As a reminder, all MAG DLC is compatible with the free MAG Trial, so folks who have downloaded the trial but haven’t made up their minds about upgrading to the full version of MAG yet can still take advantage of this offer, so spread the word!

Players in North America and Europe will notice that any character slot subscriptions that were active on April 19th are now good through June 12th – that’s 30 calendar days from May 14th, the date PSN service was restored. Players in Japan and Korea, where PSN service has not yet been reactivated, will also receive appropriate compensation – details on that will come once PSN is back online in those areas.

We’re very happy and humbled to see gamers return in full-force, so from all of us at Zipper Interactive, thank you for playing. We’ll see you online!

The MAG trial gives you full access to all of MAG’s maps, weapons, character skills and modes (including the Guinness World record-setting 256-player “Domination”), with the only limit being a character growth cap at level 8. Despite this level cap, it should be noted that trial players will still continue to bank experience points that are immediately applied to their character upon purchasing the full version of MAG (downloadable or Blu-ray versions)!

For international readers, this offer is already available Japan and Korea; Europe will follow suit on April 6.

If you haven’t given MAG a try yet, now’s your best-ever chance to do so. if you’re a longtime MAG fan already, now is also a great time to get your friends to join the battle with you!

You can discuss this episode by clicking this link.

Well, MAG v2.12 is now available with a singular purpose — to fix the knife!

The patch will be available today during our regularly-scheduled maintenance period. Log into MAG to get it!

Patch v2.12
March 9, 2011 | 40MB (TPPS), N/A (DLS)

Gameplay
·   Addressed movement issue that prevented DualShock 3 players from turning while using the knife

Want to talk about MAG v2.12? Follow this link and do it now!

That brings us to this week’s edition of Zipline, the official Zipper Interactive podcast. Joining us this time out are designers Christian Sadak and Blaine Higdon who stop by to chat about all of our newly-announced SOCOM goodness. Enjoy!

The most obvious change in MAG v2.11, and arguably the biggest, is a reaction to the overwhelmingly positive response by our community to the promotion we ran during MAG’s birthday week. In case you missed it, we made our Domination and Acquisition modes “faction neutral” so that players could defend and attack all maps related to those game-types regardless of their PMC affiliation. Our fans enjoyed it so much that we decided to make the modification permanent and so we have!

Naturally, there’s more to our patch then just faction-neutrality. We’ve also given our in-game economy a boost with smarter incentives and a better relationship with our XP system. Add to that a number of Escalation, performance and interface enhancements and you’ve got quite the pleasant update.

For our complete list of changes in MAG v2.11, check out the notes highlighted below. As always, the patch will be available tomorrow morning during our regularly-scheduled maintenance period, which begins at 1am Pacific Time. Log into MAG directly for additional information, including maintenance times specific to your region. And now, the specifics:

Patch v2.11
February 23, 2011 | 40MB (TPPS), 39MB (DLS)

Gameplay (General)

• Permanently added faction-neutrality to “Domination” and “Acquisition” game modes
• Improved ratio of launched game-types when using Multiqueue
• Fixed “Escalation” game-type exploit that allowed unintended amounts of additional game points to be earned under certain conditions
• The original three training missions unique to Raven, SVER and Valor have been reinstated (Blu-ray version only)
• Lessened the likelihood of players moving their aim while performing the “knifing” action with the PlayStation Move Motion Controller

Gameplay (Economy)

• Earned CP now takes “Bonus” XP into account as part of its equation
• Adjusted CP/ XP conversation rate so that lower-level players have the highest yield of CP-earned to XP-gained, with a lessening effect as they gain levels
• CP is now refunded when a player has gear they are no longer entitled to removed from their loadout

Weapons

• Repaired “stuck grenade” bug that would sometimes prevent players from throwing grenades
• Slightly increased grenade-throwing speed following weapon-switch (all grenade types)

Interface

• Altered queue displays for all modes so that players using “Multiqueue” no longer show up as part of the queue counts
• Repaired icon display issue in “Escalation” game-type that would occasionally misrepresent which team was interacting with an objective
• Post-game Squad scoreboard no longer includes bonus XP in its display or rankings
• All three factions are now properly displayed for the “Escalation” game-type when using the Multiqueue

Audio/ Visual

• Grenade-throwing animations are now properly blended and no longer skip
• Various camera clipping issues have been addressed

Miscellaneous

• Subscription character slots B and C are now fully compatible with the downloadable version of MAG
• Eliminated glitch that prevented players from earning the “Duteous Maximus” trophy after the 2.10 update
• Fixed bug that prevented some players from being vote-kicked out of games
• Faction-specific videos have been restored (Blu-ray version only)
• Numerous crash fixes and performance improvements
• Multiple localization updates

Want to talk about MAG v2.11 with other fans? Click here and go for it!

You can discuss this episode by clicking this link.

Think you’re a MAG expert? Think again! Listed below are five facts listed in backwards order of their mind-blowing magnitude.

5. The three PMCs – Raven, SVER, and Valor – weren’t always known by those names. Over time, they underwent a number of title changes. Valor was known as the “Allied Forces” and “Hammer,” SVER was “SEVER” and “SIRSAT, and Raven was… well, check further down the list to see what Raven was called.

4. Though MAG was Zipper’s first “released” PS3 game, it wasn’t always planned to be. Prior to the greenlight for MAG, we were tossing around several ideas – including an espionage-themed action/platformer that thrived on chase sequences and a shooter that would ultimately become the game due out this April, SOCOM 4..

3. MAG could be even bigger. MAG is renowned for its 256-player support – and we earned the Guinness World Record for most simultaneous players in a console FPS as proof – but that’s not the limit of our technology. Truth be told, we can support a lot more than that. We picked 256 players as our target for game design reasons (how we divide up squads, platoons, etc). However, with our architecture, we could increase the number players well beyond the 256-person limit if we wanted to – we’d just want to make sure our design fit whatever super huge number we wanted to go after first.

2. MAG began its life as a SOCOM game. Originally, we had planned to make MAG a part of the SOCOM universe. In fact, its first working title was “SOCOM: MAG.” As the game began to take shape, however, it became apparent that what MAG was growing into was much different than SOCOM. The gameplay design, while still somewhat-tactical, continued to become less “SOCOM-like.” The emphasis on character progression and large-scale multiplayer battles with three completely different PMCs sealed the deal, and MAG happily spun off into its own universe. Oh, and remember that Raven “early title” we mentioned? Yeah, they were “Clawhammer!”

1. MAG started as a third-person shooter. Because it started as a SOCOM title, MAG was a third-person shooter for a good portion of its development cycle. When the first MAG trailer was shown at E3 2008, for instance, the game was still planned as a TPS (and the teaser hints at it pretty strongly). As we continued to refine MAG, however, and pull it father away from its SOCOM beginnings, we moved it into the first-person realm to help differentiate it even more. After we played it, when knew absolutely that going first-person was the right choice for the game and the rest, as they say, is history!

We hope you enjoyed this look into the Zipper vault of secrets and hope that you enjoyed our game even more.

You can discuss this episode by clicking this link.