Last Week on Massively: WoW-related stories
Nov 18th, 2008
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The Anatomy of WoW: Seven games that inspired Blizzard Blizzard is one of the most prestigious and succesful developers in the world for good reason -- it takes the best ideas from all over the industry (even ones that don't quite work right... yet) and refines them, forcing them to succeed in ways they never did before. |
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Blizzard has no plans to change World of Warcraft's subscription rate Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime had some interesting things to say about the economics behind World of Warcraft. Despite the game's towering success, 11 million players and a thriving community, the Blizzard folk have no plans to change the way they charge US customers. |
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Lord of the Rings Online player's guide to World of Warcraft Unless money or time is not an issue (or you write about games for a living), you have quite a decision to make this week. World of Warcraft's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, has released yesterday. Lord of the Rings Online's first expansion, Mines of Moria, is releasing this Tuesday. |
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A look at World of Warcraft's unique characteristics With Wrath of the Lich King imminent, we thought it would be a good idea to take a short look at just what has made and continues to make World of Warcraft so different than many other MMOs and whether or not it still retains that oh-so-different sheen. |
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Keeping the wife happy: Wrath of the Lich King style In a recent article over at Game Set Watch, Michael Walbridge takes a look at the inner dynamics of the family gaming habit. He tells an all-too-familiar story of one family member (in this case his wife) who wants nothing more than to play Wrath of the Lich King upon release. |
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Features
Last Week on Massively: WoW-related stories
Nov 11th, 2008
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Ask Massively: Wrath vs All Comers I am SO SICK of all of the coverage of Wrath of the Lich King! I demand that someone at Massively write about something that isn't World of Warcraft related this week. Non-WoW players aren't interested in an expansion for a game that they don't even play. Someone throw me a freakin' bone here! |
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The Digital Continuum: Social failings of all MMOs With all the changes and additions in MMORPGs over the years, you'd think there would've been more improvements to how people interact with one another. It's strange to look at arguably the cornerstone of this genre and see the least advancements in relation to other features, but that's seemingly the case. |
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Behind the Curtain: More apocalypse please I'm not sure that the Zombie Invasion has gone far enough. So, Arthas, the Lich King, has bent his might towards bringing the forces of both Horde and Alliance throughout Azeroth and Outland to its knees, and possibly the worst in-game effect was that we had difficulty getting to the Auction House? Oh dear. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but with a QQ. |
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Features
Last Week on Massively: WoW-related stories
Nov 4th, 2008
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Anti-Aliased: Killing the auctioneers is a perfect reason to go to Northrend "What could Arthas possibly do to make everyone simultaneously angry and want to journey to Northrend?" |
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Since the WoW movie probably won't happen anyway, here's why it shouldn't It's true that the movie couldn't make it on WoW players alone; it'd have to be appealing to people unfamiliar with the franchise, too. But we really doubt that's going to happen, and it doesn't matter anyway because, as we said, it probably will never get made! |
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Blizzard VP discusses mistakes made and player expectations Blizzard may be reigning supreme in the MMO world, but that doesn't mean they haven't made some mistakes along the way. Indeed, it's actually refreshing when a company is willing to come out and admit to those mistakes. |
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The Best of Massively: Our five all-time greatest hits We're wrapping up our 'best of' series by presenting what are arguably your favorites -- our five most viewed featured articles ever! Make sure to check out our great piece on Five MMOs better than World of Warcraft! |
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The Daily Grind: Will The Old Republic beat World of Warcraft? since Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect sold substantially fewer copies than WoW, does the BioWare / KotOR pedigree really matter for this question? Star Wars is neither a star nor a war -- discuss! |
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Features
Last Week on Massively: WoW-related stories
Oct 28th, 2008
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A WoW burnout's guide to Wrath of the Lich King Does Wrath of the Lich King, the second World of Warcraft expansion, have enough new, interesting and worthwhile content to give longtime burnout players a reason to come back again? What about players who've recently hung up their Azerothian hat? In this feature, we're taking a burnout player's perspective and looking into all of the interesting things about the soon-to-see-release title expansion. |
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Everything we know about Star Wars: The Old Republic Here, then, is everything we know about the game at this point in time. Click through to read some of our coverage, and keep your eyes out for future articles on the site about BioWare's in-development title. We've got a long way to go, MMO fans! |
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A critical look at WoW's zombie issues In a move driven in part by frustration, Lume the Mad recently outlined his specific beefs with Blizzard's pre-Wrath zombie event for World of Warcraft. We've seen in the past that some people weren't enjoying the event whatsoever, but Lume has gone the distance and outlined exactly what's wrong and how massive frustration could have been avoided. |
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Will SWTOR be bigger than WoW? LucasArts thinks so While recent triple-A MMOs have shied away from a downright challenge to competing with World of Warcraft's behemoth subscription numbers, EA Games president Frank Gibeau and LucasArts' online chief Tom Nichols have come right out and said that Star Wars: The Old Republic has the potential to be bigger than WoW. |
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The Best of Massively: Five stories that scandalized you This week we're listing five stories we wrote that caused a lot of people to get very angry -- sometimes at us, sometimes at game developers or other industry figures, and sometimes at all of the above! |
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Features
Last Week on Massively: WoW-related stories
Oct 21st, 2008
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The Star Wars / BioWare announcement is just hours away We're just hours away from the highly anticipated announcement of the BioWare/LucasArts project most gamers expect to be a Knights of the Old Republic MMO. We here at Massively has been waiting for this day ... oh, for years. More recently, though, we've had some more concrete elements to talk about. Ever since the July confirmation of the project by EA's head, we've been very busy thinking, plotting, and planning. |
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WAR has only just begun to compete with WoW, declares Mark Jacobs If you've been following this particular exchange you'll know the score, but let's recap: Blizzard's Jeff Kaplan just like turned around and said some stuff about Warhammer Online, about how he wasn't even in the Beta and stuff, and Mark Jacobs was like whoa, and he totally turned around and said some stuff about World of Warcraft, and now Mark Jacobs is all, like, dude, bring it, and everybody's like, ohmygawd, it is so on. |
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Analysts see World of Warcraft adding another million subscribers Despite the success of Warhammer Online, analysts looking in on the MMO industry are of the opinion that Wrath of the Lich King will be another huge win for Blizzard's World of Warcraft. In fact, Eurogamer reports, Colin Sebastian at the Lazard analysis firm thinks the expansion will tack on another million subscribers to the game's already somewhat ludicrous playerbase. |
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Blizzard: World of Warcraft will do fine, global economic collapse be damned Unless you've been stranded on a desert island for the past year, you know that there's a global economic crisis going on. But worry not: MMOs -- World of Warcraft in particular -- will be just fine, according to Blizzard Executive VP Rob Pardo. |
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Blizzard: Next MMO won't be WoW 2 Go ahead a strike the possibility of a World of Warcraft 2 off your list of possible next-gen Blizzard MMOs because it's officially not happening. In an interview with Wired, Blizzard's recently talkative Mike Morhaime flat out said that their next MMO project isn't a sequel to their first. |
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Features
Last Week on Massively: WoW-related stories
Oct 14th, 2008
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Explore the halls and amenities of Blizzard HQ Blizzcon is this weekend, and journalists and bloggers the world over are descending upon California to report on everything from Diablo 3 classes to -- you guessed it -- World of Warcraft. MTV's Multiplayer blog counts itself a member of that gaming press Horde, and in addition to your usual Blizzcon coverage, it visited Blizzard's headquarters and took lots of photos. |
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Chinese gamer sued for using WoW add-on What if World of Warcraft had no add-ons, would you still play? Worse yet, what if they had the add-ons, and you were aware of them, but it was actually illegal to use them? That's the state of the game in China right now, thanks to the country's licensed WoW distributor, The9. |
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Behind the Curtain: Guilds are serious business How serious are you when you're either creating a guild, when you're inviting people to join, or when you're looking to join one yourself? |
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LucasArts and BioWare confirm impending announcement LucasArts and BioWare have invited members of the press to attend an event later this month at which the two companies will finally officially announce the game they've been working on together. They did not say what the game is, of course -- then how could they officially announce it at the event? |
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Features
Last Week on Massively: WoW-related stories
Oct 7th, 2008
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Blizzard awarded large payout in 'WoW Glider' case The BBC is reporting that the WoW Glider case (MDY vs. Blizzard) is moving closer to resolution. If you'll recall, the court found in favor of Blizzard Entertainnment back in July, awarding them victory in their long-running feud with 'botting' software. WoW Glider is the best known 'bot software packages, allowing World of Warcraft players to automate their AFK play. |
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Pain vest is compatible with World of Warcraft If you've ever felt like you've experienced everything there is to do in World of Warcraft, and you're looking for something more, we may have the solution. The 3rd Space Vest from TN Games is a game accessory that players wear to let them feel damage as their characters receive hits. |
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The Best of Massively: Our top 5 weirdest news stories We're still counting down to Massively's first birthday by compiling the best and most entertaining coverage we've done. So far we've listed our most important interviews and our most helpful guides. This time around, we're looking back at the top five strangest, weirdest and sometimes-raciest news stories we've covered since we launched last November. |
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MMOGology: I lost a friend to WAR Last week I wrote about Blizzard's Recruit-a-Friend program and my experience leveling through World of Warcraft with triple XP. The Recruit-a-Friend program is a seemingly brilliant strategy on Blizzard's part. In addition to recruiting new players, it also serves as way of keeping existing players ... |
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Features
Last Week on Massively: WoW-related stories
Oct 1st, 2008
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Could Blizzard be shipping Lich King without the polish it needs? By pushing Lich King out the door on November 13th, is Blizzard giving short shrift to their legendary dedication to polish? |
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MMOGology: WoW on easy mode My buddy Rob and I play World of Warcraft frequently, but between the two of us he's got the most /played time. He's got a few 70s on a PvP server and a few 70s on the PvE server where we're spending most of our time. He's also an alt-a-holic and has tons of mid-level characters. He's played every class in the game; most of them thoroughly. After spending so much time leveling so many characters he recently resolved not to level another character until the release of Wrath of the Lich King. |
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Mark Jacobs makes the case for playing WAR instead of WoW Tracey John over on the MTV multiplayer blog recently caught up with Mark Jacobs, General Manager of EA Mythic and lead Warhammer Online designer. Some of the questions posed have already been covered, and we've been busy giving out all the information we can get our eager little hands on, but possibly the most loaded of them all has been left until the day of WAR's launch: why should a World of Warcraft player come over and play WAR? |
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The allegedly incontestable momentum of World of Warcraft We relish informed opinion pieces here at Massively. That's what the professional site gamesindustry.biz is serving up for us, in the form of an editorial by site founder Rob Fahey. He tackles a subject we've looked at ourselves fairly often in the last few weeks: the nature of World of Warcraft's dominion, how long it can last, and whether challenging WoW is even worthwhile. |
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Features
Four year anniversary pet and feat of strength achievement
Ritual of Summoning revamped
Wrath sells 2.8 million in the first 24 hours
Championship Gaming Series folds
World first Level 80 Death Knight?
Arcane Brilliance: Wrath reputation rewards for Mages, part 1
Wrath 101: The Oracles and the Frenzyheart Tribe
Wrath 101: Factions and reputation
The Queue: Future raids and more on daily quests
Insider Trader: Inscription from 305 to 450
