mmo

The highly anticipated Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG still lacks a release date, but Bioware isn't shying away from showing off some end-game content.

As a bit of background for the uninitiated, gamers can group together in SW:TOR and tackle challenges called "operations," which are similar to raids or instances found in World of Warcraft. These types of areas are critical to those who have reached the maximum level possible by offering intensive teamwork experiences and the chance to acquire high-powered items. Dallas Dickinson, Bioware's director of production, previews one of those operations, Eternity Vault, in a 10-minute video released a few days ago. … Read more

A slight disturbance in the Force was felt this morning after BioWare, LucasArts, and EA announced that Jedi and Sith everywhere can now preorder Star Wars: The Old Republic for a limited time.

Three versions of the highly anticipated MMORPG are available: Standard ($59), Digital Deluxe ($79), and the whopping Collector's Edition ($149). A preorder FAQ answers some common questions for curious padawans. Those who order soon get access to the virtual world early and obtain special items to make questing easier.

Star Wars fans have clamored for the title since its reveal in late 2008, with an expected release date later this year. According to the official preorder site, here is a breakdown of the three editions: … Read more

A friend in the toy industry tells me that he makes toys for little kids because you can't survive marketing to older kids. After kids hit 12 (and often before that), they vanish into computer games and online worlds.

One place many of them are going, boys especially: Roblox, an online world where you can build stuff and share it with other people. Parents might like its strong Lego vibe over, say, World of WarCraft. To me it looks like Second Life with MineCraft bricks.

That combo doesn't do much for me, but I'm decades from its target demographic. And among the 8- to -14-year-old set, Roblox is doing big business. CEO David Baszuck told me he's recording 19 million play hours a month from 5.7 million unique users. It's the No. 3 property in terms of engagement time for kids, he says, citing ComScore.

Revenue in the four-year-old business is growing 75 percent a year, Baszuck says. The site makes money primarily by selling virtual currency (Robux), which can be used to purchase in-game items. Items can then be re-sold for more virtual currency. Users can also earn Robux through in-game activities like running their own events and creating their own virtual goods and arenas. There's no way to cash out of Roblox, though, so the in-game economics are somewhat unhinged from reality.

But Roblox is primarily a building game, not a market simulation. The game is physics-based and encourages both building things out of virtual blocks, and using scripting to code how items behave. I spent a few minutes manning a cannon on a blocky galleon, lobbing shots at a another ship (which my team eventually sank). It was pretty impressive, watching the planks fly off the bad guys' ship as we landed hits, even if the planks were toy-like, not realistic.

Roblox's construction and coding focus gives parents the "warm fuzzies," Baszuck says. It develops critical thinking and modern technology skills, not to mention entrepreneurship and some social chops (you have to build what people want). … Read more

A full-fledged MMO on the iPhone? In this week's Tap That App, I take a look at Order & Chaos Online, the massive online multiplayer role-playing game from Gameloft. Featuring a look that very closely resembles Blizzard's World of Warcraft, the game provides a sweeping world in which you'll be able to create a character, choose a class, customize your look, and set off on an adventure.

If you've ever been a fan of online MMOs or just want to see what the fuss is all about, check out this week's Tap That App.

Some interesting Apple news this week from AppleInsider revolves around Apple's acquisition of the iCloud domain name. Apparently, according to sources, Apple paid Sweden-based company Xcerion an estimated $4.5 million for the domain. It is rumored that the cloud service will be announced this summer at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference here in San Francisco.

There have already been plenty of rumors that Apple's cloud service would enable users to stream music to iOS devices, but according to the article, it may also offer a personalized "locker" where you can keep photos and videos as well. It will be exciting to see how this all pans out at WWDC, and whether people will be more inclined to sign up with iCloud than with MobileMe, which received a somewhat lukewarm response from users.

What kind of things would you like to see offered in an Apple-based cloud service? What would be a reasonable price for such a service? Let us know in the comments.

This week's apps are an instant voice mail messenger and a full-featured MMORPG that closely resembles one of the most popular games of all time.… Read more

Last May, I began a series of behind-the-scenes meetings with Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield about Tiny Speck, the company he and three partners had just started and the game they were working on.

That game, which they announced on Tuesday is called Glitch, has been in the works since last March and much has changed about it in the interim--the artistic styles, the back story, the core game mechanic and the size of the team building it.

Glitch is a social online game that takes place in the imaginations of 11 ancient giants and tasks players with essentially growing an … Read more

On Tuesday, as reported first by CNET, Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield's start-up Tiny Speck announced its new online social game, Glitch.

As described on Glitch.com, "It's called Glitch because in the far-distant and totally-perfect future, the world starts becoming less and less probable, things fall apart, the center cannot hold, and there occurs what comes to be called the 'glitch'--a grave danger of disemprobablization. This results in a time-traveling effort at saving the future, going back into the minds of eleven great giants walking sacred paths on a barren asteroid who sing and think and … Read more

If you've ever wondered what it would be like to live inside the imaginations of a group of ancient giants, get ready to play Glitch.

A new game that went into alpha testing on Tuesday, as reported exclusively by CNET, Glitch (see related behind-the-scenes feature about its development) is a puzzle-heavy, Web-based social MMO built around sending players billions of years into the past to develop the optimistic future that today seems increasingly unlikely.

"The whole world was spun out of the imagination of 11 great giants," said Stewart Butterfield, the president of Glitch developer Tiny Speck, … Read more

Last July, TechCrunch ran an item about Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield's recent tweet that his new company was hiring.

"Maybe I make a terrible boss, but at least I know it," he tweeted. "Work with me." And based on that tiny little missive, his until-then unknown start-up Tiny Speck was flooded with job applicants hoping they join Butterfield as he and his partners made a second attempt at catching lightning in the Web 2.0 bottle.

Of course, no one knew at that point what Tiny Speck was up to, beyond the fact that the … Read more