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MMO Gaming Expansions Released, Announced
News regarding two new expansions to Massively Multiplayer Games today. Thanks to Gamespot for the fascinating news that Asheron's Call 2 will roll out a new expansion sometime in the future. This announcement was anticipated after Turbine's purchase of Asheron's Call 1 and 2 from Microsoft, but no firm details had yet to be announced. Meanwhile, Yahoo has the press release on Planetside: Aftershock's release today. The waning FPS massive game has finally been reduced to the reasonable price of $20. The new offering includes the core game, the first expansion, and a new expansion that incorporates mechs into the game.
Also announced that there will be expansions, as soon as it gets out of beta testing.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Planetside is having a hard time for two reasons: 1. Most new FPS games coming out support up to 64 players on a single server, and the netcode is good enough that you don't need a T3 to run a server. It's hard to pitch the idea of $13 a month to a gamer who can buy Battlefield Vietnam once and play on packed servers for free. 2. The Planetside dev team cut out pretty much everything that had anything to do with an RPG during the beta testing, so there's no long term goals, no "loot", no personalization of player stats... It's purely an MMOFPS. There's no role-playing aspect whatsoever, so you're not gonna appeal to the usual MMO crowd. I mean, the people who wanna shoot stuff buy a (free play) FPS. The people who wanna roleplay buy an RPG. And the people who wanna be elf mangina play EQ or Lineage II. :)
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Planetside: Aftershock isn't an expansion, it's just a bundle of Planetside with the (rightfully) maligned Core Combat expansion. They mechs they're advertising (BFRs) on the box are free to any subscriber that has Core Combat.
It's called Throne of Oblivion, and looks to be a major upgrade to the sieging system in Shadowbane, lending more purpose to the pillaging of one's neighbours. Shadowbane is still suffering from lag, lack of quests, lack of dungeons, a dated graphics engine, and an abysmal physics engine. It's a real shame, because the concept and the lore are far and away the best in the MMORPG crowd.
Gamespot is nothing more than a corporate shrill.
AC2 died before birth. A horrid beta where the developers ignored the constant and loud complaints that all proved true in release.
The hubris of the AC2 developers killed the game. Immense cities in which no building was enterable served no other purpose that being monuments to the developers. Even their first liason to the public spoke of coming down from the ivory tower to the unwashed masses (ie the players)
AC2 died because Turbine stopped responding to their fans. AC2 failed because Turbine made the story more important than the fans. They forced the players to adhere to the story instead of becoming the story.
Turbine, particulary Jessica (it) hates negative comments about their game. Going so far as requiring fan boards they deem to visit to remove the posts and posters else suffer exclusion from developer interaction.
Turbine is also where the phrase "Exploit Early Exploit Often" came about. They are the only MMORPG company to ACTIVELY allow attended combat macros (AC1). This software (know as decal) listens and acts on the incoming client stream to automate much if not all of the game. It reveals things not normally known to the client and all of this is done with the knowledge and tacit support of Turbine. The new expansion for their first game even caters to the abusers of attended combat macros by support levels unreachable by other means.
One big worry about MEO was that within a week everyone would have the ONE RING
Turbine is just proof that even the most inept can stay in business.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.