This week’s Massive Update is actually two because … sniff … I missed a week. :(

I was too sick to do it last Wed/Thurs, and as a result this week’s is two ginormous weeks of MMOG news wrapped up in one package. It was so much I had to skimp on the big story, which was … UO’s decade. (duh)

The Big Story.
There were numerous important and interesting stories in the Massive genre in the past two weeks, but how often does a Massively Multiplayer game reach its decade anniversary? Ultima Online has reached its ten year mark, and while there haven’t been a lot of parties, there is a lot to celebrate. Until October 9, if you once subscribed to UO, you can download the new graphics client and revisit the world.

“In what EA is referring to as the ‘Return to Brittania’ campaign, past Ultima Online subscribers can download the game files on the Kingdom Reborn website through October 9. Kingdom Reborn offered a major graphics upgrade for the ancient game along with some gameplay tweaks and new areas to explore. Returning and current players alike will be able to hunt the realms of Brittania for some cool, unique prizes during the celebration weeks. New armor sets, commemorative items such as an Ankh Necklace and map of Brittania, and weapons from the game’s past will all be available within the game. Check out UO’s special tenth anniversary website for more info on all the festivities.”

Lots of players have fond rememberences of the game, with especially nice words from Ryan Shwayder and Stephen Emond. Aleks Krotoski notes that, of course, UO isn’t the longest running online game.

Take a wild guess what this week’s Big Story is about? If you guess Metaplace, you’d be right.

I did a little tiny bit of reporting to go along with it, and interviewed Raph about the just-post-announcement reaction in the office, and attempted to clarify a few things. Interesting stuff.

The Big Story

Earlier this week, for the TechCrunch40 Conference, Areae pulled back the curtain on their project, the mysterious game that veteran MMOG designer Raph Koster has been working on since his departure from Sony Online Entertainment. The name of the ‘game’ is Metaplace. Essentially, Metaplace is going to be a virtual world toolkit. The whole thing is built on open standards, and attempt to “bring virtual worlds to the web,” instead of keeping them boxed away in a separate little garden.

As the site puts it:

“We knew it was all coming together when one of our team made a game in a day and a half. And then stuck that game on a private MySpace profile. You can inherit someone else’s world (if they let you) and use it as a starting point. You can slurp whole directories of art and use them as building blocks. Cut and paste a movement system or a health bar from one world to another. Use an RSS feed for your NPCs. We made puzzle games, RPGs, action games… and set up doorways from one to the other.”

Virtual World News and GigaOM have writeups of the presentation at the TechCrunch Conference, while Areae’s Community Manager Tami Baribeau writes in a post why gamers should care. Over at his site, Raph just breaths a sigh of relief.

There’s been plenty of other discussion of this topic by now, from the Fires of Heavens board to F13, and you can get a general sense of what the hardcore market thinks of the idea from those posts. Terra Nova examines the idea from the academic’s perspective, while the gaming news sites … haven’t really posted much about it. If you’d like to come to your own conclusions, I can help. First, go check out the demo of Metaplace from the conference.

I find I have lost count of the number of columns I have done for 1up on Massively Multiplayer games. Just the same, I did one this week … and handed it in a day late because I got retardedly sick on Thursday morning. I travel to coasts and across time zones and have no problems, but apparently I’m unable to finish things in a timely fashion in my own home. :P

The Big Story

Another AGDC has come and gone, and this year I finally made it down there for the festivities. What is AGDC? Until last year, it was an independently-run game conference held annually in Austin, TX. The event focused, much more than any other conference, on the creation of online games and virtual worlds. Since last year, the conference was purchased by the CMP group, the same folks that run GDC every year in the spring. They re-branded the event into “GDC Austin” and (or so it seemed to me) worked to widen the appeal of the event just a bit. The result this year was a conference struggling to be at peace with itself. Some very visible scheduling mistakes made it hard for some people to enjoy the experience; some panels were overflowing, while others (especially some of the keynotes) were sorely under-attended. It felt for the most part like first year jitters, and here’s hoping they’ll have most of the kinks worked out by next year. Below are descriptions of and links to coverage of some of the biggest events at the conference this year.

Friday the latest Massive Update went up on the 1up site. For me, it was a personal victory. I managed to make it through every single week of travel without slacking on a single project. The week that Massive was missing was not my fault; the giant file o’ doom was in on time on Wednesday night of that week.  So! Go me.

Last week I touched on the news out of PAX, but it very much deserves a re-visiting. Though there were several games there, the ones that really stood out as having new content to offer (aside from the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, obviously) were massively multiplayer games. Of those titles at the show, the buzz was primarily around Pirates of the Burning Sea, Fury, and (of course) Warhammer Online. The Warhammer folks couldn’t talk about the new hotness (the Elves), because that was the task dedicated to the folks in Leipzig. Just the same, they had plenty interesting to talk about, when they could be torn away from their absolutely packed booth. Carolyn Koh of MMORPG had a chat with the folks there about the game in general, and came away impressed by her hands-on RvR experience. Cameron over at TenTonHammer has up a lengthy interview with Carrie Gouskos, the mind behind the legendary Tome of Knowledge. Probably one of the most interesting features of Warhammer, it’s great to get a detailed account of what exactly this feature will mean for players

Massively late, massively huge, Massive Update for August 16th – 30th is now up.

The Big Story.

It’s a strange tale, from this past week. You’ve probably heard of Gods and Heroes, the upcoming MMOG set in Roman times developed from Perpetual Entertainment. It’s going to use this neat minion system and has a boatload of interesting animations. It was looking good on the business side, too, with a publishing deal all worked out with Sony Online Entertainment’s “Platform Publishing” imprint. And now … the official word from Perpetual is that they are the sole publisher of Gods and Heroes.

“Perpetual Entertainment has replaced SOE’s Platform Publishing as the official publisher of Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising. Previously, the two companies had been in a co-publishing agreement. SOE Senior Brand Manager Debysue Wolfcale characterized the move as clarification of the actual roles each company play in the development of the game. SOE continues to handle marketing and retail distribution for the title, the same roles they held before this move. The altered relationship clarifies for the community and the press that SOE has no active role in the development of Gods and Heroes, SOE explained, and that all credit should go to Perpetual Entertainment.”

There’s plenty of commentary to be had, from angsty snark at Warcry to some considered words from Lum.

Fairly incontrovertible: the only big news for the last two weeks was Fan Faire and BlizzCon.

Massive Update 12 (three months!)

What could be at BlizzCon … which ended up pretty much being the truth.

Massive Update 13

Tons of details on the events, and news from an otherwise fairly ordinary week.

World of Warcraft Patch Notes – PTR notes for the 2.2 patch are now available. They include the promised voice chat functionality, as well as additional chat channel functionality, and (finally) an address for AFK players in battlegrounds! “A new feature for reporting players as being AFK in battlegrounds by right clicking has been added. When enough reports are registered, a 30 second debuff will begin to count down. Once the timer is up a new debuff will appear that will prevent the player from gaining any honor while it is on. This debuff can be negated as soon as the player engages in combat.”

I imagine you’re tired of hearing about me vs. from me, so I’m going to try to keep this to a ‘once-a-week’ kinda thing. This will especially be the case later this month as I go to conventions and write things up, etc, etc.

As an aside, though, I think there’s a lot of stuff I’ll have coming here from various events; feel the love.

I was on three separate podcast events last week:

Shut Up! We’re Talking #5 – Random ranting from a couple of bloggers. I express my man-love for Van Hemlock.

VirginWorlds Podcast #79 – ‘Top Ten Podcasts of the Future’ Part 1.
VirginWorlds Podcast #80 – ‘Top Ten Podcasts of the Future’ Part 2.

And, of course, Massive Update #11 went up last week. It’s nothing but links because I was sick most of last week, and I had to choose between sleeping and writing. Less of that this week, I hope.