MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
The number of paying subscribers for World of Warcraft fell to 11.1m between May and July, but Blizzard has plans to reverse the downturn. World of Warcraft is still the PC’s leading MMO despite losing 300,000 players. Back in May this year the online RPG had 11.4m players. At its …
Read More »How to create a world-beating MMO
While the fortunes of the most popular MMOs have never been better, it's now harder than ever create one that succeeds. Jeremy Gaffney, executive producer at NCsoft's Carbine Studios, takes a look at the future of the genre, and offers some advice on developing a hit
Read More »Diablo III lets gamers sell items for money
World of Warcraft developer-publisher Blizzard has revealed an in-game auction house in Diablo III that uses real money. Gamers will be able to buy, sell and trade digital items in the PC RPG using real-life currency, with sellers taking the majority of the cash” for each transaction. Blizzard showed off …
Read More »EA reiterates H2 2011 SWTOR launch claims
Publisher EA has once again stated that long-awaited MMO title Star Wars: The Old Republic will be out before the end of the year. Back in January MCV reported that EA was targeting a September release for the game. BioWare’s loyal fanbase were up in arms about the claims, insistent, …
Read More »F2P Championship Manager MMO revealed
Square Enix has lifted the lid on a massively multiplayer online version of its Championship Manager football franchise. Called Championship Manager: World of Football, the game will of course be free-to-play and will be accessible from any standard web browser. It is being developed by both series stalwart Beautiful Game …
Read More »Takahashi at last finds a game to love
Many thought we’d seen the last of him, but Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi has finally found a project to drag him out of the gaming doldrums – indie MMO Glitch. The studio has announced via its blog that Takahashi has joined the studio. In fact, he and his family …
Read More »Planetside 2 is coming, but will it be free to play?
Sony Online Entertainment has finally lifted the security gates on its long-rumoured first person MMO project – Planetside 2. Little is known of the game aside from the fact that the shooting action takes place in a persistent world and will feature a wide assortment of combat roles, though several …
Read More »Designing an MMO UI
Scaleform principal engineer Prasad Silva offers a guide on designing MMO UIs
Read More »Can MMOs make more money with F2P?
Gamesbrief director and industry analayst Nicholas Lovell says publishers of subscription-based MMOs could be denying themselves additional income. His comments come as several MMO publishers shift to a free-to-play business model. Everyone knows that subscriptions are a barrier to adoption, but what fewer people realise is that they are also …
Read More »F2P gives ageing MMOs a second chance
MMO publishers are flocking to the free-to-play market to stop users logging off. Over the past few weeks, a number of MMORPGs have announced they will be dropping subscription fees, such as City of Heroes, Age of Conan and LEGO Universe.Valve’s Team Fortress 2 and the Japanese version of Epic’s …
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