MMO Roundup: Last week on Massively
by Alex Ziebart 
Nov 23rd 2010 at 6:00AM
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Massively's getting a makeover! Massively is joining WoW Insider in becoming closer with our flagship blog, Joystiq. Head over to Massively and check out their sweet changes and additions. |
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GamersFirst to resurrect APB: Reloaded as a free-to-play title The saga of All Points Bulletin has become one of the dominating MMO stories of 2010, with its buggy launch, premature shutdown, hunt for a new owner, and rescue by free-to-play publisher GamersFirst last week. GamersFirst has officially announced that APB will restart as a free-to-play MMO. |
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Final Fantasy XIV players get another free month of playtime More than a month ago, Square-Enix announced that players of Final Fantasy XIV would be receiving an extension to the free trial period of the game, citing that the game was not as polished as originally hoped and it was only fair not to bill for a cycle. This month, another 30 days of free time are being granted to all players. |
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EVE gambling website SOMER.Blink is the target of 125 billion ISK theft In EVE, theft and piracy are part of the game, and players have to make a conscious effort not to put themselves at risk. Trust the wrong person with access to your assets or let your guard down, and you might regret it. That lesson was learned the hard way by EVE gambling website SOMER.Blink, as last night, it became the target of a 125 billion ISK theft. |
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LOTRO: Rise of Isengard is coming! Lord of the Rings Online enters the era of The Two Towers with the game's upcoming expansion, Rise of Isengard. Head over to Massively to hear about all of the new content and features that will be incoming for LOTRO players. |
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G-Star 2010: Hands-on with Blade & Soul Massively's Editor-in-Chief Shawn Schuster was able to sit down and play Blade & Soul's first playable demo this past week. Blade & Soul is NCSoft's upcoming high-action martial arts MMO. Medieval Korean history? Slick cinematics? Minimal grind? What's not to love? |
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Vindictus entices players with a dynamic new trailer Vindictus, the first real-physics-based MMO, launched as a free-to-play title just a few weeks ago. This past week they released a new trailer previewing some gameplay overlaid with a narrator describing the basic story of the world. Go forth and watch, heroes! |
Filed under: MMO Roundup
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Pyromelter Nov 23rd 2010 6:47AM
No offense to massively or any of the other MMO's, but these reports seem like reporting a minor fender bender 3 counties away while the city you are in has just had a 10.0 earthquake, a volcanic eruption, a tsunami, a hurricane, and large meteorites striking the city that you live in, all at the same time.
The world shakes from the great depths... woe is it to anyone who would otherwise be recognized for noble deeds in times like this.
Mr. Tastix Nov 23rd 2010 7:12AM
But at the end of the day, World of Warcraft is just a game. The real world is not exploding and collapsing in two just yet, only the game is.
This is the difference between in-character and out-of-character and why the two must be kept very distinct, and the barriers made very clear.
Nick Nov 23rd 2010 6:55AM
I really like the sound of EVE online, being able to turn in game money into game time sounds great. How much effort goes into acquiring enough for 1 month though.
In WOW:
1 month of WOW = £8.
selling 1000g = £0.80-£1 according to a quick look at the site I use to buy my game cards.
10,000g to get 1 month of play, I think it'd take me about 2 or 3 months to save that amount in WoW. Clearly even if it were allowed in WoW it wouldn't be worthwhile unless you were breaking rules elsewhere.
Pyromelter Nov 23rd 2010 7:09AM
Based on rates that I see in trade chat, it would take around 4-5k gold (let's just say 5k). If you have a max level character in wow as a farming character, you can pretty safely accumulate that amount in materials over a few hours of farming.
Eve is just a crazy game with how like everything is pvp. The one thing I wonder about "thefts" so to speak is what is the motivation, and are these people turning ISK into real life money. Because you'd have to realize that if you stole 10s of billions or even 100s of billions of in-game credit, you can be pretty sure that no one in the game is ever going to trust you (and probably won't even want to play with you anymore). So I have to wonder if those things are like a grand farewell, where they have a buyer for the ISK, steal it as mentioned in the article, and then turn it into real life money. The guy that nabbed 850billion ISK, the article stated that that would be worth a cool $45,000 in real world dollars.
That's not a huge number in this day of inflation, but it's still a nice chunk of change. I could see how someone would be tempted to do that.
Mr. Tastix Nov 23rd 2010 7:17AM
In the situation listed in the article above, it'd be like anyone committing fraud in real life.
Fraudsters make friends and allies, they get people to trust them, and then they take their money. The idea is that the person committing the fraud has no immediate tie to the person other than having their money or possessions for whatever reason. There should be no personal affiliation outside of the business one, between the fraudster, and the client.
This allows the fraudster to desensitise themselves from the clients they're stealing from, so that they don't feel any traces of guilt or regret for their actions. This makes it easier for them to continue doing what they're doing, sometimes the simple greed of money eases any sense of guilt.
The risk this guy took is the same any fraudster takes: The people know him, and if he is caught then he is basically screwed in that region. His trust will be gone, and it will be hard to rebuild that for practically any gains, legit or otherwise. He can always, however, move on to the next area of attack. Another game, another business.
Ricohardt Nov 23rd 2010 7:18AM
I'd probably never save enough since I am an altoholic, but a friend of mine said she made 300k in like a week. Some people would definitely take advantage of this.
RogueJedi86 Nov 23rd 2010 8:29AM
"selling 1000g = £0.80-£1 according to a quick look at the site I use to buy my game cards."
A site that sells game time cards would tell you a ratio for converting gold to real money? Maybe I'm reading that wrong, but it sounds like you checked on a goldsite, not a gametime card site. :P
Urquan Nov 23rd 2010 10:22AM
@ Mr. Tastix
This is also how we define a sociopath.
Nick Nov 23rd 2010 6:20PM
@Rogue unless ofcourse the site does all sorts of stuff, cd keys, timecards, xbox cards, psn cards and game currency too.
Cheapest timecards I can find though.
cyfoeth Nov 23rd 2010 7:16AM
The system for EVE is very smart. CCP always gets their money for each month of play time, because you don't use in-game currency to buy game time directly. Instead you can buy game time items, which are tradable in the in-game market system.
So, if you have money and want in-game currency, buy game-time tokens and sell them on the market for whatever you can get for them. Last time I played, they were going for about 300 million ISK, which you can make in a week or so if you play quite a bit, or a month if you put less effort into it.
If you don't have money, but do have time, you can buy the game-time tokens from those who did buy them.
I think it's a brilliant system, since no in-game money is created or destroyed (only exchanced), it doesn't hurt the economy, and CCP does indeed get the same amount of income, just not 1:1 for each player.
Hurbster Nov 23rd 2010 7:38AM
New Massively site is an awful Joystiq clone. I could live with the other changes but bright white colour scheme ? And one of the staff has the gall to say 'I don't know anyone who browses full screen anymore'.
Please WoW Insider, never adopt this scheme. I've already had to stop using Joystiq and now it looks like I'll have to stop using Massively.
jakedamuss Nov 23rd 2010 8:24AM
Yeah I second that, wow-insider is very easy on the eye's as it is :)
RogueJedi86 Nov 23rd 2010 8:06AM
"Last week on Massively" *sees top linked Massively article is from yesterday* Yesterday was last week? :P
jrblackyear Nov 23rd 2010 12:42PM
I may just try FFIV since it's currently F2P and I'm a huge fan of the series.