MMO News Wrap Up

If you're not too familiar with Massively Multiplayer Online Games then, yes, there is more to the genre than World of Warcraft. In fact, new MMOs spring up every day, but only a handful manage to stay the course. So with no further ado, welcome to this week's MMO wrap-up. It's a compilation of all the big announcements about existing and upcoming games in one place, and this week we talk about WoW, Champions Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Darkfall, Funcom's new project 'The Secret World', Star Trek Online, Aion, Lord of the Rings Online and EVE.

We'll kick off with the juggernaut that is WoW; a short time ago, Blizzard announced to players that it would be introducing a new paid service that allowed them to change the faction of their characters. Despite the fact that many players had been asking for this ability since the game began, an ability which Blizzard told them was unlikely to ever happen, many fans were unhappy with the news. Well, unhappy doesn't really cover it. To use a gaming term, QQ fits the bill a little better. And QQ they did, as the official forums lit up like a Christmas tree, with disgruntled players crying foul, claiming that Blizzard was selling out the integrity of the game. Something that had always been sacred, a player's choice of faction which they will be stuck with for the life of a character, was about to become 'frivolous'.

That's how some players saw it, others rejoiced. You see, Blizzard's reason for introducing this feature is to enable players that somehow ended up on opposing factions to play together. Before this ability to swap sides, the only option was to start again with a new character, which involves literally days of game time to get to the level cap.

Other players were happy because they thought it would allow them a way to change the race of their character to something else within their own faction. Ok, stay with me here. Some assumed that by swapping sides, which requires choosing a new race on the opposite faction that's applicable to the class of the character, then swapping back, they could take their pick of races on return to their original faction. However, Blizz were quick to stamp that possibility out. If you changed faction then changed back, only your original race would be available to you. Of course, more QQing ensued. It seemed Blizz wanted to maintain some consistency with characters after all. However, they soon saw reason because, at the recent BlizzCon event, it was announced that a race change service would be introduced after the Faction change service was implemented.

The Faction Change service launched on US servers last week, however, here in Europe we have to wait a little while longer. Amazingly, or not, EU players were up in arms about that delay as well, despite originally complaining about the service. Blizzard gave localisation issues as the reason, and we should have it in around a week. The race change feature shouldn't be too far behind now.

Other big news last week was the release of the long-awaited superhero MMO, Champions Online. Bill Roper's latest project got off to a cracking start, even before launch, as Cryptic Studios sold out of the special deals on lifetime and six month subscriptions. The deals were in such high demand that they were all sold almost a week before the offer ended. In response to the disappointed fans, Cryptic quickly re-opened the offer with an unlimited number of cut-price subscriptions.

The launch itself went off without a hitch, however, a patch that Cryptic applied to the game on launch day wasn't very popular with players. Reacting to feedback on the beta servers which indicated mobs were too easy to kill, Cryptic buffed henchmen and reduced defence on players' characters. But, with no prior warning, players with early server access who had existing characters when the game launched were left with undesirable skill allocations following the changes. They argued that Cryptic should offer them a free skill retcon, considering the high cost of changing skills once they've been spent. And that's just what Cryptic did, a nice bunch aren't they?

Just after the launch, the first Champions Online event was unveiled. Blood Moon will feature an ancient necromancer who returns to the world and wreaks havoc, spawning zombies and werewolves. Gather your friends and fight this new evil, but be careful in your dealings with these infected foes, lest you find yourself a mindless undead minion or baying hound too.