With a long and twisting history stretching back nearly seven years we felt it best to focus mostly on the future of wow in this tour.

Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft remains the behemoth of the MMO universe. New games occasionally appear on the horizon to challenge the big one, but with 11 million subscribers, WOW continues to dominate the gaming world. The game is played in nine languages from The United States to Macau.

But perhaps not even the great ones can grow forever. WOW subscriptions have been dropping throughout the year, and dropping at the fastest rate since the game’s release. Blizzard reported that in the quarter ending 30 June, 2011, the rate of decline slowed, but subscriptions continue to slip.

According to company president Mike Morhaime, subscriptions have been dropping off since the release of the third expansion, Cataclysm, in December of last year. The hope, of course, is that things will turn around with another expansion.

In October, Blizzard released information about that release, saying that “Mists of Panderia” will take players to an exotic new continent of lush landscapes and exotic life forms. Rumors continue to surround a release date. The expansion is unlikely to hit store shelves before late spring of next year, but WOW junkies are predicting that the beta will be available soon. Blizzard has announced that a 12-month subscription will guarantee beta access, as well as a new mount and a free copy of Diablo3.

In PC magazine, Mark Hachman quoted Blizzard as saying,

In the aftermath of the Cataclysm played out in World of Warcraft’s third expansion, Pandaria’s heroes are emerging from their land’s lush forests and cloud-ringed mountains to choose sides in the escalating war between the Alliance and the Horde and to share the extraordinary secrets of their ancient martial arts. … As tensions between the factions near a breaking point following the discovery of this new world, players will be called upon to explore Pandaria’s exotic expanses, make contact with its strange indigenous creatures, and unlock the world-changing secrets that have been hiding in the mists for millennia.

It looks like Panderia will be another graphically gorgeous WOW world, and hopefully will make for more scenic exploring than was introduced, say, in the rather grim landscape of WOW’s third expansion, “Wrath of the Lich King.”

For years, there have been rumors of an exotic land to the East – a land of mysticism and fabled panda-like humanoids. With the new release, players will have a chance to explore that world, set on a lush new continent that has escaped the ravages of war raging elsewhere in the Azeroth. It’s a land where mist hangs above dense green jungles and a new race of Pandaren live in charming bamboo huts. Players will learn that the new continent is situated on the back of a giant turtle, and that the turtle is sick – plagued by a giant thorn lodged in its side.

The introduction of the Pandaren has met with some skepticism among WOW enthusiasts. The Pandaren, after all, have been something of a longstanding joke among gamers. You have to admit that a race so closely related to a teddy bear could make a serious tank wince – one envisions a well-aimed swipe of the sword resulting in not a spurt of arterial blood, but rather a cloud of stuffing flying about the dungeon.

But perhaps it’s time the Pandaren got a little respect. These teddies will be masters of the martial arts and WOW designer Dave Kozak says the Pandaren deserve a second look.

Maybe people, because they’ve only been portrayed as cameos or only April Fool’s jokes, people think that there’s nothing to this race, and that’s not it at all,” says Kozak. “I think the Pandaren are kind of fascinating – they work hard, they play hard, they eat hard, they drink hard, and they don’t do anything half way.

That sounds like a fairly good description of the average WoW nut, so perhaps the new expansion will be the hit Blizzard is looking for to reverse its declining subscription sales.

In Panderia, gamers will have a chance to play a panda-like martial arts specialist, as well as to try their hand with the new class of monks, available to classes other than Pandera. With the level cap raised to 90, those gamers who simply can’t stand not being leveled to the max will have something to keep them in front of their computers on a ‘round-the-clock basis, at least for a few days. Hachman also reports that with the new expansion, pets will be able to battle one another, and time-trialed dungeon runs will be introduced.

Recently I’ve started to notice a trend that more and more games are becoming increasingly influenced by the Film Industry, with many game play elements, story plots and development techniques seemingly coming straight from a film studio. So I thought I’d take a look at the evidence and see if we really are being taken over by Hollywood, and if we are, is it a good thing?

Firstly I want to take a look at the usual suspects of the Movie Tie-in games. Its standard practice that with every major film release coming from the likes of Marvel, DreamWorks and Disney etc, you can expect that just before the film release the shops will be swamped with hundreds of thousands of copies of the game-of-the-film. These games are usually rushed, lack any decent content and seem to serve purely as a means to generate more money for the franchise it represents. Yes I can see their benefits as a means to bring in people who wouldn’t usually play games and the younger generation into the gamer fold, but apart from the odd exception (Chronicles of Riddick and X-Men Origins: Wolverine scored an average of 7.5 and 7.8 in review respectively) Movie Tie-ins have never really been that good.

Then there’s the games that take their story plots from Hollywood like the Modern Warfare series. When Call of Duty Released Modern Warfare it was like a breath of fresh air to an otherwise one track genre, Call of Duty and even Medal of Honour had done WW2 to death, everywhere you look if an FPS wasn’t set in some mad Sci-Fi world it was set during WW2 and Modern Warfare changed all that. It was a new concept to think about, at the time there were two major conflicts going on in the Middle East and Call of Duty capitalised on it, bringing the reality of the world we live in into the living rooms of the public. The storyline was relatively believable, being on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan myself there were a lot of things I could relate to and also for the sake of good storytelling, suspend belief with regards to the nuclear apocalypse that occurs halfway through, but on the whole Call of Duty 4 was a brilliant game, it took the focus away from WW2 which was necessary and brought it into the wars that were being fought right in front of us on the news. Now Modern Warfare 2 was a huge step down from the game that preceded it, it took a good concept and turned it into a bad movie, we had disgraced good guys trying to redeem themselves against all opposition (Capt Price), we had characters once thought dead returning unexpectedly (Ghost- AKA Gaz) and we even had a one on one standoff with the main baddie even with the cliché “I’m going to tell you my entire plan before I attempt to kill you and get foiled and die at the last minute” moment (you vs. General Shepherd). Added to all of that we had military operations being presented on a scale not seen since…WW2! I remember playing the game thinking “since when did Jerry Bruckheimer make games?”

Then Black Ops was released, and Black Ops was a game riddled with cliché. It seemed to be filled with all the aspects of a bad Cold War era movie, playing on all of America’s inexplicable fear of Communism, following a macho “Spec Ops” Operative who looks like an extra from a low budget Vietnam film (Treyarch were quoted in interview as disregarding a lot of advice from their military advisors with regards to how Special Forces would be dressed and equipped!) through missions in all of the Communist hotspots with all the explosions and actions sequences you’d expect from Rambo. For example, your character is abseiling from a helicopter which gets shot down, you then get thrown through a plate glass window and onto solid concrete in time to watch the helicopter fall past the window (a helicopter you’re still attached to, by the way) , thus begins a frantic struggle to cut the rope with your razor sharp Bowie knife before you’re dragged out of the window, then you hop up and proceed to clear the entire building on your own, I’m all for suspending belief for a story but come on!

Some games even go so far as to let the movie take over the game as shown in Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid 4. A game that boasts hours and hours of cut-scenes to the point where after half an hour of actually playing the game you need to sit back with a bucket of popcorn and crack open a beer to watch the hundredth cut-scene of the first half of the game! Of course I’m over exaggerating slightly and while I don’t deny that MGS4 is a phenomenal game, I don’t see why I have to choose between a feature film worth of cut-scenes and some incredible game play. if I skip the videos I can complete the game quicker but I miss out on a story that ties up the past 24 years of Metal Gear history, but if I watch them all I won’t complete the game in less than a fortnight! For me, if I wanted to watch a movie Hideo san, I’d have gone to the cinema.

But on the flip side to all of this, there are games that take elements of the Movie industry and turn them into something brilliant, LA Noire is a fine example of this. Using motion capture, all of the character interaction was recorded using live action performers, the conversations were recorded with highly advanced motion capture software so that you could tell if a character was lying to you during an interrogation by the expressions and “tells” on their face and the story was straight out of a 1940’s Noire detective movie which worked incredibly well to create a world that you could immerse yourself in and actually become the detective, relying on your own perceptions to decide how you would proceed rather than mashing buttons during another quick time event that seems to be the standard in games now when it comes to situations that might need some actual thought.

While I can safely say that Hollywood definitely has some influence in the game industry, I can’t work out whether it’s a good thing or not, or if I like it, but I can say that the other night I played a flash game called “Trader of Stories”, it was a simple point-and-click adventure, the artwork was awesome and the story was brilliant, it was unique, nothing exploded and once I’d completed it. I felt better than I did before I played it, and I was happy.

DC Universe Online went free-to-play earlier this month, quickly propelling its player base past the 1 million subscriber  mark.

With a portfolio that includes three successful free-to-play games – EverQuest II: Extended, Free Realms and Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures – we have extensive knowledge and experience to apply to DCUO and are thrilled to be taking the game free-to-play today, said John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment (SOE).

We’re redefining the genre and blazing a new trail in the gaming industry with the introduction of DC Universe Online. … This is the first true action MMO utilizing twitch-based combat and physics to deliver a completely unique and immersive gameplay experience that is reflective of the creativity, action and strength of the DC Universe.

DCUO transports PC and PlayStation 3 gamers into the world of artist Jim Lee and DC writers Marv Wolfman and Geoff Johns – a world where valiant heroes battle nefarious villains. Gamers can join forces with the likes of Batman and Wonder Woman to save Gotham City, or team up with world-class bad guys such as The Joker in pursuit of total world domination.

Players design their hero or villain, customizing their look and selecting from a slate of super powers. The landscape is legendary, from the darkened streets of Gotham City to Metropolis, the Justice League of America Watchtower and Arkham Asylum. Combat is fast-paced and engaging, allowing players to let their imaginations run wild. Your intrepid hero can snatch airborne scoundrels out of the air, scale walls, and hurl objects such as busses at opponents.

So here’s the scene: Lex Luthor has returned from the future, carrying a tale of treachery the likes of which we’ve never dreamed. Apparently, while our favorite superheros have been exhausting themselves battling better-known doers of demonic deeds (KA-POW !#!), the dastardly Brainiac has been gathering the strength he will need to destroy humanity, once and for all. Not since the attack of the killer tomatoes has mankind faced such peril.

Fortunately, Lex has a plan, as well as nifty new gadget. His latest invention can bestow super powers on ordinary citizens, allowing the man on the street to enjoin the struggle against the reprehensible Brainiac. That Lex Luthor – what a guy! (Unless, of course, you’re still a bit suspicious of ol’ Lex, or of billionaires in general.)

SOE’s stated goal is to create a more interactive MMORPG. Familiar RPG elements remain – a leveling system, instances, NPC quest givers, endgame progression and raids. Play is primarily PvE, but there are PvP opportunities as well. In a fun twist on standard RPG fare, players chose a superhero mentor, Superman, perhaps, or Wonder Woman, who will guild them through the universe. Good guys can rescue old ladies, while bad guys knock over a bank. There are other imaginative twists – heroes can find refuge in police stations, while villains can find safety at the nearest disreputable nightclub.

This genre-defining game puts the power of the DC Super Heroes and villains into the palm of your hands,  says SOE. DC Universe Online transforms more than 75 years of action and adventure into a fully realized immersive experience that brings players into the world of DC like never before, added Lee. It has been a fascinating experience for me and the team to come up with entertaining and engaging ways to blend the MMO and comic book worlds.

Tune in next week for the MMO tour where I will be covering the big one: World Of Warcraft

Ok, so the title is kind of redundant… we know that people are everywhere. Calm down. I’m being a tad more specific… geeks and gamers.

Again, this isn’t new news – MW3 sold over 6.5 million copies in the US and UK during the first 24 hours alone (reference here). That’s a LOT of people. No really, grossing somewhere in the $400m mark in one day is a feat only achievable by the largest of mainstream brands.

I reckon you know where this is heading… and no I’m not going to debate the difference between a nerd and a geek.

Point the first:

Gaming is now mainstream, and mainstream to the point of having easily recognised brands as household names. AAA titles can (and have) make more cash than Hollywood blockbusters.

Point the second:

This will only continue to grow. Just look at eSports. Where there is interest, there are people. Where there are people there is money/advertising. Where there is money there will be interest… ad infinitum.

To me this is kind of unbelievable. I remember knowing about a half dozen kids who would actually talk games at school, now virtually everyone I meet knows something about Battlefield 3 or is a secret WoW player. They can hold misty eyed conversations about Star Wars Galaxies and generally piss of girlfriends/wives (Often to the point of spontaneous lesbianism. No word of a lie.) with endless banter of a geek nature.

Come on, Big Bang Theory is one of the biggest shows on TV. They even have a Halo night just like we used to. There are T-shirts and bumper stickers on gaming and being geek, last week there were four stories on the BBC News website about gaming at the same time. Look I’m serious:

It’s going to be an exciting few years ahead of us, the gaming industry is a colossal powerhouse these days. It also has a new avenue opening ever wider each season: eSports. League of Legends is holding a $5m series of tournaments over the next year(ish). THAT’S A RIDICULOUS AMMOUNT OF MONEY. We have sponsored team gradually making more and more of a presence in the online world, within various gaming circles there are genuine internet celebrities, look at StarCraft2’s community, with casters such as Day9 and Husky being as popular (if not more so) than some of the games’ best players. We have casters and pro players making an absolute fortune from live streams, blogs and youtube fame.

And it keeps growing…

As you can tell, this stuff really excites me. I’ve watched gaming go from the early consoles and PC’s to the net-café experience, then internet communities and competitive LAN. Who knows, in a few more years will we be watching the Counter Strike 3 world finals on Sky Sports 1? Unlikely, but possible. How cool is that?

Dukes

Minecraft

Minecraft is the older of the two with development starting mid 2009 and sees you placed in a massive 3D world where you explore and mine 1m² blocks of various materials to build pretty much whatever you want, and occasionally fight off skeleton archers, zombies, suicide bomber cactuses and a few other enemies when the sun goes down. It’s an immensely huge world and you’re pretty much limited to what you can build by your imagination and the amount of hours you are willing to put into the game, I decided it would be a good idea to build a nuclear submarine to scale once, and after the mining of the ore, digging out the dry dock and finally building the thing I emerged from my house several weeks later to find that the police had declared me legally dead. The multiplayer is very good as well with hundreds of servers out there for players and friends to get into a world and build a community from scratch, and if they want, allow the other players to grief the hell out of it! But the multiplayer does lag an awful lot sometimes because even a computer that’s more powerful than the sun will struggle with trying to render some of the colossal structures people have built, like a 1:1 scale replica of the Starship Enterprise!

But for a game that has been in development as long as it has I was disappointed at how slowly the updates were coming and up until recently the single player was devoid of content and was very much a case of “here’s a world, go nuts!”. There was no tutorial, no quests, nothing to really explore, however, now with the addition of NPC villages, experience orbs, new biome generator and new Mobs to fight, the final game looks to be very good indeed.

Terraria

When Terraria was released in May 2011 a lot of people wrote it off as a 2D rip-off of Minecraft, and they would be forgiven for that as the basic premise is the same, you are in a huge randomly generated world, go build stuff! Even the colour palette and textures are remarkably similar. But once you get into the game I find that Terraria is everything Minecraft wishes it could be. there is a huge amount more content in the game than there is in Minecraft, which is fair as since they’re not having to render everything in 3D the developers would have more time to cram the game full of fun stuff to do, like dungeon exploration, boss fights, randomly spawning swarms of enemies and just like Minecraft, dig up materials and build something massive. The equipment and crafting side of Terraria puts Minecraft in the shade, with you being able to craft various types of weapons and armour that gives your character buffs like being able to run faster or be immune to lava, you can collect falling stars which give you mana and the ability to cast spells and you can even collect different guns from dungeons and boss fights! I was giggling like a school kid when I was running around trying to kill “The eye of Cthulhu” with a lightsaber and a minigun whilst wearing armour made of meteorite! The multiplayer is so much fun too with you being able to bring in any number of friends into your world to run around, explore, build stuff and fight enemies in, you can also set team colours to your characters for some decent PvP.

The only downside I found to Terraria is that you don’t get the same sense of scale as you do in Minecraft and your houses, however big, lack the same grandeur they would were they fully 3D, but I find that the 2D side scrolling world, with the RPG style interface, reminded me of playing the SNES back when I was a kid, and that gave me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

Conclusion

So If you’re willing to write off the rest of the year in order to get the sense of satisfaction that only comes from levelling a mountain in order to build a giant Castle Greyskull then get Minecraft, but if you want to play a fun, retro looking game that will have you grinning from ear to ear as you fight off zombie hordes and floating eyeballs with magic spells and a laser gun then get Terraria…also its cheaper and it’s on Steam!

Vanguard was an ambitious MMO by Sigil Games Online which started development in early 2002, the original distribution was to be handled by Microsoft for a planned release in 2006-2007, this however did not pan out as expected. Sigil and Microsoft had a creative fallout in 2006 and eventually Sigil bought the distribution rights back from Microsoft and partnered up with Sony Online Entertainment, this decision saw many already disgruntled SOE customers start to turn away from Vanguard before the game was even released.
Vanguard was eventually released in January 2007 under pressure from SOE and investors but was extremely unfinished and was suffering from lack of content and bugs by the hundreds. The initial reception of the game was very poor with the title winning Gamespy’s “Biggest Disappointment” award for 2007, Vanguard also won the awards in the categories for “Least Fun”, “Most Desolate” and “Lamest Launch” in the MMORPG.com MMOWTF Awards for the worst games of 2007.

The story so far:

• Late 2001 an excellent team of developers gets together, including many of the original Everquest devs, to make Vanguard.
• Development began in early 2002 and a publishing deal with Microsoft was announced in April 2002.
• The game’s title was announced on March 16, 2004, exactly five years after EverQuest was released
• In May 2006 Sigil reacquired the marketing rights to Vanguard from Microsoft and announced that Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) would become the co-publishers of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.
• Beta Testing for the game began in-house in August 2005 and continued until January 23, 2007.
• The game officially launched worldwide on January 30th to lukewarm reviews and widespread criticism.
• On May 15, 2007, four months after the game’s release, Sony Online Entertainment announced they had acquired all assets of Sigil and retained much of the Vanguard development team to work for Sony and to continue developing Vanguard.
• Eurogamer website completed a 1-10 level test pitting Vanguard against Everquest 2 – they promptly decided to uninstall Everquest 2, stating Vanguard had come along very well during the bug fixing SOE had made.
• 2007-current, small amounts of dedicated development start to shape the game into something far more enjoyable.

Current state of the game:

Vanguard is very playable, my time testing the game was enjoyable and it seems to have many features larger MMO’s simply do not, the only thing missing is people.. It all seemed a little desolate with players spread far and wide in this large MMO world. In December 2009 the Vanguard team announced via the forums that larger ambitious targets and expansions would be put on hold to concentrate on further polishing the game and increasing the player base, this seems like the right thing to do and was well received by the MMO community.

I firmly believe that Vanguard will in the near future be a well polished and unique MMO to play.. The community is strong yet small and the forums are active with players asking whether it is time to return yet.

Dark and light

Dark and light was the self proclaimed “Biggest MMO you have ever seen” which was actually pretty bad news if you were one of the ever dwindling number of players still running around this shell of a game before the end. Marred by a disgustingly premature release, financial woes and court cases Dark and Light has had a long and painful trip to this list.

Development on Dark and Light started by NP Cube in 2002 and was followed by a drawn out beta period which seemed to be lacking direction, fans got impatient and started “demanding” results, this coupled with financial pressures lead to developer NP Cube and publisher Farlan Entertainment releasing the game prematurely.

At release large parts of the game where unfinished and there where massive bugs and server issues which caused untold damage to the future of the game, the problems involved repeated roll-backs in which entire guilds were disbanded as the data associating the players was not recorded correctly. The client also had compatibility issues with ATI cards, giving many ATI users unacceptably low frame rates.

The story:

• Development starts 2002
• Released 2006
• Late 2006 Pulisher Farlan Entertainment “acknowledges that the game was released prematurely due to pressure from its investors and from the gaming community.”
• April, 2007 VWORLD file a lawsuit against developer NPCube on the grounds of software and technology counterfeit, non-respect of the right to being credited and paternity, unfair competition and parasitism.
• NPCube then sue VWORLD before the Commercial Court of Clermont-Ferrand during September 2007 on the grounds of unfair competition and damage to NPCube’s reputation.
• March, 2008, NPCube is entirely dismissed of all its claims by the Commercial Court of Clermont-Ferrand, which ruled that the various failures encountered by NPCube were by no means imputable to VWORLD.
• NPCube is convicted and fined €50,000 in damages to VWORLD in the same case.
• Mid 2008 NPCube close their doors due to financial difficulties.

Current state of the game:

Dark and light was around early 2010 running a free to play model with a barely functioning website but has now closed its doors.

Star Wars Galaxies

Galaxies was a completely new and not yet been repeated concept for the MMO generation, a sandbox game which opened the doors for players with more imaginative background to create their own content. The original game, launched by Verant Interactive (Later to be acquired by SOE) and LucasArts Entertainment was something in its own league, it completely broke the MMO mould and continues to be one of the only games in this genre of sandbox MMO’s. With next to no questing and nothing instanced at all it was a massive open world where players had no one holding their hand through “progression”, the game also lacked a traditional levelling system in favour of skill masteries which could be switched around and mixed up as the player saw fit.

The game had flaws, lack of immediate content and countless early bugs caused frustrating gameplay, the servers did however start filling up rapidly from the massive pre-game community following. The end became clear when SOE announced sweeping gameplay changes in the form of a patch called the CU (Combat Upgrade), the community was barely consulted on these changes which many players felt took many core aspects of the game away, despite this things carried on. The end truly came when SOE launched another massive publish which completely changed nearly all aspects of the game, this was called the NGE (New Game Enhancements), this publish emptied the servers rapidly as the players lost faith in the developers.

The story so far:

Development starts in 2000
March 2000 IGN announce that SWG could be “ one of the biggest games of all times.”

Expansion: Jump to Lightspeed is announced in 2001, two years before the game is released

• Late 2001 the website is launched, this creates the biggest pre-release community buzz ever seen
• Announced release date is pushed back early 2003 as game is unfinished
• Game is released June 2003, The game was praised for its lush graphics, liberal use of the movie soundtracks, massive world size, character customization, creative creature ecology, complex skill system, player economy interdependencies and its sandbox approach. Some reviewers however criticised the complexity and lack of quests/missions.
• First Jedi unlocked November 2003
• SOE release the Combat Upgrade (CU) April 2005 Media outlets criticized the changes while subscription cancellations rose.
• Another major update called the “New Game Enhancements” (NGE) was implemented on 15 November 2005, kept secret from the players until 24 hours upon release this patch completely changed many key aspects of gameplay, this created huge demonstrations in game from the majority of players.
• In early 2006, unconfirmed reports showed that only 10,363 subscribers were playing on a particular Friday night.
• Twelve servers close in October 2009.

Current state of the game:

On June 24, 2011, SOE announced that Star Wars Galaxies will be shutting down. The date announced for this is December 15, 2011. According to the announcement, both LucasArts and SOE came to the agreement. “If you are an active subscriber in good standing as of September 15, 2011, then you can play for free for the final months”

Hellgate: London

Set in a post-apocalyptic London in the year 2038 Hellgate: London was set to be a completely unique entry to the MMO market, beginning original development by Flagship Studios in 2005 and with a development team originating from Blizzard entertainments Diablo devs it was to be well made as well, the reality however was far from the dream. The game was released in 2007 to a very luke-warm reception from critics and gamers alike, there was limited content and enough bugs to cause major issues for some gamers. The game also had a new payment system which allowed players to buy “lifetime” subscriptions for a fee, this lead to major disappointment at the end for players who took advantage of the service.

The story so far:

• October 31, 2007 – Hellgate: London is released in the USA on Halloween.
• January 21, 2008 – The first major content update ‘The Stonehenge Chronicles’ was scheduled for release but postponed.
• February 10, 2008 – In an IRC chat conference with Hellgate London developers, it was revealed that promised subscriber holiday event development would be halted.
• February 17, 2008 – The client function /who was disabled. It returned the present number of players online.
• March 26, 2008 – It was announced that Comerica Bank would provide game funding assistance, using Hellgate: London as collateral, for Flagship Studios so that they would not “rely upon a publisher’s investment” to support ongoing development of their games.
• February 1, 2009 – servers are officially shut down and Hellgate: London temporarily dies.
• Mid 2009 – HanbitSoft, distributors for Blizzard entertainment buy rights to Hellgate: London and begin development for release to the Asian market and planned release for the EU/US market.

Current state of the game:

At present Hellgate: London is not active in the EU or US but current owners HanbitSoft are planning a re-release with significant improvements and more content, I for one hope this works out because the premise for the game is very good. They will have to break through the sour barrier left behind from 2008 however, which will not be easy as gamers don’t generally forgive and forget.

Guild drama is a time-honoured MMO tradition. What better way to keep our minds off our gaming-induced carpal tunnel syndrome? I’ve been playing MMOs since EQ1 launched, and have seen all manner of mayhem. I’ve heard of guilds crumbling over extended tours of duty and abbreviated marriages, unplanned pregnancies and unanticipated incarcerations. Accounts get hacked, parents seize computers, officers go into witness protection, pot-bellied pigs eat laptops (OK, OK, pot-bellied-pig problems are unusual.). Some of the meltdowns I’ve witnessed lead me to conclude that belonging to a guild is as much a cover-your-ass situation as buying flood insurance in New Orleans.

In most games, guild leaders are like feudal lords and hold absolute power over their lowly serfs. If they decide to screw people over, people can get pretty well, well, screwed over.

My most recent guild drama (trauma) unfolded something like this: The guild was just starting to raid. Our bank was well stocked. The officers were terrific. Recruitment was on a roll. The only problem was that the guild leader, henceforth He Who Shall Not Be Named (HWSNBN), was AWOL. For months. One day, I logged on to see a big announcement that HWSNBN was back, and we could now expect progression. …Like we’d been drinking at the inn for three months awaiting his return. So anyway, there was one reported sighting of our fearless leader, and then he poofed again.

Eventually the officers petitioned to have him replaced, but HWSNBN apparently had been logging on once every 30 days in anticipation of just such a move. Now, I wasn’t an officer, so I was spared much of the ensuing bloodshed, but according to informed sources the officers submitted individual petitions explaining the situation and asking that we be allowed to reform without the aforementioned flake. However, when HWSNBN learned of the impending hostile takeover, he logged on just long enough to gkick everyone and abscond with our bank account. No one had the heart to start another level-one guild with an echoing bank vault. People scattered to other guilds and servers, and a good thing was spoiled.

So, take heed all you trusting elves and dwarves – no game that I have found provides any real protection against this level of malfeasance. Of course, I assume nastiness of this magnitude is relatively rare. Long-absent guild leaders usually have just lost interest in the game, or have been overtaken by real-life responsibilities, and there are generally provisions for those leaders’ eventual replacement. But in most games, guild leaders are like feudal lords and hold absolute power over their lowly serfs. If they decide to screw people over, people can get pretty well, well, screwed over.

It’s best to be prepared for anything. A new guild might function best with a leader who’s retained pretty much all the authority. This makes sense until that leader can determine whom he can count on. But when a core group of people has formed, and some have demonstrated commitment and a willingness to put the guild’s progression ahead of their own, responsibilities and perks should be shared to whatever extent seems prudent. There definitely should be a co-leader or second-in-command who could take over leadership if necessary. People other than the leader should have bank withdrawal privileges.

Be suspicious if the leader insists on retaining absolute power, and if there’s reason to suspect he doesn’t warrant the trust you’ve placed in him, don’t wait. Provide guild members with some kind of out-of-guild contact. This might actually precipitate the ultimate confrontation, but better that then lose everyone. Make sure that people who don’t log in every day, or hang out in vent, feel included. If disaster appears imminent, look for a way to secure at least some of your bank deposits. Take whatever steps you can to protect yourselves from a vengeful GM.

Better yet, find out where he lives.

Rift

Rift, now eight months out of Beta, takes players into a world that’s at once familiar to fantasy RPG fans and surprisingly fresh. Rift is a vastly improved EverQuest 1, or perhaps a WoW for those seeking greater complexity and depth. The graphics are astonishing, and gameplay readably adaptable to personal style. You can easily jump in and play a casual game, or delve into a world of great intricacy.

Above all, Rift offers flexibility. An innovative class system allows a single character to develop two or more roles – tank, DPS, healer or support. In another distinct improvement over the classic RPG, characters continue to gain experience after reaching the level cap, and can use that additional experience to acquire new skills. Perhaps best of all, players can go the usual route of questing and running dungeons, or play their own game by following alternative quest lines, solving puzzles, reaching barely accessible treasure caches, or battling MOBs pouring out of the rifts that tear open across Telara. The gae can be frustrating, but there’s always something productive to do.

Detractors note that Rift offers the rather tired old stable of fantasy RPG archetypes – warriors, clerics, rogues and mages. Had the developers stopped there, gamers would be looking at a seriously uninspired set of choices. It’s pretty hard, after all, to get enthusiastic about gearing up one more baby warrior.

But Rift opens a world of possibilities with an innovative class system that allows a developed character to assume a variety of roles. A single character can start the evening throwing fireballs, then switch to a new set of abilities and take over healing, or support the group with an effective set of buffs and debuffs. The more skills trained and roles purchased, the greater the character’s flexibility. This system is a huge improvement over the usual need to start back at level 1 if you get sick of casting heals or collecting dents in your tank’s helmet.
Invasions add a shiny-new aspect to the standard MMO fantasy experience. Across Telara, rifts open spontaneously, or can be triggered by players. A zone-wide announcement calls on players to help defeat invaders pouring from the tear. Those who respond will be neatly popped into a raid, and rewarded according to their contribution to the struggle. That award, often in the form of planarite (a sort of alternative currency), can be used to purchase rare and valuable goodies.

Perhaps Rift’s most important new development came with the 1.5 patch, which allows experience to accrue past the level 50 cap. With that additional experience, players can work on a new set of abilities. This is a boon to players wanting to do something other than sit around waiting for the next raid. 1.5 also ushered in one- and two-man dungeons, giving players another alternative to questing or running five-man instances.

Rift’s LFG system is quite good. Players select the role they want to play, and be queued automatically for a specific dungeon or quest. They can also earn a bit of extra coin by taking their chances on a random dungeon assignment. With a cross-server LFG system, the wait time is usually pretty short, particularly for a random dungeon. When a spot opens up, the player pops right into the group. The system isn’t perfect – there’s no opportunity to talk to the other group members before being assigned, so you can make sure it’s the kind of run you want. This can be a problem if, for example, you want to do the second boss in the dungeon, and you get recruited to fill an opening in a group that’s on the last boss. Still, Rift’s system beats the hell out of sitting around for an hour spamming your LFG message.

Rift tends to be a pretty friendly place, with lots guilds geared toward adults or families, socializing or raiding. That doesn’t mean the game has escaped the invasion of self-proclaimed experts who seemingly have nothing better to do than pounce on anyone asking what they think is a dumb question. Fortunately, Rift has retained the old reliable “ignore” command.
The riftgame.com web site is pretty comprehensive, and widespread interest in the game has spawned independent sites covering just about any information you’re looking for. In-game support is also pretty good. You might have to wait a while, but will get taken care of eventually. Bugs are usually taken care of in a timely fashion – not always, but usually.

Despite significant innovations, Rift has a way to go. The crafting system, for example, is tired and tiresome – skilling up is boring and even a fully developed crafter is only occasionally lucrative. Some of us love crafting, and it would be nice if, once you’ve put in the time, you could make some serious coin. As things stand in Telara, a high-level alchemist has the earning potential of an art-history major. The developers could do a lot better. Maybe they will.

Well, come on – it’s only fair to recognise the effort put into making the expo what it is…

After getting up early and ploughing through the London traffic, our bleary eyed crew of gamers made it to the expo (almost on time…) and we saw many, many shiny things:

Skyrim

Now the folks at the newest instalment of the Elder Scrolls series were very mean. No photography was allowed. That made us sad. The game was good though! Another spectacular world to explore, with some great character models and just awesome views. The gameplay seemed very much the same as Oblivion to me, but we’ll see what other tweaks and changes are made before the game is finally released.

Favourite colour: Black
Game they regretted buying: None apparently!

Wargaming.net – World Of Tanks

Well, aside from the two real WWII tanks sat outside the front Earls Court – these guys had a fair sized stand offering all things tank. And the most booth girls. And the best freebies.
I had a pretty good chat with the guys and girls here, they’re a friendly bunch! Aside from giving us mountains of freebies, we got talking about World Of Warplanes and the forthcoming World Of Battleships. There’s some good news folks, 100% confirmed that World of planes will be joystick compatible! JOY. The guys were also fairly sure that World of planes was going to get a real big EU push, unlike World of Tanks that was more centred around the Russian market (and who can blame them, they’ve made some awesome tanks.). I quizzed them further:

Favourite colour: Red!
Game they regretted buying: Any F1 game.

Guild Wars 2

Wow. This stand was just rammed all day, and with good cause! I got to have a pretty good little play around with Guild Wars 2, and apart from being visually amazing, the game plays smoothly and sexily with everthing that the hype has built to. I’m no MMO player, but man I enjoyed this! There’s a real action feel to the combat, far more visceral then the others I’ve dabbled with! I got chatting to the guys there as well:
Their main sell on Guild Wars 2 is it’s dynamic world context, the open quests, fantastic environments and immersion. Everyone we spoke to just couldn’t get enough of this, and with good cause…
This game is pretty, it’s fun and oh my, oh my it’s also going to be FREE. Just get on it.

Favourite colour: Blue
Game they regretted buying: Tactical failure to answer question.

Modern Warfare 3

*Note, of everyone we spoke to, the staff at MW3 were the only ones to give us a disclaimer… so please note: The views of the staff expressed here are their own, blah blah blah. Ok?
I don’t know if you knew this, but the Call Of Duty series are kind of a big deal. Modern Warfare 3 represents the most recent instalment in the incredibly popular series, and it looks absolutely set to live up to the fans expectations. The game looked great, really smooth, fantastically animated with some incredible player models and terrain, but it’s all in the playing. The CoD series have always played well, and the Modern Warfare instalments doubly so – MW3 was so much fun to play. We got a good go at the new co-op wave defence mode – it’s a bit like the old Nazi zombies, but without the Nazi zombies. More everything… A special note goes to the new 40mm GRENADE SENTRY. Yup, it made me happy.
The staff we spoke to were really keen on the little features of the new MW3, they loved the new multiplayer system, they loved the new maps and co-op (especially the survival modes), and were keen as always to point out the new spangly graphics and single player.

Favourite colour: Purple
Game they regretted buying: Dead or Alive 4 (yeah, ouch…)

Battlefield 3 (Now officially cures cancer.)

Ok, so behind the ominous 18+ cordon lay the awesome amount of floorspace dedicated to BF3, and the game did not disappoint. The folks at EA really have something to be proud of here, Battlefield 3 is beautiful. Visually spectacular, the sound is (if possible) even better than Bad Comany 2′s award winning effects. We got a short attempt at the multiplayer and single player experiences, the PC multiplayer was immense, totally immersive and incredibly fluid. I honestly cannot do the short time I had playing it justice, it was fantasic. I also had a go at the single player on the PS3, and again the fluidity and polish really shone through. Enemy AI was a million times better than Bad Company, and the levels infinitely more interesting as well!
I got chatting to the good folks from EA/Dice: Their selling points for Battlefield 3 were it’s new engine, with all the stunning physics, visuals and sound that the Frostbite 2 engine gives. They were also proud to have prone put back into Battlefield, as well as deployable MG style weapons for proper fire support. In particular they were keen to point out that they’d collaborated with the Swedish army to take a whole load of guns and microphones into a forest and shoot/record the shit out of everything possible. Win.

Favourite colour: Teal
Game they regretted buying: Tactical failure to answer question.

End Of Nations

Not lying, I’d never heard of this up and coming free-to-play RTS title before. The folks at the stand were really friendly, and genuinely seemed to love the game they were working on. The game is still in it’s early days, but coming from the guys who brought us all things C&C is still a pretty fair title. Free to play games are getting better and better all the time, and I’m hoping this one keeps up it’s first appearances. Based around limited unit selection and controllable map areas, the game utilises map control and deployable defences to secure and income,  then use (rather expensive) support and unit abilities to push down your opponents base.
Talking a bit more with the guys here, they were very keen to talk about the games ‘Instance’ like maps, where friends/clans can battle over a real world risk-like map. Cool stuff indeed. Beta sign ups now!

Favourite colour: Blue
Game they regretted buying: The Sims… (for his misses!)

Ace Combat: Assault Horizon

We stopped to play this one just because we were running out of other titles to have a go at, and it was nearly lunch. But it looks AWESOME. The controls took a bit of getting used to, but the visuals are fantastic and the game surprising fun! Keep your eyes out folks, this took us by surprise and looks like something for you flyboys!

Counter Strike: Global Offensive

OK, so it was the console version. I know, I know. Counter strike with a control pad? NO. NEVER. Maybe? There was only a small offering from valve, just the ten machines set up playing on ye olde dust. But it was a good insight into the game, we got to play a handful of rounds – CS does work on the console! I know, crazy eh? The menus are intuitive and the maps nicely tweaked, that competitive feel is still there, that spark in CS is still alive. It’s hard to describe but I wasn’t disappointed, this is going to be a breath of fresh air for CS players.

Favourite colour: Blue
Game they regretted buying: Tactical failure to answer question.

RAGE

Bethesda and iD combine forces, and wow the world has trembled… the mighty feat of technology that is RAGE was on display with a massive area of consoles set up, the gameplay is smooth, beatuiful and generally everything you’d expect from the guys who invented the first person shooter.
The guys from Bethesda who chatted to us were all keen to tell us about the games graphical prowess,  and rightly so! It was very smooth, very pretty and they explained some technical goop about the texturing being done in a new fancy way, and that you’ll never see repeat textures in the environment. That’s nice. We had a brief talk about the multiplayer, and the guys explained to us how RAGE’s multiplayer isn’t just another frag match experience, it’s all about the racing element they’ve built, and they’ve put a lot of polish into it!

Favourite colour: Red
Game they regretted buying: WoW

Summary

We have some awesome releases coming and I for one am ready to play a lot of games this year…
The expo was well run, and well laid out – get in next time folks!