MMO Roundup: World of StarCraft, RIFT news, and more
by Alex Ziebart 
Jan 25th 2011 at 9:00AM
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StarCraft II turned into World of StarCraft by enterprising fan World of StarCraft is, by all indications, high on the list of desirable games that have never been announced or even hinted at. It's certainly a universe ripe for development, and it's not as if Blizzard doesn't know anything about running an MMO. But why wait for an official release when you can put the game together yourself? |
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The latest RIFT news If upcoming MMO RIFT has caught your attention, the past week had a number of RIFT-related news stories that might strike your fancy. New beta additions? PvP details? New class reveals? Massively has it all. |
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First Impressions: Battlestar Galactica Online Last year, developer Bigpoint announced that Battlestar Galactica Online was being developed as a free-to-play browser MMO. Just last week, Massively was able to get its hands on the game and take it for a spin. |
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The Guild Counsel: What every leader should know about recruiting Do you like WoW Insider's Officers' Quarters? Then you might like Massively's Guild Counsel. This week, The Guild Counsel tackles the topic of guild recruitment, discussing the right and wrong ways to do it. |
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Hello Kitty Online meets Manhattan Hello Kitty Online is near and dear to our hearts here at WoW Insider. We were all excited to hear about the latest HKO update. Hello Kitty Online visits New York City, where the locals have gone missing for mysterious reasons. Find out what happened, and cheer up the victims! |
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Week in Review: It's all about souls Don't let WoW Insider do all of the talking when it comes to Massively's best content of the week. The Massively staff themselves have picked out what they think is the best content their site has to offer in their own weekly roundup. |
Filed under: MMO Roundup
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Darky Jan 25th 2011 9:26AM
Hello kitty online is the best thing since barbie dolls.
Elmouth Jan 26th 2011 2:27AM
I am disapoint by the lack of DCUO news.
macster Jan 25th 2011 9:38AM
If the Best of Massively article on Massively links back to WoWInsider's Best of Massively article, will the Universe cease to exist?
Geiss Jan 25th 2011 9:51AM
awesome - the video to the SC2 mmo was already yanked by Activision...
Mattimus Jan 25th 2011 4:00PM
It might have just been yanked by YouTube being overly trigger-happy. I think a few months back, YouTube yanked a Warcraft video from Blizzard's own channel for copyright violations -- they tend to act sometimes without being told to.
From comments gleaned on Massively, the MOD creator hasn't even heard from Blizzard. Don't assume Activision and/or Blizzard yanked it just yet.
froz3nnph33r Jan 25th 2011 9:56AM
Not often do I leave comments. But you guys do realize World of Starcraft, now Starcraft Universe, is NOT an MMO? Gaming journalism sites using that classification in the first place are what nearly got this guy sued. Just an FYI.
Ice Jan 25th 2011 10:12AM
World of starcraft is funny case.
Activision Blizzard asked youtube to remove the video out because of copyright.
"Yesterday Rock Paper Shotgun told how Ryan woke to find that World Of Warcraft and Starcraft II publisher Activision Blizzard had claimed copyright infringement over the YouTube videos he had posted of his work, demanding their removal from the video sharing site."
He was free to continue the thing if he would change the name. But its not first time this happens anyway by activision, I remember certain fanmade remake of old, was it DOS game even, that was "blessed by the original maker" but it was asked to be removed because activision "owns the rights to that game".
Also the World of Starcraft guy got job offer from Riot games. Well done and deserved!
http://www.next-gen.biz/news/%E2%80%9Cworld-of-starcraft%E2%80%9D-modder-offered-job
urendir Jan 25th 2011 10:29AM
Yet another proof that people at the top of Activision Blizzard are nothing but money hungry scumbags. If it can't be milked for money, it has to be removed. And the guy trying to make a point about the fact that "Most guys who do get a job working in video games right now are driven like slaves working with little creative control." is certainly not going to work on people like that. They like the fact that the people working on games are driven like slaves.
Take the CEO, Mr Kotick, who's plan it is "to take all the fun out of making video games.” How? By instilling a culture of “scepticism, pessimism, and fear” amongst the company’s staff based around the economic depression and an incentive program that rewards “profit and nothing else”. " (source: geeks.co.uk, an article from 2009)
This is who we pay our subscriptions to.
Tirrimas Jan 25th 2011 11:04AM
@urender:
And yet, Blizzard has proven that Activision hasn't crushed their spirit and sense of fun. Yes, Kotick himself ends up with a tiny portion of our subscriptions, but the vast majority gets plowed right back into Blizz. I'll gladly continue paying it.
Straz Jan 25th 2011 1:02PM
He also was invited to visit with Starcraft II developers at the Blizzard campus. The issue was with the name, NOT the content. Blizzard has said themselves that they did not want for him to stop development, only that they didn't like how close the name was to World of Warcraft.
People love to bash Blizzard, but you not find another gaming company that is as in touch with their player-base as Blizzard.
Ice Jan 25th 2011 4:31PM
"but you not find another gaming company that is as in touch with their player-base as Blizzard."
Well theres plenty, lika valve, but I agree with you.
Thing is, its activision thats the evil not really blizzard always.
Like I said, he was free to continue work with changed name. Thing here is tho that I've seen few fanmade projects fell because of activision ( http://kotaku.com/5482221/activision-terminates-fan+made-kings-quest-extension (Which is totally own story back and forth)). Thats why I'm bit skeptical about it for now.
Ronin Jan 25th 2011 10:16AM
Maybe you could start mentioning the game your lead photos come from. I'm often curious about that, but you just post them without saying anything about them.
Straylight Jan 25th 2011 10:36AM
The top image is from Rift. They have a beta running from today till Friday. I’m looking forward to trying it out tonight.
While it does seem very WoWlike, Cataclysm has failed to spark my interest in continuing to adventure in Azeroth. I'm looking for a new MMO much sooner than I expected.
Goodk4t Jan 25th 2011 10:20AM
Despite his modding skills, Ryan is not a clever kid and his letter to Blizzard proves so: the videos weren't taken down because Blizzard was upset that someone was making a World of Scarcraft map, I doubt they care about stuff like this. The issue is that, with a name such as "World of Starcraft", people searching for info on Starcraft would end up finding this and could think it was an Official project. Worse than that, what if the game became as popular as DotA? When Blizzard decided to launch the real World of Starcraft, they 'd get mixed results having a popular modded map with the same name. The project was renamed to "Starcraft Universe", and now everything is fine.
nonentity Jan 25th 2011 10:30AM
Got an invite for the Rift beta today... that game has one crappy download system.
Downloaded 3gb of the 7.45gb client, had a raid in WoW so stopped the download, restarted it later... started at 0. Hell, even the Everquest 1 and 2 download management worked better.
Especially after their "You are not in Azeroth anymore." (aka "WoW sucks, we rule, weeeee") this is a major fuck-up in my opinion, one that makes the game much, much less interesting to me.
nonentity Jan 25th 2011 10:32AM
Small correction - you can continue the download I think but you have to start a time-consuming "Recovery" process, something that is done automatically and faster in other game-patchers I've used so far.
ShadowPriest Jan 25th 2011 11:09AM
You know this might seem Tabo on a WoW site, but i really hope Rift dose well, I mean really well. IMHO, this last expo has been a little lackluster, and i would like to see something light a fire under their but. "No king rules forever"
Herman Jan 25th 2011 6:28PM
Taboo
lacklustre
does
butt.
that is all.
Darr Jan 25th 2011 11:35AM
I'll be trying Rift tonight and am looking forward to it. I expected so much more from Cata, and find myself doing dailies while I wait for guildees to gear up so we can raid. WoW has become cookie cutter, same old same old. Don't get me wrong I love the game but I'm bored already.
I looked at the talent trees in Rift last night and went wow that's cool. I had no idea what talents were best to get and I felt like a huge noob.. And for some reason that makes me excited to try the game. After over 4 years of min/max on my rogue I look forward to learning something new.
Jason Ralph Jan 25th 2011 2:13PM
WoW is the first MMO I have ever played. I started playing DCUO during the beta and I like it. That and the fact I'm in a really good guild, has made me play WoW a lot less than I thought. Haven't decided if I renew my WoW time or not. Biggest issue I have with WoW is I'm new to it and being recruited by a decent raiding guild is next to impossible. See no point in playing a game to level cap only to BR frozen out of content because the only guilds I can get into as a newb suck.