Hugh Pickens writes "An MIT Technology Review article has new details on the challenges of a 'one world design' in Massively Multiplayer Online Games. Most games shard their servers, putting up artificial barriers between friends and family members. Technologies are now being developed to keep lots of players within a single world, some of them based off of the unique PvP-heavy title EVE Online. The best part - the technologies don't just apply to gaming. 'NASDAQ, for example, can be thought of as a very large MMO, supporting very large numbers of 'players' performing billions of transactions daily in a graphically intense environment, all within a single shard. Technologies that solve this problem effectively, says George Dolbier, technical lead for games and interactive entertainment at IBM, will have applications in any industry that requires spotting and reacting to trends, or "anything where behavior is dynamic and you need to move resources around rapidly."'"

Earlier this month Dr. Eyjólfur "Eyjo" Guðmundsson, the newly hired EVE Online economist, released his first market report looking at the mining and trade of minerals within CCP's massively multiplayer online game. I had a chance to speak to Dr. Guðmundsson at GDC Austin, to further understand why it is that an online game needs an econ professor on staff. We discussed his work on the mineral information, future plans, the reality of trust in an inherently hostile world and why that makes for a bad banking environment, and a few words on player communication from CCP CEO Hilmar Petursson. Read on for the full interview.

BioShock, the moody drama-driven FPS for the Xbox 360 and PC, was released last month to rave reviews from the major gaming news sites. Since then the internet has been ablaze with outcry about the game's high rating scores. It's hard to understand why. The work of Ken Levine and Irrational Games on the spiritual successor to System Shock 2 is sublime. It's incredibly atmospheric, the game's story is well written and compellingly told, and the first-person shooter gameplay is a respectable, tightly crafted experience. It's a really, really good game. I'll tell you now: it's a 5/5. So why all the angst? Why the backlash? Read on for my review of BioShock, and a few comments on the dangers of 'merely' being a good game.

simoniker writes "Are MMO populations 'tribal', and if so, what's the next tribal shift after World of Warcraft? At Gamasutra, academics including MIT's Henry Jenkins and Ludium's Edward Castronova discuss what's next for the MMO market, based on their research and play patterns. Jenkins states that WoW is getting _too_ much analysis from researchers right now: 'WoW deserves attention because it has so captured the imagination of gamers over the past few years. That said, I don't think it is healthy for the field of games studies, which is still emerging, to be so fixated on a single game franchise — no matter what the franchise. A few years ago, it might have been The Sims or GTA, now it's WoW.'" For more on this topic MMOG industry veteran Gordon Walton spoke on this topic last week at GDC Austin, and notes from that event are also available at Gamasutra.

Gamespy had a chat with Chris Perkins, story manager for Dungeons and Dragons R&D, at this year's Gen Con. Though Chris had no more details to offer Gamespy than he did for us at the event, the piece puts a lot of information all into one place on what we can expect from D&D Fourth Edition. "GameSpy: We've been reading a lot about talent trees in 4th Edition ... Christopher Perkins: Talent trees aren't unique to MMORPGs. Wizards has produced other games that use talent trees, such as the d20 Modern Roleplaying Game and the Star Wars Roleplaying Game Saga Edition. The theory of game design, regardless of platform, is constantly evolving. We've taken our gaming experiences over the past decade, as well as player feedback on the games and supplements we've produced in that time period, to build a system for character creation and advancement in 4th Edition that draws inspiration from numerous sources, but isn't exactly like anything that's been done before."

Thursday at GDC Austin featured several excellent presentations, but the cap to that day's writing track was without a doubt BioWare's discussion of their writing processes, tools, and the creation of the Xbox 360 title Mass Effect. The talk detailed the numerous revision processes their work goes through, as well as the shape of their writing team across a project's lifetime. Read on for notes from the session, and impressions from the short amount of in-game footage they showed during the event.

WoW Insider has the word that the South Park Episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" has won the Creative Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program. The episode, which heavily features machinima shot inside a Blizzard-run World of Warcraft server, has proven extremely popular with fans of both the game and the show. So much so that the DVD set including that episode includes a 14-day trial for WoW, and extensive commentary on the episode from the show's creators. From the WoW Insider post: "This isn't the first Emmy that South Park has won, but perhaps this kind of attention will get WoW more positive (or at least humorous) attention in other television shows. Though, when it comes to TV ratings, 9 million people worldwide does not a target audience make. For example, American Idol was considered slipping when it only had 30 million US viewers for an episode. Would you like to see WoW references appear more often on TV? Or are you too busy playing to care?"

The fundamentals of game design for Massively Multiplayer Online Games are beginning to become fairly well known in game development. Just the same, there is still a lot of argument about what is and is not a 'good call' when it comes to adding features to a massive service. The way to go about making those choices, and a good deal of attention to the concept of a game as a service, was laid out by Damion Schubert in his talk at GDC Austin on Thursday entitled 'The Zen of Online Game Design'.

At GDC Austin, the technical keynote for Thursday focused in on the challenging task of developing the online game Final Fantasy XI. We were treated to a broad but vaguely technical discussion from Hiromichi Tanaka, the producer of the half-a-million strong game world. He was joined by Sage Sundi, the global producer of the game, who gave a fascinating discussion about Square/Enix's battle against real money traders. Their successes have been hard-fought, and are illustrative of the problems facing anyone running one of these games. Read on for notes from the event.

The Austin Game Developer's Conference, now under new management, kicks off today with a keynote from Blizzard President Michael Morhaime. He started off the event with a discussion of the potential of gaming in the 20th Century, and the lessons his company has learned from the long trial that has been World of Warcraft. Read on for notes from his presentation.

Mytob writes "Today is the last day of service for NCSoft / Net Devil's Auto Assault. The game, which has never proved that popular, will have its service terminated at midnight central time. Refund emails have already been sent out, and end-of game events have been happening since last week. From the Auto Assault Website: 'We are now in the final week of Auto Assault and to mark this occasion on Friday night we'll be doing all sorts of nutty things in-game — whatever you request, we'll try to make happen. Most of the fun will be in and around Ground Zero (don't worry if you don't have a high-level character, we'll boost you), but we'll be doing other stuff all around the game. We plan on starting around 9PM CDT (if not before) and should last right to midnight when the servers are shut down for the final time.'"

Joystiq has the word that the epic space RPG from Bioware, Mass Effect, now has a ship date attached to it. The date? November 20th. "The preview videos have been yummy, the conversation system looks amazing, even our time with the game was nice -- now if we could only get a straight answer on those weird frame-rate hiccups we keep seeing. We hope that'll all be cleaned up by November when we'll be partaking in turkey and then sitting our tryptophan overdosed selves down for hours of Mass Effect. Who would watch football after dinner when there's a galaxy to save?"

Another year, another Gen Con? Hardly. This year was the 40th anniversary of Gen Con, marked the announcement of the newest edition of Dungeons and Dragons, and was the first year videogame companies were actively sought out as exhibitors. Put together this resulted in what felt like record crowds, a healthy dealer's hall, and an instant conversation-starter with every other person at the event. Read on for notes on the new tabletop releases, thoughts on the new edition of D&D, impressions of the videogames that were in attendance, and a shameful admission of weakness.

Oxygen99 writes "The Times is reporting on a paper by researchers in the US who argue that the spread of 'corrupted blood' in World of Warcraft might provide clues to the way a real world population would cope with the prospect of a global pandemic. In the study, to be published in The Lancet next month, Professor Lofgren of Rutgers University and Professor Fefferman of Tufts University, suggest that: 'If, God forbid, a disease broke out in London, you could see what would happen if people were told immediately of the risk. Would there be panic and chaos, or would it allow them to psychologically accept the danger and act accordingly? What would happen if we made people feel too reassured? These are all things that have a great impact on the number of people who would be affected. They are also things we just don't know, so [virtual games] could be of great value in helping us understand what their true emotional responses would be.'"

eldavojohn writes "Recently CCP, the folks behind the online game Eve Online, hired a real world economist to advise them on their in-game economy. Says the new hire, Dr. Eyjolfur Gudmundsson, 'There's a lot of discussion in the game about inflation and that is my job, to find out if inflation is going on. This makes the consumers behave in a more natural way because they are competing against each other on multiple levels, not only on a tactical level in combat but for logistics and resources. That builds consumer behavior and patterns that you see in the real world.' Is this a serious step to keep Eve Online competitive in the virtual land of MMOs despite scandals, Ponzi schemes & scams?"

Dr. Eggman writes "Valve announced today that their digital distribution system, Steam, is now hosting Irrational Games-turned-2K Boston's soon to be released title, Bioshock. The game will appear on Steam and the US August 21st and in Europe on the 24th. If you don't enjoy pipes, perhaps you'd like to utilize the tubes at 3DDownloads, Worthplaying, FilePlanet, or Gamer's Hell."

Lord Aramil of Dreadwood writes "Blogger and Dragon magazine writer Jonathan Drain is tracking the latest developments on the new D&D edition. Highlights include: Thirty levels instead of twenty, no more XP costs for magic items creation, flexible talent trees replacing feats and prestige classes, a new racial bonuses system that obsoletes ECL, and an end to rubbish skills like Forgery and Use Rope. A quote from the blog: 'Unlike 3.5, all the changes this time around sound like they're definitely for the better... If nothing else, at least they have the opportunity to get rid of Mialee.'"

bigstrat2003 writes "For the past day, Wizards of the Coast has had a countdown to "4dventure" on their web site. The countdown ran out at 6:30 eastern time today (and the web site promptly crashed), but stories are already appearing on the rest of the web. Wizards also has had their 4th edition forums up for a couple of days."

simoniker writes "BioWare's QA director Phillip DeRosa has written a piece called 'Tracking Player Feedback To Improve Game Design' over at Gamasutra, which deals with how game developers can use statistics, even before a game is released, to improve gameplay. DeRosa "...explains how the Mass Effect creator has set up and executed code-based monitoring of key metrics to test, analyze, and refine its projects through playtesting." Is this approach sensible, or could it be more like movie producers 'pandering' to test audiences?"

Sony Online Entertainment this week stated they'd have a 'new announcement' on Friday at their annual Fan Faire player event. SOE President John Smedley addressed the assembled players, revealing an in-game trading card game that's to be rolled out to players of EverQuest and EverQuest 2 sometime before the end of the month. The game was developed by the SOE-Denver studio, the same folks who made online TCGs out of Pirates! and Stargate. Gamespot reports: "All current EQ and EQ2 players will initially receive a starter deck, and additional booster packs can be purchased with real-world cash. However, those wishing not to spend any extra money will be happy to know that booster packs can also be acquired as loot off of boss mobs in both games, and the game will be free of charge to play. Of further note, the game will feature loot cards that can be redeemed for in-game items for players' characters. SOE plans to offer substantial support for the product, including in-game tournaments, card trading, a unique user interface, and deck-building functionality."