MMO Clerks

“With such a vibrant and active community as The Sims has, we wanted to build even further on the already immense offline experience, by offering players additional functionality, content and tools available online through the game,” said Sims 3 executive producer Ben Bell in this morning’s announcement.
To that end, EA has added a huge number of features to the upcoming game’s online features catalogue. A full verbatim list can be found below, but players should be pleased to learn of the game’s “Create A Movie” mode, an Xbox Live Marketplace-esque downloadable content store and even further ways to share your created content with other Sims fans.
The Sims 3 launches on the PC, Mac, iPhone and iPod Touch on June 2.
A full list of the game’s online features, courtesy EA’s official announcement:
Key Online Elements Include:
The Sims 3 Store: Included with purchase of the game is $10 worth of SimPoints, which players [...]

Original post by Earnest Cavalli

Click here to view the embedded video.
Sega just released the Mazuri Adventure Pack on the Xbox 360, this pack will deliver three new stages and three new missions.
Right now this is only for Xbox 360 owners, but might/should be released later for Playstation 3 owners.
The pack will run you 250 points, what a bargain, right?
[Thanks Sanus]

Original post by George

We’ve spoken about Neo Steam a few times now as the upcoming steampunk MMO being re-engineered for English speaking audiences by Atlus Online, the new division of Atlus Games. What we haven’t mentioned, however, is that there will be two versions of Neo Steam for English audiences — the Atlus American version and Gamigo’s European version.
Gamigo has recently thrown open the doors on their open beta test for Neo Steam, letting all interested parties enter the battle between Rogwel and Elerd. For the sake of not confusing the two games, Gamigo has subtitled their version “Steam Wars Begin” while Atlus has dubbed their version, “Neo Steam: The Shattered Continent,” as we have reported on before.
So if you’re itching to see what exactly Atlus is working on, you can jump over to Gamigo to sign up for a free account and check out the game. We’re excited to [...]

Original post by Colin Brennan

Quite unexpectedly, there’s not just one winner of the inaugural Linden Prize, there’s two. Last week, we covered the finalists (and a pretty worthy bunch at that). Today, the Lab is handing out a pair of Linden Prizes. Each of the winners receives Linden Dollars to the value of US$10,000.
The Linden Prize itself is open to Second Life users and organizations who have an innovative in-world project that improves the way people work, learn and communicate in their daily lives outside of the virtual world and who are willing to participate in Linden Lab marketing efforts.
And the winners are…
Continue reading Linden Lab awards a pair of Linden Prizes
Filed under: Contests, Culture, News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds
Linden Lab awards a pair of Linden Prizes originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 30 Apr 2009 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Original post by Tateru Nino

Age of Conan’s game director Craig Morrison has penned a ’state of the game’ letter for April, primarily to discuss progress on the upcoming patch 1.05. Undoubtedly the biggest piece of information to come out of the letter is the news that players will be able to create a new character that starts at level 50 when the patch hits. There are, of course, a couple of caveats to this; the option is only available to players that have a character who is level 50 or higher, and it only works once. Players who reach level 50 for the first time after the patch will also get their chance to roll a new 50 of any class, but it sounds like it’s a one-per-account offer, not per-character.
Morrison explained that the re-roll is being offered so that people can try out a new class with updated 1.05 feats and skills, without [...]

Original post by William Dobson

The Council of Stellar Management in the sci-fi game EVE Online is a fairly unique concept in the massively multiplayer online game industry. As an MMO matures and the number of subscribers increases by thousands of new players every year, representing very different playstyles and outlooks on how the game is evolving, there are few companies out there that would ask the players themselves to advise on how best to move forward. But this is exactly what CCP Games is doing with EVE.
Following their GDC 2009 presentation on virtual democracies, Massively had a chance to speak with Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson, CCP’s lead economist, (also know as Dr. EyjoG) and Pétur Jóhannes Óskarsson, a researcher at CCP who is in the unique position of pursuing a Master’s degree in Philosophy while facilitating a system where political philosophies can play out virtually.
Continue reading Massively speaks with EVE Online devs about Council of [...]

Original post by James Egan

When dealing with a game that’s already known for incorporating the best features of many different MMOs into its core design, it was only a matter of time until some aspect of Warhammer Online showed up inside of Runes of Magic. And now, that piece of design has revealed itself — public quests in the form of new “public encounters.”

Runes of Magic has announced their first encounter, “Attack on Segarth Outpost,” as a battle between the defenders of Segarth Outpost and the wolves of the forest. The setup for the encounter is a classic public quest setup featuring 3 waves of wolf attackers that concludes with the appearance of Axis, the wolf king. If players should be successful in destroying Axis, he will leave behind a treasure box filled with all sorts of goodies for players to collect.
This is only the first of the public encounters, and Runewaker Entertainment’s Tony [...]

Original post by Colin Brennan

No matter what hour of the day you log in, there’s generally always someone around. Early morning? People are checking the auction house, maybe trying to finish one last mission, checking game mail, or doing some quick tradeskilling. Come the evenings and weekends of course, the server population goes up as folks get off from work and settle in. Some stay up late to game with friends, others get up earlier to enjoy a quieter server. As for our team here at Massively, we’ve got a bit of everything from crazy wee morning hours gamers to a pretty hardcore late-night crew. We figured we’d ask you; when is your gaming primetime? Are you a fan of early mornings, enjoying gaming with your morning coffee? Perhaps you’re an evenings and weekends gamer, with all those adult responsibilities keeping you away from the keys? Maybe you like to grab an hour of [...]

Original post by Krystalle Voecks

It’s impressive to see it in motion. I must have it!

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Tags: PS3, PLAYSTATION 3, tekken 6

Original post by Tosh Hatch

We are a little later with this review than we had hoped and because of this we realise that many of you will have already bought the game, played it, reviewed it in some random forums and won a t-shirt.  So we thought we would try something a little different with this one.
Instead of a full, in-depth, review of OutRun Online Arcade, we have three different (less in-depth) views on the game from myself (Graham), Chris and George.  You might be surprised to see how different our opinions on the game turn out.
So without further ado, read our opinions on OutRun Online Arcade after the break.

George:
I have to say, booting up OutRun Live Arcade put a big smile on my face. That same stupid smile I had when I first play OutRun 2 on my Xbox. What makes OutRun so awesome? I think for me is the moribund genre that [...]

Original post by Graham