I hate it when a Deadric Prince has evil plans for my soul. Thankfully, I’ll get a chance to put a stop to that nonsense in the upcoming massively multiplayer online role-playing game from Bethesda.

The Elder Scrolls Online, from developer Bethesda, is due out later this year. In anticipation of that release, Bethesda is dripping out details of the MMO’s mechanics and story. Earlier today, the studio released a video that reveals information about the title’s plot.

Check out the video below:

Basically, Molag Bal, the God of Schemes, has some crazy plan to enslave the souls of all mortals. This forces the player to track down the Daedric Prince in Coldharbour, one of the evil parallel planes of Oblivion.

Once there, players will discover that Molag Bal has special plans for their soul in particular.

The Elder Scrolls Online is Bethesda’s first time taking the popular franchise online. Most recently, the company had a major hit with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC. Online takes place 1,000 years before the events of that game. Spoiler warning: Molag Bal is still around in Skyrim, so I’d be careful with your soul in The Elder Scrolls Online.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Trion Worlds is finding some success with its online-shooter Defiance.

Trion revealed today that over one million players registered for accounts in the $59.99 PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 mulitplayer online game. That’s a major milestone for a title that saddles players with “bland graphics, an unintuitive user interface, and performance issues,” according to GamesBeat’s review.

Defiance, the game, might be getting a boost from Defiance, the SyFy television show. Nearly a month ago, SyFy introduced the science-fiction series that ties into the events of the game. It drew big audiences for its premiere and showed off several commercials for the game. It’s likely that the SyFy audience is crossing over to the game in a big way.

To celebrate the Defiances’ (plural) success, Trion is also announcing a competition where players can compete in the game for a chance to appear on the show. The contest is available to enter now on the official website.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The opening pilot of Defiance, a TV-game transmedia project in the works for five years, debuted last night on the NBC Universal’s SyFy Channel. Early reviews are coming in for both the online game and the show — and they’re not overwhelmingly positive.

Having watched the pilot, I think it was an enjoyable two-hour episode. It has humor, action, political intrigue, and some mystery to keep you enticed to watch more. But Game of Thrones, it’s not. I’ve watched the show and played the game (see our impressions story by Stefanie Fogel), and they are not the highest-quality entertainment experiences I’ve had in the past year.

Add to that the huge distraction from the horror in Boston today, which may deter people from creating any buzz around the pilot. The initial talk about the game was negative because of some well-known server issues that stopped people from joining the game at the outset.

That means the risky bet that some big companies have made on Defiance is looking pretty scary right now. Trion Worlds spent the past five years and an estimated $70 million developing a cross-platform online game for the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. The game-show combination is perhaps one of the biggest bets in entertainment today.

The show has good cast, starring Grant Bowler as Joshua Nolan, a war veteran who becomes a lawman in the wild-west town of Defiance in a future where a post-apocalyptic Earth has become the home to seven alien races. Bowler and his adopted daughter Irisa (played by Stephanie Leonidas) make an appearance in the game and then escape the San Francisco Bay Area and drive onto the TV show’s setting in what was once St. Louis, Mo.

The initial reviews are thin and not pretty. So far, 15 game publications have given the game an average rating of 62 out 100, according to Metacritic, a review aggregator. That’s pretty pathetic. On TV, 13 critics have given the show a rating of 52 out of 100. That’s even worse. The Boston Herald said it felt like the “Frankenstein of TV shows,” built from the parts of other successful shows — from Battlestar Galactica to Deadwood.

That doesn’t bode well for Trion, which has to hold the attention of gamers for many more hours of content compared to the TV show, whose first season will span 12 episodes.

I’ve put a dozen hours into playing the game, and I have to agree with the critics so far about its shortcomings. But I will acknowledge that I have played a tiny bit of the available content, and I am not willing to give the game a review score just yet.

As Nolan and Irisa move into the town, they meet the mayor, Amanda Rosewater (Julie Benz), and residents like Rafe McCawley (Graham Greene), lounge owner Kenya (Mia Kirshner), and the ambitious and evil-looking aliens, the Tarrs (Tony Curran and Jaime Murray). Then events unfold that threaten the fragile peace in the town where aliens and humans live together.

In the TV show, Nolan and Irisa are scavengers. In the game, players take on the role of Ark Hunters, who hunt down lost alien artifacts. The idea is to make the players feel like the main characters. In the show, Bowler does a great job being a cocky yet diplomatic lawman in a lawless town.

Trion is promising a couple of patches to fix software problems. And it has to give out some extra goods to players to convince them to stick with the game.

As I noted in my previous preview, the content is good. But I don’t know if this show and the game are going to pan out. You don’t have to watch the show and play the game at the same time, but it’s a fair bet that these two will live or die together.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the development costs alone on the video game are $70 million. That’s not hard to believe considering Trion has raised more than $150 million and has a team of 150 working on the game. Over five years, it’s easy to see how payroll costs alone could hit that number. Another 150 worked on the TV show at SyFy, and they all had to coordinate.

The story is set on Earth in the year 2046. It takes place after a massive alien ship, the Ark, crash-lands on Earth. The aliens are seeking a refuge as they flee their own planet, but they make a mess of Earth. The ship terraforms the whole place, and it dumps seven unwanted alien races to live or fight among the surviving humans. The aliens brought with them a new resource, Gulanite, that everyone wants to control in a kind of gold rush. The game’s version of San Francisco is in a state of constant warfare. In Defiance, the races are living together in an uneasy truce.

In today’s pilot, players got to see more of the backstory to the game that they’re playing. Nolan and Irisa roll into town, meet the mayor, and quickly get into trouble. The mayor talks Nolan into becoming the sheriff of the town, and he immediately has to deal with a Romeo and Juliet subplot that leads to a cross-species murder. Nolan and Irisa just want to escape to Antarctica, but they have to choose their temporary allies wisely.

Add to that some serious scheming among the power brokers of the town and those who don’t mind betraying everyone who lives there. The townsfolk learn that they’ve got an invasion of mechanical robots to fend off. They have to either pull together as one to defend the town or fall as a divided community.

The story of the town is an immigrant drama. The pilot has some slow parts, but it drew me in. The acting was good, and the story had tension, action, and comic relief. The climax combat scene was pretty satisfying, but I had to shake my head at how dumb the invaders were. They don’t seem to have heard of these things called “scouts,” and they walked right into an ambush.

The show also set in motion a number of mysteries that will unfold in future episodes. I liked the episode, but I can’t say it’s going to hold my attention for a whole season in competition with so much other entertainment. It has a large cast and is tightly woven for a two-hour episode.

What was your opinion of the TV show? Take our poll below.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The galaxy was such a nice place before the Hutts moved in. Now crime is on the rise in The Old Republic thanks to those slug-like gangsters, and property values are in decline.

Earlier today, developer BioWare launched Rise of the Hutt Cartel, the first major expansion for its massively multiplayer role-playing game Star Wars: The Old Republic. The downloadable content costs $19.99, or $9.99 for subscribers.

The add-on pack will raise the level cap to 55, introduce a new planet, and offer up new story-based missions for players.

“We’ve worked hard over the last year to ensure we were listening to player feedback and acting on it,” The Old Republic executive producer Jeff Hickman said in a statement. “This month, we’re not only adding hours of new story-driven content and features with Rise of the Hutt Cartel, but we are also adding depth and content to the end game with our latest Game Update 2.0: Scum and Villainy. All of this new content, combined with a much larger, more active, and engaged community since the addition of the free-to-play option last year, makes this the best time to join or return to The Old Republic.”

Star Wars: The Old Republic is one of the bigger free-to-play MMOs in terms of scope. BioWare released the title in December 2011 under publisher Electronic Arts. The game originally operated under a subscription-only model, but the big-budget title moved to free-to-play in July.

The Old Republic’s failure to maintain a subscriber base is one of the many failures attributed to former EA chief executive officer John Riccitiello, who resigned from that position in March.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Elyse Petersen is the founder of Tealet

Tea Drinkers Anonymous is a guild on the popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game Guild Wars 2. And no, they are not trying to fight a tea addiction: On the contrary, they brought it online. Its members sip tea as they explore the world of Tyria together. The connection between tea and games could stop there, but it turns out tea connoisseurship relates to gaming personas, as modeled by Richard Bartle. More, these might apply to many other kinds of products and experiences.

A model for gamer’s personas

While Bartle’s research comes from early MUDs (multiuser dungeons, ancestors of current online games and RPGs), it laid a foundation for the personas of gamers that has been used to describe many other online communities. Other models compete, but Bartle’s is widely used.

He found that the four things that people enjoyed most from MUD games were: achievement, exploration, socializing, and competition Most players exhibit dominance of one or two traits. And consciously or not, game developers manage the balance of these elements in order to sustain a healthy ecosystem of players.

Achievers want to complete the game and gain levels and recognition.

Explorers enjoy their knowledge of the game world and finding out hidden corners of the game’s world.

Socializers spend a great deal of their time interacting with the other players in the game. Their influence and network of friends in the game keeps them motivated to play.

Competitors are more aggressive and find fulfillment in “winning” and domination.

From MUDs to tea leaves

“Herbivorous” tea lovers are – like gamers – on a journey, and they exhibit many similar behaviors.

In the tea world, here are the equivalents of Bartle’s personas:

Achievers are the enthusiasts that will spend their life becoming a tea master. These connoisseurs will stop at nothing to learn more about the artistic mysteries of the Camellia sinensis plant. They might share their enthusiasm in detailed blogs about the teas they taste and stories they learn. They might not have a mastery level attached (unless they practice Japan’s cha-do), but the community respects these achievers as experts.

Socializers are the backbone of the new tea lover community. These tea community builders love tea not just for its wonderful taste and healing powers but also for the bond that forms when people share a tea experience. Since the beginning of tea’s history, it has played a significant role in bringing together communities – from India to East Asia and to England and more. With technology, you can share a cup of tea across the world — regardless of the time difference involved.

The tea journey for explorers is motivated by the desire to try every tea they can. Believe it or not, those adventurers may find themselves traveling around the globe to well-hidden tea-growing regions just for the taste of something that you can’t find anywhere else. More than likely, these explorers have so much experience tasting teas that they can taste the difference between two Dragon well teas harvested from the same plant just days apart. They are not unlike wine lovers or birders.

Competitors, also referred to as killers, are not out to drown others in tea or poison their cup. These passionate tea lovers enjoy heated discussions with others about their favorite beverage. They are always sure to correct someone’s tea ignorance or disagree with someone about the degree of muscatel of a Darjeeling. A quick browse on subreddit /r/Tea will show a list of engaged discussions on proper tea pouring and tasting etiquette. These discussions are had in good fun and help create bonds between the community members.

Communities increasingly dominate industries

As the Internet is connecting isolated enthusiasts in all sorts of fields, similar personas are emerging and gaining power from their knowledge, network, attitude or opinions. Offline experiences that used to be isolated are being shared and influencing in turn which companies succeed by harnessing those powers to serve customers better.

Thinking about your own interests you can surely identify how much of an achiever, explorer, socializer, or killer you are.

While at Tealet our passion took us on the way of tea, the lessons from online games and virtual communities as Bartle describes are taking over. Is life a game, or were games life in the first place? We might ask the members of Tea Drinker’s Anonymous around a virtual campfire and … a cup of tea!

Thanks to Benjamin Joffe for suggesting this connection between tea and gaming and reviewing drafts of this article.

Elyse Petersen is the founder of Tealet, an online community and marketplace for tea lovers. She is an advocate for tea growers and technology and wants to connect growers and tea drinkers around the world. Tealet is part of the 500 Startups Accelerator Batch of Winter 2012.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Michael Nankin has been working on the Defiance television show that ties in with the massively multiplayer online game of the same name from Trion Worlds. The project has occupied hundreds of creators for years and is finally coming to a head. The game debuts April 2, and its story builds to the beginning of the TV show that debuts on April 15.

“There’s a seamless transition from one to the other, and we are hoping that will lead gamers — after becoming attached to the characters after two weeks of play — into the pilot,” Nankin said.

You can play the game without ever watching the show and vice versa, but as TV series goes on, some characters will leave the show and transition into the game. Global issues affect both worlds, as the show is set in St. Louis and the game is based in the San Francisco area. The sci-fi show has the flavor of a western, but Nankin describes it more as an immigrant drama.

The first season will have 13 episodes. Some are finished and some aren’t. That’s what you call real-time production. Here’s our video interview with Nankin.

SyFy’s Michael Nankin tells us about the making of the Defiance television show from VentureBeat on Vimeo.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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I’ve seen the pilot episode of Defiance, and I’ve previewed the massively multiplayer online third-person shooter game. Both are launching this month as part of a huge collaboration between NBC Universal’s SyFy network and venture-backed game company Trion Worlds. And I’ll be honest. The content is good, but I still don’t know how this one is going to turn out. These two properties will share a common fate. They’re both going to succeed, or they’re both going to fail.

The magnitude of the gamble is unlike any other “transmedia” project involving both TV and game versions of the same entertainment property. The Wall Street Journal reported that the development costs alone on the video game are $70 million. That’s not hard to believe, considering Trion has raised more than $150 million and it has a team of 150 working on the game. Over five years, it’s easy to see how payroll costs alone could hit that number. Another 150 worked on the TV show at SyFy, and they all had to coordinate.

The story is set on Earth in the year 2046. It takes place after a massive alien ship, the Ark, crash lands on Earth. The aliens are seeking a refuge as they flee their own planet, but they make a mess of Earth. The ship terraforms the whole place, and it dumps seven unwanted alien races to live or fight among the surviving humans. The aliens brought with them a new resource, Gulanite, that everyone wants to control in a kind of gold rush. The game’s version of San Francisco is in  a state of warfare. In Defiance, the races are living together in an uneasy truce.

The game launches on April 2 with a huge amount of publicity from NBC Universal and its owner Comcast. Players will become immersed in the game and, hopefully, become attached to the lead characters Joshua Nolan and Erisa during a two week mission. They will start in the Marin County headlands and work their way down to the Golden Gate Bridge, where the player will feel a “Planet of the Apes” moment at seeing the ruined state of the iconic bridge, said Nick Beliaeff, senior vice president of development at Trion Worlds, in an interview with GamesBeat. The game is one of the only ones that works across the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 platforms.

“We’re so excited this labor of love is about to see the light of day,” he said.

An intriguing pilot

After two weeks in the game, Nolan and Irisa will leave San Francisco and drive to the St. Louis arch, which is also in a ruined state after an alien spaceship crash lands on Earth. In the town of Defiance, where the TV show takes place, the aliens and humans are trying to live together. The movement of the characters from the game to the TV show is what transmedia theorists call a “touch point.” It’s a place where the fans of one medium could cross over and become fans of the same story in another medium. It is the hook to draw us into Nolan and Erisa (pictured right, Nolan played by Grant Bowler; Irisa played by Stephanie Leonidas). The touch point can work in either direction. It can pull the TV fans into the game or vice versa. If it happens right, like with the Harry Potter films and games, it’s a gold mine.

“We’re not binary when it comes to entertainment,” Beliaeff said at a recent event in Las Vegas. “We have touch-points. We don’t care how you get into Defiance, through the TV show or the game. We just want you in Defiance.”

The TV pilot is finished and set for its debut on April 15. Altogether, the first season will have 13 episodes. Some are done and some aren’t, said Michael Nankin, directing producer at SyFy, in an interview with GamesBeat.

You can play the game without ever watching the show and vice versa, but as TV series goes on, some characters will leave the show and transition into the game. Global issues affect both worlds, as the show is set in St. Louis and the game is based in the San Francisco area. The sci-fi show has the flavor of a western, but Nankin describes it more as an immigrant drama. The pilot has some slow parts, but it drew me in. The acting was good, the story had tension, combat, and comic relief. The show also set in motion a number of mysteries that will unfold in future episodes. I liked the episode, but I can’t say it’s going to hold my attention for a whole season in competition with so much other entertainment. It has a large cast and is tightly woven for a two-hour episode.

So how is the game?

But the game, by definition, is non-linear, with hundreds of hours of content and enormous territories for the players to roam over. You can run around on foot, but more likely you’ll want to ride an all-terrain vehicle. I’ve played the game several times, watching it move from an unpolished state to nearly finished. Last week, I played the version that players will see.

In the third-person shooting game, you can take on a wide variety of roles, including medic and machinist. I walked into a battle as a machinist with a sniper rifle and a machine gun. The graphics in the PC version look a lot sharper than on the consoles. But titles like Crysis 3 definitely look better.

I happened to materialize in the middle of a bridge. I tried to ride over it, but faced a roadblock by a bunch of mutants. I retreated and used my sniper rifle against them. They were not particularly hard to kill as they stood out in the open. But they did have a nasty habit of scooting to the side whenever I had them in my gun sights. The artificial intelligence was limited but passable. While one set of mutants fired at me, another would occasionally rush me with the mission of slicing me in two.

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The folks at Hunted Cow Studios are patient. Today, they’re unveiling Eldevin, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game that they have worked on for eight years.

The company is releasing the first-ever gameplay trailer for Eldevin, and it is announcing a closed beta test set to launch in March. The developer’s target is the browser-based free-to-play MMO, Runescape. Runescape has an 11-year head start and more than 200 million registered players. But Elgin, Scotland-based Hunted Cow has financed its 3D MMO with a bunch of other games along the way, and the group wants to release the highest-quality experience it can develop, said John Stewart, studio manager of Hunted Cow.

Eldevin is a story-driven title set in a corrupt fantasy world on the edge of an all-out war. Players can join the Eldevin army or the mages of the Arcane Council in a quest to recover magical artifacts. The game runs entirely within a Web browser using Java technology, and it doesn’t require high-end graphics processing. That means it runs on the Web, and it works on the majority of netbooks, laptops, and desktops running Windows, Mac OS, or Linux. The team wants to reach as many players as it possibly can.

After eight years of work, Eldevin is a vast world. Stewart wants to release one of the richest, most in-depth experiences players can get without having to download a massive file. The title has real-time combat, 100 different abilities, 200 talents, several hundred items, and plenty of things for players to collect or craft. People can pursue 14 different professions. Hunted Cow estimates the title will have hundreds of hours of gameplay at launch, and it will have 600 individual quests. Eldevin has group dungeons and solo adventures while featuring player-versus-player combat, including battlegrounds for five-on-five and free-for-all matches. After launch, the team will continuously add more content.

Stewart said, “Eldevin is our flagship project. We’re a small indie developer but we’ve been working on this game for the best part of eight years now. It incorporates everything we’ve learned from our previous games, such as Fallen Sword and Gothador, but adds a wide range of innovations and ideas we believe take the genre in a number of new directions.”

He added, “As huge MMO fans ourselves, our goal was simple — to build the best massively multiplayer online role-playing game on the market. We’re incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished, and we’re ready to find out what players think of the game.”

Andrew Mulholland and Glenn Murphy started Hunted Cow in 2003 in the small town of Elgin. Their first website, CowPlay, featured multiplayer correspondence chess games. Then it launched the free-to-play online titles Gothador and Fallen Sword. After those launched, the company hired its first employees to work on Eldevin. Since then, the studio has released games like Solar Fleet, a space-trading Web-based experience.

Hunted Cow has also released new mobile war-strategy offerings, including Tank Battle: 1944, complemented by Civil War: 1863 and Tank Battle: North Africa. I’ve been playing these titles, and they’re addictive. They remind me of the old paper-based war games I played as a kid. Full told, the company’s offerings have had more than 4 million players. Thanks to these titles, Hunted Cow is entirely self-funded to date.

Mulholland said the company has gone through several iterations on Eldevin. The developer hasn’t released it yet because it wants to make sure the game is at its best.

Stewart said that the company has invested more than $1.6 million to develop Eldevin. The studio has just 20 employees, far fewer than Jagex, the maker of Runescape, and that explains why the work has taken such a long time. Eldevin has 3D graphics, which isn’t easy to do in Web-based Java applications.

But Hunted Cow hopes that its MMO will be more modern, incorporating all of the learnings from the past eight years. Eldevin has an integrated account system that will enable cross-promotion with other Hunted Cow offerings. The studio is planning on publishing releases from third-party developers.

“Our goal has been to bring together the excitement and agility of an indie developer, which is what we still consider ourselves to be, with the decade of experience we’ve built up,” Stewart said. “The goal’s very simple. To redefine the expectations for browser-based MMO games for the whole industry.”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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RuneScape is one of the oldest established massively multiplayer online (MMO) games, going strong 11 years after its 2001 launch and recently passing 200 million registered accounts. Mark Gerhard (pictured), chief executive officer of Jagex Games Studio, took time to speak to GamesBeat, via email, about the industry’s rush toward free-to-play experiences and the future for Runescape and Jagex.

Embracing a new model

With ongoing contraction in the retail-game sector, more-traditional publishers are embracing the free-to-play model, of which Runescape is a prime example, as they look for opportunities to expand their digital sales. Gerhard says he’s “excited to see the change,” but adds that, “it’s a very different business running a games service [which is how all the successful free-to-play games today are built and run] compared to the traditional publisher’s expertise in commissioning a product, shipping the said product, and simply marketing the life out of it.”

Traditional publishers looking to reinvent themselves is understandable, “given the sharp declines in both their relevance and revenues,” says Gerhard. “Clearly pretending the market hasn’t shifted is not a strategy for success.” He cautions that, “simply observing spectacular results from a handful of industry-leading companies and surmising that it’s easy to replicate is very likely to compound their existing problems rather than resolve them.”

It could be too much of an ask for traditional publishers to embrace the service mindset, constant data analysis, and sustained innovation required to succeed in the free-to-play space. “We are talking about a complete inverse in culture; it’s hard to imagine many will get it right on their own,” says Gerhard.

Saturation of the MMO market

New MMO titles are appearing all the time, which has led to a genuine concern that the market will become overrun. Gerhard believes that players will become more discerning about where they choose to spend their time when this happens and will switch content even faster. He’s happy with Jagex’s position in this eventuality, saying, “I believe as the market becomes more heavily congested, consumers will gravitate towards the most recognizable and trusted brands, a shift that will only continue to benefit Jagex. It ultimately comes down to what’s original and best.”

The launch of major MMO competitors, such as Dungeons and Dragons Online, The Lord of the Rings Online, and Star Trek Online, hasn’t resulted in any attrition in Runescape, according to Gerhard. “Be that because they continue to remain engaged with our ever-changing content throughout, perhaps return rather quickly after trying any new content, or simply that we may serve a different psychographic to the some of these other games is not completely clear.”

Free-to-play releases on consoles

Games like Dust 514 (a first-person shooter set in the EVE Online universe) and superhero MMO DC Universe Online are bringing the free-to-play model to consoles, but Gerhard is adamant that such a move is not on the cards for Jagex. “The amount of online customers around the world accessible via browsers on desktops, smartphones, and tablets ranks in the billions. Weigh that against the tens of millions of connected consoles, and it’s clear that it’s not a number-one priority for us for a while.”

It isn’t just a numbers game. During discussions a few years ago, Gerhard discovered that, “the real issues were not the expected ones of choice of content or even to a degree the commercial models, but rather that the platform holders themselves were not prepared to open up their closed ecosystems to the web. We found that they were even less prepared to contemplate the notion that we insisted our community would be playing the same game on every platform,” including the Wii, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.

“When the consoles do open up completely then we would readily support them as part of our roadmap,” says Gerhard.  “I’m certain this change will come in time, simply out of necessity, but if history is anything to go by, the progress will be glacial.”

Transformers Universe

Going forward, Jagex is focusing a lot of its key development resources on Transformers Universe, an MMO property with huge potential. The team is, “super excited about how Transformers Universe is taking shape and rather punchy about its potential to be a truly breakthrough game,” says Gerhard. He is aware that a huge amount of work is still required for the project to reach completion, and focus remains on the progress made with every daily game build. “We remain grounded by the enormity of effort still required over the course of the next six months.”

Jagex’s potential

Given the ongoing success of RuneScape and the upcoming release of Transformers Universe, Gerhard is confident of Jagex’s future market value, when compared to companies such as Zynga and Nexon. “I genuinely believe we are a gold mine of equal, if not greater, market-value potential, but that will probably only start to become widely evident early next year as some of our major initiatives start to come to fruition. We’ve still got tons of work to do over the next six months, but if the successes of the first half of this year are anything to go by, we will completely smash it in the second half.”

As for the future of gaming? Gerhard is clear that it lies in the growth of free-to-play initiatives. “Free to play will largely be the way of the future given it offers the best value and choice for consumers. As any industry matures, that’s where the focus shifts.”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Troubles continue to mount for Star Wars: The Old Republic. After months of layoffs and a shrinking player base, executive producer Rich Vogel has left BioWare Austin. He oversaw all aspects of the massively multiplayer role-playing game during its development and after its launch.

He leaves amid reports that his former studio will be suffering more layoffs, according to game-business website Gamasutra.

Vogel (pictured right) has a long history with MMOs, having previously worked on Ultima Online (one of the first successes in the genre) and Star Wars: Galaxies (the first attempt at a Star Wars MMO) before he spent seven years at BioWare Austin working on Star Wars: The Old Republic.

We once wondered if SW:TOR would be able to take on the famously popular World of Warcraft, but after a decent start came dwindling subscribers and a series of layoffs at developer BioWare Austin. It seems like we’re just waiting to see how long it takes publisher Electronic Arts to throw up its hands and make The Old Republic free-to-play.

[Update: Andrew Wong, a spokesman for EA, said in a statement, "As we announced in May and detailed at E3, the BioWare Austin team is refining Star Wars: The Old Republic to continue to grow the game and the service. "

He added, "As with the launch of any MMO, the size and skillset of the teams needed to maintain the game is different than the ones that built it. Starting in May, there have been staff reductions in the BioWare Austin studio and Rich Vogel left BioWare in June.  Some people have been platooned to other projects at BioWare Austin and EA SPORTS/Austin. Others have been released – qualifying personnel receive severance and outplacement assistance. BioWare Austin is currently staffed to ensure the continued delivery of new, high quality game content for The Old Republic, and at a more frequent cadence.  In the weeks ahead, we will announce plans for growing SWTOR with new content, new players and new ways to play."]

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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We all know about services like Foursquare, which track location data to show our friends where we are for social media. But what about using the same sort of service for games? Robert Bowling of Robotoki spoke the other day about how location-aware devices will play a part in the developer’s upcoming title, The Human Element.

This year is also the first time so-called “smart watches” are becoming available. These devices connect to our smartphones and offer application services right on our wrists. Some, like Sony’s SmartWatch, run applications natively. Others merely stream from the phone via Bluetooth.

The Cookoo watch isn’t a smart watch, according to creator Peter Hauser. It offers a simple system that pings the wearer with notifications about new emails, calls, tweets, or other social media updates without requiring you to hold your phone. It also can automatically check into locations using Foursquare, Facebook, or Twitter, and has an open SDK for developers to build their own functionality.

The project’s Kickstarter closes tomorrow morning.

While the watch itself looks like a decent timepiece, its allure to gamers is how a connected watch can work with games. Bowling’s example is just one of many possibilities. Massively multiplayer online games can benefit from such systems when players are “AFK” (which stands for “away from the keyboard,” meaning they’re out in the real world) by allowing them to actively participate in the game with the press of a button. “Having a piece of hardware that ties them to their alternate world,” Hauser said, “is unique for watches.”

Of course, all of the same applications could be done with just a smartphone, but therein lies Hauser’s major selling point. The phone lives in your pocket; a watch, which many have already replaced with a phone, is on the wrist and easy to hear and notice. It’s also discrete; we all accept that watches can beep, while phone ringtones can be equally embarrassing and annoying. The Cookoo makes check-in features and notifications a simple click or beep away. It can be used for everything from an Ebay bid reminder to direct messages on Eve Online.

Hardware companies like Logitech, Razer, SteelSeries, and plenty others already build specialty keyboards, mice, and other peripherals to meet the demands of an ever-growing userbase of gamers. Will gamers be interested in a watch that can quickly and efficiently help progress in a game while at work, shopping, or doing anything besides for playing?

It will take developers, and perhaps a few invested gamers who want an edge, to get the ball rolling on using a wristwatch to help play a game. Such technology isn’t limited to just the Cookoo watch, but with an open development kit, Hauser and team ConnecteDevice Ltd. is on the right path to making that possibility into a reality.

APB Reloaded — a free-to-play massively multiplayer online (MMO) title — is proving that positive reviews and long-term success don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand, as it flies in the face of criticism from the gaming press and continues to develop a loyal playing community.

Rewind two years, and it’s fair to say that the original release of APB was a disaster. Having sucked up $100M in venture capital funding, the title got a critical mauling on its June 2010 launch. Just 79 days later, poor sales and low player numbers saw the game servers being closed and developer Realtime Worlds folding, with the loss of over 300 jobs.

Free-to-play game publisher GamersFirst took the bold move of reviving this seemingly dead title, launching the newly branded APB Reloaded (APBR) at the end of October 2011. This new iteration ditched the subscription model of the original and featured a host of improvements from Reloaded Productions — the development team cherry-picked from the ruins of Realtime Worlds — but APBR was still received poorly by critics. It currently sits of a Metacritic aggregated score of 57 out of 100, one point lower than the original game.

Despite the poor reviews, APB Reloaded gained 3 million users within a week of launch, quickly becoming the second most popular microtransaction-based game on digital-distribution service Steam.

The guys at Reloaded Productions — general manager Michael Boniface, lead producer Scott Stevenson, and lead designer Zak Litwin — talked to GamesBeat via e-mail about how APBR is managing to build and maintain a strong user-base despite poor reviews and what they see as a general lack of interest from the gaming press.

Left to right: Scott Stevenson, Zak Litwin, Michael Boniface

GamesBeat: BackinDecember,APB Reloadedhad3millionusersandwasthesecondmostpopularmicrotransaction-basedgameonSteam.Howareyournumberslookingnow,sixmonthsdowntheline?

Reloaded Productions: The numbers are still looking great. The initial launch was incredible, and there are a lot of people out there who have given the game the benefit of the doubt and downloaded it. They’re now regular players. Our initial numbers have grown steadily which is, we believe, a tribute to the way the gameplay has come on, how it’s matured, and the way in which the development team can respond very quickly to player feedback.

GB: APBRhasn’treceivedthekindestreviewsfromthegamingpress,withaMetascoreof57.Doyoufeelthatreviewsadverselyaffectplayernumbersinfree-to-playtitlessuchasAPBR,asmuchastheymightwithaboxedretailgame?Istheremorescopetogetplayerstolookbeyondthereviewswithafree-to-playgame?

Reloaded: Reviews are much less of an issue for a free-to-play game which has a much, much longer retail window than a traditional boxed title. For one thing, a lot of the games press can’t or won’t run a review for a F2P game and are not structured to provide any sort of ongoing coverage for a game which is sold over a much longer period. Once a game’s been reviewed, a lot of the press immediately lose interest.

In APB’s case, a lot of the reviews are now almost two years old, so they’re moving down the Google rankings and are less visible and less important to prospective new players than the active community and a lot of players who are telling friends and family to give the game the benefit of the doubt and try it.

For a game which requires zero up-front investment, apart from the time taken to download and install it, players tend to be a lot more open to trying something new. A lot of the comments and feedback we get are from players saying how surprised and delighted they were that, after taking a chance on the game, they’ve really enjoyed it.

We’re also finding that players have far fewer preconceptions about the game than the games media. If they like the game, they’re pretty open about saying so to friends. It’s not a guilty secret.

The bottom line for APB Reloaded is that it doesn’t demand £40 [$60] upfront. The only way we make money is if players enjoy the game enough to come back on an ongoing basis and part with a small amount of cash to improve, upgrade, and add new elements to their game. If the players don’t like it, the game won’t survive. We’d love to show the games media how much everything’s evolved over the last couple of years, but for a lot of them, the game’s already come, gone, and been consigned to the trash.

GB: LookingatMetacriticuserscores,APBRseemslikealove it, hate it title --thereareveryfewmiddlingreviews.Whydoyouthinkthegameinspiressuchextremereactionsfromitsplayers?

Reloaded: There’s a lot of history and a lot of baggage around APB. The PR was handled badly, and a lot of early reviews reflected — quite rightly — that there were a lot of problems with the game on its initial release.

There’s still quite a lot of suspicion about the game in some quarters. Several publications don’t want anything to do with the game, despite the fact it’s been redeveloped extensively.

The fact it’s free-to-play hasn’t helped it in some sectors either. There seems to be a fundamental mistrust within some parts of the games industry that free-to-play games are somehow not real games, or at least are not good enough to pay money for.

The game itself also polarizes opinion. It’s a title which encourages and rewards team-based play, so a lot of players who are looking for a more [first-person-shooter]-style experience — or just Grand Theft Auto online — can be disappointed.

However, having said all that, the people who do download the game tend to be very happy with it. The blend of vehicle-based action, cops and robbers style gameplay and more intense up-front action has been incredibly popular. We’re getting a lot of great feedback from people who play and enjoy the game. Alongside the people telling us we suck, of course.

Rather than try to be all things to all men, we’re planning to focus on giving players the best experience we can.

GB: Whatdoyouthinkisthesecrettobuildingapersistentcommunityinafree-to-playMMOandkeepingthatcommunityinvestedinthegame?

Reloaded: Keeping a community interested is very simple — give them something they can ALL hate together. It really pulls everyone together.

Actually the real key is to never, ever take your players for granted. Don’t assume you know best and never ignore them.

The reality these days with any form of media which players — or viewers, or listeners or “fans” — can get passionate about, is they now want to feel part of the overall process. They want to be included and kept in the loop throughout the whole process. That doesn’t mean you have to crowd-source design decisions, or base everything on your users, but you can’t ever ignore them.

Talk to them directly; make sure the communication is ongoing and goes both ways. If you can give players access of some form to the development team, it can really benefit both sides. It keeps the team grounded and makes the community feel special and part of the game.

Events, competitions, and special activities can help, but communicating and making the community feel part of things is the real heart of it.

GB: The$64Mquestion:Howhaveyouturnedagamethatkilledastudiointoasuccess?

Reloaded: The original game had a number of problems. When it was released, there were a number — OK, lots — of issues which meant it wasn’t a whole lot of fun. This wasn’t due to a lack of ideas or talent, but the whole structure of the studio at that point meant there was a colossal amount of momentum which limited the changes which could be made quickly and effectively. The game took so long to come to market, that everything had moved on. The types of game on the market had changed, as had the expectations from the audience, the media, and the industry as a whole.

We all knew there was a good game in there. We could all see the game APB could have been. It just didn’t come out in the original release.

In APB Reloaded we’ve changed the entire structure around the game. Nothing within the game is sacred. We’ve got to be responsive and agile, since we rely on players coming back multiple times. We’ve built the team around these concepts and we can make changes — fundamental changes if need be — very quickly and get them incorporated into game, out onto the market, and then monitor the response. Players won’t wait for weeks or months anymore. They’ve got such a huge choice when it comes to games and entertainment now, you’ve got to be able to keep them interested, keep them happy, and keep them playing.

Focus and agility, those are key for us. And fun. We like fun. Our players like fun. We’re all after the same thing.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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She looks up. Ravens fill the trees in her yard. Lots of ravens. “They feel it too,” Norma says. “Last time I saw ‘em like this, when the trees were more birds than branches…there were murders.”

When Norwegian developer Funcom’s latest massively multiplayer online role-playing game, The Secret World, launches in July, two things will no doubt set it apart from its competitors: its real-world Lovecraft meets Stephen King meets the X-Files setting and its challenging, brain-teasing missions.

Massively multiplayer online MMO veterans know how questing traditionally works. You stumble upon a hub of non-playable characters with golden exclamation points over their heads. You scoop up every task they offer, then you spend the next few hours grinding them out as efficiently as possible, sometimes while simultaneously watching TV. The Secret World changes all of that by restricting the number of active missions you can have at one time. While some players will find this too limiting, I think it’s a good thing. The Secret World is a story-driven game, complete with cutscenes and voiced dialogue. Many of its missions require attention, thought, and the occasional Google search. Flitting from one mission to another like a hummingbird with ADHD would ruin the experience.

“Find more information about the murders.” After speaking with Norma, this is the only clue I have on what to do next. It’s here I realize The Secret World’s investigative missions are refreshingly free of hand-holding. There is no arrow on the mini-map telling me where to go. Sure, I could probably hop on the Internet using the game’s integrated web browser and find the solution on the official forums, but where would be the fun in that?

After a bit of exploration, I find the information I’m looking for and feel a small rush of accomplishment as my journal updates with yet another cryptic clue. Missions are divided into sub-tiers that need to be tackled in the order they’re given. Once I’ve completed all the tiers and tracked down Norma’s mystery killer, I send a report back to my faction handlers with the simple click of a button and claim my reward. There is no tedious backtracking, which is a nice touch. I find another investigation mission, and it’s not long before I’m searching Kingsmouth for Illuminati symbols for a slightly nutty priest who claims to be the secret society’s biggest fan.

I suspect that The Secret World is not a game for everyone. Quest grinders will no doubt find the game’s slower pace annoying, and action junkies might be disappointed by its floaty, vanilla combat. But if you’re the type of gamer who loves exploration and puzzle-solving, if you love classic adventure games, or if you’re just looking for something a little different, The Secret World might be right up your alley.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Electronic Arts said today that its critical online game, Star Wars: The Old Republic, had 1.3 million active subscribers in the fourth-fiscal quarter ended March 31.

The video game giant announced the news as part of its quarter and year-end fiscal report after the close of trading on the stock market today.

According to the accompanying press release, fiscal Q4 full-game downloads were up 76 percent year-over-year, contributing $60 million in the quarter, driven in part by Mass Effect 3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic. EA also plans to release two new content packs – Legacy and Allies – both becoming available in fiscal Q1 of this year.

Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) is a well-funded massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) with full voice-acted cutscenes and high production values. It was created as a competitor to Activision Bizzard’s venerable MMO, World Of Warcraft, the online game to beat.

Our own reviewer, Heinrich Lenhardt, gave SWTOR high marks, citing the storytelling, mutliple classes, and a game that’s fun to play as a singleplayer as well as with others.

Founded in 1982 and headquartered in Redwood City, California, EA is a publisher and developer of video games for consoles, computers, and mobile devices. Some of their high-profile titles include The Sims, Madden NFL Football, FIFA Soccer, Need for Speed, Battlefield, Star Wars: The Old Republic and Mass Effect.

EA’s number of active subscribers is consistent with EA’s original goal. It is down from 1.7 million subscribers in the previous quarter (Star Wars launched on Dec. 20). But EA said that it has a stable number of subscribers now after the initial casual players cycled through the game. So far, 2.4 million units have sold through at retail.

In a conference call with analysts, EA chief executive John Riccitiello said that Star Wars is an important title, but not as important as EA’s top five properties, which include Medal of Honor, SimCity, The Sims, Battlefield, and Madden NFL Football. He said the Star Wars title is more important to revenues than Tiger Woods PGA Golf. Riccitiello said that investors have been very focused on Star Wars. He said the game is profitable.

Frank Gibeau, another top executive at EA, said that no one is directly competing with EA’s Star Wars title in the massively multiplayer online space, and no one else has the Star Wars brand behind it.

GamesBeat 2012 is VentureBeat’s fourth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. This year we’re calling on speakers from the hottest mobile, social, PC, and console companies to debate new ways to stay on pace with changing consumer tastes and platforms. Join 500+ execs, investors, analysts, entrepreneurs, and press as we explore the gaming industry’s latest trends and newest monetization opportunities. The event takes place July 10-11 in San Francisco, and you can get your early-bird tickets here.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Are you longing for the day you can play a game with depth on your phone or tablet, then hop onto your PC when you get home to continue the adventure? That day may be here, if Spacetime Studios has its way. Dark Legends, the third in the “Legends” franchise, is here and it’s aggressively cross-platform.

“The simultaneous launch of Dark Legends on mobile and PC is the first in what we predict will be a wave of ubiquitous gaming,” says Spacetime CEO Gary Gattis. “The era when gamers were forced to use a specific dedicated gaming device if they wanted to play a particular game is drawing to a close, and Spacetime Studios plans to help lead the way.”

Big words for an even bigger game genre. Dark Legends draws much of its mechanics from Spacetime’s previous games, Star Legends and Pocket Legends, both proving grounds for the technology to run an MMO on iOS, Android, and PC platforms. Dark Legends continues this tradition with a simultaneous release on Android and Google Chrome, with an upcoming release on iOS.

The mechanics here are pure hack/slash and loot collecting, Diablo-style, with an energy and in-app purchase system that echoes many familiar Facebook-style social games. Dark Legends takes players into a persistent world of Vampires, recently come out of the coffin. Modern-day humans, of course, aren’t very happy about this and begin hunting the vampires down. As a recently turned vampire, you take the battle to the streets, facing hordes of humans, undead, werewolves, warlocks and witches, and even demons.

Says Gattis, “Every Legends title is an experiment as we push the boundaries. In Dark Legends we set out to create a new type of social and casual MMO. We wanted to combine casual advancement content told through cut scene stories along with our award winning real-time 3D multiplayer system.”

Spacetime isn’t resting with this release, however. Gattis promises more from the studio in the coming year, saying, “Spacetime Studios is already working on another Legends for the end of this year. We’re also looking at a project completely outside the Legends franchise. The Spacetime client-server technology allows us to build any type of 3D multiplayer, online game — from MMOs to shooters to strategy games — and we’re looking at some really interesting concepts for cross-platform titles.”

Spacetime Studios is based in Austin, Texas.

GamesBeat 2012 is VentureBeat’s fourth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. This year we’re calling on speakers from the hottest mobile, social, PC, and console companies to debate new ways to stay on pace with changing consumer tastes and platforms. Join 500+ execs, investors, analysts, entrepreneurs, and press as we explore the gaming industry’s latest trends and newest monetization opportunities. The event takes place July 10-11 in San Francisco, and you can get your early-bird tickets here.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Wargaming.net has earned its stripes in PC gaming. Known for the Massive Assault series, Order of War and other titles, the PC development has now started cashing in big time on its hardcore gaming know-how with the success of its massively multiplayer online world World of Tanks.That game has more than 18 million players worldwide, a massive hit that has given the company resources to launch its next big online game worlds. The company has more than 800 employees, making it one of the powerhouses of downloadable online gaming on a global scale.

Wargaming.net will be releasing World of Warplanes in the near future. It has already received more than 100,000 requests from North American players to play in the current alpha test. World of Warplanes will likely launch its public beta in June and launch by the end of the year. We sat down recently with the man behind World of Warplanes, lead designer at Wargaming.net, Sergey Burkatovskiy. Here is an edited transcript of our talk.

GamesBeat: Can you tell me a little more about World of Warplanes and why the warplanes idea was implemented into an MMO atmosphere rather than a single player or smaller online community game?

Sergey Burkatovskiy: Generally, there’s an undeniable trend toward MMOs in the market. And we are no newcomers in the field: World of Warplanes isn’t our first MMO title.

The “Tanks” taught us many useful lessons and we’ve got proven-to-be-good schemes and concepts designed for our first MMO title, which we can now apply to World of Warplanes. Surely, we encountered difficulties, but World of Tanks proved that an MMO has the potential to deliver a great gaming experience, once it’s polished, deep, well-balanced and constantly updated. Take a look at the concurrent user numbers; we have over 500,000 tank men playing at a given moment in time. That’s impressive.

Why planes? Well, that wasn’t a hard choice either. Many people in the dev team are passionate for planes and flight sims, not to mention hundreds of World of Tanks fans asking us to come up with a flight combat title. We were very excited about the idea when only started working on Tanks, and the fact that players pretty much wanted the same thing only urged us towards getting down to the concept.

GamesBeat: What has been the biggest challenge so far with the game? What has been the biggest challenge in implementing the MMO aspect of the game?

Burkatovskiy: Switching from ground tank combat to 3D air battle arenas was extremely challenging in the first place. It called for considerable game engine enhancement, both in terms of server and render improvements, and adjusting to combat specifics (accurate aiming, terrain and weather effects).

Pertaining to MMOs, the firing rate, for example, was a real pain in the neck. A standard battle in World of Warplanes is two teams, 15 on 15 players. It makes up for 30 planes on the battle field simultaneously. Imagine what server capacity would ballistics system need if, for example, the TSh-3 (an early Soviet ground-attack aircraft) alone comes with 10 quick-firing machine guns plus one to fire backwards. When we only started testing first gameplay iterations, the server was close to failing. Server programmers were racking their brains trying to knock over the issue with minimum simplifications in the damage system. Eventually, we managed to tackle it with several small changes, but you’d be surprised how much time those several tweaks took!

Another thing about the MMO aspect: World of Tanks experience stood in good stayer here. With our first MMO title, we ran into a major hitch trying to catch up with the fast-growing number of players. We never expected so many people to join the game and had to drastically increase our server capacity after launching the open beta in Europe and North America. To avoid this mistake with Warplanes, we’ve implemented multi-cluster technology right away.

GamesBeat: The trailers and press release seem to focus on an older era of warplanes from the 30′s up to the Korean War. What led to this decision to use older era aviation planes? Adding to that, are there any planes on releasing modern era type planes/maps in the future?

Burkatovskiy: Well, the first reason why World of Warplanes features only the mid-20th century aircraft is because the game continues the theme started in Tanks. Both games have the same concept and nearly the same setting. So, it would have been awkward to shift the core essence. Let’s now imagine if we add the F-15 as an 11-tier fighter in the American line, right after the Saber. It would EAT the poor Korean veteran. What I’m trying to say here is adding more sophisticated and technologically advanced aircraft would ruin the gameplay completely. So, we’ve decided to stick strictly to the frames we had chosen. Again, the period we are using covers the very birth of the jet as the main means of modern air forces. We have the aforementioned Saber, we have the MiG-15, we have the completely lunatic German prototypes, and I believe players will get no less fun trying these out.

GamesBeat: How realistic is the weaponry in regards to the period and what the original warplanes would have used? And on the same subject of weaponry, how much upgrading will be featured in the game and will there be opportunities to use different weaponry on different era planes?

Burkatovskiy: We are aiming at maximum realism and authenticity, and the development started with an in-depth research on vehicle models and their internal components. The progression system will largely resemble the one used in Tanks. Every plane will have key elements to upgrade and feature multiple modules to unlock: engines, canopies, glider components and many more.

So, players will be able to build their planes up piece-by-piece, change parts and various modules to their liking, and pick the optimal configuration for the most effective behavior in combat. Modules will be based on actual blueprints and schematic diagrams. Of course, you won’t be able to install, for instance, a General Electric J73-GE-3 engine on a WWII fighter: you’ll be offered to choose from authentic options.

Also, we’ll offer quite a plenty of choices in regard to ammunition. WoWP will feature incendiary, high-explosive and armor-piercing shells, as well as shells with combined effects, such as incendiary-explosive shells. Plus, players will be able to put together ammo loads and define ammo sequence.

However, players should bear in mind that too much armament will have reverse effect on speed and agility. It will increase the overall weight of a warbird, affect drag coefficient and other flight characteristics. So, they’ll have to think twice before installing a desired component.

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So says Dallas Dickinson, director of production for Electronic Arts’ BioWare division. In fact, the public relations folks promoting the company’s  Star Wars: The Old Republic game were told — only half jokingly — to announce the game onstage as, “Star Wars, MMO (massively multiplayer online), BioWare,” and then walk off, says Richard Vogel, the company’s executive producer.

The game plan, when BioWare began developing Star Wars: The Old Republic more than six years ago, was to become a genre leader in the MMO space. The trick, said Dickinson, is to broaden the market, differentiate your game from current market leaders, build enough content to keep players invested, and update constantly. Their goal, for now, is to gain over one million subscribers in the long-term, one they’re apparently well on their way to meeting.

Vogel said that, in addition to competing with a game like Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic is competing with many free-to-play (F2P) MMO options, like DC Universe or Star Trek Online, both with solid intellectual properties themselves.

In order to create a game worth playing, he said, BioWare had to build something that gave players real value for their subscription dollars. That meant careful innovation, building the game on a large scale, and merciless editing in the development cycle.

Innovating

Dickinson and Vogel said that BioWare couldn’t recreate the genre just to say they had innovated. Instead, they decided to aim for the core audience of the MMO genre first, then build on that by acquiring new players. Keeping people playing an MMO game is less expensive than acquiring new players, they said.

To focus on what core MMO players want, the production team used concepts from the Bartle Test, which proposes that there are four kinds of players of multiplayer online games: the socializer, the killer, the explorer, and the achiever.

BioWare innovated by meeting the needs of these diverse types of MMO fans. They included individual stories for each class, with family legacies that build over multiple generations, interactive cinematic dialogue with branching storylines, and multiplayer dialogue systems — all innovations in the storytelling realm. The addition of sidekicks brought a new way to add social elements to a genre that only relied on other real-time players in the past. Combat was made to look and feel like the movies, with dodging, connecting lightsabers, and true ranged combat, which Vogel bragged about being a 70+ meters system plus true cover, a genre first.

Scale

Star Wars: The Old Republic has over 240,000 lines of fully voice acted dialogue, over 4,094 characters, and more than 321 actors. This is, the producers say, six times the amount in Dragon Age, nine times the scale of Mass Effect, and more voice over than all the previous BioWare games combined. Whew! Add in 20 full planets with over 90 unique areas to explore and around 200 hours of gameplay for each of the eight classes, and BioWare had its hands full with scale.

Dickinson said that they won some and lost some in trying to scale up to full production with this kind of scope. He believes they did well in the voice over and writing development cycle, as well as outsourcing of art for both character and environment. Where they didn’t do so well, he said, was in the build pipeline (what gets done and by whom), data tables (tracking), and software scripting.

Both producers talked about needing to be flexible during the process of creating such a large game, though they also said they would be taking these lessons learned to future projects of any size. BioWare began this project using specific management and software strategies, had to change course over the project timeline, and at times had to go back to the original way of doing things. Without that flexibility, they say, the game would not have been as good or as on time.

Triage

Finally, the BioWare production team needed to make sure that it stayed on task, focusing only on the things that would make a great game. One thing that any team of game developers creates, they said, was a “wouldn’t it be cool to have” list. The first thing the team did at every point was to cut these “nice to have” items, which makes the game better, but makes the team sad. Sometimes, a sad team is the price of a better game, said Vogel.

BioWare used the Colonel John Boyd fighter pilot model of decision making, which says that the winner of a dogfight is the one who makes the most decisions the fastest. A development team is like a fighter pilot, said Dickinson, in that good decisions made slowly can impact a project fatally. The team iterated through a method of observing, orienting, deciding, acting, and then observing again (the OODA model) to make super fast decisions, based on the combined experience of the production team. This led to faster decisions over time, and, said the producers, a better game on launch day.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Marriage in online role-playing game Maplestory is serious business. Just ask some of the folks who found themselves marrying other players in the game, or the marriage and family therapist who weighed in on their online relationships.

Marriage expert Athena Carrillo Lee of Mind Body Spirit Therapy in Los Angeles had a few words to say about those who virtually tie the knot.

When asked why people form these in-game relationships, she said, “Some players might forge online partnerships because they see it as advantageous, the way someone might marry for money — no offense to those of you with those values. Others, who play in order to socialize, might forge a partnership because they wish to flirt, romance, and marry, as these are certainly social activities.”

Carrillo Lee rates these sorts of bonds quite positively. “If someone is only capable of social interaction at this level, then I’m grateful they have some level of interaction,” she said.

Sadly, for those looking for romance on Maplestory, the odds aren’t great. In 2010, of the 26,982 in-game marriages performed, 20,344, or 75 percent, ended in a virtual divorce. The good news? If you are still interested in finding love, Maplestory divorces dropped to 46 percent in 2011, at least for North American gamers.

According to DivorceRate.org, the divorce rate in America for a first marriage is 50 percent. That goes up to 67 percent for a second marriage. By the third marriage, it’s 74 percent. So it seems you may have a better shot staying married in a game than in real life.

But just like real life, you have to watch out for angry exes in Maplestory. One married player was hit with the classic, “You’re not the person I fell in love with.” His virtual spouse said he didn’t seem to care about her anymore. It gets worse: The gal logged into his account and started dropping the items in his inventory, and that’s when he decided to cut ties with her. Like I said, marriage in Maplestory is serious business.

As for how to be successful in your online marriage, Carrillo Lee says, “Don’t marry to get something, marry to share something — you. It’s a great way to get to know yourself.”

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Here’s a story that is equal parts awesome and amazing: some talented and persistent Minecraft fans have built a one to one scale representation of the entire Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time video game on their own Minecraft server. It’s open to the public as a limited time alpha preview; the IP can be found on their website.

In essence, the creators of this immense undertaking have used the mining and crafting tools within Minecraft to represent the game maps, look, and feel of Ocarina of Time. This is only phase one, however, as the website states:

“The HC team hopes to have a completed server ready later this year which will include a unique Minecraft MMO experience including quests, NPCs, dungeons, free build zones, guilds, and more of the classic Minecraft stuff you know and love.”

Here’s the launch trailer for Hyrulecraft’s Alpha Preview:

Ambitious, no? The creators are using custom graphics, called a skin, to present their recreation. My screenshot at the top and int he gallery below are not using those custom graphics, to give you a sense of how they created the town using the basic Minecraft building materials. If you’re interested to see more about the development of Hyrulecraft from the beginning, the team has a weekly video podcast, Hyrulecraft Weekly, here.

Minecraft is an indie gaming sensation with over 20 million registered users across the globe. It’s an open world single or multiplayer game that can be played on Mac, PC, iOS and soon the Xbox 360 console.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time was originally released in 1998 for the Nintendo 64 platform, with a version later appearing on the company’s GameCube console. It is also currently available as a Virtual Console download on the Wii.

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The lawsuit sought to cancel the license granted to Interplay to develop a massively multiplayer online game based on the popular post-apocalyptic franchise. Bethesda stated in its complaint that Interplay failed to meet the conditions of the license. Those conditions required that Interplay secure $30 million in funding and begin development of the project within 24 months of the date of the agreement (April 4, 2007). Interplay would also need to launch the MMO within four years of the beginning of development, as well as pay Bethesda 12 percent of sales and subscription fees for the use of the Fallout IP.

Under the terms of the settlement, the license granted to Interplay is now null and void, with all rights granted to develop the Fallout MMO reverting back to Bethesda effective immediately.

ZeniMax says it will pay Interplay $2 million in the settlement, but each party will bear the costs of the litigation. Bethesda will continue to own the Fallout intellectual property, while Interplay will be allowed to continue to sell the original Fallout Tactics, Fallout, and Fallout 2 PC games through December 2013. After that time, the games become the sole property of Bethesda.

Bethesda also settled a separate lawsuit on Dec. 29, 2011 with developer Masthead Studios. Interplay claimed it had engaged the studio to develop the Fallout MMO under its license, but Bethesda says it was not permitted to sublicense any rights granted without Bethesda’s prior approval. In the settlement, Masthead acknowledged it had no legal right to use the Fallout intellectual property and agreed to not use the IP in the future. No payments were made by either party in the settlement.

Robert Altman, chairman and CEO of ZeniMax, expressed satisfaction on behalf of the company with the resolution of the two lawsuits, saying, “While we strongly believe in the merits of our suits, we are pleased to avoid the distraction and expense of litigation while completely resolving all claims to the Fallout IP. Fallout is an important property of ZeniMax and we are now able to develop future Fallout titles for our fans without third party involvement or the overhang of others’ legal claims.”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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“NHN grants Aeria Games the first right to review and obtain, with preferential treatment, all MMO games that NHN has obtained licenses to, whether through its wholly-owned or partially-owned studios or third-party studios. The transaction also includes two licenses from NHN’s lineup,” said Aeria chief executive Lan Hoang (pictured below). The press release lists the two games as shooters Alliance of Valiant Arms (A.V.A.) and Soldier Front.

Hoang said that Aeria has been profitable to date and that the investment is the first fundraising the company has done from an outside investor. “The key for us is the acquisition of Ijji and the content agreement. The additional resources will be used to acquire Triple-A titles and aggressively expand our platform to the mobile gaming market, with a focus on our core audience of mid- and hardcore gamers, aka our power players. We will be launching through our platform a number of multi-player games for the smartphones and the tablets in the very near future,” he said.

The Ijji acquisition will add about 10 million plus users to the Aeria’s current 35 million core players. The company has a number of online games, including the MMO Eden Eternal, the MMORPG Shaiya, the supernatural MMOFPS Wolf Team, the strategy game Golden Age and an upcoming action shooter named Repulse.

“The shooters community, which Ijji is really known for, is probably one of the most hardcore and loyal gaming communities,” Hoang said. “Our audiences are very complementary, so it’s a good fit and one that will help to further foster an even more active community amongst Aeria Games users.”

Aeria Games, founded in 2006, has offices in the US, Germany and Brazil, publishing in nine languages across 30 countries.

NHN Corporation, established in 1999, is a multinational Korean internet company, operating a Korean search portal with more than 17 million unique daily visitors as well as a game portal, Hangame, which reports $422 million in revenue last year, from over 30 million registered users.

“We likely had the largest one-day subscription account registration process in MMO history — over one million people are now registered players of the game, and the number is growing rapidly,” say BioWare co-founders Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk on the game’s official blog.

“As you might imagine, this presented a huge strain on our infrastructure and systems,” they add, ”but the good news is that we seem to be through the worst of it now thanks to folks working hard all day to serve our community.”

The developers say they are also working to resolve the issue of server queues, claiming it’s another side effect of the huge demand for The Old Republic. ”We were definitely anticipating a very high load but if anything the demand for the game has only exceeded our expectations.”

To date, BioWare says players have logged 28 million hours in the game – roughly the equivalent to watching all six Star Wars movies two million times. They have also created more than 3.8 million characters, including 510,000 Jedi Knights and 550,000 Sith Warriors. BioWare says players have averaged well over five hours a day online and have killed more than two billion non-player characters in the eight days since early game access began.

“Everyone at BioWare, EA and LucasArts is honored — and humbled — by the stellar response from our fans,” says Dr. Muzyka. ”We’re going to work together closely with our community in the weeks, months and years ahead, continually serving our audience with regular delivery of compelling new features and content.”

BioWare has already given a sneak peek at the new upcoming content for the online role-playing game, which includes a new Flashpoint and an expanded Operation. The new Flashpoint will take place on a brand new world, the developer says, while the new Operation will take the existing Karagga’s palace scenario and more than triple it in size.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Sci-fi and space massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) are played by an estimated 14 million people in the U.S., according to Newzoo’s 2011 MMO Report, but a full 68 percent say they only play free-to-play MMOs, with half of the remainder saying they play some mix of free and subscription-based games.

The ratios are similar in Europe, where 76 percent of sci-fi MMO players ignore subscription games, and in the emerging markets of Brazil, Mexico and Russia, where 80 percent of sci-fi MMO players play exclusively for free, Newzoo said. Paid subscription MMOs fare somewhat better in Asia, where 52 percent of sci-fi MMO players pay for at least one subscription.

Newzoo’s report comes as more and more MMOs transition to a free-to-play model as a way to attract players, who may eventually pay much more for in-game items. Warner Bros.’ DC Universe Online saw its revenues increase 700 percent following a recent move to a free model, and even venerable subscription-based MMO World of Warcraft recently expanded its free trial to allow unlimited free play up through level 20. Last month, Newzoo estimated total U.S. spending on all free-to-play titles has increased 24 percent in 2011.

EA is bucking this trend by charging upwards of  $13 per month for access to The Old Republic, which is currently in beta and launches fully on December 20 . EA CEO John Riccitiello said in September that the game would need about half a million subscribers to break even, and the company says the beta test has currently attracted over 2 million players.

While Newzoo CEO Peter Warman said he didn’t want to use the MMO data to make any predictions about the fate of The Old Republic, he did say he was ”very curious to see how [many free-to-play] sci-fi gamers EA will be able to convert to [paid subscription] gamers.” EA could also find success by converting subscribers from successful fantasy-themed MMOs, such as World of Warcraft and Rift, Warman said.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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A fourth expansion to World of Warcraft, entitled Mists of Pandaria, was unveiled at Blizzcon in October, and marked the start of a push to reverse the declining user base of the hit massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). This patch is the latest move in a public relations drive that has also seen a new series of TV ads, starring kung-fu legend Chuck Norris, debuting on prime-time TV. Mike Morhaime, head of Blizzard, said during the last earnings call that Blizzard would make bigger efforts to keep the subscriber base high, and these latest efforts all seem to be part of that promise.

In addition to pressure from within, World of Warcraft could potentially lose more subscribers after Dec. 20 when Electronic Arts’ massively multiplayer online game, Star Wars: The Old Republic, launches. Never one to mince his words, Activision Blizzard chief executive Bobby Kotick dismissed this thought, casting doubts on whether the publisher EA will even turn a profit on its upcoming game.

“Lucas is going to be the principal beneficiary of the success of Star Wars,” Kotick told Reuters, referring to Star Wars creator George Lucas, who has licensing rights to the game. “We’ve been in business with Lucas for a long time, and the economics will always accrue to the benefit of Lucas, so I don’t really understand how the economics work for Electronic Arts.”

The contents of World of Warcraft patch 4.3, which releases today, and is available to all players, is as follows:

• Raid Finder – Players can quickly and easily form a raid for a specifically tuned version of the Dragon Soul raid; works much like the Dungeon Finder feature
• Dragon Soul – The most epic 10- and 25-person raid encounter Blizzard has ever designed
• Transmogrification – Customize the appearance of your weapons and armor
• Three new 5-person dungeons – Continue the storyline of Thrall and Deathwing as players embark on all-new adventures in End Time, Well of Eternity, and Hour of Twilight
• Void Storage – Players of all levels can now open up 80 slots of long-term storage space
• Fangs of the Father – Legendary rogue quest line
• The all-new Darkmoon Faire – Darkmoon Faire has been completely redesigned and offers all-new games and rewards for players to experience

You can also check out this video, which gives provides a somewhat more dramatic interpretation of the changes:

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Dark Orbit players recently helped demonstrate this whale theory, with 2000 of them each splashing out €1000 ($1335) on a rare virtual space-drone, which can be used to gain a competitive advantage in the game.

Whilst some developers shy away from the sale of big game-changing items, preferring to offer premium features with optional subscriptions, Bigpoint are embracing the fact that some players will spend big, in order to improve their performance. Thanks to the four-day space-drone sale, Bigpoint netted a cool €2 million (about $2.67 million) in extra sales revenue.

Dark Orbit is a space-based massively multiplayer online game, in which your spaceship can be supported in combat by drones. There are different levels of drone ranking up to the 10th Drone, which is the very rare Zeus Drone. The usual means of obtaining the Zeus drone is to collect all 9 previous drones and then obtain blueprints in order to make it in the game. When Bigpoint put this limited number of Zeus drones up for sale, at a quite staggering price for a virtual item, 2000 players happily stepped forward to pay, in order to circumvent the otherwise arduous task of collecting it legitimately.

Bigpoint Games, a German company specializing in browser-based free-to-play online games, was founded in 2002. It is currently on course to deliver over €200 million (about $267 million) in revenue from the sale of virtual goods in its games this year. In April this year, two major private equity firms bought a majority stake in the company for $350 million.

With figures like that, it is easy to see why many developers are now looking at the free-to-play model as the best way of monetizing their own games.

[Update: Gamesbrief has followed up its initial report, now stating that the 2000 Zeus Drones were sold for in-game currency, not cash. If a player had bought in-game currency (Uridium) at full price, they would have spent the equivalent of €1000 on one Drone. It is possible that players purchasing the Zeus Drones had previously bought Uridium at discounted prices, or earned it through in-game activities. As a result, it is not possible to say exactly how much revenue Bigpoint made from the sale of this single item.]

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The makeover is about how to keep users coming back, which in turns leads to better monetization. Despite being free-to-play, RuneScape offers players the option of purchasing a monthly membership, which provides a host of premium benefits. It also generates revenue through adverts that appear above the playing screen for free users. With many MMOs now rushing towards such free-to-play business models, including DC Universe Online, Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard has recently offered some words of caution: “It’s less about what’s the right model, less about how to take money from a customer’s wallet, and more about what kind of gameplay you have that’s conducive to that type of monetization mechanism.”

The new RuneScape website is described as a complete overhaul, and as well as providing a fresh look, it also offers players some features that have not been seen before:

- The RuneScape Wiki: The manual has now been moved over to the new, community-editable wiki. Even if you’ve never used or edited a wiki before, it’s really easy to do. Follow the link for details of the basic requirements for editing, and for guides on how to get started.

- The Events Section: There’s a whole new section devoted to the organisation and advertisement of events. The Jagex Community Engagement team, clans and individual members of the community can put up details on the events feed and place a location pin into the events map to direct prospective attendees.

- RuneScape News to the Fore: News, media and social networking activity feeds have been given pride of place on the new front page, ensuring that up-to-the-minute RuneScape information is readily available at all times.

Alongside the new look website, Jagex has also created a nifty new logo for its game, which celebrated its 10^th anniversary in style this year, at the Runefest event in London.

With so many publishers starting to experiment with the free-to-play business model, in which just 3 percent of players typically spend money, Jagex is obviously hoping that RuneScape’s new look helps to keep it ahead of the game.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Earlier this month, we revealed that DC Universe Online had seen one million new players sign up following its transition to a free-to-play business model. What wasn’t clear was whether these new players would stick around, and whether they would actually support the title financially, through micro-transactions and optional premium subscriptions.

According to John Smedley, President of Sony Online Entertainment, we needn’t have been worried, as 85 percent of daily log-ins are now by returning players, and the user base continues to grow at a rate of 6 percent per day. On top of that, daily revenue for the game has increased by 700 percent, thanks in part to players purchasing additional character slots and new skins for their in-game characters.

It is interesting to note that 53 percent of this revenue is being generated by the Playstation 3 version of the game, with the remainder coming from the PC version. Whilst micro-transactions are certainly not new to console users, these figures suggest that we might see more developers coming to this market with monetised free-to-play games in the future.

Sony Online Entertainment has had a lot of experience with free-to-play games. Even as it operated subscription games, it launched its Free Realms free-to-play online game in 2009. That game now has more than 20 million registered users.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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DC Universe Online, for PC and PS3, originally required a paid monthly subscription when it launched in January this year. But Sony announced in September that the game was becoming free-to-play, with income being generated through micro-transactions and an optional subscription package. It was a gutsy maneuver, given the potential change in revenues for the title.

This move seems to have paid off, certainly in terms of player numbers. “DC Universe Online’s transition to free-to-play has been welcomed by the community and gamers with heroic enthusiasm. In just one week alone, 1 million new players have joined DCUO, with a 50/50 split between PC and PS3” Lorin Jameson, executive director of entertainment at Sony Online Entertainment Austin, said today.

Under the free-to-play business model, DC Universe Online now boasts a three tier access structure, as detailed below:

Free Access: New players have access to the base game content in DC Universe Online, including Gotham City, Metropolis, and all current raids and alerts outside of dowloadable content (DLC) packs. Free Access lets players create two characters and join a League, among other benefits. Free-level players can also purchase DLC packs, additional character slots and more in-game.

Premium Access: Any player who has spent at least $5 qualifies for the Premium Access level. Premium-level players get additional character slots, additional inventory slots, and higher cash limits. DLC packs, additional character slots, and more can be purchased in-game. All previous subscribers are automatically granted Premium Access.

Legendary Access: Legendary Access provides the most content, features and benefits of the three access levels. Loaded with enhanced features, Legendary Access is available for a $14.99 monthly fee (multi-month discounts available) and includes access to all DLC packs at no extra cost, more than 16 character slots, over 60 inventory slots, the ability to form Leagues, and many other benefits.

With SOE’s solid record of creating world-renowned MMO games, such as Everquest and Free Realms, it will be interesting to see whether this move pays off in the long-term. Getting gamers to sign up for a free-to-play MMO is one thing, but making sure they stick around and spend some money is another challenge altogether.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm started with a massive, powerful dragon god, Deathwing, laying waste to most of the game’s world, Azeroth. It ends with an epic showdown against that same dragon that will send players across the world and traveling through time. Players will have to visit a future where Deathwing has won control of Azeroth in order to convince another dragon god to send them further back in time to find the secret to defeating Deathwing. Players then team up with Thrall, the largest iconic hero in the game, to track down the key to defeating Deathwing.

If all that trotting around in the timeline wasn’t epic enough, the expansion culminates in an epic fight that literally takes place on the giant dragon’s back. You parachute off of an airship onto Deathwing’s back and try to pry armor plates off the beast. During the whole fight, Deathwing is trying to shake you off by doing barrel rolls and other maneuvers. Eventually, you wrestle him to the ground and face off with the same corrupted dragon that destroyed most of the world.

Grand finales aside, the announcement today indicates that World of Warcraft’s next expansion pack is on the horizon. Blizzard Entertainment’s yearly Blizzcon convention is set for the third weekend of the next month, beginning October 21. The company unveiled World of Warcraft: Cataclysm at 2009 Blizzcon — shortly after revealing details about the ending of the company’s second expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King.

World of Warcraft is one of the most dominant online games in the industry. It’s enjoyed that position since it launched in 2004, peaking at 12 million active subscribers. That number has since fallen for two straight quarters to around 11.1 million subscribers, a sign that the game might now be showing its age. The slip in subscribers has given other online games, like Trion Worlds’ Rift, an opportunity to step in and try to steal market share from the massive multiplayer online supergiant.

Cataclysm has also been a huge source of revenue for Activision-Blizzard. World of Warcraft charges players $15 a month to access the game. The company said digital revenues from properties such as World of Warcraft hit a new record, showing a 27 percent increase from the same quarter a year ago during the company’s most recent operating quarter. Digital revenues now account for 37 percent of the company’s total revenues.

Activision-Blizzard sold more than 4.7 million units of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm in the first month after it was released. Cataclysm’s sales topped 3.3 million sold on its first day of sales. By comparison, World of Warcraft’s previous expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King, sold 2.8 million units on its first day in 2008, and The Burning Crusade sold 2.4 million units on its first day in 2007. World of Warcraft’s third expansion generated an estimated $188 million in retail sales in its first month.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Secret World is a stylized take on the modern era, where vampires, secret societies and all the horror stories you heard as a kid are real. Players take control of a character in one of three secret societies trying to keep the world from plunging into chaos while still vying for control of the planet.

Secret World is developed by Funcom, the studio behind online game Age of Conan. It’s the second online role-playing game Electronic Arts plans to publish alongside Star Wars: The Old Republic, which is developed by BioWare. While The Old Republic seems quite similar to World of Warcraft in terms of progression and gameplay style, Secret World goes in almost the complete opposite direction.

The progression system is one of the most unusual I’ve seen in online games in a while. It seems almost like a spiritual successor to Star Wars Galaxies, in that the player does not “level up” in the traditional sense but adds and upgrades new skills. In Secret World, “leveling up” just makes the character more versatile — not necessarily more powerful.

Most online role-playing games feature a linear progression for powering up. For instance, in World of Warcraft, when a player levels up, they do more damage, gain more health and sometimes get access to a new ability. But they are restricted to abilities that power up the class they chose — if they picked a warrior, they get an ability that lets them do more melee damage.

There are no such classes in Secret World. There are the traditional archetypes: damage dealing, healing and characters that control the enemies and make sure they are taking all the damage. But how you play those archetypes is up to you since you can pick and choose the skills you want. You can change those skills at certain points throughout the world. If you want, you can build a character that can heal and also shoot lightning bolts to kill enemies, then run up and finish them off with a giant hammer.

While the progression system and aesthetic design seem unique, the rest of the typical tropes for online role-playing games are in Secret World. Players explore an open world and enter five-player dungeon parties that consist of a healer, tank and three damage-dealing classes. The boss battles make pretty good use of the environment, like electrifying the water and forcing the player to constantly stay on the move.

The game runs on an upgraded version of the graphics engine running Age of Conan. It looks crisp, and the game cruised along at somewhere north of 40 frames per second, which was par for the course for Age of Conan as well, assuming the player had a half-decent computer. The game’s still in an alpha stage, but it looked quite a bit better than World of Warcraft.

The visuals are also dark and gloomy, and more realistic. That doesn’t mean the game is filled with brown and gray like other “ultra-realistic” titles out there, but the game uses a darker color palette than typical games. That’s compared to World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic, which use very bright and vibrant colors and throw realism out the window in favor of artistic style. They’re two very different approaches to art style, and they both work.

The company wouldn’t disclose when it would release the game, saying it was in a very early alpha build.

We’ll be exploring the most disruptive game technologies and business models at our third annual GamesBeat 2011conference, on July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. It will focus on the disruptive trends in the mobile games market. GamesBeat is co-located with our MobileBeat 2011conference this year. To register, click on this link. Sponsors can message us at sponsors@venturebeat.com.  Our sponsors include Qualcomm, Flurry, Greystripe, Nexage, Tapjoy, FunMobility, TriNet, Zong, Sibblingz, OpenFeint, Spil Games and WildTangent.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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