|
|
Latest Guild Wars News Updates and Reviews Updated daily
Guild Wars : Player Consequences: Are MMOs finished with forums?By: Gabriel Runfeldt
Sep 27, 2008 06:00:00 PM News Item: 5513
Filed under: World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Forums, MMO industry, Warhammer Online, Player Consequences
The creation of the Internet has made communication affordable, fast, and almost completely reliable. It's no wonder that almost every facet of our lives has been affected by it, especially our entertainment. Mainstream entertainment like mp3s and streaming television have only recently found their way online. However, gaming has had a much longer relationship with the Internet. Early developers were practically hobbyists and they worked closely with players to establish some of the first persistent online games called MUDS. These text-based games often had very tight knit communities since there were initially few people who could afford to play them. Players often had direct communication with a game's creators and used early Bulletin Board Systems and Usenet to voice their opinions and offer help. This became the foundation for the relationship between MMOs and gaming forums.
Nowadays, it is much more common for a company to hire community managers to act as intermediaries between developers and players. Games are more complex and it is not just a couple guys in their basement anymore. Think about the opportunities for miscommunication if every developer on a large team posted their opinions on a game forum. It would be anarchy and the game studio would constantly be clarifying statements and putting out fires. When you look at that way, it becomes obvious that community managers serve an important function. Not that every gamer will agree they are necessary. As developers became more removed from gamers there's been an increasing amount of disdain for community managers and the forums they moderate. Over the years, several games have had bad situations on their forums that have some companies wondering if forums are even worth the trouble.
Continue reading Player Consequences: Are MMOs finished with forums? Comments
Guild Wars : Raptr adds Warhammer Online supportBy: Kyle Horner
Sep 26, 2008 07:00:00 PM News Item: 5500
Filed under: Fantasy, Warhammer Online, News items
It looks like the guys an gals over at Raptr were listening when we asked for Warhammer Online support, because as of today it's here. The service will track your characters' items and stats through a module on your Raptr page so anyone can see what you're wearing whenever they like. Your Raptr status will also update whenever you gain a new piece of equipment, level or renown rank. Bragging rights have always been an important component in completing any MMORPG experience and with the additional support of Raptr you can really rub that purple "Sword of Bowel Movement" into everyonce's faces. Not you'd want to, considering the implied usage of your epic equipment.
As long as we're feeling like we may have a little pull here (though this is probably all coincidental) we would also suggest adding support for other MMO titles like Lord of the Rings Online, Everquest 2, City of Heroes and Guild Wars. We've got plenty of friends who play more than one MMO at a time and being able to keep track of them all would certainly be nice. Comments
Guild Wars : The Best of Massively: Our most helpful guidesBy: Samuel Axon
Sep 26, 2008 03:30:00 PM News Item: 5480
Filed under: World of Warcraft, Galleries, Age of Conan, EVE Online, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online, Guides, Warhammer Online, Massively meta
In just over one month, Massively will celebrate its first birthday! Last week we started a countdown to the event by kicking off a series of features highlighting the best stuff from the site so far. We started with our ten most important interviews. Today, we're continuing the weekly countdown by listing some of your (and our) favorite guides!
We broke them out into six categories, counting down to the best and most popular. A wide variety of games are covered, so chances are you'll find something useful in here. This list can serve as a springboard to a ton of content -- dozens and dozens of articles. So consider this your go-to place for info on some of the hottest games.
Without further ado, here's the guide to our best guides. Wow, how meta is that!
%Gallery-32805% Comments
Guild Wars : SwitchBlade PRO goes live next week, gets SIXAXIS supportBy: Karl B.
Sep 24, 2008 08:42:21 PM News Item: 5448

Blue Orb has announced that SwitchBlade, an application that lets PC gamers use a console controller to play, will be getting a lot of new features with the advent of SwitchBlade PRO. Foremost is the addition of support for the Sony PlayStation 3's SIXAXIS controller.
SwitchBlade PRO will also come with pre-configured game Blades for more than 20 popular games and the new BladeBuilder tool that allows gamers to build and share their own customized game support Blades. Additionally, SwitchBlade PRO introduces the new Texter system that lets gamers send text messages right from their game controllers.
The catch here is that SwitchBlade PRO is not free. It'll be available on a subscription basis for US 1.99 a month starting October 1. You can also get a year-long subscription for US 19.99.
Related articles:
- Three new Switchblade solutions for Call of Duty 4 and more
- SwitchBlade support coming for Guild Wars, Hellgate: London and Half-Life 2

 Comments
Guild Wars : David Reid sets the record straight on NC WestBy: Adrian Bott
Sep 24, 2008 03:30:00 PM News Item: 5419
Filed under: Interviews, MMO industry Nobody can have failed to notice the announcement of NC West, which broke recently amid rumors of staffing reshuffles in various NCsoft studios. Although some key concerns were addressed very swiftly, many of our readers had plenty of questions to ask, and so did we.
David Reid, appointed President of Publishing, was kind enough to give up considerable time yesterday for an interview. We discussed Guild Wars and Tabula Rasa, but the main focus was on the NC West announcement.
Massively: We really do appreciate you guys talking to us, because there are a lot of Massively readers who are concerned with this announcement. It was kind of sudden - the NCsoft West thing just kind of snuck up on them, and they're not entirely sure about what's going on. Although you guys have put out a couple of statements so far about it, I think people are still a little unclear on it.
David Reid: That's exactly why we are keen to talk with you. Let us be clear about whatever questions your readers have, and set things straight on that.
Massively: Great! As a broad question: NC West sounds like (to us, and we want to make sure we have this clear) a conglomeration of the game development assets for NCsoft in the US, into a smaller number of groups than it is right now. Is that the primary goal?Continue reading David Reid sets the record straight on NC West Comments
Guild Wars : David Reid sets the record straight on NC West: Part 2By: Adrian Bott
Sep 24, 2008 03:30:00 PM News Item: 5418
Filed under: Interviews, MMO industry Massively: Great. So it's actually more towards NC West as sort of a general umbrella under which these specific studios can have their own names, and really carve out their own places within the company?
David Reid: Absolutely. Think about it this way: the reorganization and the establishment of NC West is more of an acknowledgement that we as a company can be doing better on the publishing side, in terms of taking these great products that these veteran leadership studios have been able to crank out, and turn them into much bigger phenomena. Right?
I mean, we've had great success with City of Heroes, we've had great success with Guild Wars, but we think it can be bigger. What we're not doing is changing the studio organization, other than the studios all now report in to Jeff Strain, who has moved on from the day to day management of ArenaNet - Michael O'Brien is now the studio head there, and is leading the Guild Wars 2 team and other projects there - but Jeff serves as a manager across the studio organization.
"... we've had great success with City of Heroes, we've had great success with Guild Wars, but we think it can be bigger."
|
And in parallel, what I get to do for Jeff and those studios is make sure that we do the best we can to deliver triple-A world class launches across our Western territories, and make sure that the marketing, the sales, the customer support - all the elements that great developers look to great publishers to do - are being done here. There's going to be some common platforms and things on the technology side, and a common team that helps serve the business, but nothing really changes on the product development side.
Massively: Okay. So you're saying nothing much is going to change on the product development side, but to that end it seems like as part of the NC West conglomeration, there are some folks moving around. There's a little more... we guess you could say refinement in what people are doing in a couple of these different studios. Could you talk generally about what we're seeing, as far as people moving on to new positions, people moving on from Austin to Seattle, those sorts of things?
David Reid: I should say one thing: that the decision about moving out NC West in the way we're doing it is, while there's no real change happening at the studio level, there is this ratification of 'NCsoft is going to be in the triple-A MMO space day in and day out', right?
We've done some interesting things and had some success with smaller titles, things like Dungeon Runners and Exteel are doing well for us, but the company by and large is the company that Lineage built, and this reorganization is a ratification of getting back to that business and going all-in on the Lineages, Guild Wars, Aions, City of Heroes, Tabula Rasas, Blade and Souls, those sorts of games are what NCsoft is going to be doing day in, day out here in the West.
Now, there's a specific question you asked there about how does this impact certain people. We are planning to - we're in the process of now porting the internal people that we would like to relocate to Seattle, and have offered a healthy number of folks a relocation up to Seattle to be part of what is principally a publishing headquarters. And so that's where the bulk of the North American and global leadership for marketing, for sales, for PR, aspects like that, we're thinking will be headquartered in Seattle.
Seattle for us was the logical place to go because of the relationship with Seoul, and Seattle just happens to be the place where you get the best number of non-stop flights to Seoul and to our West Coast studios, and to our UK office, out of Seattle versus any other city on the West Coast. And so we are also relocating what is now our Eastern games studio, the folks that are our North American and European producer team, for bringing games like Aion and Lineage and Blade and Soul into the Western market. Those folks are moving to Seattle, as well as the publishing headquarters.
Comments
Guild Wars : David Reid sets the record straight on NC West: Part 3By: Adrian Bott
Sep 24, 2008 03:30:00 PM News Item: 5417
Filed under: Fantasy, Dungeon Runners, Interviews, MMO industry, Free-to-play, Consoles Dungeon Runners
Massively: Now when you're talking about stepping more in the direction of the triple-A titles, that sort of implies that you're getting away from some of the smaller games that you guys have been working on in the past. We know that the Dungeon Runners team is experiencing some changes - can you talk specifically about that game, and what's going to be happening with those folks?
David Reid: Even before the NC West announcement, the Dungeon Runners team went through some changes. You're probably referring to the announcement of the reduction we had of about 21 people, several weeks before the announcement of NC West, and Dungeon Runners was part of that. And that was about the fact that - yes, we like Dungeon Runners as a service, but there was a decision not to port that product on to other platforms but to keep the game intact as it is right now on the PC platform.
There were a number of other projects that had not been announced that were part of that, and they too were what we'll call lighter and smaller MMO fare, rather than triple-A types of products. Beyond that, Dungeon Runners is as healthy as it's ever been, and is still a vibrant part of the NCsoft portfolio. It's just that it's a different sort of business, and one that is a very successful kind of business overall, it's just not where NCsoft is going to continue investing its product development publishing resources, going forward.
Massively: So it would be fair to say that people who enjoy Dungeon Runners shouldn't expect it to go anywhere, but as far as a ton of new content in the future... that would probably not be the direction that the company would be going in for that product?
David Reid: I'd clarify that answer just a bit. We were thinking seriously about 'should we bring Dungeon Runners to other, alternative platforms?' And that's what a large amount of that team was working on, and other parts of NCsoft. That decision has been: no, we're not going to. I wouldn't read into that anything about the amount of content that the Dungeon Runners team is going to be making on a regular basis. That will continue to go forward.
Console Ports
Massively: You mentioned porting to other platforms a couple of times now. We think it's a little more than a year ago at this point that you announced you had that agreement with Sony to think about doing some stuff for the PS3. We haven't really seen that so far. Is that part of this announcement, sort of refocusing NC West on getting some of Ncsoft's more stable games over to the Playstation 3?
David Reid: Yeah... I can tell you that we do think console development is an incredibly important part of our future. We do think that, you know, you look at companies like... NCsoft today is a PC only company, and we've seen what's happened with some of these formerly PC only (or predominantly PC) companies who have successfully brought their properties to the console.
As a gamer myself, I take a lot of inspiration from what the Tom Clancy series did for UbiSoft, or what Morrowind as a shifted Xbox and PC title did for Bethesda. And we believe that there is a transition like that that NCsoft can have, by taking some of its triple-A properties, and making a great triple-A MMO that works on the console.
"As a gamer myself, I take a lot of inspiration from what the Tom Clancy series did for UbiSoft, or what Morrowind as a shifted Xbox and PC title did for Bethesda."
|
So yeah, it is true. You can't do everything all the time, and at some level we recognise that the best prize for NCsoft to be focused on is the triple-A space, and that's on the PC platform and on the console platform. But beyond that, I don't have an announcement that I can make for you at this time!
Massively: Not a problem. We just wanted to clarify, because it seems like a natural progression from where you guys are talking about with triple-A titles being your focus.
David Reid: We passionately agree. Absolutely.
Massively: We really appreciate you guys' time. We know that the readers have been... we guess the best word is confused, because as we said, it sort of came out of nowhere. And we're glad we had the chance to talk!
David Reid: You bet! Well, at the end of the day, I hope that for folks who are fans of these giant triple-A games, these big investments in the MMO space with high production quality, there should be no confusion: this is good news for that game. We are going to get back to doing this all day, every day, in a world class way. The lighter side of the business, the free-to-plays and things like that, those are great businesses, but there will be other companies who will be delivering that form. It won't be NCsoft so much, going forward.
Read what David Reid had to say on Tabula Rasa and Guild Wars. Comments
Guild Wars : NCsoft 'very encouraged' by Guild Wars 2By: Adrian Bott
Sep 24, 2008 03:15:00 PM News Item: 5416
Filed under: Guild Wars, Interviews, MMO industry, Guild Wars 2
Massively recently got to talk to David Reid, the newly appointed President of Publishing for NC West, about several key NCsoft matters. We took the opportunity to ask David about ArenaNet and Guild Wars, and in particular, what was happening with Guild Wars 2.
Massively: Something we know the Guild Wars players are very interested in, is with Jeff Strain now moving into his new position within the company, what does that say for ArenaNet and Guild Wars 2, which is obviously a product that ArenaNet's been working on for some time? Guild Wars players are... well, they're dying for you to let them know what's going on with that game. Is this a good sign or a bad sign for the company, and what should this say to Guild Wars players who are looking forward to the sequel with more than bated breath?
David Reid: First thing: I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that we, too, have an enormous amount of enthusiasm for Guild Wars 2! And we're very encouraged by what we're seeing.Continue reading NCsoft 'very encouraged' by Guild Wars 2 Comments
Guild Wars : The return of Evil in Guild WarsBy: Shawn Schuster
Sep 23, 2008 08:00:00 PM News Item: 5431
Filed under: Fantasy, Guild Wars, Culture, Guilds, PvP
When a competitive MMO has been around as long as Guild Wars has, there tends to be certain legacies that have evolved over time. A perfect example of this is the guild EvIL, which had dominated the GW PvP tournament scene during the game's infancy. Over the years though, the Korean guild had broken up due to life issues and players simply moving on from the game.
However, after taking a few years off, a few of the founding members are back with a vengeance to form a new guild called The Return. Their goal is to return to the top of the tournament ladder and dominate as they once had. The team is participating in 2-3 daily tournaments and are spending close to seven hours per day gearing up for future tournaments. Recently, they practiced 16 hours straight just to qualify for a monthly tournament, then played another seven during the event itself. This type of dedication from a group of players who were in on the earliest days of the Guild Wars beta just goes to show that the game's competitive allure is still going strong after all these years. Comments
More Guild Wars News
(Click to read)
Sep 19, 2008 11:00:00 AMGuild Wars : Pirates of the Burning Sea celebrates Talk Like a Pirate Day Sep 18, 2008 07:00:00 AMGuild Wars : Warhammer Online launches! Sep 12, 2008 05:44:00 PMGuild Wars : Set the Stage: Winning Performances! Sep 12, 2008 05:00:00 PMGuild Wars : "Disgruntled ArenaNet employee" blogger finally admits it was a hoax Sep 11, 2008 06:00:00 PMGuild Wars : Guild Wars update adds new Zaishen reward and more Sep 09, 2008 09:00:00 AMGuild Wars : A World of Warcraft player's guide to Warhammer Online Sep 08, 2008 08:00:00 PMGuild Wars : The newest Guild Wars companions explained Sep 05, 2008 09:30:00 AMGuild Wars : Guild Wars players get two new companions Aug 31, 2008 12:30:00 PMGuild Wars : Guild Wars 2 lore to be told in book series Aug 31, 2008 10:30:00 AMGuild Wars : PAX08: Day two impressions Aug 21, 2008 08:00:00 PMGuild Wars : Official NCsoft Europe podcast: Games Convention edition released Aug 19, 2008 06:00:00 PMGuild Wars : Guild Wars announces PAX tournament prizes Aug 14, 2008 08:00:00 PMGuild Wars : New Hero added to the Guild Wars NPC line-up Aug 12, 2008 05:15:00 PMGuild Wars : Rumor: NCsoft Austin, Dungeon Runners to be shut down Aug 08, 2008 04:00:00 PMGuild Wars : Major Guild Wars update drastically changes GvG Jul 31, 2008 10:00:00 AMGuild Wars : A World of Warcraft player's guide to Guild Wars Jul 29, 2008 06:00:00 PMGuild Wars : ArenaNet will not show Guild Wars 2 at PAX Jul 28, 2008 02:00:00 PMGuild Wars : One Shots: Forgotten in the Crystal Desert Jul 26, 2008 02:00:00 PMGuild Wars : One Shots: On Beacon's Perch Jul 26, 2008 08:00:00 AMGuild Wars : The Daily Grind: How much instancing is too much? Jul 21, 2008 03:30:00 PMGuild Wars : Guild Wars new player guide wrapup Jul 16, 2008 04:30:00 PMGuild Wars : Guild Wars Wintersday in July event Jul 16, 2008 02:00:00 PMGuild Wars : One Shots: Shiverpeaks snow Jul 15, 2008 01:56:00 PMGuild Wars : NCsoft Europe Community Day at the Games Convention 2008 Jul 11, 2008 08:30:00 AMGuild Wars : Dwell On It: Asking directions Jul 10, 2008 05:30:00 PMGuild Wars : Guild Wars Guru GvG Challenge 2008 starts this weekend Jul 10, 2008 02:00:00 PMGuild Wars : One Shots: On the Istani Coastline Jul 09, 2008 01:00:00 PMGuild Wars : Back to the Future: A guide to GW's Hall of Monuments Jul 05, 2008 04:00:00 PMGuild Wars : ArenaNet to host 2nd annual PAX afterparty Jul 04, 2008 10:00:00 AMGuild Wars : Guild Wars skill update: The nerfing of Shadow Form Jul 04, 2008 08:30:00 AMGuild Wars : Dwell On It: A sudden chill Jul 03, 2008 02:00:00 PMGuild Wars : One Shots: Not a warm summer screen Jun 29, 2008 10:00:00 AMGuild Wars : Jess Lebow interview Jun 01, 2008 12:00:00 PMGuild Wars : Make NCsoft machinima and win some swag May 30, 2008 08:00:00 AMGuild Wars : The Daily Grind: Why can't Earth have a fantasy MMO? May 15, 2008 07:00:00 AMGuild Wars : NCsoft begins selling 14-day MMO trials at retail Apr 18, 2008 04:00:00 PMGuild Wars : Player vs. Everything: Coolest classes ever Apr 05, 2008 11:00:00 AMGuild Wars : Lineage 2 and Guild Wars get online game manuals Jan 18, 2008 06:00:00 PMGuild Wars : Our chat with NCsoft's new president Jan 11, 2008 07:30:00 AMGuild Wars : WeGame records their way into my heart Dec 12, 2007 09:30:00 AMGuild Wars : MMO subscriptions report -- who is beating whom? Dec 06, 2007 03:00:00 PMGuild Wars : As the Worlds Turn: Neverending Stories Dec 05, 2007 09:30:00 AMGuild Wars : O Death, where is thy sting? Dec 04, 2007 02:00:00 PMGuild Wars : One Shots: We took the red pill!
|
|
|