Help Us Stress Our Servers on June 27

From ArenaNet's Blog: We were very pleased with how our servers performed during our second Beta Weekend Event, but we want to gather additional data on how they operate under load before the next one. That’s where you come in. All players who have pre-purchased Guild Wars 2 are invited to participate in our upcoming stress test. This four-hour test event will run on Wednesday, June 27th, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT (GMT-7). We won’t wipe characters for this event, so if you played in our previous betas, you can pick up right where you left off. All we need you to do is log in and have fun—leave the stress to ...

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Blade & Soul Open Beta in Korea

PlayNC Korea kicks off their Blade & Soul Open Beta on June 21st, 2012! For those of you who aren't aware yet, PlayNC removed the fatigue system so you'll be able to level up to your hearts content. If you're in the US and lucky enough to have a Korean SSN, I suggest you check this game out. I would definitely recommend this game for players who are looking into a fast paced oriental fantasy action MMOR...

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1UP's 2012's Best RPGs So Far... and Yet to Come

Read full article here... Cover Story: Halfway through 2012, we take stock of the best role-players so far and up ahead. The role-playing genre may not be quite as dead as some people would have you believe. In fact, we've seen quite a few in the first half of the year, some of which were downright excellent. And you can expect even more in the months to follow. We've pulled together a dozen of 2012's standout RPG titles 2012 -- the six best RPGs we've played already, and the six we're looking forward to the most. This steady drip-feed of role-playing content guarantees we'll never extricate ourselves from the shackles of our consoles and PCs. There'll always be one more level to grind, one more super-boss to crush, one more piece of...

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Destructoid Editorial Review of E3

Read full article here... E3 is kind of bullshit. Though not many will say it, developers, publishers, investors, and media alike think it. And so, it’s not really a controversial statement, except for the one group that isn’t aware of the expo’s privy charades. I’m speaking of the general public.  For a show that is supposed to inform consumers, E3, in recent years, seems to confuse and disappoint game enthusiasts more than anything. I continue to love the spectacle and insanity that E3 brings, but lately I’ve been wondering what purpose this show serves in 2012. It’s supposed to be about more than the press bellyaching over promotional practices and internet users getting upset when publishers show up without a surprise in tow,...

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Is it Fun? Colin Johanson on How ArenaNet Measures Success

Read full article here... To begin this blog post, let me pose a question: How do you measure the success of an MMO? Historically, it’s been easy to point to success with traditional MMOs: subscription numbers were the ultimate means a company used to measure how well a game was doing, and customers typically looked at those same numbers as well to gauge the success of the game. The number of concurrent users—how many players are online at a given time—was also important, but that number was usually hidden from users, since it typically painted a less rosy picture of a game’s health when compared to the number of active subscriptions. Now let me pose a second question: If the success of a subscription-based MMO is measured by the number...

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