True Games Interactive’s development studio in Beijing, China, has made itself known with the first expansion to the online game publisher’s hit massively multiplayer online game Warrior Epic that includes new maps, items and gameplay modes.
The expansion, dubbed “Battlegrounds,” is the studio’s first project. The Beijing studio is the second studio that True Games has opened this year, the first one being the one in Austin, Texas, which is handling the company’s next game.
“We are thrilled that the new studio has done such great work on the new expansion, and when players get a chance to check out the new …read more

Ah, here’s some bit of news that I missed last week, the one about changes in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game DragonSky, published in North America by Aeria Games. First off, I’d like to apologize for this oversight, courtesy of my ongoing beef against the online games publisher’s downloader.
Before I give you details about the changes in DragonSky, I’d like to share information regarding my dilemma in trying—and I do place a lot of emphasis on TRYING—to download any client from Aeria Games, and would like to find out whether others are encountering this as well.
The trouble starts when …read more

This blog and its writer, yours truly, has always been a fan of machinima. For the benefit of those who don’t know what the heck machinima is, the terms stands for “machine-animation” or “machine-cinema” and, to borrow the definition of the first machinima film festival on my side of the pond, “utilizes widely popular videogames such as Grand Theft Auto, World of Warcraft, etc. to produce short films and music videos, using avatars and characters as actors, and the maps and locations of the game as setting.”
So imagine my surprise—and excitement—when friend and fellow online games enthusiast PJ Punla informed …read more

After a bit of research on free-to-play massively multiplayer online games I could try, I finally settled on World of Kung Fu from Vestgame Entertainment. The game looked promising from the reviews I had read and its graphics didn’t look outdated, so I decided to download the client and start up the game.
When I managed to enter the World of Kung Fu and started creating my character, a spear wielder named Jadzia, I had a feeling I wouldn’t like something in the game. Nothing was amiss. The graphics looked great. There wasn’t any lag. The controls were easy to master. …read more

How do you choose a massively multiplayer online game to play? I’ve been thinking about this question many times over the course of a week, especially after my video card conked out (again), and keep coming up with the same answers. There are only five factors that push us to play an MMO. Of course, our preferences differ, with one player identifying closely with only one factor, while other players claiming all five.

I’m looking forward to playing Shaiya from Aeria Games.
In the end, however, all five factors must be met for a player to stay and continue playing an MMO. …read more

As a microcosm of real life, the virtual environments of massively multiplayer online games also hosts negative aspects of the world it is patterned after. In simpler terms, if we have baddies in the real world, there are also baddies in the virtual world.
In the real world, the worst of the worst criminals are those that commit heinous, mostly unforgivable crimes like genocide and murder. In the virtual worlds, because you can’t exactly kill a character and not expect him or her to rise from the grave and pwn your sorry behind, the worst malcontents turn out as scammers and …read more

Michael Jackson, the world’s one and only King of Pop, has passed on but his legacy will continue to live in the memories of millions of adoring fans who, surprisingly, include hundreds if not thousands of online game players. I realize that this tribute is a bit late so I’ll keep it short.
Frankly, I was surprised at the reaction of different massively multiplayer online game communities when news of Michael Jackson’s death hit the headlines on June 25, 2009. In China, home of hundreds of thousands of MMORPG players, the outpouring of grief was pretty evident in the way they …read more

Where we left off: Our young heroes are reunited after a spat when Mr. Obnoxious, also known as THEGREATESTEVER or simply TGE, discovers that Pudding beat him in changing into the first job in the popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game Fly For Fun.
In the fourth installment of the hit machinima based on Flyff, we find Pudding and TGE beating the crap out of Wagsaacs outside Saint Mourning as they continue their adventures after changing into their first jobs—Mercenary for Pudding and Assist for TGE. Of course, THEGREATESTEVER is still clueless about how his job class works, mostly due to …read more

Pistol … check! Assault rifle … check! Short-wave radio … check! Survival knife … check! Rocket launcher … check! Thermonuclear device … Welcome to the world of Fallen Earth, an upcoming massively multiplayer online game set in a post-apocalyptic age. Yes, it’s coming to your PC, very soon.
I apologize for the cheesy introductory paragraph. I’ve been wanting to do that for the longest time and this announcement story on the launch of Fallen Earth seemed perfect for it.
Anyway, before you start scouring the Internet for Fallen Earth client downloads, let me cue you in: It’s not available yet, and even …read more

I know, cheesy title. Frankly I can’t think of any title for this particular post that’s less cheesy. It’s either the one above or “How MMORPGs Kept My Marriage Alive.” See what I mean?
Okay, enough of the cheese. It’s time to get down to serious business. First off, though, I’d like to apologize for not posting anything in the past couple of days. The wife and baby are down with the flu (not H1N1 or what is more popularly known as the swine flu, thank the gaming gods), and it’s taking a lot of effort to keep order in an …read more