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Massively Multiplayer Games Quickified
It's the last day of the first month of 2006, and already there are plenty of new things brewing on the Massive front. World of Warcraft's community is abuzz with news of the Raid content Jeff Kaplan mentioned over the weekend, and details on the 1.10 patch, which is to feature priest updates and weather cycles. City of Villains has big changes a-coming as well, with content for levels 40 to 50 going in, as well as new zones and a new mission type. The Mayhem missions sound like they're finally living up to the promise of 'being a villain'. The EQ2 server combines are the least of the changes occurring at SOE. Chris Kramer did an interview with GamerGod about some of the sweeping changes inc, touching on the free Planetside scheme and mentioning the Sony Station blog, which so far just has an intro from John Smedley. More romantically, FFXI is rolling out information on its Valentine's Day event. Valentione's day is the chocolate and hearts holiday as only Moogles could imagine it. It's fun to play for love, but also fun to play to crush. Guild War's world championships are taking place in about two weeks, with the first place purse weighing in at $50,000. Vanguard's own brand of hardcore lost a little bit of mystery this week with the release of a features list. Finally. Even though you can't win big bucks for playing them, Eve and Ultima Online continue to please their players with updates and releases. Eve's Creative Director spoke with OGaming about plans for outer space in 2006, and UO will see a new player tour and seasonal spring items. It's a good spring for Massive gaming. Update: 01/31 20:30 GMT by Z : I knew I would miss one. A reader wrote in to mention that Anarchy Online is gearing up for some great new stuff in the 16.2 patch, as well as in the upcoming expansion Lost Eden.
And will anything you do or don't do on this quest affect the game world in any persistant way?
Even in single-player games, it's amazing how seldom your actions affect the world. Sure, there's backstory claiming it's all very epic and important, but it rarely shows up in the game at all.
With MMORPGs I've yet to see a game where ordinary quests by ordinary player had any persistant effect on the game world at all. Occasionally you'll see an "event" with two possible outcomes in which the entire server population participates, but that's not really the same.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Zonk, it would be much easier on the eyes and brain if you broke this into several stories. I know that some people might complain about the lower content density, but 16 links in one paragraph does not entice me to see what that content is.