Given that all US game publishers are traded on the NASDAQ, it was unsurprising that they, too, were down across the board. The share price of Activision Blizzard (World of Warcraft, Guitar Hero World Tour), the newly minted biggest third-party publisher on the planet, slid 13.8 percent ($2.26) to end the day at $14.12. Former top dog Electronic Arts (Madden NFL 09) saw $3.63 shaved off of its stock price, ending the day down 9.16 percent at $36 even. THQ (Saints Row 2) lost 7 percent, or $0.87, to close at $11.48, and shares in Take-Two Interactive (Grand Theft Auto IV) lost 4.52 percent ($0.73) to close at $15.43–nearly $10 less than its asking price one month ago.

Though the US economy has been listing during 2008, analysts have been touting game stocks as a safe bet. In a May online column for the financial weekly Barron’s, Signal Hill Capital Group Senior analyst Todd Greenwald called the game industry “virtually recession-proof.” In a piece aired last week, National Public Radio said games’ are growing more popular because they offer cost-effective escapism, much like films did during the Great Depression.

Unfortunately, today’s massive market loss affected even the most prosperous of publishers. As the Dow Jones industrial average shed a whopping 777.68 points (6.98 percent)–the biggest one-day point drop in history–the NASDAQ composite index was also clobbered, falling 199.61 points, or 9.14 percent.

But though today’s losses in American markets came after the US House of Representatives voted down a $700 billion bailout bill, some game companies overseas were flagging even before the legislative decision. Worst hit was Paris-based Ubisoft (Assassin’s Creed), which lost a whopping €12.47 ($17.92) per share in just hours, closing at €45.50 ($65.37) on the Euronext market. Eidos Interactive parent SCi Entertainment (Tomb Raider Underworld) lost £3.75 ($6.75) on the London Stock Exchange, ending the day at £26.75 ($48.16).

Large multinational companies with large game components also suffered. Software giant and Xbox 360 maker Microsoft (Gears of War 2) saw 8.72 percent ($2.39 per share) of its multibillion-dollar market value vanish in a single day, closing at $25.01. On the New York Stock Exchange, PlayStation 3 manufacturer Sony Corp (Resistance 2) shed 5.09 percent ($1.65 per share), ending trading at $30.76.

We’ve even seen fantasy games show up, such as “Dungeons & Dragons Online” a property that has been around longer than EverQuest or World of Warcraft yet it didn’t reach that mass appeal, why?

John Smedley: A lot of that is a matter of quality too. You have to have some new and something really cool to appeal to people. But there have been a lot of what I would consider high caliber and high quality games that haven��t done terribly well. What it takes to have that extra spark is making sure that you take the time to do the releases right. That is something we��re focused on. We��ve been invested in this game Free Realms since 2005 and we have the best in class for free MMOs. It is coming out in January, and we��re really proud of that.

We’ve even seen fantasy games show up, such as “Dungeons & Dragons Online,” a property that has been around longer than EverQuest or World of Warcraft yet it didn’t reach that mass appeal, why?

John Smedley: A lot of that is a matter of quality too. You have to have some new and something really cool to appeal to people. But there have been a lot of what I would consider high caliber and high quality games that haven’t done terribly well. What it takes to have that extra spark is making sure that you take the time to do the releases right. That is something we’re focused on. We’ve been invested in this game Free Realms since 2005 and we have the best in class for free MMOs. It is coming out in January, and we’re really proud of that.

What can you tell us about Free Realms?

John Smedley: Free Realms isn’t exactly high fantasy. I’d say it is more whimsical fantasy. Think of the movie Shrek, and you wouldn’t be too far off. It is that kind of irreverent humor set in a fantasy world. But we still think that high fantasy has a key pillar spot in our company. We want to continue to invest in that, and we are doing so very actively.

Costs are rising in the MMO space, but are we seeing enough players to support the games for the developers to stay profitable?

John Smedley: First and foremost, you have to make great games. But a close second to that is run your business smart and profitably, and that’s something we’ve been doing for many years. We believe very strongly that you have the investment spending with huge negatives. And now I see a lot of venture money going to this space and a lot of it is going into chasing World of Warcraft, and what we should be focusing on is what is the next best thing. Now we’ve seen some games come in at the low, low cost and there have been some very good examples of that, such as Eve Online. They started very small with that and its grown very well. But I think we’ll see the Warhammer Onlines, and the next EverQuests. These are the high budget brands just like there are summer movie blockbusters. I think that is going to be the norm.

Sony’s EverQuest was once the most popular, most talked about online role-playing game, but its been eclipsed by World of Warcraft. Do you ever see a way that an EverQuest property can recapture that top spot and regain the crown?

John Smedley: Ever Quest is a franchise that we have a lot of faith in, it’s been around 10 years now and we’ve released “EverQuest 2�� very successfully. We’ve run both games very profitably, and they’ve made a lot of money. More importantly they’ve made a lot of players very happy. So yes, we’re investing in the EverQuest franchise for the future. And you’ll see more EverQuest games in the future. We liked the look of the crown, and we’d like to put that back on.

So maybe there will be a South Park episode centered around EverQuest?

John Smedley: It is my dream! That was one of the funniest South Park episodes [featuring World of Warcraft], and that might just have been the best South Park episode ever. Look, I’m a fan of what the guys at Blizzard are doing. I’m super impressed with World of Warcraft. So to get on South Park, that and [The Colbert Report], are the dreams.

All the of the most successful MMOs have had a fantasy element. The success of those games is something that not even “Sims Online” or even “Star Wars” could match, so why is the fantasy element such a draw for gamers?

John Smedley: It has more to do with the gameplay in them, and in the case of Star Wars I think that is an IP that can reach millions and millions of people. From our perspective, at least while we were creating, it was a different time and a place. But what we’ve seen is that gameplay has evolved so quickly to become a bit more of the casual play and less of the super hardcore that we had started with EverQuest. So that’s something we’re adapting to, and that’s why we have [the free upocming MMO] “Free Realms” and we have “DC Universe Online” and why we have The Agency. We’re broadening out our demographic to be sure that we have games that fit in a lot of different genres, and therefore appeal to a wider range of gamers. I think it is possible to do big games that don’t have to be in the fantasy space.

 Setting the Pace

Speaking of pacing, I found the pace of Warhammer Online to be absolutely optimal for a game focused around competition. While most massively multiplayer online games are loaded with various time sinks, WAR is chuck full of things to do and easy ways for you to do them. Want to go RvR? Simply jump in a queue. Feel the need to do some PvEing? Go run out and get it done! Want to do both? That’s absolutely possible.

On top of all that, the leveling in the game is frenetic. In just a few hours each day, you can easily progress your character up to the midway point with two weeks, and it’s entirely possible to move to the high end of the game - the level 40 areas - within a month with only a few hours spent each day. In a game focused on competition, it makes sense to really give players the feeling that they’re driving towards a competitive level, and the quick way players earn ranks is a great way to accentuate this competitive environment.

As an example, at the end of this week of gaming, I had a level 15 Archmage, a level 6 Squig Herder, a level 8 Swordmaster, a level 4 Shaman, and a variety of other characters dotting multiple other servers. And I certainly don’t play that often compared to most hardcore gamers; I get in a few hours every few days at most.

Some Frustrations

But all of this fun doesn’t mean that there aren’t some frustrations with the game. I have to admit that there are a variety of early points in the game where new players can easily become confused and sidetracked with their gaming. That said, tutorial windows aren’t always the best option for this sort of thing either. For example, the first time I encountered a public quest, I was eager to see if I could get it completed and see what I would earn. I had heard great things about the public quests, but I was in an area that was devoid of other players. I began grinding through the monsters, only to eventually reach a point where I couldn’t complete the quest on my own. It was frustrating to spend all the time plowing through the monsters, only to reach a point where I couldn’t get any further simply because of the lack of players online.

I also found that figuring out the crafting system in the game is a relatively touch-and-go sort of experience. Even with my tutorial windows turned on, I never quite figured out how to go about making talismans and the rest of the crafting professions weren’t much easier to discern. I’ll certainly spend some time looking at this element of the game for my review, but it’s hard to make any sort of judgement on a piece of content when a player can’t figure out the ropes.
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Some of you may be expecting me to tell you that Warhammer Online was just that sort of title. Other editors from various media sites have pushed hordes of flowered prose down the throats of their readers telling the various wonders and enjoyable encounters they’d been a part of during their short stints in WAR. Since I’ve been fairly positive with other titles in the past in my first impressions, it could be assumed that Warhammer Online deserved a heaping pile of praise right from the start.As a long time reviewer of both online and offline games, there’s usually a point in the process of the game review where the game reaches above the below average status and begins to earn its stripes as a high quality game. Sometimes a game never reaches that average status, either because of nagging bugs or just a thoroughly unimpressive presentation and gameplay experience. Other titles take a few days to really sink in, with the depth of the control mechanics or competitive playstyles helping push the game into the average or above average status.

But then there are games that instantly appeal to a player. These games - and they are few and far between - come out with all of their guns cocked and loaded, and the player merely has to pull the trigger to be totally enthralled and immersed in a flood of gaming enjoyment.

Frankly, Warhammer Online didn’t instantly win my heart. But - and that’s an enormous “but” - Warhammer Online has gradually shown me what a studio focused on giving MMO gamers a cooperative *and* competitive experience can really accomplish when both elements of their game are full of novel elements and quality moments. Throughout the rest of my first impressions article, I will attempt to outline how Warhammer Online won me over. Along with that, I’ll give some of my favorite elements, some areas that still need improvement, and the bits that still require a bit of exploration on my part before I dole out a full review.

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If you’d like to take part in this year’s summer event it couldn’t be simpler! All you need to do is spend some time in Middle-earth. Log in at any point during the week and then answer the question on the competition web page and you’ll be entered into a draw for a chance to win Baggins of prizes.

Not a LOTRO subscriber? No need to worry. You too can participate! All you need is a copy of the 14-day free trial which you can download from www.trylotro.com.

If you want to see previous weeks’ winners, please see the following announcements:
Week 1 winners
Week 2 winners
Week 3 winners
Week 4 winners
Week 5 winners
Week 6 winners
Week 7 winners
Spend your summer in Middle-earth is a great, fun and easy competition and you could win some fantastic prizes.

The next lot of names have been drawn from the hat and we can now reveal that the week eight winners of the Summer in Middle-earth competition are:

• Jérôme Challes, France
• Cathleen Grünhagen, Germany
• Javier Martinez, Spain
• Karsten Hoffmann, Germany
• Michael Wirth, Germany
• Bas Diender, Netherlands
• Sven Scherer, Germany
• James Murphy, United Kingdom
• Florian Dietrich, Germany
• Andreas Weinzinger, Austria

Lastly for today (I think I have taken a good deal of your time already, hopefully constructively so!) I also wanted to mention that we‘ve come very far with the DirectX 10 version, which we unfortunately had to keep on internal test-servers for launch. It’s now almost ready for the full test server. Once the next game-play update is out expect to start to see the DX10 functionality coming to the test environment. How long it will take to transition to live will depend on the testing of course, but it’s starting to shape up nicely. Having done some reviews of it internally over the last few weeks I can admit that a few of the features really do give some added visual punch. I know it’s a feature that is long awaited and I can assure you the technical folk here are working flat out to try and get the version in a state where it can be considered for live release.

There are two things on the immediate horizon that will very soon be on the test server for public testing in the shape of Ymir’s Pass and the second stage of the PVP update. There are a couple of things I want to address on these.

Firstly Ymir’s Pass is a large zone and has quite a bit of content to test. This may mean that it stays on the test server through several updates on live. We have the ability not to include a given playfield when we build new versions for live, which means that this testing won’t hold up the release of the other new content and Ymir’s Pass will still get the time on the test server that it needs. We want the experience to be as good as possible for its release and feel the public testing phase is important in that. We hope to be bringing the playfield to the test server shortly, and we all hope you will enjoy the many varied encounters it brings.

Then there is the second stage of the PVP update that brings with it the consequence system. This new system allows for players PVP actions to have real consequences in the world, and it will greatly enhance the entire PvP experience in Conan. As you know the system is meant to bring repercussions for repeated evil behaviour (i.e. killing players outside of your level range), so should you chose to “gank” other players, a whole new gameplay area opens up! For one, it will result in you no longer being welcome in many parts of the game-world, but in its place you will have to rely on a newly arrived network of camps and areas that function with a little more moral ambiguity. This is very true to the essence of the Conan lore, and a change I think many players will find intriguing.

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There’s also a host of smaller problems, though none of them rise to more than a small level of annoyance. Players in scenarios can “AFK” their way through, stealing experience and renown points they don’t deserve. There’s a weird graphic bug that will lock an avatar into one animation cycle (though you can still play the game). The crafting is confusing and feels like an afterthought. The UI, while quite good, could use a few now-common elements like the ability to hot-link items and abilities in chat. Considering how important player coordination is in higher-level PvP, the game could really use some type of built-in voice chat system. Some of the terrain in the scenarios and the PvP lakes could use some tweaking, as their proximity to spawn points sometimes gives an advantage to one side while the other faction faces an incredibly long post-death trek.

In the end, though, all of the problems, even the most serious one of lag in heavy player combat, are ultimately fixable. Warhammer Online has had the smoothest, most complete MMO launch we’ve ever seen. Game balance and other elements of the game need tweaking but they’re all there, they all work and most importantly, they’re all fun. This is a game that has 20 separate classes and while some may be overpowered or underpowered, none of them are boring to play. The game comes loaded with PvP and PvE content that — balance issues notwithstanding — is as good as or much better than that of any other MMO on the market. Warhammer Online is the next great game of Player vs. Player and Realm vs. Realm content and we have the feeling that somewhere on the other side of reality, the Chaos god Tzeentch is smiling.

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 Hell is Other People
The biggest irony of Warhammer Online is that its greatest strength is also its biggest weakness — the reliance on other people. The vast majority of the game’s content, especially its meta-game, requires an active and enthusiastic player-base committed to getting to the city sieges. In the game’s opening days as everybody levels up and the game still exudes that “new game smell,” that isn’t a problem. Even in these first days, however, we’ve found that there are inconveniently located PQs that are virtually abandoned. We’re concerned that as the player base ages, these areas may be abandoned, making the trip to level 40 the grind that Mythic worked so hard to avoid.

Fortunately, Mythic is aware of this and put systems in place to try to stem it. Since every zone in the game contributes to the push-pull city-raiding meta-game, there is certainly an incentive for players to level alts and leave them at specific levels in order to be able to switch to different content tiers when the situation requires it. The game also offers a “Tome of Knowledge” that in itself is a huge piece of content. The Tome is combination achievement/kill-counter system that tracks virtually every aspect of gameplay. There’s a kill counter for every type of creature (and player) in the game, exploration unlocks for finding specific locations, well-written story snippets as a reward for following the PvE questlines, titles, new skills and much much more. In fact, there’s even a whole host of silly and secret achievements in the Tome such as clicking on your own character 100 times, fighting while naked or just adding five players to your friends list cheap wow gold.

As players progress through the game, a fascinating melding of PvE and PvP content begins to occur. Certain PvE quests will send players into PvP “lakes” to complete objectives that have nothing to do with fighting other players. Others will offer players in PvE zones opposing PQ objectives conveniently located right next to PvP areas where players can slip over and try to kill one another when taunting and interference aren’t enough. In higher-level PvP zones, capturing objectives entails dealing with very powerful NPCs that require raid-level coordination to take down. City sieges — the very goal of the game — are the ultimate fusion of the two. Once a city siege begins, players will have to compete in PvP events to unlock a whole instanced capital loaded with PvE content ranging from low-level quests to loot and kill regular citizens to high-level dungeons and huge raid-level bosses that will take the resources of a guild to destroy.
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PQ For Me And You

More interesting than RvR (for me, at least) are the Public Quests. Here’s an example: I’m sent to kill some Annoying Squigs on a quest (with Squiggle, my Squig Herder). When I arrive at the killing field, the game tells me that the area also happens to be a Public Quest called Ugrog’s Rage (Oh, that giant troll thing!) where the first objective is killing quite of few of the buggers. I notice another player in the area, and invite them to a party.

Parties are automatically labeled as open, and in the upper left there is an icon you can click at any time to see what parties are available, how far they are from you, and what they are doing. Everyone in the area knows we’re here doing this PQ, and we can keep inviting people, too. Even players not in our party (or eventual warband, if enough show up—that’s a group of up to four parties) are helping the cause.

Next we have to collect Ugrog some beer kegs, but there are still enemies to deal with as well. Finally, once he’s good and boozed up he’ll bust down the door to this dwarven fortress and the bosses first send minions charging, before finally running out themselves.

Most PQs seem to have three stages, and when it’s over you get a loot drop (or not, if there were a lot of people involved) depending on how well you participated. The drop is a grab bag where you get to choose one item, and there is always something you can use, whether it’s armor or a crafting material.  If you help out a lot, you also get tons of influence (points—a bar that fills for each chapter of the story) and are able to pick up influence rewards from the rally master in town.

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Tactic Trainers: All tactic trainers in the main city libraries have been temporarily turned off, while we investigate an issue involving them. They will return as soon as this issue is resolved, we apologize for the inconvenience.

Troll Country: Players will no longer get the T3 scenario queue window when attempting to zone into the scenario cave in Troll Country

Open-RvR Servers: Players will no longer receive the “bolster” buff while in Kadrin Valley

The first patch comes in the morning of Sep.6. And the down time only lasted a little more than 1 hour and a half. The patch notes are below:

Patch Notes
Queues bypass system: Player’s position in the queues will now be saved when disconnected for a short period of time.

Guild Tavern: All players in a guild will now have access to the guild tavern at the appropriate guild rank level.