Kotaku: Mmoprg

World of Warcraft Gets Its Cross-Server Real ID Party Started

Mike Fahey — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:20:00 EDT

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Blizzard's Real ID system allows World of Warcraft buddies to chat no matter what game server they reside on, but talk is cheap, and we came to party. With the Real ID Party system, star-crossed pals can now team up to take on dungeons no matter what realm they roam. More »

Funcom Teams With EA For The Secret World

Mike Fahey — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 10:50:27 EST

Independent developer Funcom has joined up with EA's EA Partners division in order to co-publish the upcoming present-day paranormal PC MMO The Secret World. More »

Game Power 7 Bringing MMOs To The Middle East

Mike Fahey — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:20:00 EDT

Perhaps some of the strife in the Middle East can be attributed to the fact that they don't have any massively-multiplayer online role-playing games localized in Arabic and Farsi. New publisher Game Power 7 is looking to rectify that unfortunate oversight. They've just launched themselves as the first online game publisher in the Middle East and North Africa, established to help game developers publish localized versions of their online games in the region. Think of them as the Arabic version of China's The9. More »

Tabula Rasa Adds Fuel-Efficient Hybrids

Mike Fahey — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 11:40:26 EST

Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa has from the start been a story about humanity, but since before the game launched players have been clamoring to play something outside of generic human number five. The lack of character diversity is one of the main things I didn't like about the game, but that's all changed now. Patch 1.4 saw the introduction of human alien hybrids - human characters spliced with alien DNA to create something entirely new. Thrax, Brann, and Forean hybrids, each with unique stat bonuses, are unlocked via quests that start at level 15. In order to help facilitate the new options, new emphasis has been placed on player stats, clones can now reassign ability points, and an option to hide your helmet to show off your new blue head have all been implemented. Enough to draw me back into the game? Only free time will tell, my friends. More »

SOE Resurrects Vanguard Accounts For The Holidays

Mike Fahey — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 10:40:53 EST

Did you try Vanguard: Saga of Heroes when it launched, only to cancel your subscription once you realized what a buggy mess it was? Sony Online Entertainment wants you to give the game another chance. From now until January 3rd, SOE is reactivating Vanguard accounts that have been inactive for at least 60 days, giving old players a look at how far the game has progressed since those first, clumsy, stumbling steps. Oh come on, Vanguard wasn't that bad. I have to admit that during the end of my stint playing the game I was starting to enjoy myself. My main issue with it wasn't so much the bugs (bugs can be fixed) but the lack of people playing. I actually got into a group one time within an entire month of playing, and while I had a blast it just drove home the point of how sparse the population was. For me, MMOs are all about playing with other people, so when it came time to go over my MMO budget, Vanguard didn't make the cut. Maybe I'll pop on over the holidays to see how things are going. I hear helmets show up now! More »

Time Travel Comes To Paragon City

Mike Fahey — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 10:40:51 EDT

NCSoft has announced the latest free expansion for the City of Heroes and City of Villains MMORPG, and along with new power sets, new inventions, and the long-awaited ability to customize your weapons to suit your character's style, guys both good and bad will get a chance to journey back through time and experience the history of Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. The update will introduce the Menders of Ouroboros, a mysterious organization with the power to send characters back through time to experience epic struggles that shaped the City of universe into what it is today. As well as historical missions, the Ouroboros system will let players experience story arcs they might have missed on the first go-round, automatically powering down your character to the appropriate level. Neat! More details on Ouroboros as well as the new power sets, Dual Blades and Willpower, after a brief message from our gallery. More »

Blizzard Dishes On The Death Knight

Mike Fahey — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 10:20:24 EDT

Blizzard drops some Death Knight details in a Q&A with the design team for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. The Q&A explores the role the new class plays in game lore as well as your adventuring party. The player character Death Knights have rebelled against Arthas, joining the Horde (yay!) or Alliance (boo!) to help take down the vile Lich King. Rather than being powered by rage or mana, the Knights will use a completely new Rune System to power their offensive magic and abilities. Unable to use shields, they'll rely on magic to help them mitigate damage and generate threat, culminating in what Blizzard hopes will be another fun tanking class that will make Warriors feel even more useless than they already do. More »

ArchLord Goes Completely Free

Mike Fahey — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 10:40:30 EDT

When Codemasters released ArchLord in the states back in February of this year, it didn't exactly fly off the shelves. I'd daresay there are release copies still sitting on a store shelf somewhere right now, sad and lonely, never to be sold. Especially now that Codemasters has announced the game is now 100% free to play. Download the game for free, play it for free, get the new expansion for free, and possibly even hate it for free. CM Director of Marketing Ed Relf markets:

"We are ecstatic to be in a position now to release ArchLord as an entirely FREE MMORPG and this marks a milestone in the games ongoing development. Since its release, ArchLord has grown consistently and we are excited to throw open the doors to players across N.America and Europe looking to play a premium 100% FREE MMORPG. "

Nice marketing Ed. ArchLord has just recently launched the ArchLord Suit of Armour Battle, where the first player to be crowned ArchLord wins a life-sized suit of plate armor, which they probably just had laying around and had to get rid of anyway. Still, free MMO! More »

LOTRO Book 10 Detailed

Mike Fahey — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 11:20:00 EDT

Turbine continues it's quest to make Lord of the Rings Online players dizzy with new content next week. August 21st sees the release of Book 10: The City of Kings, the second free content update to the massively popular online roleplaying game. Highlights include newly customizable UI (thank god), new reputation (faction) and bartering systems, the latter being akin to WoW's pvp reward system, where you trade trophies for special items, the introduction of the Ranger of the North and Troll into monster play, and over 100 new quests. In case that wasn't enough, you'll be able to play as a chicken. Yes - a tiny, harmless little chicken. Hunting for worms has never been so...present in an MMO. Weird, but I like it. Hit the jump for full details! More »

Acclaim Strays From Download Play

Mike Fahey — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 13:20:28 EDT

Re-envisioned as a company that created free to download and play MMO games via the internet, Acclaim was well on their way to proving that the digital delivery of large scale games like 9Dragons and BOTS!! could work. And it did - so well that they are now teaming up with SwiftCD.com to offer CD and DVD versions of their popular online games. On the download pages of the aforementioned games you can now order a CD or DVD copy delivered to your house for just $3.99 or $5.99 respectively. More »

Anarchy Online Gets Paid Content

Mike Fahey — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 12:21:15 EDT

Six years and *checks watch* two days ago, Anarchy Online stumbled into the world, kicking and screaming extremely slowly before lagging out. Since then the game has grown into a title impressive enough to keep even my short attention span for months at a time. Now, as the citizens of Rubi-Ka celebrate the sixth anniversary of their world, Funcom has launched a brand new business model, inspired by the very best Korean MMOs. Money for nothing...chicks are still free. Now AO players can drop cash on Funcom points that can be used to purchase special prestige items in-game. More »

Warhammer Beta MMObbed

Mike Fahey — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 11:20:04 EDT

When I suggested you sign up for the Warhammer Online closed beta, I didn't mean all at once. More »

Burning Crusade Street Date Broken

Mike Fahey — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:40:12 EST

Retailers on at least two continents have been extremely lax about the World of Warcraft Burning Crusade's January 16th street date. While most major game outlets across the US have been sticking to the agreement, many smaller shops as well as some large retailers already have the games on the shelves for purchase. I found the game at a Target store in Atlanta over the weekend, but since I already have it fully paid for at a midnight launch locations I passed on picking up a copy. More »

Goodbye WoW Maintenance Tuesday

Mike Fahey — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 16:40:35 EST

Tuesday has long been the bane of the WoW player's existence, being the (scheduled) day that the servers go down and stay down till the middle of the afternoon Eastern time for weekly maintenance. My girlfriend especially hated Tuesdays, since that was the one off day from work she had set in stone and WoW is really the only game she gets into regularly. Blizzard plans to change all of that now, as testing has begun on a new process that performs the weekly work with the servers operational, with downtimes lasting less than 10 minutes, if at all. Today was the first Tuesday morning that I can recall where I've actually been able to log into the game and poke around at all the pretty things in the auction house that I can't afford. More »