Author Archives: Beau Hindman

EVE Online executive producer moving to concentrate on mobile

Posted on April 13, 2013 by Beau Hindman| Comments Off
CCP office screenshot It looks like EVE Online's Jon Lander, otherwise known as CCP Unifex, will be moving on from his position as executive producer of the 10-year-old single-shard space MMO to concentrate on CCP's "emerging mobile strategy," according to a recent dev blog. Lander helped steer the team through EVE Online expansions Crucible, Inferno, Retribution, and the upcoming Odyssey. Don't worry, though; Senior Producer CCP Seagull and Development Director CCP Ripley will continue on with production of the game. Odyssey's release is still set for June 4th, and CCP promises that the transition will have zero impact on the quality of the upcoming new expansion.

Even more intriguingly, CCP wants to fill the position that Jon vacated with a candidate from outside the company. The dev blog wonders whether you have what it takes to take on the massive responsibility of running the world's biggest collection of pew-pews, or maybe you know someone who does. Good luck!

MassivelyEVE Online executive producer moving to concentrate on mobile originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 13 Apr 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rise and Shiny: Revisiting Salem

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Beau Hindman| Comments Off
Salem screenshot A few months ago, I dived into Salem, a hardcore sandbox MMO that promises actual permadeath. That means if your character is killed while in game, he or she stays dead and loses everything. Not of your possible scores of skills are passed on, all items are lost and your homestead -- similar to a deed in Wurm Online -- can be destroyed. Heck, your homestead can be destroyed even if you're not dead. People can literally block your path, call you names, and attack you over and over. It makes me cry!

Nah, it's not as bad as it sounds. It never is. If there is one thing I have learned over the years, it's that you should really try a game for yourself before you believe everything you hear about it. Don't worry about trolls or griefers because the worst that can happen to you is that you end up leaving the game to find a better one. That's why we're called gamers.

Salem is actually about 50% killer and 50% silliness. I don't want to describe the killer part as "bad" because there is something the game is offering that so many others are not, and that's real danger and actual permadeath.

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MassivelyRise and Shiny: Revisiting Salem originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 31 Mar 2013 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Free for All: The West: The most realistic fantasy MMO yet

Posted on January 30, 2013 by Beau Hindman| Comments Off
The West screenshot There's something distinctly unfair about being an American fantasy fan. If you enjoy all of the movies or run around in all of the wonderful fantasy landscapes you'll quickly notice how un-American the inhabitants are. Sure, monsters or knights in a fantasy MMO don't really belong to any one nationality or time, but they are more likely to sound like they're from England rather than Long Island. It's not fair. What do Americans have in their past that is anything as cool as knights and swords?

Actually, we've had some pretty cool stuff over here as well. And, if you think about it, a lot of it is pretty much like a more recent middle ages... sort of. The thought sunk in as I was looking at Salem, a hardcore free-for-all PvP MMO by Paradox Interactive. Then the thought really sunk in when I recently fell in love with The West by Innogames, a German publisher.

America has a very primitive, and recent, past that had to feel a lot like a time of magic and wonder to those who were in it. Why aren't we seeing more Western MMOs or games set in the time of the founding of our country?

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MassivelyFree for All: The West: The most realistic fantasy MMO yet originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 30 Jan 2013 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rise and Shiny: Deepworld

Posted on January 6, 2013 by Beau Hindman| Comments Off
Deepworld screenshot When I first got my hands on Deepworld, a new iOS sandbox MMO by Bytebin, I knew I was holding something unique. Sure, it took some cues from Minecraft and came from one of my least favorite schools of design -- steampunk -- but it was being built by a young team of indie developers who simply wanted to make a world that was free-form, open to a player's creativity, and multi-platform. After spending some time with the game, I'd say that they have mostly succeeded.

There are some issues with the game, and I have played enough indie titles to know how rough games can be when launch rolls around. So far, however, the issues are relatively minor and could be easily fixed.

Gallery: Deepworld screenshots

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MassivelyRise and Shiny: Deepworld originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 06 Jan 2013 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rise and Shiny: Salem

Posted on November 25, 2012 by Beau Hindman| Comments Off
Salem hardcore screenshot Before I get to the part where I rant about one of the strangest exchanges I have had with an independent developer -- and I mean that in a fun, gasp-y sort of way -- I will cover the basics to give you an idea of how Salem the MMO works. You know, just in case you have never been privileged enough to witness the glory that is hardcore PvP, full loot, and permadeath. Yes, I'll cover permadeath; don't worry.

The game is set in that funny time period when people wore Pilgrim hats, ate turkey, and killed bears. I have to admit that I was never expecting a game set in this time period or one influenced by early America, but I asked Bjorn Johannessen, Creative Director for the game, about the design choice during the livestream that is always embedded in this column. If there is one livestream of mine you need to watch, it's this one, for many reasons. Warning: It might not be safe for work; cursewords appear on the screen. You know, because it's hardcore.

Gallery: Salem: The MMO screenshots

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MassivelyRise and Shiny: Salem originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 25 Nov 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rise and Shiny: Darkfall

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Beau Hindman| Comments Off

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Darkfall screenshot
I've played Darkfall several times since launch, and each time I've remembered how good the game can be and how bad it sometimes is. Good and bad, I thought it a good idea to record the Darkfall that exists now so that I can compare it to the Darkfall that will be open after an upcoming relaunch, one that promises to change quite a few key features. Will it be a better game? I hope so.

Either way, during my week with this free-for-all PvP MMO, I was able to hook up with a newbie-friendly clan relatively quickly but spent most of my time running to the city where the clan took up residence. Same old Darkfall, really, but there were some truly hilarious and truly fun moments all the same.

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MassivelyRise and Shiny: Darkfall originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 28 Oct 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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GDC Online 2012: A (severed) hands-on with The War Z

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Beau Hindman| Comments Off

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The War Z screenshot
Everyone loves zombies. We all enjoy shooting them to bits, pummeling them with a hammer, and watching them die... again. But I'd been feeling a bit tired of the zombie genre, even though some of my favorite titles are heavy on the zombs. Then I sat down and played through a bit of The War Z, a new post-apocalyptic horror shooter MMO that tosses players on servers up to 60 miles square and holding up to 250 players. Those zones are chock-full of zombies, so players who care to risk it all can hope to survive as they run, gun, and generally get their wits scared out of them.

I wasn't alone during my short time in the game, thanks to Alex Josef, Director of Communications for Hammerpoint Interactive We sat down for an interview and wound up smashing zombie heads with a flashlight. Ah, the perils of writing about games! Join me past the cut to read what I thought.

Gallery: The War Z GDC 2012 screenshot

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MassivelyGDC Online 2012: A (severed) hands-on with The War Z originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 12 Oct 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rise and Shiny: Mortal Online

Posted on October 7, 2012 by Beau Hindman| Comments Off

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Mortal Online screenshot
There are so many issues and subjects to cover this week, thanks to the limited time I spent in Mortal Online, a free-for-all PvP sandbox by Star Vault. I've played my share of MMOs that are similar to Mortal Online, games like EVE Online, Darkfall, Ultima Online, Wurm Online, Salem, and others. Essentially the idea is to set players loose in a massive, open world that is closer to "realistic" than standard themepark MMOs. Players might spend time farming or fishing or hunting down other players or mobs. It's generally a good idea to prepare yourself for a lot of running around, hiding, and slowly figuring out what to do when playing a FFA PvP sandbox.

Games like Mortal Online provoke questions like "Why is nudity an option at all?" and "Why is there stamina (and other realistic features) alongside magic and no permanent death?" I've learned to forget those questions and just take each specific FFA MMO as it is. Mortal Online stands alone in many ways. Unfortunately, being known as a buggy mess is one of those. I've played many buggy MMOs in my time but have enjoyed myself immensely in some of them (remember, I hosted an early Vanguard: Saga of Heroes podcast!), so I wasn't scared of jumping into an MMO that was supposed to be rough to say the least.

What did I find? Well, I found a ton -- and I mean a ton -- of bugs. But I also found a pretty cool community (yes, I just said that) and some grand adventure. Let me break it down.

Gallery: Mortal Online revisit screenshots

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MassivelyRise and Shiny: Mortal Online originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 07 Oct 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rise and Shiny revisit: Ultima Online

Posted on September 30, 2012 by Beau Hindman| 1 Comment

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Ultima Online anniversary celebration screenshot
What can I say about Ultima Online that hasn't been said before? This week, the grandparent of MMOs turns 15 years old. In MMO terms, that's a long, long time. In fact, Ultima Online is the measuring stick for resilience. Think about it: Does any of us believe that many modern MMOs will last even half that long? While it's very possible, it's also very hard to imagine. For many different reasons, Ultima Online still maintains a playerbase, continues to be developed, and even attracts new players. It also runs on a subscription model and will likely continue to do so. If you read the transcript of my recent livestream with the UO devs that was so generously typed out by Ultima Codex, you know that I asked about a free-to-play or freemium Ultima Online and received this as an answer:
Actually, there's no use to do free-to-play. We have a good number of key players. So, at this time it's not really something we're looking at doing.
That was Producer Bonnie Armstrong. Oddly, I received some form of the free-to-play question from people who are not playing the game currently. The players inside the world seem just fine with the payment model. Has this old-school approach helped the game last this long? I'm not sure, but during this annual return to Britannia, I found the same great game I do every time I visit.

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Free for All: Getting lost in the labyrinth of Wurm Online

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Beau Hindman| Comments Off

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Wurm Online screenshot
Wurm Online is a game of darkness. Really, the entire world is balanced on what will happen after the sun sets. If a player isn't careful, she can find herself lost and alone without a torch to light her path. I don't mean to make the daylight out to be a haven from danger; a player can die during the day as easily as at night. But at least during the day, a far-off shelter can be aimed for. Unless there's fog, of course.

OK, look. Wurm Online is a game of super-scary death things, but the night is particularly scary. That's what I meant.

When an old Vanguard: Saga of Heroes buddy of mine let me know that he and his friends had built a giant maze in Wurm, one that can actually keep players occupied for hours and can possibly lead to injury or death, I jumped into a tiny rowboat and paddled my way south toward the Deliverance server. I had to see this thing for myself.

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MassivelyFree for All: Getting lost in the labyrinth of Wurm Online originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 12 Sep 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MMObility: Project Theralon puts players deep in the browser sandbox

Posted on September 7, 2012 by Beau Hindman| Comments Off

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Project: Theralon screenshot
If you're a sandbox fan who's not familiar with the browser-based sandbox called Project: Theralon, become familiar with it. For sandboxers as well as browser-based MMO fans, this game will nudge the genre up in quality and help undermine the notion that browser-based gaming is limited, linear, and boring. In Project: Theralon, players will be able to make characters how they want and can eventually become dragon-riders, powerful characters who can fly through the environment causing havoc as they go.

During my interview with the game's Associate Creative Director Sven Ehrentraut and Public Relations Director Piotr Pilich, I watched live as the game was loaded in a browser and a character mounted a dragon, flew through the landscape, and hopped off into a fight. The game has been in development for only six months, but there's already plenty to get excited about. Click past the cut and I'll give you all the details!

Continue reading MMObility: Project Theralon puts players deep in the browser sandbox

MassivelyMMObility: Project Theralon puts players deep in the browser sandbox originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 07 Sep 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Exclusive Ryzom interview details player wipes and server merges

Posted on September 7, 2012 by Beau Hindman| Comments Off

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Ryzom screenshot
If you have been a Ryzom fan as long as I have, you know that the road to Atys has been long and bumpy. Unfortunately, the bumps haven't stopped. Winchgate has just announced that it's planning to merge existing servers and wipe existing characters. That means if you have built characters over these last several years, they will no longer be as they were

Massively interviewed Vianney Lecroart, Ryzom's CTO, to ask about what this means for the game and community, so read on for first the official announcement and then Lecroart's comments.

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MassivelyExclusive Ryzom interview details player wipes and server merges originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 07 Sep 2012 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rise and Shiny: Vendetta Online

Posted on August 26, 2012 by Beau Hindman| Comments Off

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Vendetta Online screenshot
For the record, Vendetta Online has been in development since 1998 and launched an alpha in 2002. EVE Online was released in North America in 2003. So although it might be too close to call or lost in the foggy details of gamer's memories, it's safe to say that EVE Online did not invent space, spaceships, speedy space travel, trading, or ship-to-ship combat. Still, feel free to post fill the comment section with "EVE-clone," a common phrase that pops up whenever Vendetta Online is mentioned or shown.

Now that we have that out of the way, what is Vendetta Online? It's a multi-platform, twitch-based, science-fiction universe that offers free-form travel and character development. At least that's what I have read. So far in my time with the game, I have experienced only a smattering of what it seems to offer. I've traveled a lot, gunned down a few enemies, and read a lot of text. While I know I have touched but the tip of the iceberg, I still had fun this week. And yes, I pretended to "fly" my spacecraft by running through the house while playing on my Nexus 7 tablet.

And yes, I provided the WOOSH and BRAKKA BRAKKA sounds myself. (That's how you know it's space.)

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MassivelyRise and Shiny: Vendetta Online originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 26 Aug 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Choose My Adventure: Once more into The Kingdom of Loathing

Posted on August 23, 2012 by Beau Hindman| Comments Off

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The Kingdom of Loathing screenshot
Wow, how time flies. Here it is, the second-to-last Choose My Adventure for The Kingdom of Loathing. I have to admit I am surprised at how much I am enjoying the experience so far. The reasons I am enjoying it might be surprising, but it's possible that my time with KoL is nothing new. After all, the game is one of surprises and twists as well as options for play. I've also discovered that the world of KoL is a steady one. I really expected it to be much more loosely assembled because the variable pace and lazy artwork seemed indicative of a developer that doesn't care.

It turns out that quite a lot of care has gone into The Kingdom of Loathing, whether the developers are aware of it or not. Judging by the podcast they host twice a week, I suspect they are too consumed by developer details to notice just how deep their own world goes. (Developers often get a bad case of tunnel vision.) I find the communication each week to be refreshingly different from what I see from many other developers. Most seem too afraid to say anything at all, much less to host a scheduled podcast on which they curse and discuss game mechanics.

So in this last vote of the run, be sure to make your voice heard! Give me advice!

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MassivelyChoose My Adventure: Once more into The Kingdom of Loathing originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 22 Aug 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Why I Play: Mabinogi

Posted on August 22, 2012 by Beau Hindman| Comments Off

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Mabinogi login screenshot
How do you define a sandbox MMO? In my opinion, sandbox MMOs are often described in ways that are much more complicated than they deserve. To me, they are simply MMOs that allow players to play how they want by providing systems -- real, game-impacting systems -- that foster unique character growth. These systems can be represented in a lot of different ways, however. You might grow a unique city in an MMORTS or customize an avatar in a social sandbox like Second Life. The general rule is that there are no rules in a sandbox, within the limits of the particular game, of course. Even then, sandbox players can be some of the most stringent rule-makers and followers. Just ask a Darkfall or EVE Online player how to get the most DPS and she'll rattle off a series of rules, essentially providing a class cheat-sheet. In other words, sandboxes are much like their themepark cousins, only with many more choices for character development. The themepark rules might be left out of a sandbox, but the sandbox communities often fill the void with new guidelines.

Mabinogi provides so many systems to grow a unique character with that it's ridiculous. I can easily log in and spend an hour just decorating my avatar, crafting goods, exploring new areas, flying around in the hopes of stumbling across trouble, or growing my character by leveling any one of the possible hundreds of skills. However you describe a sandbox, Mabinogi should be one of the first on the list of examples. Let me show you three reasons why.

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MassivelyWhy I Play: Mabinogi originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 22 Aug 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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