Free Floating Hostility: Microsoft did it again

They did it again. Microsoft is one of those companies, which seem to think, that instead of making better products you dominate market by locking competitors off. Earlier this week Motiga, developer of upcoming MOBA Gigantic announced at PAX East that their game will be available only on Xbox One and Windows 10.

This is not the first time Microsoft is pulling stunt like this. Last year they made a deal with Crystal Dynamics - developer behind current installment of Tomb Raider franchise. Upcoming Raise of the Tomb Raider will be Xbox exclusive at launch. PC and PlayStation players will probably get it at some point in time. Let's just hope this will not take as much as getting GTA V to PC market.

Please don't screw this up...

If you were paying attention to the news lately you probably know last few weeks were not good for Everquest franchise. After SOE has been acquired by investment firm Columbus Nova several members of Everquest 2 and Everquest Next teams were laid off. A week after Terry Michaels revealed during livestream that when it comes to Everquest Next the matter of business model is now open for debate and they are considering alternatives to free to play. Also Daybreak will not continue to cooperate with Storybricks. I have finally squeezed some free time out of my packed daily schedule to write about all of this. So here's my view on recent events.

Derail the train: why Edge of the Mists needs to be fixed

Almost a year ago if you wanted to level your character up to 80 in Guild Wars 2 as fast as possible you had to go to Queensdale (one of the starting zones) and follow the champion train. This was very efficient way of leveling character - no argument about that. You got constant stream of exp from events and large amount of loot. There was no skill involved in doing this. Sheer number of participants guaranteed that any champion, no matter how difficult do beat with a small group, will be dead in 10 seconds or less. Unfortunately train had one nasty side effect - it unleashed upon the game large population of people, that at the level 80 didn't know how to play their class.

Free Floating Hostility: How ArenaNet killed the dailies for me

So here's my first shot at a column. I called it "Free Floating Hostility" because I'm going to write a piece every time something i get really pissed of at something game-related. Topic for today is Guild Wars 2 and the way daily achievements work in this MMO. I recently came back to the game after six months break and discovered some bizarre changes to few of the core mechanics. What I like the least is new way dailies are completed. While playing the game one thing boggled my mind...
  

Subs are here to stay

Some may argue that 2014 was last year that business executives in MMO industry thought they can launch successful game with subscription. We had two high profile releases: ESO and Wildstar. Both games launched with sub and after few months fizzled. There have been rumors about Elder Scrolls going F2P/B2P for quite some time. Many expect this to happen when game launches on consoles. Wildstar with huge layoffs and population under million is not doing better than ESO. Suits at NCsoft are certainly analyzing pros and cons of conversion. What about other publishers? Do they look at these two games and draw conclusions? Of course they do. However lesson they learn here is different from what you may think.

2015 Predictions

If you're fan of MMOs like me chances are good that 2014 was for you a year of disappointment. Every big game that launched had either serious design flaws (Wildstar) or was released without proper testing (ArcheAge) or both (The Elder Scrolls Online). In 2015 we will get no major release and maybe alpha access to 2 MMOs, see below for details. There are few expansions worth checking out. Some already announced and some expected - I'm looking at you Guild Wars 2. To summarize 2015 will not be as interesting as 2014 but there are still few things to watch out for.