Evil Pumpkins Galore Storm North America in Gamepot’s Bright Shadow

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Answering the call for a unique take on massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG), Gamepot (USA), Inc., the U.S. publishing division of Japanese gaming behemoth Gamepot, Inc., is proud to announce its second North American offering, Bright Shadow. Making its way to North American gamers for the first time, Bright Shadow is currently beloved by countless fans around the globe. While the adored MMORPG’s cute, cartoon-like characters and novel monsters – known as “Umbra” – will remain as found in other markets, Gamepot USA is localizing and adapting Bright Shadow with updated storylines, unique new items, and new systems for nearly endless character customization and imaginative new experiences.

“Bright Shadow lets players own their adventure – placing great emphasis on personalized experiences for them and their friends,” said Thomas Lee, director of business and marketing, Gamepot (USA), Inc. “With a focus on creativity, finely-tuned social options and easy-to-learn gameplay, we feel it’s the perfect online entertainment experience to bring to North America as part of our growing roster of free-to-play games.”

The vast Bright Shadow game world – complete with its own ever-changing weather system – places a high emphasis on combat with a horde of unique, deadly monsters and social functions, featuring vigorous guilds and 20 unique classes, a number almost unheard of in traditional MMORPGs; making it ideal for both hardcore and casual audiences alike. Also included in Bright Shadow are an innovative Monster Card system used for a variety of abilities (including monster summons), a “Soul Power” collection system to boost skills, tailored item crafting and original pet systems all geared toward providing a truly customizable undertaking where no two players will be alike.

Bright Shadow is scheduled for release for online PC gaming in late 2009, with closed beta beginning this fall. Like all Gamepot games, Bright Shadow will be a 100% free-to-play experience with the option of purchasing “Pot Cash” for special in-game items further down the line.

For more information, or to sign up for a chance to be part of the beta, please visit www.brightshadow.gamepotusa.com.

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MagiQuest: a real life MMO(ffline)

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framedImage via Wikipedia

You begin by picking up a brand new wand. You listen to an old wizard talk about your upcoming adventure. Then, ready to embark on your journey, you approach an important looking tree. The tree presents you with a choice of a number of quests. You select one, then go exploring in a dark forest. You pick up many things along the way, and interact with various objects, but in the end you manage to gather everything you need to complete your quest. Whew! Now you can move on to the next quest.

Sounds like a typical MMORPG, doesn't it? You're right, there's nothing much different about this from any other MMO.

Except that it's real.
That's right, everything I just described is physically acted out, although with fake trees and wizards (then again, the virtual trees and wizards are not exactly real either). Thsi is the premise behind MagiQuest,the live action MMORPG.

For a fee, you receive entrance as well as your very own wand, complete with an infrared signal. This IR wand is what allows you to interact with countless things around you, from magical mushrooms, to kiosks depicting "NPCs," to, yes that's right, real people in costumes wandering around the "forest."

And in a backwards kind of way, MagiQuest plans on taking its real life game to the internet, creating an MMO (this time online) where the things you do and get carry over to the physical locations.

By Yuliya Geikhman

Source: http://www.examiner.com/

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Dawntide Dev Diary #1 or "Help I Need a Title!"

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WarCry is pleased to be hosting developer diaries from Working As Intended, developers of the upcoming MMO, Dawntide. Dawntide is currently in beta phase 1. Find out how the dev team is responding to beta questions/concerns below:
Dawntide Blog #1: Help, I Can't Come Up With A Good Title


So this is my first developer blog here. My name's Christian Hummeluhr, or zodium on the Dawntide forums, and I'm the producer for Working as Intended's Dawntide. Dawntide's a low-fantasy sandbox MMORPG with a focus on civilization building and equally enjoyable gameplay experiences for all types of players - we're more than just combat, basically. Warcry already has a good interview, and for more information you can visit our website and forums.

I'm not really all that sure what to write about here, but I figure I'll start out with the responses we've gotten to Beta 1 (which started on Aug 1st), I'll get into some sort of groove and we'll go from there.

Everyone's been positive about our graphics. We have the usual texture errors and animation bugs, but the game's simple realism seems to have struck a chord. I think we've hit a good middle road between hyper-realistic graphics that never quite seem to resemble photographs and cartoony or otherwise purposely unrealistic graphics. We still have a lot of work to do in adding content and flavor to the game, but overall I think it's going well.

Something that's going less well for us is the feedback on our accessibility. Frankly, most people can't seem to figure out just what to do or how to do it when they start out, and I don't blame them - it's really not all that easy right now, what with the lack of tooltips, gameplay guidance and comprehensive feature descriptions. The one upside is that it seems while the curve is steep, it's relatively short; Players who get past the initial learning curve and settle into the proper mindset for Dawntide seem to excel even in this early stage. Unfortunately, not many seem to do so, and we will have a lot of work to do on accessibility in the next beta phase if we want Dawntide to be a successful and enjoyable game (we do).

Lastly, our game design concepts. The general reception has been extremely positive, and I honestly can't complain about the feedback we've had there - I feel like I should say more to properly reflect how much positive feedback we've had, but that's the gist of it. We could be a lot better at properly distributing information right now, and we will be correcting that in the next week or two by releasing feature articles with supplementing screenshots.
The strangest thing is easily the negative reaction to our concept, though. While most people are very positive, our detractors don't actually seem to dislike our ideas, but say that they have no faith we can implement our good ideas. And I'm seeing this across the board for MMORPGs: even when people like what they're seeing, a significant amount of them will instinctively shy away because they've learned the dreams don't materialize.

It's not new, people have been saying that for a while. Some interpret it as the MMORPG genre having reached its peak, that we just can't squeeze any more fun out of this lemon and that we should all get off our computers and get a tan, but I don't think so. I think it's a reflection of a growing consensus among MMORPG players about what we want in an MMORPG, and the repeatedly dashed hopes of actually getting those things in an MMORPG. Now, I'm not nearly arrogant enough to say that it's going to be us who've got the secret formula - at least not in public - but I will say I think we've got a pretty good shot.
I guess that's it. My groove's all grooved out, and this is exactly one page, so I'm just gonna end it while I'--

Thanks to beta player, Cinn, for the screenshots and to Christian for his insight. Stay tuned for another diary coming in the very near future!

by Suzie Ford

Source:http://www.warcry.com/

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Colonists Receive Call for Help From the New Planet Calypso

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First Planet Company, developer and publisher of the largest real cash economy MMORPG, announced that the completely new Planet Calypso - The Colonist MMO has been launched today on PC's worldwide. This new release sees the complete transformation from Project Entropia as it becomes Planet Calypso with beautiful new vistas, a compelling new story and dangerous monsters all rendered in Crytek's stunning CryENGINE 2.


As an exclusive benefit to players who sign on now, Planet Calypso's 'Second Golden Age' has been declared. As the new version is brought fully online, and new and improved features are added, players are being given a chance to find elite items that will never be made public again. Additionally, as a thank you for helping to make sure the planet is ready, veteran and former colonists are all being given a very special gift. A brand new pair of Gullaldr sunglasses, now more important than ever since the introduction of day and night cycles, will be waiting. Colonists will have the ability to directly impact the new world as they can interface directly with the development team should they have any problems. This will help Planet Calypso smoothly implement its new and improved features.

"As always a player's real life business skills can still translate to real money in their bank account," said Marco Behrmann, CEO of First Planet Company. "With Planet Calypso we are focusing our efforts on game play, storyline, events and an overall engrossing experience for the user. Explorers can still seek their real life fortune on Planet Calypso, but they can also just play a fantastic and entertaining MMORPG"

Planet Calypso will continue the tradition of using real currency in the game and allowing players an opportunity to use their business skills to make real money. Six years after the initial launch as Project Entropia, the game is now called "Planet Calypso" and uses state-of-the-art technology. Its real cash economy, using a fixed exchange rate of 10:1 between its PED currency and the USD, is still the mainstay of this MMORPG. Players will have the ability to play for free and participate in a unique virtual economy with real prospects.

Planet Calypso is a free download available today. For more information please feel free to simply go to our new website at www.planetcalypso.com. For an official press preview disk and special media account please contact us at the emails above.

About First Planet Company
First Planet Company AB is a subsidiary of the MindArk Group. First Planet Company AB develops and markets Planet Calypso, a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) based on the Entropia Platform, and is part of the Entropia Universe. Set in a distant future, the planet Calypso is home to an expanding human colony struggling with the natural and economic elements involved in establishing their new civilization.

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MMORPGs That Failed (And Why) Part 2

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Star Wars Galaxies box art.Image via Wikipedia

MMORPGs That Failed (And Why) Part 2

STAR WARS GALAXIES: AN EMPIRE DIVIDED MMORPGStar Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided
(June 2003 – Present)

What’s the idea: The greatest licence in the universe led to incredibly high expectations from players. It’s not so much a case of failure (SWG is still active and regularly updated) but of disappointment from fans of the saga.

What went wrong: Impossibly high expectations coupled with poor balancing, bugs and changes to gameplay mechanics while ignoring what the players had to say about it. The infamous New Game Enhancements led to a massive uproar and subscription cancellations. The idea was to grab a new audience, but not only it didn’t happened, it angered t
he existing one.


TABULA RASA MMORPGTabula Rasa
(November 2007 – February 2009)

Tabula Rasa (video game)Image via Wikipedia



What’s the idea: Apparently, not even the developers were really sure. Ric
hard “Lord British” Garriott (of Ultima fame) started with a fantasy MMORPG in the vein of World of Warcraft and many others, only to have it changed halfway through to science fiction.

What went wrong: Midway revamps like the one Tabula Rasa suffered can’t do any good. Conflicts between developers, some of them clueless about the game’s direction led to replacements and most of the game code being rewritten. In the works since 2001 and released in November 2007, Tabula Rasa actually gathered some positive reviews but failed to captivate players to its world. Developers cited the lower than expected in-game population as the reason to make Tabula Rasa free to play (as of December 23, 2008) before closing down the servers on February 28, 2009.

Richard Garriott, also known for his spaceflight, is now suing Tabula Rasa’s publisher Ncsoft, claiming breach of contract, fraud and negligent misrepresentation on the part of NCsoft. It seems his “voluntary” departure wasn’t so, and he was actually fired in late 2008. This scheme also forced him to sell his stock options prematurely, losing millions of dollars in the process.


THE MATRIX ONLINE MMORPGThe Matrix Online
(March 2005 – July 2009)

The Matrix (series)Image via Wikipedia


What’s the idea: A MMO based on Neo, Trinity and friends, using the hype of the movies to its advantage. The potential was definitely there.

What went wrong: The several delays resulted in The Matrix Online being released when interest in the movies waned, and the initial sales figures were disappointing. The further addition of in-game advertising raised controversy, and the reduction of the game world due to sparse population wasn’t well received.

Time has come to take the red pill.


THE SIMS ONLINE MMORPGThe Sims Online
(December 2002 – August 2008)

The Sims OnlineImage via Wikipedia



What’s the idea: The amazing success of The Sims led to uncountable expansion packs bu
t also to a more bold idea: a massive multiplayer game with these lovable (if you’re a fan) characters. Now you could live a life pretty much like your own online! Sounds appealing?

What went wrong: It may be named The Sims, but it lacked most features of the offline versions. It was hard work to earn simoleons, the skill system was annoying and it all felt somewhat empty. The Sims Online was released in December 2002 and could have been enriched with frequent updates, but it only officially happened in February 2008, with the rebranding to EA Land. The future looked bright...

... and yet it shut down on August 2008. Are the Sims doomed to their offline world?

Source: http://www.mmorpgate.com



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