This episode starts with an MMO focus and ends with community feedback, we’re looking back at an MMO that never made it to life: Ultima X. We give a quick and dirty first-look at Cataclysm, the next World of Warcraft expansion. This episode arrives on day early as Derrick is flying off to Germany early this week on business. This weeks news includes:
- Final Fantasy XIV PS3 Delayed
- Minecraft Enters Beta On December 20
- Carmack Loves Apple’s App Store
- Sony: Kinect’s Problems are ”Quite Big’‘
This week’s question of the week, “as 2011 approaches, what game really surprised you this past year?”
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3 responses so far ↓
1 Herr_Alien
// Dec 14, 2010 at 4:41 am
:O Weird way to handle MMOs. I never played one, and perhaps that’s why I find it … weird to create several characters.
As for one MMO scalping another MMO of the same company? That will happen to Blizzard too, but I doubt it will have a major effect on WoW. So I won’t call it scalping, but rather trimming the sides a bit.
@Final Fantasy XIV PS3 Delayed
Oh my 🙂 Lemme guess, also programming for PS3 is tough, because the PS3 devs made it hard on purpose 😛 ?
Keyboard – mouse combo FTW!
As for the half year free, it could be actually a half year free for testing the game …
@Minecraft Enters Beta On December 20
I like that the indie dev got the attention. One thing they lack is advertising funds, so when a game like this goes viral, it can only make me happy.
As for the price, well, I think it all boils down to costs. I’m not sure how much the costs for maintaining the servers are, but I see this as the major justification for the price point of the beta.
Jonah, what you say is basically selling stocks for the company. The share holders WILL want to control the game.
@Carmack Loves Apple’s App Store
Funny to hear that AppStore gets the credit. Steam got it right years before, and now it is the dominant DD (no laughs :P) channel for PC, threatening to become the dominant also on Mac.
I agree with Jonah, Steam is much more friendly. And the one thing that is missing from Steam is a front end for mobile devices. How long do you think it takes to make a Steam client for iPhone? The problem is, Apple won’t approve it, for the right reason: Steam it’s a direct and serious threat to AppStore.
@Sony: Kinect’s Problems are ”Quite Big’‘
Now, in my books, it’s a bad thing to say “Kinect has problems” then end up with “so we’re kind of equivalent”. Does somebody need a translation for this?
I agree with Jonah, they should have said “No comment”.
2 eni_
// Dec 16, 2010 at 3:40 pm
There are two games that surprised me this year;
first was Minecraft, which came out of nowhere and is a truly fantastic game. A lot of the big companies building games these days could learn a lot of a lot from Notch (the creator of Minecraft).
The other game that surprised me this year was Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, I was expecting this to be a mere expansion to Assassin’s Creed II, but I found that it was genuinely a fully crafted game that stands up on it’s own. I actually enjoyed it more than Assassin’s Creed II, and has got me very excited for the next instalment of the series.
All other games I have played this year, haven’t been surprising, except for Fable III. Which I found somewhat disappointing after all the hype that surrounded it. I found it far too ‘fairytale’ (perhaps not a valid argument given that it was made by Lionhead/Molyneux).
3 Tristan
// Dec 21, 2010 at 4:23 am
@ QotW
Boardgames have been the most surprising find for me this year. Having not been near a risk set for nearly a decade, discovering the amazing world of designer boardgames (and card games) has been quite an eye opener.
Myself and half a dozen friends have regularly gathered over the past couple of months for games like Betrayal at House on the Hill (where we all begin exploring a haunted house together only for one player the turn on the rest part way through), or the dungeons and dragons: castle ravenloft boardgame (where cooperatively we venture into dungeons to fight amazing monster miniatures, occasionally coming out victorious in numerous missions). And then there are games like Ligretto (a simultaneously played card game) that feels almost like an FPS with the speed of thought, awareness and reactions required.
It is in a way similar to the experiences of lanning in years past where you can see the agony, relief, joy or tension on your friends and foes as you plot together and against each other. My collection of games has grown to 12 over the last few months and have offered some amazing experiences of which some are truly unique from those I have enjoyed with electronic games.
Hopefully next year will only bring more of the same as I explore a few more of the thousands upon thousands of boardgames I was formally unaware of.
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