about really brilliant videogames this August Bank-holiday weekend at Rock Paper Shotgun Towers. As I said a couple of posts back, I've been playing Guild Wars: Eye of the North on its preview weekend. And I've had a lot of fun. Let's see a picture of my character, having a lot of fun.
Yay! It's like Rainbow Islands, except with less Rainbows or Islands or Rainbow Islands.
]]>Been playing through the preview weekend of Guild Wars: Eye of the North. More eventually, but something amused me and I wanted to share. What some would consider spoilers under the cut, but since it's one which was included in Arenanet's trailer for the expansion pack, it really doesn't matter.
]]>Well, there's got to be someone out there who isn't planning on going through Bioshock this weekend. I'm among you, actually. I'm instead going to be spending my time playing Guild Wars, as they're having a preview weekend for their forthcoming Eye of The North Expansion.
]]>
