After only one year on the market, Tabula Rasa, the science fiction MMORPG from developer NCsoft, has announced it will be shutting down its service on February 28, 2009. According to a statement made on the Tabula Rasa news page by the TR development team, the game’s poor performance is the primary reason for the [...]
Continue reading...Saturday, November 15, 2008
When I wrote about Age of Conan and Warhammer Online preparing to make their splash in the Korean MMO market, I couldn’t help but wonder if the games would reach a similar level of success as they did in the US. So far, I’m still going to stick with my prediction and say no. In the [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, August 14, 2008
Fantasy MMORPGs are a tricky thing to report one’s impressions on. Here is a genre of game whose very design is intended to be epic and time-consuming, providing players with dozens upon dozens of hours of large, suitably “massive” tasks like exploring a sprawling new game world, battling and questing your way through a rich, [...]
Continue reading...Friday, May 16, 2008
In this week’s episode, Jesse covers the Video Game Ratings Enforcement Act, Wii Fit’s unabashed honesty, DRM issues with Mass Effect on the PC and E3’s growing lack of exhibitors.
Continue reading...Friday, May 2, 2008
Coming on the heels of an announcement that Activision will not be in attendance at E3 and that Activision and Vivendi Games are leaving the ESA, there is news that Foundation 9 and NCsoft will not be attending the annual entertainment expo. The industry show has been in turmoil ever since the decision was made [...]
Continue reading...Friday, April 11, 2008
Over 40,000 people die every year in the United States in car accidents. That’s just a little over 100 people per day. And yet, somehow, people remain fascinated by cars and racing and the site of two cars smashing into one another like metal behemoths at war. I suppose it should come as no surprise [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, April 10, 2008
European pirates, guard your jugulars: intellectual property holders have released the hounds. Today, City of Heroes publisher NCsoft announced that it will actively pursue court orders to shut down illegally operating game servers in Eastern Europe; while the UK-based ELSPA disclosed that it had seized 85,000 discs worth of counterfeit Nintendo DS software.
Continue reading...Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Whether there’s a growing trend away from painstakingly crafting proprietary toolsets for each new game, or whether game devs just like a coat of sugary gloss on their character models, Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 is making a middleware mint. EA, for one, simply can’t get enough.
Continue reading...Friday, April 4, 2008
Video game advertising partner Double Fusion is just full of bright ideas on how to make advertisements acceptable to Joe Gamer. Since authentic, vintage product placement won’t exactly work in a futuristic MMO like City of Heroes, NCsoft announced yesterday that their in-game ads will be completely optional.
Continue reading...Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Enjoy the MMO experience in City of Heroes? Tabula Rasa? Guild Wars? Like the powerful graphical possibilities present in Gears of War and BioShock? What if you could have both? Today, NCsoft revealed that two new “top-tier” MMOs would be powered by Unreal Engine 3.
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Friday, November 21, 2008
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