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Flameseeker Chronicles: Glitching in Guild Wars 2
Last week was crazily newsy in the world of Guild Wars 2. One might even call it newsilicious. Between a look at the next handful of months, an announcement about guesting and paid world transfers, and a developer livestream about rewards, WvW, and other stuff, last week was just ridiculously full of information. We'll be seeing the first bits of all that prophecy come into being on the 28th, when January's patch officially hits, bringing with it, among other things, guesting. The guesting announcement was fairly ill-received, due almost entirely to the news that it wouldn't work between North American and European servers. Up 'til now, you could always talk to folks from the other data center, but you couldn't actually play with them without transferring. Now you still can't play with them without transferring (and you can still talk to them), and people were really hoping we'd be able to do the whole guesting across regions thing. I'm hopeful that it will come in at some point, but I still can't see guesting as a net loss in any way. There's a lot of digesting to do with all that news, though, so let's start things off by not talking about any of it.
SOE Live 2012: EverQuest II interviews highlight focus on crafting, player stories
It is undeniable: Between panels, keynote addresses, and interviews, SOE Live offered fans a smorgasbord of information this year. Even as we reported on some information, more came our way. Such is the case with EverQuest II and its upcoming Chains of Eternity expansion; no sooner had I shared the new tradeskill AA and prestige lines than I was able to sit down developers to gain more insights into the new features. And of course, another panel came along offering even more tidbits about the expansion and beyond! Did previous announcements leave you wondering whether crafters will be required to grind their own AA tree up from 0? How many crafted items can actually be mass produced at one time? And what's in store for the Dungeon Maker and SOEmote? These questions and more were answered as I sat down with Brain Ferguson (PvP and tradeskill game designer), Holly Longdale, (Producer), and Dave Georgeson (Director of the EQ franchise).
Rise and Shiny recap: City of Eternals
City of Eternals is somewhat of an enigma to me. I've heard of it off and on through the last few years. I've seen it before, and it doesn't seem as though it has changed much, if at all. I am familiar with it just because I have been covering games for a long time, yet I've never really checked it out. Sure, I poked my head into it through Facebook once or twice, but to be honest, I didn't really like what I saw. I am all about independent, different-looking, or not-so-pretty games... heck, if I weren't, I'd have nothing to play but bloated "AAA" grindfests. But there's just something about the skinny-jean, pleather-wearing vampire scene that I cannot stand. My wife is into True Blood, the campy, vamp-heavy, naked-people festival that shows on the HBO network, but at least the show has fun with it and builds up interesting characters. City of Eternals seems to be stuck in that cheesier area of vampire fandom, though. Still, I played it over the last week and started to enjoy it a bit, for a few different reasons. Click past the cut and I'll tell you about it.
Facebook MMOgraphy: First impression of vampire MMO City of Eternals
Every two weeks, Facebook MMOgraphy brings you the latest news, guides and analysis about MMOs on Facebook and Facebook apps associated with MMOs. Twilight jokes aside, vampire MMOs are among us. Free-to-play Dark Eden and Reign of Blood are already out. IGG's Moonlight Online is due later this year and Spacetime Studios, developer of 3D action MMORPG iPhone app Pocket Legends, has Empire of Night in the works. And earlier this year, ohai Studios debuted their free-to-play vampire MMO, City of Eternals, both on their own site and on Facebook. City of Eternals is the only MMORPG on Facebook that is really like an MMORPG. Quests, factions, crafting, equipment that needs regular upgrading and other recognizable features are there. But more than that is the fact that the game places you in the same virtual space with other players. This isn't a trading card game with a chat interface or a single player RPG that allows you to use your Facebook friends to accomplish tasks in-game whether or not they are online. In CoE you actually run past other players. For that, the game gets points. Unfortunately, many of the game systems are confusing and the quest flow is a mess. Read on for more first impressions!
Interview profiles Age of Conan's Priest of Mitra class
Imagine if Snow White's wicked queen gazed into her magic mirror and asked, "Who's the most badass priest class of them all?" Judging from the info Funcom provided in a recent interview with Ten Ton Hammer, the answer would be "Age of Conan's Priest of Mitra."Healers in AoC don't select a target and heal just that target, nor do they automatically heal everyone in their group. Rather, they heal all friendly targets standing in a 120 degree cone of effect in front of them. We'll call those spells "CoE heals." The Priest of Mitra will get bonuses to his or her damage output based on how many friendlies he or she has healed recently. He or she will have an ability called "Reciprocal Healing" that will allow him or her to AoE heal friendlies when affected by a CoE heal from another healer -- making groups with multiple priest-types particularly potent.Perhaps most impressively, the Priest of Mitra will have access to a wide and dynamic range of crowd control spells by level 80 -- including "stun, fear, knockback, snare, and blind abilities." All that and more in the interview. Check it out.
Warlock changes in 1.9
It has been a little over a week and I have been grinding my warlock towards getting my mount... Since I am purely spec’d for affliction right now, I haven't seen much downside (personally) from the recent patch. I have seen a lot of whining about the CoS/CoE nerf on the forums. Most of the whining is geared towards the fact that CoS is only useful in groups/raids now because the damage buff is easily overrun by CoA when running solo. Any warlocks with real numbers done a comparison? The other item I wanted to discuss was the addition of the soul shard bag - I have mixed feelings about them. I am running with 19-20 shards on me, average now. Even thought I have more shards, I find I still use them up at the same old rate when running solo (I don't have shadowburn, yet). I have seen a lot of flak about the cost of the bags and the fact that they should have been a quest reward, at least for the low end bag. Ecksvee has started an effort on Uldum to take donated components and money to make free bags for everyone - a brilliant idea! What are your thoughts on the shard bags? Was 1.9 a buff or nerf for warlocks, or do you not care? :)
