Posts with tag rift

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Oh, Monday. I hate you. Not because I have to go back to work, no. I already work on the weekends, so what's the difference? No, I hate Monday because there are no questions to answer in The Queue after the weekend, and you're all quite tired of reading me complain about it! Today will have a couple of brief WoW questions, and then I'm going to talk about RIFT because some of you were curious about the game and that's what I spent my weekend playing.

Many of you asked:

Is patch 4.0.6 releasing this week?

MMOs have been my game of choice since Ultima Online. I've played so many massively multiplayers that I've probably logged more time in virtual worlds than I care to even discuss. Suffice to say, there are a lot of games that have come and gone that I have been privy to. When World of Warcraft was announced, we were all very excited to see Blizzard take on a genre that was still, admittedly, in its conceptual infancy and add some of its famous polish to the concept.

What we got in World of Warcraft was the smoothest MMO ever. Bits and pieces of the entire genre were fine-tuned and polished to an extraordinary degree, with some of Blizzard's trademark innovations taking center stage. Instancing, for one, was huge.

Now, a new post-WoW generation of MMOs has begun, and with them comes innovation building off Blizzard's immense success. Some of these MMOs have ideas and concepts that WoW hasn't even touched (but maybe should consider). Warhammer Online, RIFT, EverQuest 2, and other games all had some cool new ideas that Blizzard might want to think about using and polishing up even better. Here's what I think Blizzard should crib.

Sometimes you'd like to know that there are other MMOs out there, right? It's not all WoW, all the time! Our sister site Massively can provide you with everything you need to know about all of the other MMOs around -- past, present and future.

	Trion releases new RIFT CG cinematic If you've been on the fence about whether or not you should try upcoming MMO RIFT, perhaps this newly released CG cinematic trailer will convince you. At the very least, it will supply some delightful eye candy.
	Damion Schubert philosophizes about TOR's death penalty Lead Combat Designer Damion Schubert recently discussed the philosophy behind SWTOR's death penalty on the game's official forums. "I would rather our challenges be gated by whether or not you have the skill, the gear, and the teamwork to succeed than whether or not you have the credits and/or time to wait out the forced downtime in between, you know, the fun part," Schubert explains.
	Gamers documentary now available for streaming In the 60-minute film Gamers, filmmaker Ben Gonyo explores today's online gaming culture in an effort to make it more accessible and understandable to a wider audience. For two years, Gonyo immersed himself in World of Warcraft and the gaming subculture to find out what it's all about.
	Fan hired to edit video for Star Wars: The Old Republic Fans often ask developers, "How do you get started in the business?" If you want to know the answer, then maybe you should ask Brandon Miletta. Last night, the Star Wars: The Old Republic podcast TOROcast announced that Miletta was leaving the long-running show to go work for the very company he has been talking about in the show for the last two years: BioWare.
	Massively Speaking episode 132 Massively Speaking returns this week with Shawn and Rubi dishing out the usual news and views, but there's an added bonus. In the second half of the show, Champions Online Executive Producer Shannon "Poz" Posniewski joins Shawn and CO columnist Patrick Mackey for an interview about the recent F2P relaunch of the superhero game.
	Week in Review: Freemium spandex 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.

Sometimes you'd like to know that there are other MMOs out there, right? It's not all WoW, all the time! Our sister site Massively can provide you with everything you need to know about all of the other MMOs around -- past, present and future.

	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?
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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!
	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.

Look, it should come as no surprise that World of Warcraft is king of the hill, head of the list, cream of the crop, at the top of the heap when it comes to MMOs. Whatever Blizzard did, it did it at exactly the right time with the right team and the right IP; it was a perfect storm of something. And it did other game developers a favor in that it's now possible for an MMO to do respectable business, even if the numbers don't quite approach WoW's 12 million concurrent subscribers.

Naturally, though, there are studios that aren't content with having their own subscribers. They want WoW's, too. And that's a pretty tall order. To that end, they reference WoW in their ad campaigns. But what good does name-dropping the world's most popular MMO in your ad campaign even do? Let's take a look.

Sometimes you'd like to know that there are other MMOs out there, right? It's not all WoW, all the time! Our sister site Massively can provide you with everything you need to know about all of the other MMOs around -- past, present and future.

	Them's fightin' words: RIFT commercial takes on WoW "We're not in Azeroth anymore," Trion Worlds' new TV commercial proclaims before a rift gobbles up the words. This 30-second spot for RIFT features a hero opening a rift with a jewel, a dragon roaring, an ogre on the warpath, and adventurers gearing up for the fight. Want to see it? Head over to Massively.
	Blizzard, Zynga sued over gaming patent What's an upstart company to do in a world dominated by deep-pocketed publishers and corporate titans? Sue them, of course! Walker Digital, the brainchild of Priceline.com founder Jay Walker, made headlines by suing Facebook late last year and has now completed a legal double play by filing a patent infringement suit against Zynga and Activision-Blizzard.
	RIFT beta events: Impressions from the Massively staff Trion Worlds' RIFT has become the talk of the town in MMO-land lately. Since the NDA dropped a few weeks ago, every MMO blogger, journalist, and fan is spewing his impressions of the game. Head over to Massively to find out what the staff really thinks about the game.

Sometimes you'd like to know that there are other MMOs out there, right? It's not all WoW, all the time! Our sister site Massively can provide you with everything you need to know about all of the other MMOs around -- past, present and future.

	GamersFirst's predictions for the video games industry in 2011 While end-of-the-year predictions are quite commonplace amongst game industry bloggers and journalists, it's a bit rarer to see prognostications coming from game-makers and executives. GamersFirst bucks that trend with a press release outlining its forecast for online gaming in 2011. Unsurprisingly, the free-to-play publisher sees its preferred business model "taking over the video game market," as well as a massive shift to mobile gaming and digital distribution.
	25 free MMOs for that shiny new laptop Were you graced with a new laptop this holiday season? Are you looking to take a few new MMOs for a spin? Massively's Beau Hindman has compiled a list of 25 free-to-play MMOs that your laptop will be perfectly capable of playing, even if it wasn't built with gaming in mind.
	5 MMOs that have gone MIA Unlike Chuck Norris, who seems to hang on as an MMO meme with insane tenacity (perhaps it's that extra fist under his beard), there are a handful of MMOs that appear to have dropped off the radar in the last several months -- if not years. Find out which highly anticipated franchises simply disappeared.