Events, in-game

Many MMOs suffer from not actually having immersive worlds. As a player, I always find a separation between what I am doing and what the rest of the playerbase sees. My personal gameplay has little to no effect on anyone else. MMO communities need to have more interdependency -- positive and negative.

I also believe that player choice also plays a major part in making a believable world, and I don't just mean just in some arbitrary dialogue choice, although that can be part of it. Actions in the world should play a part, too.

Many MMOs have the pieces already in place to make wonderful, immersing worlds, but for some reason, no one has ever put all the pieces together. What does it take to make a believable, fun world for a player to not only live in but feel that he is a part of the greater universe?

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With real-world summer festivities like Canada Day and the 4th of July fresh on the minds of many gamers, it seems like the right time for the folks at Carbine Studios to talk about WildStar's celebrations. CM David Bass lays out two such holidays for our perusal: Starfall and Foundation Day.

Starfall is an Exile holiday that remembers the day that the wandering fleet crossed the galaxy to discover the Eldan planet. For the Exiles, Starfall marks the end of their journey and the beginning of a new home. It's a weeklong celebration that includes plenty of games, including Kiss the Matria (chances are that's a lot less sexy than it sounds). The festival is capped by an enormous fireworks display put on by the Alchemist's Guild.

Foundation Day, on the other hand, remembers both the foundation of the Dominion Empire and the establishment of Nexus as its new homeworld. Contrasted with the rough-and-tumble celebration of Starfall, Foundation Day is far more regal and official. After all, speeches are way better than kissing Matrias, right?

Both Starfall and Foundation Day come around about the same time each year, and depending on a player's allegiance, she might find herself engaging in a different celebration than her friends.

Ragnarok Online might seem very familiar to many of my readers. In fact, if you are from a certain age group, the group that grew up with the internet instead of watching it come into being while you were already living on your own, you might have played Ragnarok Online. I can often tell a Ragnarok fan as well. They're OK with the grind as long is it pays off in the end, and they usually have a pretty exact way of looking at MMOs. I have yet to find a Ragnarok player who is over 30 and who roleplays more than anything.

In other words, Ragnarok has affected almost an entire generation of MMO gamers. Personally, I always enjoyed the graphics of the game when I got a few chances to play it, but the overwhelming world and gameplay was a bit too much, and I didn't really enjoy the entire experience.

Well, good news for me! I can now roll on a brand-new, old-school server that promises to be more like something from the early days of the game. The best news? All players will start off on the same page.

Want to know more? Keep reading because I sat in on a conference call with Ragnarok producer Jason Koerperich to talk about all of the changes.

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July is here, and with it comes heat, BBQs, and Atlantica Online's newest in-game challenge: the Bunraku Festival. Why participate in this summer festival? How about for the chance to recruit the new Puppeteer Rin mercenary? When battling the forces of evil, who wouldn't want to have a puppeteer with a power-saw-wielding puppet on his side?

From now until July 26th, players can collect festival scripts just by logging in and also by helping bring an end to evil through a series of quests for Dr. Gon. These scripts can then be turned in for various prizes, including the mercenary.

[Source: Nexon press release]

The world of EVE Online's capital warfare is most often a numbers game. Alliances commit forces to a fight knowing that victory is almost assured if they have significantly more ships than the enemy. But not all capital pilots and corporations are created equal; some can pull off incredible tactical plays that act as force multipliers, increasing the effectiveness of every man on the battlefield.

Rooks and Kings alliance has a long history of fighting above its weight by employing highly effective cooperative strategies, so it's no surprise that four out of my five top capital tactics come from the alliance's awesome PvP videos. I think it's safe to say that if Rooks and Kings brings fewer capital ships than you to a fight, you're still vastly outnumbered.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I showcase videos of five awesome carrier tactics, each with a video of the tactic in action.

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Last week we brought you the story of five EVE Online players who gamed the new faction warfare mechanics to produce trillions of ISK worth a total of $175,000 US. The players who found the exploit did report it for developers to fix, but not before abusing it for a full two weeks. CCP Games spent the week deliberating and today released its official statement on the exploit and the punishments those involved will face.

As market manipulation has always been a legal part of EVE's sandbox gameplay, the lines between exploit and gameplay were not as clear in this case as they could have been. The accounts of those involved will remain in good standing, but all of their ill-gotten gains will be completely removed. The five offenders will essentially be rolled back to where they were before the exploit happened. CCP reminded players that there are rewards for reporting an exploit to developers and that abusing an exploit before reporting it is not considered responsible disclosure.

Maybe you're a poor college student with plenty of time to play TERA but not a lot of cash to spend out of the game. Or maybe you're a man of means with plenty of cash to spend but little time to farm gold. Whichever category is closer to you, you'll find something to like in TERA's new Chronoscrolls system, which allows players to buy scrolls of subscription time and trade them for in-game gold.

The system works fairly transparently: Chronoscrolls can be purchased for real-world cash and then placed on the auction block, and a scroll thus purchased can be redeemed for extra subscription time. That means that players with piles of in-game gold can get plenty of free time to play the game. And if you're wondering why you'd like to spend that money, there is an event taking place starting on Friday, June 29th, in which players will hunt down reptilian egg thieves for special rewards. So you've got some motivation.

[Thanks to Dengar for the tips!]

For a limited time today, developer ArenaNet is putting its soon-to-be-released online world of Guild Wars 2 to the test with a four-hour beta event. Our sister site Joystiq, having recently discovered the joy of yelling into a microphone while readers watch editors fail at video games, will be streaming the tail-end of today's event.

From 3:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. EDT today, the stream from Joystiq's new Twitch.tv account (which you should totally follow) will be open. While Xav de Matos plays through the game with a fresh character, Massively columnist Elisabeth Cardy will be on-hand to manage your questions from the stream chat and comments on this post. Hilarious banter between both editors is expected but not guaranteed.

This event represents a game still in beta, and things may not function properly. Due to the nature of a "stress test," we may experience crashes, game freezes, and other performance and connection issues.

[Edit: You can find a the finished recording of the stream here.]

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CABAL Online is six years old this week, and Games Masters is putting on a few celebratory events to, er... celebrate. What sorts of events? Let's see. There's monster hunting, gathering, and various lotteries that can lead to prizes both in and out of the game.

Razer gaming headsets, artwork, in-game Drei Frame armor, and several other virtual armor and weapon pieces are up for grabs. The devs are also adding new high-end outfits, content, and items. Don't worry if you're a low-level player, though; Games Masters is adding goodies for you too. Full details are available on the game's official boards.

We're in the thick of the summer movie blockbuster season, so you can't blame the folks at Paragon Studios from trying to get in on the fun. The devs are so on board with this concept, in fact, that City of Heroes will kick off its Summer Blockbuster Double Feature event starting tomorrow.

As the name implies, this event features two movie-like adventures. The first one is called Time Gladiator, and it features an over-the-top fight in a Roman coliseum. The second one, Casino Heist, is a robbery-gone-awry as the superheroes take on the tough security forces. Each movie event has a different mechanic as well: Time Gladiator will have players filling up a favor meter to unlock a bonus stage, while Casino Heist divvies up your team into specialized roles.

Paragon's even made a movie theater lobby for players as they wait. It's here that winning submissions from the player-designed poster contest are displayed.

Players are welcome to kick back with this double feature as long as they're level 15 or higher. If a player completes both movies, they'll be treated to a new universal damage IO enhancement. One enhancement can be earned every 20 hours.

As you might have guessed from the title, I'm taking a tiny break from writing about Star Wars: The Old Republic this week. Although it might seem like odd timing to change the pace of my articles with Update 1.3 releasing today, I figured that the update will be here next week, but Star Wars Galaxies' birthday comes around only once a year. Last weekend, the first Star Wars MMORPG would have celebrated its ninth year in service.

Being the first Star Wars MMO will always be an honor Galaxies will hold. But that's not the only thing that drew so many people to the game. I often find myself thinking back wondering what could have been. Besides my love for Star Wars, that game held a lot of significance in my life. It was my first serious MMO and my first step into MMO roleplay. If Star Wars Galaxies were still around, would I still be playing? More importantly, what would I be doing in that game that I really can't do in the current Star Wars MMO?

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If there's one constant in the EVE Online universe, it's that the players can never be underestimated and every care must be taken to make sure systems can't be abused in unintended ways. In 2009, a handful of players figured out how to artificially boost the number of valuable faction warfare loyalty points rewarded for completing missions and farmed enough ISK to build a titan. That record was completely blown out of the water today as five EVE players revealed how they'd generated five trillion ISK using game mechanics introduced in the Inferno expansion.

Inferno added a new reward system for faction warfare that gave players loyalty points for enemy ship kills based on the value of the destroyed ship and cargo. A bug was found that rewarded players for both the destroyed and surviving cargo, even though surviving cargo could be recovered. GoonWaffe pilot Aryth and four friends began destroying their own freighters full of minerals to cash the minerals out into loyalty points, which were then used to buy items for sale.

When CCP discovered this bug and fixed it, the group manipulated the market price of one of the game's least-purchased items up to a huge number. When the price index for the value of that item updated, the players began destroying haulers full of them to generate billions of loyalty points for almost nothing. The points were cashed out into items for sale on the market, producing a total profit of over five trillion ISK. The abuse has not yet been declared an exploit, but CCP has fixed the issue and is still investigating it. At current market prices, five trillion ISK is enough to buy around 10,000 30-day game time codes worth a total of $175,000 US.

Has it really been 11 years since Anarchy Online burst onto the scene with one of the smoothest launches of all time? It must be -- Funcom is throwing a birthday bash for its faithful players.

There will be two birthday celebrations, one on the Atlantean server on Friday, June 22nd, at 1:00 p.m. EDT and one on Rimor on Monday, June 25th, at 1:00 p.m. EDT. Both in-game celebrations will be marked by spawning events, special mobs, and in-game items. If you're down with the party scene, the community will be throwing a monster rave to end all raves.

Funcom hinted at a few of the surprises, including new costumes, action figures, vehicles, and the love of a duck and a cake. The studio will be handing out a free jet pack for all players who log in during the celebration.