Posts with tag sony

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.

	RIFT offering free character transfers with patch 1.3 Trion Worlds has announced that with the advent of patch 1.3, RIFT will allow players to move to select servers once per week -- for free. These free character transfers include a wholesale move of all of the character's items, achievements and titles. Also, Trion has stated that initially, there will be no limit to the number of times your character can hop to a different server.
	Sony loses $3.2B, spends $170M in response to hacker attacks Sony's bad year is getting a smidge worse. The company, which had previously predicted a healthy profit for the past fiscal year, is now expecting a loss of $3.2 billion for the period of April 2010 through March 2011. The reverse in fortunes is mostly due to writing off a $4.4 billion tax credit, although the company has been struggling with both the recent earthquake and hacker attack that disrupted operations of both its physical operations and online services.
	Funcom prepping new Age of Conan adventure pack inspired by film reboot Recent rumors of new film-related content for Age of Conan proved to be accurate. According to a new press release, the pack "includes but is not limited to" content from the forthcoming Conan the Barbarian film reboot and will see players traveling to the lands of Turan some 20 years after the events of the movie.
	Guild Wars 2's explosive seventh class: The engineer ArenaNet has announced the seventh Guild Wars 2 profession: the engineer. Rifles, dual pistols, pistols with shields, explosives, flamethrowers, and automated turrets -- come on, do I really need to say any more than that?
	Massively Speaking episode 148 Massively Speaking, Massively's MMO podcast, is back this week as Shawn and Rubi discuss the latest MMO news, including some more details on ArcheAge and Guild Wars 2, a better explanation of the DCUO MegaServers (formerly Super Servers), and the return of SOE!
	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.

Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Running parallel to the games we love and enjoy is a world full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play?

For PlayStation Network users, this past week has been a harrowing one. The security breach and subsequent dismantling of the online network was a huge blow to Sony, which prided itself on being able to provide the service free of charge and expand into sales, downloads, and everything else synonymous with a next-gen online network. This past week's events, however, prove that these networks are fragile and have everyone asking the question, "What is next?"

What would happen if World of Warcraft were down for a week -- not due to some prescribed downtime or voluntary upgrades, mind you, but a comprehensive security breach that affected every single member of our online community? From the PlayStation Network incident, we can see the hostile environment that these security breaches foster, from political ramifications to financial consequences and even legal trouble. Shall we muse about the stability of online networks?

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky be your host today.

Today's listening music for the Queue is Spider Pig. Don't ask why. It just is.

We answer a few good question today, so read on for the discussion. Also, don't forget to leave your questions in the comments or tweet them to @wowinsider. If we don't answer your question keep asking, we'll eventually get to it. Good times! On with the show...

Psiwave asks...

"Do you think Cataclysm is really just a sneaky way to release WoW2 without us noticing? A full talent rework for classes, a rebuild of the world for all levels of play and a reworking of stat allocation to name but a few changes. I get the feeling that Cataclysm will play more like a sequel than an expansion."

I've been reporting on our sister site Massively (just like WoW Insider, but for all MMOs) about Live Gamer, a startup that claims to be legitimizing RMT (real-money trading, which is spending real money on virtual items) in MMOs. But while there are a few big names supporting them already (Funcom, which is making Age of Conan, and Sony, which makes lots of different MMOs, including all the Everquests), there is one name that's missing from their supporters: Blizzard.

And now we've heard that that's not going to change anytime soon. A "Blizzard rep" says in no uncertain terms that they're not interesting in RMT at all, in a sanctioned form or otherwise. "Not only do we believe that doing so would be illegal," they say, "but it also has the potential to damage the game economy and overall experience for the many thousands of others who play World of Warcraft for fun." Wow. Tell us how you really feel.

If I can be biased for a moment, that's great to hear. Blizzard has definitely been taking steps to make RMT obsolete rather than legit (by doing things like adding in daily quests and requiring things other than gold-- reputation, turn-ins-- to buy virtual items). There's no question that there's a lot of money to be made in RMT-- every day, virtual items seems to gain more and more real world value. But it's good to hear that Blizzard is invested in making their game fun, not selling the virtual items they create.

The always awesome Alice Taylor from Wonderland was at the Hollywood and Games Summit this past week, and Blizzard's Rob Pardo made an appearance in a panel about creating a "parallel experience" between entertainment media and MMOs. Alice put up summaries of the various points made, and the result is a pretty interesting read into how Blizzard is working on their upcoming Warcraft movie.

The whole panel is a good read (reps from MTV and Sony also make appearances to talk about how they're taking audiences across media), but Pardo specifically makes the point that in whatever media you're in, you have to balance how you're using that media against how you're using the intellectual property the media is based on. "Demographics," he says, "follow the IP," so Blizzard clearly thinks that if a Warcraft movie is released, that Warcraft players will run to see it in droves. But at the same time, he says the media must define how you use the IP-- Warcraft RTS is a different experience than WoW, and WoW will be (supposedly) a different experience than a Warcraft movie. He does want to make sure "the epic scale of the IP shows up in that movie."

He also speaks to Blizzard's plans to make "episodic content" for WoW rather than "boxed content," and says that they haven't delivered content as fast as they've wanted to yet. But he also claims, "We've got our head round it now." So maybe they really will have a new expansion for us ready on time next year.