MMO Roundup: Blizzard on RIFT, SOE outage compensation, and more
by Alex Ziebart 
May 17th 2011 at 1:00PM
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Activision Blizzard: RIFT players will come back to WoW During Activision Blizzard's recent investor conference call, the question of how RIFT's launch in early March had affected WoW's playerbase inevitably came up. Morhaime was quick to point out that while a percentage of players have historically left WoW to try out each new game released in the MMO market, a healthy proportion of them tend to return. Blizzard expects the same to occur with RIFT. |
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SOE reveals compensation plan for outage After the long silence during SOE's recent downtime, Sony has finally revealed its compensation plan of action. All current SOE players will receive 30 days of game time added to their accounts plus one day for every day the system's been down. Depending on the game to which players are subscribed, SOE has a list of specific in-game items, currency, Station Cash, events and bonuses ready as well. |
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The Game Archaeologist jacks into The Matrix Online The Matrix Online (otherwise known as MxO) may have been shut down a few years ago, but it still holds many fond memories for its former players. The Matrix had the potential to be this generation's Star Wars, but the franchise ultimately petered out, eventually taking MxO with it. |
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Gaming with Game of Thrones Sorry to disappoint -- this isn't a Game of Thrones MMO announcement. However, if you enjoy Game of Thrones, there are a number of free-to-play MMOs that may offer you some of the same things you like from the novels or television series. Political intrigue in an MMO? It's true! |
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Massively Speaking episode 147 Massively Speaking, Massively's MMO podcast, is back this week as Shawn is joined by Leala and Dana from the Game Dames blog and podcast. Topics include more on Sony's downtime, The Old Republic's confirmed launch window, the power of a possible Mass Effect MMO, the revenue growth of Nexon and Activision Blizzard, and the fact that World of Warcraft is dying! Wait, what? No. |
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Massively's week in review 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)
Steve May 17th 2011 1:16PM
F$@& you Gumbi!!!!
Dril May 17th 2011 1:42PM
The amount of people in that Massively topic guffawing over how crap WoW is but praising things that are *exactly the same or, in most cases, better* in RIFT is hilarious.
Good times on the WoW-hate bandwagon.
Ant May 17th 2011 2:03PM
Totally agree with you. I like how they'll rip apart WoW for not having Rift like events, then you point out that WoW has that, albeit in Black Morass/Violet Hold. Or that the massive amount of souls won't make their pvp unbalanced, but WoW's 33 specs makes the most unbalanced game ever.
I also attribute the WoW-hate bandwagon to Massively itself. The bias shows.
ubergrendle May 17th 2011 2:23PM
So its not enough to have your own WoW dedicated joystiq site, but you also have to diss people who have an opinion contrary to yours on *another* site? There was some legitimate complaining here when Rift fans were threadbombing WoWinsider comments, but that's now died down... but you're still threatened by the fact that other people like different MMOs?
Keep in mind that most people playing something different -- Aion, Age of Conan, LOTRO, Rift, -- are doing so specifically because they tried WoW and didn't like it. Those other games are all doing well on their own. They don't have WOW type numbers, but they have healthy populations and are succeeding on their own terms. You don't have to be WoW sized to be successful.
thepiratester May 18th 2011 8:12AM
I’m not a wow hater but I don't like the idea of being tossed in a large guild pot to have a shot at seeing all the content I bought and paid for.
I just hope Star Wars does it right and allows players to do great things without all the hassles. 5-6 people together should be enough to do everything the game has to offer and still feel epic.
nikdaheratik May 17th 2011 3:49PM
My issue is the 2-3 fanbois (or plants maybe) that were turning an article about an earnings call where Blizzard just had its most profitable quarter in its history into a thread about f-ing RIFT. If they really are examples of Rift players or fans, then I want nothing to do with it.
Iirdan May 17th 2011 4:07PM
@uber: You do realize that it was, from the start in that thread, RIFT players/fans/fanboys gushing over how bad WoW was? Are we not to come to our own defense?
Amaxe May 17th 2011 9:41PM
Massively is essentially the site for WoW haters from what I have seen. The writers seldom talk of it, and when they do, the commentors trash it and make it seem WoW players can't handle a "real" game.
So I think Dril and Ant are merely commenting on the whole attitude over there
Mr. Tastix May 18th 2011 4:29AM
It's rather ironic and hypocritical that you give the Rift players crap for speaking badly about WoW and it's players yet you're speaking crap about them and Rift.
As for Massively not talking much about WoW? They don't because both Massively and WoW Insider are apart of the Joystiq network. There's no point in discussing World of Warcraft on Massively when the network has an entire website dedicated to the cause. Some of the authors might express disdain but to say they outright condemn it is as ignorant as people saying the next new MMO will be the "WoW killer".
I've played Rift. Have you? Yes, it's like WoW in many ways, so are many other games. Do you know how WoW was before it got a "mind of it's own"? It was like EverQuest. It's far from that now but EverQuest was the basis for World of Warcraft, just like WoW is for the majority of new MMOs.
In any case, I simply find it shocking that people like to call others out on the attitude that they're doing themselves. Is being a hypocrite a paying profession nowadays?
jrhenry9 May 18th 2011 10:52AM
I'm still playing wow ~ 5 nights a week but would like to try something else. We started a new guild and Blizzard has really destroyed any hopes for us to get any larger. We have started guilds in the past and had as many as 100+ in our guild - broken down and left for larger raiding guilds - we still keep the original guilds for personnal guild banks. We have recruited hard the past few months but the way Blizzard has it designed we have no shot at getting a 10 man raid together. We have been beaten into submission by Blizzard, small guilds are no longer able to recruit. No raider is willing to lose their current guild rep to try a smaller guild. Not many looking for a home are going to choose a guild at level 11 (my guild) vs a guild at say level 20. We have had the few drifters stop by and then move on because we couldn't get more peeps to get things going. We are desparately trying to hang on to the couple raiding drifters we currently have - very frustrating. We have a sick website on Guildhosting and Vent but there is no way peeps are willing to try it due to all the Blizzard penalties currently in place. We will let the accounts die on the guild website and vent at the end of this year. Unless you have tried recruiting for a small guild lately you have no idea how impossible they have made it. Blizzard put a big poison sign on smaller guilds. Because of this I have been more interested in trying something new - I am somewhat interested in the new Star Wars game coming out soon.
Discolando May 17th 2011 2:25PM
WoW is still by far the most polished MMO out there, but they *have* to start getting more aggressive with upgrading the underlying engine. You can only throw so many band-aids (ie, nice textures) on it before you end up falling too far behind.
nikdaheratik May 17th 2011 3:57PM
They did a heck of alot with retexturing. I wouldn't call it band-aid so much as a full body skin graft. There are two sides to the latest and greatest coin: WoW didn't have this kind of makeover until 5 years into the game and it still looked good most of that time because it didn't need to continually update, it just needed to look like WoW. So it aged more slowly than EQ (for example).
That being said, I agree some more polys on all of the vanilla races would be extremely welcome. And really that leads to some of the problems I (and probably lots of other people) have had with the expansion: they put so many resources into remaking old world that they didn't make enough new end game content, or enough new graphics, or enough side quests to keep the zone on rails concept from getting stale the 2nd or 3rd time around. They need more nooks and crannies in their world, but maybe they're already devoting alot of dev resources to the new MMO or D III.
jfofla May 17th 2011 3:46PM
All the players who left our Guild for RIFT are back. RIFT was shiney and new, but had no depth.
Maribel May 17th 2011 4:48PM
I think you're right, though that's kind of depressing to think about for the future of the game. If they're really holding to the attitude that they don't need to worry, folks will come back, and it's not just what they're telling investors, then we're in trouble.
This is all just anecdotal, but folks are leaving the game, and not just for RIFT. People are bored. My husband, who's played since a week after launch, cancelled his subscription - not for RIFT, just because he didn't feel like playing WoW. I don't feel like WoW needs to be The Most Popular Game Forever or anything, but I'd like to see Blizz actually react to the apathy so many players are feeling.
Ross May 17th 2011 5:37PM
I tried RIFT, liked it but as I got higher in level the zones got more and more deserted and the ultra generic quests I had to do (in addition to the "hey I know you just killed these and these in this place but now I need you to go BACK to the same area and kill those!") got really old. If I didn't enjoy playing WoW I might have stuck with it but it just didn't have enough staying power to hook me in for good...
Sleutel May 17th 2011 6:55PM
I would buy a Mass Effect MMO just to be able to hear new Mordin dialog every day. Favorite character across both games, I think.
WaterRouge May 18th 2011 12:40AM
I'll raise your Mordin with a Garrus! If Mass Effect wasn't human-focused then I could easily see Garrus being the protagonist. Why? Cus he's cool and like Shepherd he can easily go both ways on the morality scale along with being a born/trained leader. I'd have a hard time pin-pointing anyone else as in the middle of the spectrum like Garrus. Everyone is either pure paragon or pure renegade in terms of the recruit-able crew.
Hmmm. Well, maayybbee Mordin and Thane but that's much more of a stretch than Garrus.
Sleutel May 18th 2011 1:16AM
Garrus is excellent, I agree. IIRC he was my go-to third party member in ME1. (I also loved guessing early on who he was going to be in ME2 and proving myself right. :D) But his dialogs just aren't as awesome as Mordin's.
Zhiva May 17th 2011 11:38PM
# Activision Blizzard: RIFT players will come back to WoW #
You know, it's funny. I mean, I haven't been playing WoW for two months, but I haven't been playing any other MMO either. And today I saw this "pay on top of subscription for crossrealm friends" stuff.
I'm sorry, Blizzard, but I think that if I get to play MMORPG again, it will not be WoW. I do not like giving my money to "we will never make an in-game advantage a premium service" hypocrites.
Boozard May 18th 2011 3:31AM
it's not arrogance. it's just plain fact. 7 years of trends showed exactly that. if blizz is going to panic over losses that they've basically seen before, then they're idiots. and it's not like blizz doesn't have a plan. if Rift does get stronger over the months and WoW weakens, i predict Diablo 3 will be released.