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WildStar dev donates LEGO sculpture to Child's Play charity
WildStar developer Carbine Studios made a special donation at PAX East this year that included a $10,000 check and a 50,000-piece LEGO Rocket House that will be auctioned off for the Child's Play charity. The rocket house LEGO sculpture stands three feet tall and four feet long and was created by LEGO artist Mariann Asanuma specifically for the charity. The sculpture will be auctioned off at the annual Child's Play Dinner later this year with all proceeds going towards partner hospitals and facilities. "We wanted to not only find a fun way to bring a small piece of WildStar to life, but also see the efforts go to a good cause," said Mona Hamilton, vice president of brands, Carbine Studios. "Child's Play is a wonderful charity doing really great things with the gaming industry and we're looking forward to seeing the result of the auction later this year. It was also important for us to say thanks by giving back to the Boston community; they've been great to us over the years at PAX East." You can check out a video of the LEGO sculpture being assembled just after the jump below. [Source: Carbine press release]
The Nexus Telegraph: In which no WildStar injuries happened
My performance on the dance floor during PAX East 2013's WildStar party is the stuff of dark legends (in my mind, anyway), but it was not replicated this year. Indeed, when I tried to get into this year's WildStar community party, the entranceway was inaccessible due to the sheer mass of people. As I naturally handle crowds about as well as a Mechari handles knock-knock jokes, I opted to turn around and go back to my hotel room. There was a Ghostbusters marathon on, so it was still kind of awesome. This did not, however, mean that the convention was devoid of interesting stories; it just was devoid of stories in which I sustained injuries greatly impacting my normal hiking routes. So let's talk about what things really stuck out in my mind through the whole con. For my money, that comes down to the focus on the endgame and a really stupid statement. Where to start?
PAX East 2014: The future looks bright for the next generation of MMOs
While last weekend saw a surprising lack of noteworthy announcements at PAX East 2014, one panel gathered several industry veterans to answer a not-so-simple question: How does the future look for the MMO industry as a whole? The panel, titled Next Generation MMO Games: What's Next for Multiplayer Trends?, featured Ian Fisher (Director of Design, Robot Entertainment), Stephen Frost (Game Design Producer, Carbine), Dave Georgeson (Director of Development, SOE), Kjartan Pierre Emilsson (Principal Game Designer, CCP), and Stephen Johnston (President, Guild Launch) in a roundtable discussion about where MMOs have been and where they're headed. While panelists agreed that there is a huge barrier to entry when funding, developing, and launching a new MMO, their outlook was positive overall, and in general they believe there is still plenty of room for growth in the industry.
PAX East 2014: Can World of Warcraft's garrisons live up to the hype?
Like many players, I have very mixed feelings about the garrisons being added to World of Warcraft's latest expansion, Warlords of Draenor. At this year's PAX East, I sat down with Blizzard Entertainment to discuss the feature, and the studio reps explained garrisons as a way for Blizzard to bring a bit of Warcraft into the WoW universe. As a fan of WarCraft 3, I left the interview feeling hopeful and excited. But the more I thought about it, the more I began to worry that garrisons will boil down to one of three things: an expanded version of Mists of Pandaria's farms, a new daily quest hub, or just another time-sink that will keep players isolated from one another.
The Think Tank: Thoughts on PAX East 2014
PAX East came and went last weekend, and as we do most years, the Massively writers got together to discuss the highlights and the disappointments of the con. Join the conversation -- what did you think was the best (and worst) MMO or reveal at PAX?
Watch Firaxis boldly bring Civilization to space from PAX East
Missed the PAX East panel that revealed Civilization: Beyond Earth to the world? Maybe you just want to relive the magic you already witnessed live in Boston? Firaxis has you covered either way, uploading its panel from the show, complete with a peek at the future of the Sid Meier series. Civilization: Beyond Earth takes the addictive franchise into space this fall, though the developer has some experience with space exploration. The developer's decision to boldly go into space allows its designers and artists to free themselves from a "historical context," Firaxis designer and programmer Anton Strenger told Joystiq at PAX East. "We, as designers, were free to come up with really fun new gameplay systems that didn't really make sense in a more historical game, or even like a fantasy game." In Beyond Earth, Strenger said for example, players may launch satellites over a planet, influencing the events below. [Image: Firaxis]
PAX East 2014: WildStar shows off Warplots at last
Do you want to go to war in WildStar? Then you're going to want a stronghold. No, that's not right, you're going to want a fortress. You're going to want a fortification that makes others quake in terror. And then you're going to want to drop that fortification down on your enemy's front lawn and claim their territories while laying waste to their fortifications. Welcome to Warplots. They're the game's answer to player-made fortresses and high-end battlegrounds all at once. More specificially, they're team-based 40 vs. 40 maps that drop you into a race to tear down your enemy. At either end sits the carefully constructed fortress held by each team, in the middle sit resource nodes, and both sides are pushed together to be the last side standing or the one putting a fortress back together post-battle. Want to know more? That's a good thing. Take a look at the typical WildStar trailer past the cut, and then let's talk details.
PAX East 2014: Upsilon Circuit is an MMO like no other
A lot of what I see in the MMO industry is fairly predictable. That's not an insult; it's just that most of the new games you see are either a result of elegant mechanics solving a problem that's always been there or a new take on an old system, and that's OK. There's nothing wrong with taking old favorites and refining them. But then I see something like Upsilon Circuit and I wind up being completely blown away because the very idea is a fundamental rewriting of how we understand MMOs. Upsilon Circuit is a new game currently in very early development from indie studio Robot Loves Kitty (of Legend of Dungeon fame), and when I say early, I do mean early. The animations are rough, the build is very much in a proof-of-concept stage rather than a fully playable state, and none of that matters. The game is the love child of Twitch Plays Pokémon, the Hunger Games, and Diablo III, a game that not only encourages streaming but demands it while interacting with the audience
PAX East 2014: Guild Wars 2 on the Feature Pack and beyond
If you're a Guild Wars 2 fan, we all know what you're excited about today. After a year(ish) of small incremental patches and living story, the game is rolling out a big patch full of features appropriately dubbed the Feature Pack. It's not new content, but it's a lot of big bonuses and improvements to the ways that players already play the game's existing content. And we got to see a bit of it in action at PAX East. Some of the information about how these features will work has already been discussed, but not everything, and seeing all of the improvements in action definitely gave a sense of tangible change not visible in development blogs. It's part of a shift in ethos for the development team, as well; rather than trying to roll out changes along with Living Story updates, ArenaNet is implementing a big set of improvements at once to make the whole update feel meatier.
PAX Beta keys temporarily allowed Warlords of Draenor access
Matthew Rossi posted on Friday about Blizzard's handing out Beta keys to people who played Warlords of Draenor at PAX East. Those keys were supposed to be for a later phase of the beta, but, as Bashiok elucidates on the official forums, a few of them actually worked during the PAX weekend itself. This meant that a few of the players who took their key home and applied it to their account were able to access and play the beta well in advance of when the keys should have allowed them to. Blizzard has taken steps to revoke those players' access, but it would explain some of the streams seen on Twitch over the weekend. Where players have legitimately accessed Warlords with PAX keys, no action appears to have been taken. However, it seems that the Twitch warning is still in place for anyone streaming the alpha outside the select few who had accessed it legitimately with keys. Those players no longer have access to the beta, and will need to re-redeem the same keys again at a later stage. No comment has been made by Blizzard so far about keys appearing on Ebay, but based on previous betas, they will be taken down as soon as they can be. Hit the break for Bashiok's full post.
PAX East 2014: Erin Roberts on Star Citizen's development
Star Citizen's backers have been waiting to see the game's dogfighting module in action for quite some time now, and it finally happened just before PAX East 2014. Unfortunately, it also wound up having some technical difficulties right at the beginning, which wasn't exactly what anyone had in mind when showing off the whole thing in action. It wasn't quite as bad as having the computer running the module burst into flames and die, but it was bad. Do the developers regret it? Not a chance. We got a chance to sit down and talk to Squadron 42 producer Erin Roberts and were told, in no uncertain terms, that even hitting technical hiccups like that don't make a more private development cycle feel better. In a way, having the development cycle be so public actually makes technical hurdles less problematic for the company when they're encountered because the language is in place to keep a meaningful dialogue going with the fans.
PAX East 2014: Pre-launch words with WildStar's Jeremy Gaffney
WildStar is being released in about a month and a half. It feels as if it's been forever since the game first revealed its announcement trailer. Now we've finally got a release date in sight, and the last few features for the game are being revealed to the public. It's one of the last chances that we'll have to talk about the game before it releases. On the last day of this year's PAX East, I had a chance to sit down with executive producer Jeremy Gaffney to chat a little bit more about the game before it launches. While the game has gone gold and the discs are being manufactured, the team is still refining and improving the game and plans to do so up until the day of launch. That meant talking about the endgame, the development process, and the changes that have been made already in the most recent stages of beta.
Last Week on Massively: PAX East 2014
This post originally appeared on Massively from Editor-in-Chief Brianna Royce. At the end of every week, we round up the best and most popular news stories, exclusive features, and insightful columns published on Massively and then present them all in one convenient place. If you missed a big MMO story last week, you've come to the right post. Massively took on the wilds of PAX East 2014 this weekend. Here's what we've seen so far: PAX East 2014: WildStar's panel was all about the endgame PAX East 2014: First impressions of Warlords of Draenor PAX East 2014: Landmark's current tools and future crafts PAX East 2014: The Repopulation's Josh Hall on the future of the game PAX East 2014: Hands-on with Infinite Crisis PAX East 2014: State of Decay eyes multiplayer, stays offline PAX East 2014: Guns of Icarus Online's expanding environment PAX East 2014: PlanetSide 2's Matt Higby on weekly updates PAX East 2014: Hearthstone reveals Naxxramas single-player adventure PAX East 2014: Star Citizen and the DFM are 'more than just PvP' There's more to come over the next few days. Read on for the rest of this week's top stories!
Gearbox reveals Homeworld Collector's Edition Mothership statue
A Homeworld Remastered Collector's Edition is prepping for landing, developer Gearbox announced at its PAX East 2014 panel today. The special edition will include, among other things, a replica statue based on the game's Mothership, pictured above. The figure stands at more than 12 inches tall, is USB-powered, and lights up. Gearbox polled fans last month asking what they'd like to see in a Collector's Edition, and it looks like people chose "big spaceship." Can't say we blame them. [Image: Sierra Entertainment]
PAX East 2014: Hands-on with Infinite Crisis
I don't know what Superman's problem is, man. I was expecting my confrontation with Doomsday to be something epic, something horrifying, but instead it turned into a pretty standard affair. Grab him with my enormous telescoping force arm, yank him over, slow him, then put up a shield while I beat the stuffing out of him. Seriously, I can only assume that Last Son of Krypton's death was largely a result of his desire for a vacation. Of course, soon thereafter I fell victim to the eternal nemesis of Green Lantern -- enormous red-hued turrets surrounded by support drones. But I did all right. MOBAs are not really my cup of tea, but superheroes are in a big way. I hadn't gotten a chance to play Infinite Crisis before now, but on the show floor at PAX East this year, I was given the chance to sit down and get a coaching session from one of the more experienced members of the team while I smashed heads. So I picked up Atomic Green Lantern and walked in fully expecting to fail left and right. To my pleasant surprise, the whole thing played out much better than I had expected, making excellent use of the license and providing a fun match all around.
The Daily Grind: Did you reconnect with any games thanks to PAX East?
Now that PAX East is winding down, it seems as good a time as any to take stock of the news coming from this year's convention. On a personal level, I was excited to hear about the (eventual) MMOification of one of my favorite games. I also enjoyed catching up with Guns of Icarus, an indie title already holding its own and with its eyes on a larger persistent world prize. What about you, Massively readers? Did you glean any useful nuggets from PAX East or perhaps rediscover a game you'd not thought about in a while? Massively's on the ground in Boston during the weekend of April 11th to 13th, bringing you all the best news from PAX East 2014. Whether you're dying to know more about WildStar, Landmark, or any MMO in between, we aim to have it covered!
PAX East 2014: State of Decay eyes multiplayer, stays offline
The ground is fairly littered with zombie games of some sort these days. That isn't meant as a mark against Undead Labs' State of Decay, but it does raise questions of focus. How do you make a zombie game more unique? According to the studio's Jeff Strain at this year's PAX East, you focus upon building at the community level rather than individual survival. While games like DayZ focus on the personal, State of Decay is much more focused on the idea of putting society as a whole back together and trying to accumulate resources and structures for survivors as a whole. Of course, most of our readers are more interested in what comes next, specifically Class4. That's the proposed sequel to State of Decay, previously codenamed Class3; it's meant to be a full MMO according to previous statements, a game in which you can worry about rebuilding not just a local community but the world as a whole. And Undead Labs certainly isn't hurting for talent that's familiar with online games, especially with the acquisition of ArenaNet co-founder Patrick Wyatt in January. So what's happening?
PAX East 2014: Guns of Icarus Online's expanding environment
PAX East taught me that I am apparently not the right person to pilot a ship in Guns of Icarus Online. In my defense, I was trying to do what my ship was designed to do. The co-op mode on display is all about delivering supplies to a final point on a map, and I was flying the fast scoutship. So I figured, why bother slowing down? Why not just jink left and right and avoid anything in my way? As it turns out, the reasons to not do that are quite simple: The boss encounter at the cargo dropoff requires two people, and you need to actually retain control of the point rather than just wing to it at full speed. So I may have sent my ship crashing to the ground in a tumble of burning wood and broken steel. (By "may have" I of course mean "I definitely did this.") This isn't a failing on the part of the game, just a failing on my part for trying to bull-rush through something. But it's still fun; the game gives players a variety of things to do while they're busy crewing the various stations across the ship. And it's just one place the developers are going with the game.
Titanfall free updates bringing 2v2 Last Titan Standing, Titan burn cards
Titanfall developer Respawn announced at their PAX East panel today that they'll be bringing new modes, among various other tweaks, to their heartwarming game about soldiers and the robots they so dearly love. One such mode will be a 2v2 variant of Last Titan Standing, where all players begin with their walking deathmachines. Considering how well that went for us, maybe we'll stay away. But then, we're masochists, so ... Respawn said that they'll also be introducing new ways to make the titular Titans more tantalizing: Titan-themed burn cards and Titan insignias are on the to-do list, as is a new matchmaking system that will let players use hashtags to filter through private games until they find one they like. Lastly, Respawn will also be introducing "rifts," which will introduce various tweaks to already-existing modes. All these micro-updates will be free, while Titanfall's first map pack DLC, Expedition, will cost $10. [Image: EA]
Titanfall's first DLC map pack, Expedition, due in May
Titanfall pilots that are a bit fatigued from stomping around the same set of maps, take note - the game's first round of DLC maps is due in May under the title of "Expedition." Polygon reports that the three-pack of maps will include "Swampland," a stretch of alien ruins that offers trees for wallrunning, "Runoff," a map that incorporates water, and "War Games," a map that's hosted within the game's training simulator. "Expedition" is the first of three $10 map packs that are included in Titanfall's season pass, which was announced in March alongside its $25 price tag. The pass provides a $5 discount from what the combined price of the three map packs would be if bought separately. [Image: Respawn Entertainment]
