Borderlands – Jupiter Broadcasting

Ubuntu 14.10 Mega Review | LAS 335

chris — Sun, 19 Oct 2014 16:36:04 +0000

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Our review of the major flavors of Ubuntu 14.10. We’ll show you how this tried and true desktop can be the fertile playground of future desktop technologies. Our all-star lineup will review everything from Kubuntu to the MATE Edition of Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn.

Plus Linus responds to the culture of hostility claims, Plasma 5’s big update, Docker’s surprising news, a new AAA game for Linux…

AND SO MUCH MORE!

All this week on, The Linux Action Show!

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— Show Notes: —

Ubuntu Turns 10

Ubuntu with Unity 7

If we’re honest, a review of Ubuntu 14.10 could be summarized simply as:

“For those who love Ubuntu, 14.10 is more of what you love. And not much else, for better or worse.”

But Ubuntu 14.10 also offers an appealing playground to check out some of the latest desktop technologies.

Ubuntu 14.10 will be supported for 9 months for Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Core, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Ubuntu Kylin along with all other flavours. This 9 month window of time is too short for a long-term deployment, but just about right for the enthusiast.
Linux kernel 3.16

Kubuntu

Kubuntu is releasing two flavors: One with Plasma 4 for stability, and one with Plasma 5 to try the new hotness. Both can be grabbed from Kubuntu.org.

Updates to Plasma 5.1

Kubuntu Plasma 5 will come with Plasma 5.0. Use the Kubuntu Next PPA which provides KDE Frameworks 5 / Plasma 5 – using this PPA will upgrade your current KDE installation.
KDE – Plasma 5.1 Brings Back Many Popular Features

Xubuntu

Xubuntu is an elegant and easy-to-use operating system. Xubuntu comes with Xfce, which is a stable, light and configurable desktop environment.

Ubuntu MATE

Ubuntu MATE is a stable, easy-to-use operating system with a configurable desktop environment. Ideal for those who want the most out of their desktops, laptops and netbooks and prefer a traditional desktop metaphor. With modest hardware requirements it is suitable for modern workstations and older hardware alike.

Ubuntu GNOME

Ubuntu GNOME is Ubuntu with a pure GNOME Shell experience as opposed to Unity.

Ubuntu GNOME includes GNOME 3.12, but can be upgraded to 3.14 using the following PPAs: ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3 and ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3-staging

Lubuntu

Lubuntu is the LXDE-based variant of Ubuntu for low resource usage and targeting older computers.

Lubuntu includes LXDE but LXQt is available for installation via the following PPA: ppa:lubuntu-dev/daily

Other flavors released this cycle:

Edubuntu: Education-targeted flavor using Unity as the desktop environment.
Ubuntu Studio: Xubuntu-based flavor using Xfce as the desktop environment targeting graphic artists, photographers, musicians, and audio/video production.
Ubuntu Kylin: Ubuntu Kylin is the official Chinese version of Ubuntu. It uses Unity as the desktop environment.

— PICKS —

Runs Linux

Formula 1 Runs Linux

Hi Chris and Matt,

Don’t know how popular F1 is in the US, but while watching the Japanese Grand Prix, I noticed the “weather man” was using a unity desktop while displaying the forecast for the race. I’m guessing ubuntu 12.04.

Love the show,

Roald

Ubuntu Spotted At F1 Suzuka – YouTube

Video sent in by fkol-k4

Desktop App Pick

CrossOver 14.0 Makes Installing Windows Apps Easier

CodeWeavers’ CrossOver 14 features improvements to the installation of Windows binaries by using a new automatic configuration feature for detecting/downloading/installing system components needed to run particular Windows applications. CrossOver 14.0 also boasts support for Quicken 2015 and supports a number of new upgrades.

Weekly Spotlight

Ohio LinuxFest 2014 – The Future of Free | Free and Open Software Conference and Expo – Columbus, Ohio – October 24-26, 2014

Come say hi, we will be armed with stickers
Ang will expect selfie’s with her in exchange for stickers.
Special additional sticker for those wearing JB swag
And be sure to say hi and hang out at the after party
If you want an interview contact production@jupiterbroadcasting.com
If you got a las jacket email angela@jupiterbroadcasting.com
Follow Jupiter Broadcasting on Instagram and my Twitter feed for updates on events.

Next LAS Monday afternoon Oct 27th

Seattle (U.S.A. – Washington)Monday, October 27, 2014 at 3:00:00 PMPDTUTC-7 hours
UTC (Time Zone)Monday, October 27, 2014 at 10:00:00 PMUTC
New York (U.S.A. – New York)Monday, October 27, 2014 at 6:00:00 PMEDTUTC-4 hours
London (United Kingdom – England)Monday, October 27, 2014 at 10:00:00 PMGMTUTC

— NEWS —

Linus Torvalds Regrets Alienating Developers with Strong Language

“One of the reasons we have this culture of strong language, that admittedly many people find off-putting, is that when it comes to technical people with strong opinions and with a strong drive to do something technically superior, you end up having these opinions show up as sometimes pretty strong language,” said Linus Torvalds.

Linux: On The Internet no one Hears Subtle

LinuxCon + CloudOpen Europe 2014 – Linux Kernel Developer Panel – YouTube

KDE – Plasma 5.1 Brings Back Many Popular Features

October 15, 2014.
Today, KDE releases Plasma 5.1.0, the first release containing new features since the release of Plasma 5.0 this summer. Plasma 5.1 sports a wide variety of improvements.

Plasma desktop 5.1 is available in arch official repo now : LinuxActionShow

Docker 1.3 Improves Container Security

Among the big additions is the ability to check images with the using of a digital signature. By having the digital signature, it provides users with an additional layer of confidence to know that an image has not been tampered with.

Docker container support coming to Microsoft’s next Windows Server release

Under the terms of the agreement announced today, the Docker Engine open source runtime for building, running and orchestrating containers will work with the next version of Windows Server. The Docker Engine for Windows Server will be developed as a Docker open source project, with Microsoft participating as an active community member. Docker Engine images for Windows Server will be available in the Docker Hub. The Docker Hub will also be integrated directly into Azure so that it is accessible through the Azure Management Portal and Azure Gallery. Microsoft also will be contributing to Docker’s open orchestration application programming interfaces (APIs).

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! Arrives on Linux

Development team Aspyr, responsible for the Mac and Linux ports, worked with Gearbox and 2K Games to ensure same-day support for the Tux-faithful arrived alongside the Mac, Windows and console releases of the game.

Linux gamers get access to all of the same features, downloadable content add-ons, settings and multiplayer functionality as their Windows and OS X counterparts thanks to the Unreal 3 engine the title is built on.

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is set between the previous two Borderlands games to reveal the story behind Handsome Jack’s rise to villainy.

Note: October 14 marks its North American release only. It goes live in Australasia on October 16. The European release follows on October 17.

VCs Pushing Young Entrepreneurs to Build Proprtary Products that Lock-In

To some extent, I think this goes back to the pernicious myth of the “sustainable competitive advantage.” This is a line you hear all too often from venture capitalists, and as I’ve said for over a decade, it’s misleading in the extreme.

Thanks to users’ input on the issue, ChromeOS developers’ decision to drop ext* filesystem support on the file manager is being reversed.

Thanks for all of your feedback on this bug. We’ve heard you loud and clear.

We plan to re-enable ext2/3/4 support in Files.app immediately. It will come back, just like it was before, and we’re working to get it into the next stable channel release.

Please star this bug to get the latest updates. We’ll post everything here.

— FEEDBACK —

— CHRIS’ STASH —

Next LAS Monday Oct 27th

Seattle (U.S.A. – Washington)Monday, October 27, 2014 at 3:00:00 PMPDTUTC-7 hours
UTC (Time Zone)Monday, October 27, 2014 at 10:00:00 PMUTC
New York (U.S.A. – New York)Monday, October 27, 2014 at 6:00:00 PMEDTUTC-4 hours
London (United Kingdom – England)Monday, October 27, 2014 at 10:00:00 PMGMTUTC

OLF Updates During OLF

Hang in our chat room:

The best source for the latest info on our OLF adventures.

irc.geekshed.net #jupiterbroadcasting

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The post Ubuntu 14.10 Mega Review | LAS 335 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Top 5 Linux Games | LAS 333

chris — Sun, 05 Oct 2014 16:20:39 +0000

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The top 5 best Linux games on Steam for the fall get demoed on today’s show. Every game we feature, will be one worth buying & how to get a lot more out of Steam.

Then sandboxing any Linux process, the news of the week, our picks & much more!

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— Show Notes: —

Best Linux Games of Fall (so far)

Brought to you by: System76

Recent improvements to Steam, combined with some great new releases of games. We’ll feature some of the best games of 2014. Something we like to do a couple weeks before we head out to a LinuxFest, it gives us a great chance to highlight how much fun Linux can be to attendees of the Fest looking to learn more about Linux gaming.

Getting more out of Steam

Steam Curators

Follow one or more of these curators to see their recommendations featured on your Steam home page.

Steam Music

News – Introducing the Steam Music Player

Point Steam to the MP3s on your computer, then browse your collection of albums and artists. You’ll also find your Steam Soundtracks DLC in your Steam Music library when the associated base game is installed. Listen to albums, queue up mixes, and create playlists you love, right in your Steam library. Best of all, it’s all available right within the Steam Overlay, so you can control playback without leaving your game.

Steam Groups

Steam Community :: Group :: Jupiter Broadcasting

Steam now allows streaming from Linux!

Tonight I opened up Steam on my laptop and found all my games installed on my Mint desktop available to be streamed. I then fired up Borderlands 2 and happily played on my GPU deprived laptop! So, it appears they finally enabled streaming from a Linux server!

The Best Games

Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart on Steam

Would you like to enter a thrilling Pirates world where danger lurks in every corner? You are a museum owner pursuing an undead pirate who kidnapped your daughter. You quickly realize that the villain is entangled in a tragic, centuries-old love story, and wants to resurrect his mistress with the girl’s life force.

J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars on Steam

J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars is an innovative narrative driven adventure game which is being developed due to overwhelming support from a successful crowdfunding campaign.

The story centers on Rachel Manners, a 35 year old astrobiologist. She is a member of an elite group of scientists, chosen to embark on one of the most critical missions ever conceived on Earth.

J.U.L.I.A.: Among The Stars Sci-fi Adventure Released On Linux, Plus Some Thoughts | GamingOnLinux

Super Win the Game on Steam

Throw on your nostalgia goggles and travel back in time with Super Win the Game, a retro-core explosion of exploration and platforming action!!

21MB install

Velocibox on Steam

Velocibox is a twitch-heavy action game crafted for the hardcore audience.

Borderlands 2 on Steam

Borderlands 2 is an action role-playing first-person shooter video game, developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K Games on September 18, 2012. It is the second game in the Borderlands series and the sequel to 2009’s Borderlands.

As with the first game, Borderlands 2 allows players to complete a campaign consisting of central quests and optional side-missions as one of four treasure seekers, “Vault Hunters”, on the planet Pandora. Key gameplay features from the original game, such as online collaborative campaign gameplay; randomly generated loot, such as weapons and shields; and character-building elements commonly found in role-playing video games are in Borderlands 2.

Borderlands 2 Technical Issues: Feel free to post any problems and solutions here

— PICKS —

Runs Linux

The Hollywood Animation Firm Weta Digital, Runs Linux

ANIMATORS IN ACTION The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug – YouTube

Desktop App Pick

Firejail

Firejail is a SUID security sandbox program that reduces the risk of security breaches by restricting the running environment of untrusted applications using Linux namespaces. It allows a process and all its descendants to have their own private view of the globally shared kernel resources, such as the network stack, process table, mount table.

Firejail can sandbox any type of processes: servers, graphical applications, and even user login sessions. Written in C with virtually no dependencies, it should work on any Linux computer with a 3.x kernel version. Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, OpenSUSE, and Fedora packages are provided. An Arch Linux package is maintained in AUR.

Fierjail configures a basic sandbox, runs the program and exits. The sandbox consists of a mount namespace and a new process namespace. In the mount namespace, the main system directories are mounted read-only.

Weekly Spotlight

logstalgia – website access log visualization

Logstalgia is a website traffic visualization that replays or streams web-server access logs as a pong-like battle between the web server and an never ending torrent of requests.

Requests appear as colored balls (the same color as the host) which travel across the screen to arrive at the requested location. Successful requests are hit by the paddle while unsuccessful ones (eg 404 – File Not Found) are missed and pass through.

The paths of requests are summarized within the available space by identifying common path prefixes. Related paths are grouped together under headings. For instance, by default paths ending in png, gif or jpg are grouped under the heading Images. Paths that don’t match any of the specified groups are lumped together under a Miscellaneous section.

Linux Action Show Fall/Spring Jacket | Teespring

— NEWS —

The Xen Vulnerability That Rebooted the Public Cloud

Amazon, Rackspace and IBM SoftLayer have all had to reboot their servers in the last several days to fix a flaw in Xen that was privately reported two weeks ago and only publicly disclosed on Oct. 1.

Indian Developers Redesigning Linux Kernel With OOP, C++ Support

The project site explains, “MOOL (Minimalistic Object Oriented Linux) aims at redesigning the Linux kernel to reduce coupling and increase maintainability by means of OO (Object Oriented) abstractions. Excessive common coupling prevails in existing kernel.

BOSSMOOL – A Joint Initiative of DOS Lab IIT Madras and CDAC Chennai | BOSSLinux

Ubuntu GNOME Devs Encouraged by Ubuntu Team to Add Latest GNOME in Future Versions

“I think it’s too late to revisit such a decision for 14.10 without significant downside for the quality of Ubuntu GNOME; but for 15.04, I recommend that you explicitly consider at the beginning of the release cycle whether you would like to release with the latest version of GNOME,” also notes the Ubuntu developer.

CUPS Turn 15 Years Old, CUPS 2.0 Released

CUPS 2.0 has greater security around its scheduler, various OS X specific improvements, systemd support, support for TLS certificate validation and policy enforcement, updates to all Linux man pages, dropped OpenSSL in favor of GNU TLS, dropped support for AIX / HP-UX / OSF/1 architectures, and various other changes.

GOL Survey Results: September | GamingOnLinux

Debian based – 58.98% (394)
Slackware based – 1.20% (8)
Red Hat based – 3.59% (24)
Suse based – 3.89% (26)
Arch Based – 25.45% (170)
Other (please specify) – 6.89% (46)

It is perhaps no surprise given most developers test on and officially support only Ubuntu that most use a Debian-based distro, however, Arch still has a pretty strong showing.

— FEEDBACK —

Call for help for producing a Linux SDK

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The post Top 5 Linux Games | LAS 333 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Calm Before the Storm | LINUX Unplugged 60

chris — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 17:30:57 +0000

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Today’s show is full of robust discussion as your hosts discuss the recent criticism over our coverage of Ubuntu 14.10, the general reaction to Shellshock & the Netflixification of Photoshop on Chromebooks.

Plus picking the best distro for getting a job, a little more XFCE chat & much more!

Thanks to:

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Show Notes:

Pre-Show:

Adobe brings Creative Cloud to Chromebooks starting w/ ‘Project Photoshop Streaming’ beta | 9to5Google

FU:

Shellshock Reaction Overblown?

weev: Dear clueless assholes: stop bashing bash and GNU.

_This is a defense of the most prolific and dedicated public servant that has graced the world in my lifetime. One man has added hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars of value to the global economy. This man has worked tirelessly for the benefit of everyone around him. It is impossible to name a publicly traded company that has not somehow benefitted from his contributions, and many have benefitted to the tune of billions. In return for the countless billions of wealth that people made from the fruits of his labor, he was rewarded with poverty and ridicule. Now that the world is done taking from him, they are heading to the next step of villifying him as incompetent.

Could Shellshock cause internet MELTDOWN? Hackers scramble to exploit Bash bug | Daily Mail Online

Save 75% on Borderlands 2 on Steam for Linux!

A new era of shoot and loot is about to begin. Play as one of four new vault hunters facing off against a massive new world of creatures, psychos and the evil mastermind, Handsome Jack. Make new friends, arm them with a bazillion weapons and fight alongside them in 4 player co-op on a relentless quest for revenge and redemption across the undiscovered and unpredictable living planet.

Operating System: SteamOS, Ubuntu 14.04

CPU Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad, AMD Phenom II X4

CPU Speed: 2.4GHz

Memory: 4 GB RAM

Hard Disk Space: 13 GB

Video Card (NVidia): Geforce 260

Video Memory (VRam): 1GB

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Don’t meet the above requirements? That doesn’t mean your configuration wont run Borderlands 2. Visit the Borderlands 2 community page to share your experience with other Linux players and learn about how to send bugs to Aspyr. Your feedback will help us improve Borderlands 2 Linux and future AAA Linux releases!

Save 75% on Valve Complete Pack on Steam

Runs Linux from the people:

Send in a pic/video of your runs Linux.
Please upload videos to YouTube and submit a link via email or the subreddit.

New Shows : Tech Talk Today (Mon – Thur)

Tech Talk Today Today | Jupiter Broadcasting

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The post Calm Before the Storm | LINUX Unplugged 60 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Hellgate Review | MMOrgue 10

chris — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 23:16:51 +0000

Enter the gates of Hell, otherwise known as the slums of London! In today’s episode, join Jeremy for a live review of the first few hours of gameplay for Hellgate:Global, as well as the usual smattering of MMO news and leaks, including hints of Comic-Con announcements from Bioware!

Also included in this episode is a proposal for an audience-participation segment on the topic of The Best of MMO Music. Tune in to hear the details, then join the conversation!

Direct Download Links:

HD Video | Large Video | Mobile Video | MP3 Audio | YouTube

MMOrgue iTunes Feeds:	MMOrgue RSS Feeds:
HD Video iPad & Apple TV Video iPod Video MP3 Audio	HD Video RSS Large Video RSS Mobile Video RSS MP3 Audio RSS

Show Notes:

T-Shirt of the Week: https://store.hbo.com/game-of-thrones-stark-t-shirt-black/detail.php?p=298870&v=hbo_best-sellers

It seems we’ve hit a slight lull in big MMO news. Not an outright drought – just a lack of stories that are prompting my usual editorial spiel.

In order to combat this, I have a proposal: an episode dedicated to the best of MMO music

I need YOUR submissions…
* If there is a specific GAME that sticks out in your mind as having an incredible soundtrack.
* If there is a specific SONG that you think is fantastic (EQ2’s Qeynos theme, e.g.)
* If you don’t care for music, I’d like to hear why, or what sort of music you listen to while gaming.

Please include links to samples I can listen to when submitting your responses!

LINKS WORTH TALKING ABOUT:

APB may be charging a box fee for their “F2P” game?
https://www.mmocrunch.com/2011/07/14/free2play-apb-hitting-store-shelves/

GW2 World Tour ‘11: NCSoft @ GamesCom, ArenaNet @ PAX
https://www.mmocrunch.com/2011/07/18/guild-wars-2-world-tour/

HELLGATE: REVIEW

Getting the game downloaded, installed and patched can be a long, tedious, boring process.
And the patcher is always on top! It cannot be moved beneath other windows!
– It has been recommended to use the uTorrent download, but I went the traditional route.

This game was originally published in 2007 and was already showing its age.
– I’ll let the visuals speak for themselves at this point, and audio listeners may get more value by watching the video version of this particular episode.

I will making frequent comparisons of this game to Diablo II, Torchlight and Borderlands.
– And unfortunately, while this game sits somewhere between those three spiritually and mechanically-speaking, it doesn’t really stack up to any of them individually. And not for any single particular reason, just as a compounding of all the little things. Most of which I hope to show you in this review.

It’s an easy, casual experience. Pick it up, shoot some stuff, grab some loot, walk away. But don’t expect any deep or meaningful experience.

The gameplay is driven by greed and power — kill things to get better gear, so you can kill bigger things to get even better gear. This cycle breaks down at the high end of the game however, where it suddenly becomes necessary to care about the world, in order to care about progressing. Unfortunately, the world as a whole is relatively bland with no real sense of urgency or community.

The sole virtue this game has going for it, is the non-existent barrier for entry. For the cost of nothing but a few hours of your time, you can start enjoying a basic hack-and-slash, shoot-em-up mindless loot grind, and even bring along some friends for the ride.

For my part, I still feel like this game fails as a comparison to Diablo II due to shallow mechanics, and incomplete feeling animations. Add to that the confusion of the crafting system, frustration of inventory management, and the lack of a compelling storyline, and it leaves me thinking that FREE is about as much as I’d honestly pay for this title.

If you want a good loot-whoring shooter, go play Borderlands. It’s worth the box cost, and contains multiplayer. And if you’re willing to try out an older title for your fix, Diablo II has aged surprisingly well, and Torchlight 2 is just around the corner!

Next Week: Comic-Con in review!

It’s happening at the time this episode is being published, and already there is speculation that several large announcements may be occurring, including:
The unveiling of Zenimax’s MMORPG (assumed to be based on the Elder Scrolls universe)
Official details on Blizzard’s “TITAN” project (though I suspect this will happen @ BlizzCon)
The official release date of SWTOR

Speaking of TOR announcements…
SW:TOR’s box art released (Standard & Collector’s)
https://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/loadNews/21245

The post Hellgate Review | MMOrgue 10 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Planetside & Hellgate | MMOrgue 5

chris — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 07:13:00 +0000

The much-maligned sub-genre of MMO Shooters has been an intense and gorey battlefield since the first of these titles rolled off the production line back in 2001. Since that time, two major titles have come to serve as examples within this archetype: Planetside and Hellgate: London.

Unfortunately, these two titles are frequently held up as examples of what NOT to do, rather than being revered. In today’s episode, I’ll examine each of their failures and see if I can make a solid case for why each of these titles was considered a flop, despite reinventing a whole genre.

Direct Download Links:

HD Video | Large Video | Mobile Video | MP3 Audio | YouTube

MMOrgue iTunes Feeds:	MMOrgue RSS Feeds:
HD Video iPad & Apple TV Video iPod Video MP3 Audio	HD Video RSS Large Video RSS Mobile Video RSS MP3 Audio RSS

Show Notes:

E3 is underway, and despite the incredible announcements that’ve so far been made by the big players at their flashy press conferences, very little has come out on the MMO front. Despite this apparent lack of MMO-themed information, I’ll be keeping a close watch on the continued coverage of the event over the next few days and hope to dedicate next week’s episode to a recap of the festivities.

But instead of looking forward to those announcements, today’s episode is going to look BACK on a specific facet of the MMO world that has had a rocky history. Despite FPS ruling the single-player, console, and multiplayer markets to a certain degree, they’ve never found solid footing in the land of MMOs. In order to understand why, today’s episode is going to dig into the meat of two specific MMO shooters:

Planetside, which is long past its days of glory, and gearing up for a sequel at the hands of SOE.

Each of these titles, and many of their unnamed brethren, suffered from many of the same flaws that have plagued the MMOFPS subgenre since its inception in 2001, with the launch of World War II Online. And because of these faults and failures of the past, this type of game has never made a name for itself in the MMO landscape.

However, developers around the world have not yet given up hope on the concept of the MMO shooter. So today’s show is going to review the major faults and faux paus of these two noteworthy titles, and lay out my opinions on what future developers need to do to find success in this area, where others have failed.

PLANETSIDE / NEXT

Released in 2003.
Balance issues and population imbalances led to widespread loss of subscriptions.
By 2009, all 6 original servers had been slowly merged into a single world.
Early gameplay also suffered from stability issues, and frequent network lag.

The GOOD:
– Thorough tutorials
– Interesting advancement system with many unique choices to make.
– Instant action is a great feature in a PvP-focused game.

The BAD:
– The ONLY thing to do, is fight over bases against other factions. Very 1-dimensional.
– No reason to defend, except for the love of battle. Nothing gained by claiming territory, except safe passage to another territory.
– Landscapes are all featureless and bland.
– A single battle over a single base can last HOURS, and success can be determined by attrition instead of actual skill or strategy.
– Vehicles are way overpowered compared to infantry unit types.
– Steep learning curve, and the amount of information to absorb may turn players off that just want to shoot enemies (typical fans of shooter games).
– No solo viability. Squad or Die.

Subscription fee may have been the nail in the coffin. In a world of FREE FPS games, why pay for one?

SOE shuts down The Agency
Also confirmed delay of NEXT due to switching development to a new Engine.

HELLGATE

Disclaimer: Barely an MMO.

Hellgate Relaunch!

US/EU shut down in 2009, continued actively in Eastern markets by Hanbitsoft.
In late 2010, Hanbitsoft obtained the rights to international distribution.
Currently undergoing the final phases of Closed Beta.

Why did it fail?

Boring gameplay mechanics (hold down the trigger while you spin/move) and lackluster abilities.
Massive engine stability issues. The game was rarely playable for more than an hour without crashing.
No narrative. With so many Diablo 2 devs on board, more was expected of the story.
Incongruity of mechanics and incomplete implementation. (Turret-based shooting gallery, improper scaling)
No Social Tools: LFG, Guild Support
- This was DEATH to a game that launched at the dawn of “Web 2.0” when MySpace and similar sites were connecting people in new and exciting ways.
Subscription models … game was compared to Half-Life, Guild Wars and Diablo II (all free) and yet charged $10/mo for a subscription.
- Box cost got you a stripped down version of the game, had to pay monthly to play multiplayer but the social tools SUCKed, leaving people on both ends of the subscription model feeling gypped.
- Then there was the Lifetimer/Founder fiasco, when the game shut down…
  - $150 = 15 months. Game was only active for 10 months before the shut down was announced (which actually happened 5 months later.)

General commentary:

Another relaunch/resurrection from an Eastern company, of a failed Western title (APB)
- This trend could represent more than just hope for gamers – it could come to be seen as a bail-out for investors and publishers of upcoming MMOs.
  - Not finding the success you wanted/needed at launch? Pawn the game off to a company that cranks out F2P relaunches, and try and recoup some of your costs.
This game is an excellent example of Hype Gone Bad.
- The developers, many of whom had worked on Diablo and Diablo II, compared the game to Half-Life, Diablo II and Guild Wars at different times.
  - All of these games were defining titles of their individual genres.
    - The buggy, incomplete and LAZY release of Hellgate was a devastating disappointment.

Why the relaunch might find modest success:

Leech off the hype for Diablo III
Under-represented subgenre (FPS Action RPG)
Very low system requirements
Free to play!

SUMMARY:

In examining these two flopped FPS, we see a number of similarities…

1 – Subscription models don’t match the playerbase.

Fans of shooters can get their online jollies playing a billion different FPS games with no subscription costs. Charging for access puts you at a significant disadvantage.
MMO players want a game with more substance than is typically offered in a FPS. With customization of both abilities and avatars.
- In other words, you’re charging the wrong amount, to the wrong audience.

2 – Social tools added as an afterthought.

When you’re creating an online environment, your ability to have players play together must be considered one of your most important gameplay mechanics.
- Instant matchmaking, auto-grouping, and easy social hotkeys must take the place of conversation-based grouping, when your gameplay is fast-paced and action-centric. (In a word, more FPS-like)
Both of the above games seem to make the assumption that their players would talk to eachother and form bonds through conversation and interaction.
- This is a disconnect with the type of player that would typically play these games.
  - They don’t want to talk, they want to shoot.
Seamless voice chat integration will make future MMOFPS games more likely to succeed on this point.

3 – Poor/shoddy implementation of features, rushed development schedules.

To be fair, this is becoming more of a common problem in the MMO industry in general, and is not unique to shooters.
- Given the track record that these “incomplete” launches have, it boggles my mind that it continues to happen on such a regular basis.
However, on that note, I’m starting to see more and more release and beta windows get pushed back and delayed, across the industry.
- As much as this upsets me as a player, it also potentially means more developers giving more care and attention to the product they will have ready at time of launch.

FIREFALL
Firefall avoids industry-only conventions (E3), wants to talk to gamers

Cinematic Trailer (made by Blur)
Gameplay Trailer
10 minutes of gameplay footage
6 minutes over-the-shoulder PVP from PAX East 2011

Release Date: “before the end of 2011”
Official Game Site

E3 Videos from Machinima:
https://www.youtube.com/show?p=dqBjY9Gxj1I&tracker=show0

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The post Planetside & Hellgate | MMOrgue 5 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Rift, 2KGames, Mass Effect | MMOrgue 4

chris — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 07:33:12 +0000

This week, we finally get around to taking an editorial look at the beginning of the life of Trion Worlds’ flagship MMO, Rift. How are the initial impressions and population trends for this game? What’s the long-term outlook for this game’s future success?

After that, we’re taking a look at two new franchises that may soon be landing on the MMO landscape, from developers at 2KGames and BioWare. What are we in store for, from these top-name game shops? Tune in to find out, and speculate along with us!

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Show Notes:

First, an update on a previous story…

It was announced this morning that “Perfect World” has penned a deal to purchase Cryptic Studios for $50mil.

I’m going to save the majority of my commentary for this week’s episode of STOked, which will film live on Saturday, June 4th @ 11am PDT. Tune in to hear all about it, or catch it after it is published on Tuesday, June 7th.
- But, I will say that this quote makes me happy: More importantly, Cryptic Studios’ highly reputable development team and its technology platform will further strengthen our well-established R&D capabilities.
  - The emphasis on technology and R&D are what has made Cryptic a studio worth considering a player in the MMO industry as a whole, and it’s nice to see their new owners appreciate that fact.

RIFT

Inevitably… comparisons to WoW

Talents = Souls (some even exactly the same, just renamed)
Abundance of Kill, Click, Fetch and Deliver quests
UI elements (hotbars, extra hotbars)
“Whack-a-mole” combat mechanics – slave to cooldowns

Where it doesn’t live up to this:

Content (vastly inferior quantity)
The argument that “WoW has had 7 years to add content!” does not hold water. You have to compete with what’s on the market, not what was on the market 7 years ago.
Many “smaller” features, like guild banks
- Added a LFG tool within first 2 months… took WoW several years to make one!
Balance — “Trion Worlds has thrown up their hands due to the complexity of their soul system.”

Where it breaks the mold:

Rift events
- On one hand, fun change of pace
- On the other, interrupts otherwise mindless and easy to execute gameplay (grinding)
Soul construction, and ease of switching roles while adventuring
- At a glance, similar to Talents … until you realize the amount of options available to you.
- Can swap any of your 3 active souls, to any others you have unlocked (within your archetype).
- Individual souls are capable of doing things you can’t do in WoW: Tanking priests, healing rogues, Warriors with pets, etc.

Population consistency:
https://www.riftstatus.net/graph/Hammerlord/history/7d#!/graph/Briarcliff/history/30d

Most popular servers (which by default appear at the top of the list) are seeing growth, while smaller ones are shrinking or going stagnant.
Indicates that the trend is overall good for population.
Initial 30-day period definitely saw a drop, but not a monstrous one.
The response among active players seems to be “good riddance” for most of the folks that left. Community strengthened by it.
How many people? Under 1000 per server at “prime time”, but 58 different servers in the US, and another 41 in Europe (whoa!) Avg 500 per = almost 50,000 concurrent
- Implies a serious lack of content.

Overall…

RIFT is a success, for a very specific type of player.
– Likes WoW’s mechanics, but hates its age and lack of “outside the box” class structure.
– Likes WoW’s interface, but doesn’t want to rely on UI add-ons to customize their experience.
– Likes smaller communities, smaller population servers.
– New to MMOs

The future of RIFT…
Sadly, despite the success it is experiencing right now, I don’t see it remaining a top player in the MMO world after the launch of SWTOR and/or GW2. Even another WOW expansion pack would take a significant bite out of RIFT’s population. It feels to me like a game that a lot of people are playing while they bide their time waiting for something better to come along.

Why? LACK OF INNOVATION.
Almost every single aspect of RIFT has been done elsewhere, first. Admittedly, Trion Worlds has done many of those same things BETTER in RIFT (like active, dynamic events, which we’ve seen since Anarchy Online and Warhammer), but they are still not anything NEW.

2K Games Enters the MMO arena!
https://massively.joystiq.com/2011/05/23/take-two-signs-with-xlgames-to-make-existing-property-into-an-mm/
https://phx.corporate-ir.net/preview/phoenix.zhtml?c=86428&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1568889

Lineage creator Jake Song (and his company, XLGames) signed into partnership deal with 2K Games to “develop and publish a massively multiplayer online game for the Asian market based upon one of 2K Games’ top-selling franchise.”

Let the speculation begin!

Since this is specifically in reference to 2KGames, and not its parent company Take Two Interactive, you can probably rule out IPs that aren’t directly owned by 2K. Including:
- – GTA
- – Red Dead Redemption
- – LA Noire
This leaves a fairly short list when you’re talking about “top-selling” franchises:
- – Bioshock
- – XCom
- – Borderlands
- – Dungeon Siege
- – Civilization
- – Pirates!
- I wanna see an innovative MMO Shooter.
- The one most likely to get adapted would be Dungeon Siege, imho. Though a part of me would love to see either a Borderlands or Bioshock MMO.
  - I don’t honestly know how popular or appealing any of these IPs would be to a Korean gaming market.

What about XLGames’ “ArcheAge?”

Now undergoing its third beta phase, all reviews coming out of the game have been favorable. In fact, I’m honestly hoping to see an English version of the client available some time this year, as many of the sandboxey features of this game have definitely caught my interest.
Since this deal is a “partnership” and not a buyout, it’s likely that the future development and support of ArcheAge will not be affected in any way.

BioWare Talks Mass Effect MMO:

I’ll be honest, this is kind of a non-news item at this point, since it’s primarily based off a single quote. There’s not much to go on, but I’ll give you this:

https://www.vg247.com/2011/04/11/bioware-mass-effect-mmo-makes-sense/

“A lot of people say that they want to see an MMO, I think that kind of makes sense for this universe. […] If you get rid of the Reapers and win that, wouldn’t it be amazing to just live on the Citadel or just take a ship to Omega? That makes sense.”

That quote is from Casey Hudson, Executive Producer of the Mass Effect franchise.
Not just “some guy” musing about the future of Mass Effect… he is “the guy” that could make it happen.

That quote is also from more than a month ago, and nothing has been said since…
Bioware is waiting to see how SWTOR does on the market, before moving forward with other online projects.

They’re not a small-fry company: They take BIG risks, and expect BIG payoffs.
If SWTOR doesn’t show a viable payoff for some reason, we may not see further MMOs from Bioware.

Reasons it could work:

Mass Effect has a rich galaxy, filled with political intrigue and TONS of stories to explore.
“Magical” technology (Biotics) allows for limitless imagination and flashy gameplay.
Psuedo-realistic astronomy would be unique in current space genres, if allowed to explore.
Plenty of armor, weapons, ships, etc, already established.

Reasons it could FAIL:

If you destroy the Reapers in ME3, why is it worth tooling around in this universe? What are you saving?
It would HAVE to be a cover-shooter, to live up to Mass Effect. And developing the maps, cover mechanics, bullet physics, class balance, and everything else… PvP would be a nightmare in this setting.
Your crew… people? No, I want well-scripted, well-acted companions that I can get to know, converse with, maybe even romance. If I wanted to talk to people, I wouldn’t be playing video games!
You’re not Shepard. This IS the Mass Effect franchise. Without Shepard, is it really ME?

Nintendo recently applied for ESRB ratings on a game titled “Zelda Universe.” No other news. But it’s POSSIBLE that Nintendo is looking to enter the MMO space.
– Interactive website?

NEXT WEEK:

I will be exploring the concept of MMO shooters. Why did PlanetSide not find success? Will SOE fix those mistakes in PlanetSide Next? Will FireFall be the next big thing in online shooters? How could Duke Nukem influence the future of this market?

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The post Rift, 2KGames, Mass Effect | MMOrgue 4 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Top 3 Co-Ops | LOTSO 009

chris — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 07:06:26 +0000

Chris, Justin, and Alan give you their top 3 co-op games, and go head to head on which deserves to be the champion!

PLUS We cover the possible Xbox Live update that might bring streaming Hulu video, a crazy full body arm motion controller, and Sega kicks everyone in the nuts by jumping on-board with EA’s new online key requirement scheme… We discuss!

Grab one of LOTSO’s feeds to get the show when its released:

This week’s show notes:

Hulu Coming to XBox?
Sega Agrees that Taking Our Money is Good
Dying Newspapers Need Money … So the Federal Trade Commission Pulls a Classic Dick Move.
While EA, Ubisoft and Sega Feel Like They Need to Take Our Lunch Money, Rockstar Comes Correct!

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The post Top 3 Co-Ops | LOTSO 009 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.