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New environmental concept art from Global Agenda

Filed under: Sci-fi, Galleries, MMO industry, New titles, Spy, Global Agenda


As promised, we're happy to show off three new pieces of concept art from Hi-Rez Studio's upcoming spy-fi MMO Global Agenda. This time around we get to see the Missile Assembly Observation Hall, the Nomadic Drilling Platforms (which is probably one of the coolest concepts ever) and the Pacific Research Facility.

We've been talking a good bit about the game lately, as some of you have noticed. The main reason for this is the avalanche of new content coming out of hiding after flying so low under the radar for the several years that this game has been in production. This is good for you because it means we'll be getting much more, and showing it off to the readers. Check out the three new pieces of concept art in our complete Global Agenda gallery below.

World of Warcraft
Tabula Rasa to shut down in February 2009

Filed under: Sci-fi, Events, real-world, Events, in-game, Endgame, Tabula Rasa


It's been a fairly good run for Tabula Rasa, but the inevitable has now been announced. As of February 28, 2009, Tabula Rasa will be shutting down its servers for good. We've feared an Auto-Assault-like fate for the game for a while now, but confirmation of this event truly saddens everyone in the MMO community.

According to the announcement, the folks at TR plan on going out in style, though. Not only will they continue to pump out some new, quality content in the remaining months, but the game will actually go free-to-play for its final month and a half. You can check out more of their upcoming final plans with the game, as well as the official announcement at their website.

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Star Trek Online producer confirms familiar races and locales

Filed under: Sci-fi, Interviews, New titles, News items, Star Trek Online, Races


Bet you'd just about forgotten about Star Trek Online by this point, hadn't you? There was a big explosion of information when Cryptic announced its iteration of the game in August, but since then, we've seen less and less information as time's gone by. But lo! There has been an update at the officlal site! Turns out the executive producer, Craig Zinkievich, did an interview with Skewed and Reviewed.

It makes for a decent overview if you're new to Star Trek Online, but there isn't much in the way of new gameplay information except for some specific revelations about visitable locales and playable races. First of all, he confirmed that Deep Space Nine -- the setting of the TV series of the same name -- will be in the game. He also rattled off a few of the playable races (but not all, and remember you can create your own): "Human, Vulcan, Andorian, Klingon, Orion and several others." Trekkers / trekkies should be glad to hear that there will be no shortage of scantily clad green people or blue antennae.

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World of Warcraft
EVE's Council of Stellar Management elections end tomorrow

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Culture, Events, in-game, Forums, Game mechanics, Guilds, MMO industry


Tomorrow is the last day for EVE Online players to cast their vote for the Council of Stellar Management (CSM) candidates. Members of the player-elected council act as representatives of the playerbase, bringing issues with the game before the developers and working towards keeping EVE Online a game that reflects the interests of those who play it.

EVE's Council of Stellar Management is one of the first significant implementations of a democratic process impacting both the players and developers of an MMO. Other titles and developers have taken smaller steps towards this in the past, but the first CSM was a first for the industry as well.

Continue reading EVE's Council of Stellar Management elections end tomorrow


Star Wars: The Old Republic interview with Community Manager Sean Dahlberg

Filed under: Sci-fi, Interviews, Lore, MMO industry, New titles, PvP, Education, Star Wars: The Old Republic


In a recent interview with Allakhazam, BioWare's Sean Dahlberg discusses their newest MMO project, Star Wars: The Old Republic. As Community Manager for the project, Dahlberg was able to give some great insight into the game's storyline and direction, or at least as much as he could say for now.

One particularly interesting part of this interview is the discussion on PvP. As Allakhazam points out, the Republic and Sith Empire are not exactly friendly towards each other, so PvP would be an obvious game feature. Dahlberg explains that PvP is definitely part of the game, yet points out that TOR "is not looking to be the jack-of-all-trades game. Instead, we are going to focus on what we do best and make sure the game and all its elements are fun and entertaining." He goes on to explain away what may have sounded like a suggestion that the game will be PvP-heavy by saying, "TOR will offer fun and rewarding gameplay no matter what your play style is. If you're not a PvPer at heart, there are definitely other things within the game to do."

Sounds very promising, and we're excited to hear more about the game, and relay it all to you, when more news becomes available.

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Stargate Worlds newsletter reveals awesome new Jaffa armor

Filed under: Sci-fi, New titles, Stargate Worlds, News items


The second Stargate Worlds community newsletter has descended upon us, and with it comes what can only be described as a sweet crocodile Jaffa armor. We also get a peek at some Jaffa abilities such as Ground Blast and Kree!, an AoE knock-back and mez ability. Of course, a community newsletter wouldn't be complete without some sort of video to sink our teeth into and CME doesn't disappoint here with the YouTube insider page for Stargate Worlds. Since its launch, this page has become packed with all sorts of clips for fans to ravenously consume.

We're quite curious about what other sorts of Jaffa armors are in store for this game. Our vote goes towards a Beagle armor, because who'd want to mess with a face like this? Like the saying goes, "Always let a Beagle win."

The Star Wars Galaxies devs on how Hoth was made

Filed under: Sci-fi, Patches, Star Wars Galaxies


Just a bit ago we noted the launch of the Hoth heroic encounter in Star Wars Galaxies. Chapter 11, as it is also known, has been a long time coming. It's a project the developers have put a lot of work into, and they were eager to share with us some of the background on the mega-patch's development process. The folks at SOE Austin were kind enough to send over a document detailing just that, written up by the game's former Lead Designer Thomas "Blixtev" Blair and its current Lead Designer, Jesse Benjamin.

Join the two developers as they walk through the challenges of fully exploring the Empire Strikes Back movie, the thorny issue of one side being guaranteed to lose, and the critical need for detail and finesse in this difficult development challenge.

Continue reading The Star Wars Galaxies devs on how Hoth was made


Hoth goes live in Star Wars Galaxies!

Filed under: Sci-fi, Expansions, Patches, Star Wars Galaxies


The SOE Austin team may not be working on an expansion for Star Wars Galaxies, but today it sure feels like the players have gotten one. The enormous content drop, Chapter 11 in the SWG saga, hit the live servers early today like the main blaster on an AT-AT walker. The Hoth heroic encounter is now live on the servers for all players to enjoy. The complete patch notes for The Battle of Echo Base are available in the official forums, and there's an informational press release included below the cut.

Highlights from the patch include:
  • The expansive battle itself, which pits Rebel and Imperial heroes against NPC opponents in a timed experience. The Imperials seek to destroy as much of the ragtag fighting force as they can, while the Rebels aim to flee the battle with as many resources as they can. This is easily the most ambitious offering in SWG history, and we explored it thoroughly in a feature from Fan Faire 2008.
  • A new holo-pet system, which will allow players to add fun holographic creatures to their homes.
  • New collections and other side-elements were added to the game to suppor the addition of Hoth.
  • Several classes recieved slight gameplay tweaks and balancing fixes.
  • The character transfer service recieved a big upgrade in advance of next year's free transfer initiative.
  • The Aurilia Guildhall, which serves as the hub for heroic encounter play, has a new memorial to former SWG developer Jeff Freeman.
It's great to see a much-anticipated chunk of content go live in a game like this. Check out the developer insight SOE passed on to us as a developer diary, and read on below for the official release for the patch.

Continue reading Hoth goes live in Star Wars Galaxies!


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World of Warcraft
EVE's call to arms: Thursday fleet battles on test server to help combat lag

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Bugs, Events, in-game, Expansions, Game mechanics, PvP, News items


EVE Online's latest expansion Quantum Rise brought some new features for the industry crowd, and a few enhancements aimed at PvP pilots as well. But some of the broad changes they've made to the game mechanics have triggered lag, and lots of it, which CCP Games is hoping to combat with the help of the players themselves. CCP Tanis says, "We take this issue very seriously and as a result, our engineering team has been in high-gear working on fixing the problem and we think we are close, but we need your help."

The help CCP Games is looking for requires relatively little from players, aside from logging into the Singularity test server and entering the fray, blasting each other apart in battleships. The Wednesday tests were already underway when we got word of this, but they're looking to get a large group of pilots (200 or more) for the Thursday fleet engagements on Singularity. The test will take place on Thursday at 11:00 GMT, and another is tentatively slated for 15:00, dependent upon what CCP learns from the previous fights. CCP Tanis lays out how players can get involved:

Continue reading EVE's call to arms: Thursday fleet battles on test server to help combat lag


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World of Warcraft
EVE Mail changes in latest Quantum Rise patch

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Forums, Game mechanics, Patches, PvP, News items


The Quantum Rise expansion for EVE Online, while only recently deployed, has drawn a substantial amount of forum rage for sweeping changes to how the game is played, namely for the nerfs of speed and missiles. This follows in the wake of unrest created by the CCP Games decision to phase out ghost training. The latest change, announced Tuesday, targets the in-game email system ("EVE Mail" to be precise).

CCP Wrangler says: "To address performance issues in EVE we are making some changes to the EVE Mail system in Quantum Rise 1.0.1. You will now be able to fetch up to 1000 undeleted EVE Mails, however EVE Mail number 1001 and beyond will not be fetched, whether it has been read or not. To gain access to those EVE Mails, you must delete newer EVE mails. In addition to this all EVE Mails sent by NPCs that are older than 3 months will be deleted."

Continue reading EVE Mail changes in latest Quantum Rise patch


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World of Warcraft
CCP Games releases EVE Fanfest 2008 videos

Filed under: Sci-fi, Video, EVE Online, Culture, Economy, Events, real-world, Game mechanics, MMO industry, Humor

Most EVE Online players didn't have the opportunity to attend EVE Fanfest 2008 in Reykjavik earlier this month, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have to miss out on what was revealed. CCP Games and EVE TV have made good on their promise to release video footage of Fanfest presentations and panel discussions. While they did make live audio of some of this available in-game over EVE Voice, it was difficult to follow without the visuals to tie it all together.

Now, they've put up a new video page dedicated to EVE Fanfest 2008, with both low res and high res downloads. They culled roughly 30 hours of raw footage down into 12 videos. We've listed them below, accompanied by the CCP descriptions and video links, for both YouTube (when available) and high resolution versions:

Continue reading CCP Games releases EVE Fanfest 2008 videos


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World of Warcraft
EVE Online offers free game time incentive to recruit friends

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Business models, MMO industry, News items

It was just the other day that we noted a 21-day trial for EVE Online through Steam. CCP Games is following suit and offering their own 21-day EVE trial (a jump up from their standard 14-days). But more significant is the new incentive to bring your friends into New Eden: Active subscribers who bring their friends into the game through the Buddy Program (login required) will receive 30 days of game time for each of those trial accounts that become subscribers as well.

There are some rules and conditions that apply to the Buddy Program offer, so if this is of interest to you, check out the full announcement from EVE developer CCP Loktofeit, and be advised that this offer will expire on December 1st.

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World of Warcraft
Tabula Rasa introduces new Epic Bane

Filed under: Sci-fi, Events, in-game, Game mechanics, PvE, Tabula Rasa


In the worlds of Tabula Rasa, the Bane have been relentless in their attacks against the remaining humans who threaten their plans of complete domination. In response to this, they have developed a new type of super-troop to turn the tide in their favor a bit. These new Bane are called E.P.I.C., or Enhanced Primary Invasion Conscripts. They have shown up in small groups sporadically throughout Foreas and Arieki, killing all AFS they encounter.

According to the most recent Feedback Friday, these Epics will need a full squad of high-ranking soldiers to take them down. Among the Epics spotted so far, there have been reports of Caretakers, Technicians, Grenadiers, Pistol and Rifle Soldiers wreaking havoc across the two planets. Is this a last-ditch effort by the Bane, or a simply a distraction used while they focus their true power elsewhere? Hop in game and find out as the interesting elements of TR's lore continue to unfold.

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World of Warcraft
One Shots: Medic!

Filed under: Sci-fi, Screenshots, EVE Online, One Shots


There's always something going on in New Eden. From the basics like mining and mission running to huge PvP wars, Tranquility is abuzz with activity. Today's One Shots comes from Massively's very own EVE Online columnist, Brendan Drain, who is also known in the EVE community as Nyphur. Brendan's weekly column, EVE Evolved, keeps players in-the-know on this highly interesting sandbox MMO - and the note he sent along with today's One Shots is no exception to his normal insight. Brendan tells us a bit about this interesting ship: This is an Oneiros, the Gallente logistics cruiser. Its role is basically the healer class out of other MMOs. With a massive bonus to remote armor repairer range and capacitor use, these ships are perfect for assisting with difficult level 5 missions and are very useful in organised PVP gangs.

Are there any insights, tips, or tricks you'd like to give others in regards to your favorite game? Perhaps you'd like to show off your favorite ship, as our other EVE Online writer James Egan did, or you have great screens of PvP. If you've got screenshots from your favorite MMO, we want them! Just send them in to us here at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name and a brief description. Yours could be the next one featured here!

Gallery: One Shots


Blue Mars beta and launch dates disclosed

Filed under: Betas, Sci-fi, Business models, Launches, News items, Blue Mars, Virtual worlds


When it comes to virtual worlds, Massively's main focus to date has clearly been on Second Life, but we're also interested in some of the other choices that are becoming available to residents in virtual spaces. Blue Mars from Avatar Reality is one that's caught our eye -- it's a sci-fi themed virtual world, set on a terraformed Mars in the year 2177 AD. The potential is there to have some stunning visuals, as Blue Mars is built on CryEngine2, best known for giving Crysis its look.

The official Avatar Reality site lists a beta release for the end of 2008, but they've told Eurogamer that Blue Mars enters beta in January 2009. "The first-time developer expects this to last for around three months, before the full game launches in April," Eurogamer's Rob Purchese reports.

Continue reading Blue Mars beta and launch dates disclosed


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