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PAX South 2015: Jennifer Hale will host Guild Wars 2 panel, herald 75% off sale
So you already knew about Guild Wars 2's big event at PAX South this Saturday, the Point of No Return panel, which has players crossing their fingers for an expansion announcement. If you can't go in person, you can watch the whole shebang on Twitch for the low, low price of nothing. And that deal just got even sweeter, as ArenaNet has just declared this morning that gaming icon and voice actress Jennifer Hale, known to GW2 fans as the voice of Queen Jennah and to everyone else as the voice of approximately eight million other characters, will be hosting the livestream. Meanwhile, the studio has vowed to slash the price of the buy-to-play MMO to $9.99 on Saturday and Sunday in honor of the hoopla, marking the biggest sale for the game it's held to date. Characters in-game will be showered with sales on boosters and a free double-experience bonus that lasts all weekend. Massively GW2 expert Anatoli Ingram speculated about the possible expansion and analyzed the final season 2 episode in his most recent columns.
Neverwinter offers doubled experience until May 5th
Are you ready for the imminent release of Neverwinter's next major patch? Oh, you're not. You aren't nearly ready. This is going to be a problem, isn't it? Quick, maybe you can catch up this weekend before it comes out. Helping you in that catch-up goal is the fact that the game is offering doubled experience from now until May 5th, 1:00 p.m. EDT. So what's doubled? Oh, just experience from killing creatures, clearing quests, professions, invocations, Foundry missions... you know, pretty much everything you could possibly be doing in the game. And even if you've already hit the level cap, Companions will still gain the increased experience, although those Companions will not get the upgrade from Sword Coast Adventures. So if you're looking to race up to the level cap before the next patch hits, you've got a weekend full of play ahead of you.
Final Fantasy XI celebrates 11 years 11 ways
Final Fantasy XI is 11 years old this year (11 years and six months at this point, but that's nitpicking). So it seems appropriate that the title is kicking off a big anniversary event on November 11th. Except that it's really kicking off not one big anniversary event but 11 smaller ones. You see the theme at work. Whether you've been around for all 11 years or just 11 days, there's plenty of rewards available for everyone. Seal drop rates are improved for all characters in a party during the anniversary timeframe, as are are double synthesis skill increase rates and several seal-based battlefield rewards. Players will also earn double experience, doubled Salvage drops, doubled Monstrosity experience, doubled Shining Stars in Mog Gardens... the list goes on. Almost anything you choose to do between now and November 25th will see a significant boost, so take a look at the full list of bonuses and get ready to enjoy 11 bonuses for the next 14 days. (They can't all line up perfectly.)
Double your pleasure and double your experience in Star Wars: The Old Republic
Are you ready to start leveling in Star Wars: The Old Republic? More to the point, would you like to level a whole lot faster? That's good, because you're going to have the chance to do just that starting this weekend. Double experience weekends are back for the next three weekends, including an extra-long version during the fourth of July, so that all of your characters can enjoy the freedom to scream up in levels and possibly skip some of the more tedious planets. The first weekend starts on June 21st at 2:00 p.m. EDT and runs until 3:00 a.m. EDT on June 24th, while the second weekend runs at the same hours from June 28th to July 1st. The third and final weekend starts at 7:00 a.m. EDT on July 4th and runs all the way until July 8th at 3:00 a.m. EDT, which should give you ample time over the holiday to buff up your levels.
The Daily Grind: Do you like experience boost events?
If you've got one last alt in Star Wars: The Old Republic that you want at 50 before the expansion goes live, this weekend is the time to make it happen. You've got doubled experience gains, after all. For someone like me who has reached the level cap multiple times over, the fact that I could suddenly jump in and scream up in levels has been a very pleasant departure from the norm over the last few weekends. However, that came with a downside. Sure, during the weekends I could blast through leveling, but during the rest of the week I found I didn't want to touch any characters that were still leveling. Why push hard when I could just wait and get another experience rush? A lot of games like to turn on increased experience gains at various points, usually during weekends. Do you like these experience boost events? Or do you feel they cheapen the leveling experience as a whole? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Labor Day weekend brings bonus XP weekends to all
Labor Day weekend is upon us, and EverQuest II, Champions Online, Warhammer Online, and Vanguard are all getting in on the festivities. In addition to celebrating Labor Day, Champions will be celebrating its two year anniversary by giving players gift boxes, party favors, and new costume pieces. Meanwhile, Warhammer Online is keeping it simple with a 50% XP and RP bonus for all players. Vanguard players get bonus experience as well, whether it's of the crafting, adventuring, or diplomacy variety. EverQuest II is also providing bonus experience -- double experience, to be exact -- for AA, tradeskill, and adventuring experience. If you're a regular of any one of these games, or if you just want to pop in to see what the fuss is about, it sounds like this weekend is the right time to do it. See something we missed on our list of Labor Day weekend events? Tell us in the comments! [Update: Commenter Furdinand reminded us that Star Wars: The Old Republic's beta test weekends began today, and commenter Dartanis points out that RIFT's half-birthday celebration continues throughout the weekend, providing players with a wealth of bonuses.]
Double XP coming to EverQuest II this weekend
Citizens of Norrath, mark your calendars! Bonus experience is coming to EverQuest II this weekend and you'll want to be sure to avail yourself of what the EQII website calls a "true double XP promotion (+100% XP)." The bonus applies to adventure, tradeskill, and alternate advancement experience, so don't leave your crafter alts or level-locked and AA-starved characters out in the cold. Double XP starts at 12:01 a.m. PDT on Friday, July 29th and runs through 11:59 p.m. PDT on Sunday, July 31st. It's also good across all the game servers including the free-to-play EQII Extended shard and French, German, and Japanese realms.
Double experience weekend postponed for City of Heroes
Were you looking forward to heading out for a spin this weekend in City of Heroes and enjoying the promised double experience weekend? If so, well, we have some bad news for you. As it turns out, rather than giving players a chance to double their pleasure, this weekend will see experience rewarded at the usual rate after all. A bug has apparently cropped up in testing that has resulted in the weekend being postponed until the middle of August. It's not all doom and gloom, of course -- to test the new build and ameliorate the bad news, the development team will be hosting a series of task force runs on the test server this Wednesday. Still, it's a shame to see one of the most popular recurring events in the game delayed due to technical issues. Here's hoping that the next set of dates go off without a hitch.
Aika Online opens its doors to Europe
European players rejoice! Aika Online is officially throwing open its doors to the old world with today's "Europe, We're Up" celebratory kickoff. The week-long festivities include double experience and a contest that gives players the opportunity to snag $10,000 in prizes. Logging into Aika also makes you eligible to receive powerful premium items like 3x and 4x experience scrolls. Today's update also sees a new dungeon introduced to the game. The Prison Despero will test the mettle of Aika's elite players and offers a chance to earn a new level 70 armor set. Aika is a fantasy MMORPG from the creators of Neo Steam. The game features five warring nations vying for control over the world of Arcan and its massive castles, priceless relics, and various battlegrounds.
City of Heroes offers up double experience all weekend
Been looking for a good time to level that dusty, neglected alt up on the hero or villain side in City of Heroes? Well, just in case you'd forgotten in the recent flurry of anniversary and update announcements from Paragon Studios, a huge double experience weekend is about to start in City of Heroes. For four glorious days, your characters will be positively awash in experience, just for doing what you were going to do anyway. Well, OK, except for the costume contests, dance parties, general standing-around-roleplaying, time noodling around with costumes, or playing the market. We're afraid there's still no experience for any of those as yet. With that said, if you've already got an active City of Heroes account, all you'll need to do to take advantage of the sweet, sweet double experience is to sign in sometime over this upcoming weekend and either run missions or smack down bad (or good) guys. The event starts tomorrow, Thursday, January 27th, at 9:00 a.m. PST and runs until 11:59 p.m. PST, Sunday, January 30th when things return to normal -- or at least as normal as they ever get in Paragon City, Praetoria, or the Rogue Isles, anyway. If you don't have an active City of Heroes account, now is a great time to start it back up and get some extra experience before Spring Fling and the 7th Anniversary celebrations get underway!
Fantasy Earth Zero hosting double experience week
If you're a fan of Fantasy Earth Zero, then odds are good that you've also become a fan of the game on Facebook. (You can't escape from that site any more, really.) But if you do enjoy the game's hybrid of real-time strategy elements and fantasy battles without having become a fan of the game on social networking... you owe the Facebook fans a big "thank you." As a celebration for having reached 5,000 fans, the game is running a week of doubled experience. Running from August 10th to the 17th, the effects are obvious -- every character will receive doubled experience, presumably from every source. While the game doesn't require high levels to be competitive in PvP, it does offer up more options. In addition, players who logged on between July 1st and August 9th will receive a few special in-game items as an additional thanks for playing. Another celebration is planned for 6,000 fans, so Fantasy Earth Zero players are encouraged to become a fan if you're not already.
Celebrate the summer in Perfect World International
Grab your beach towels, slather on the sunscreen, and slip on a pair of shades, for the summer is upon us! Just because we love MMOs doesn't mean we can neglect healthy seasonal traditions. Perfect World International is excited about the summer as well, and is ushering in an ocean's worth of new content for players to dive into a month early. If a makeover is your thing this season, then you'll be thrilled to know that you can finally switch between the Demon and Sage paths with a new conversion feature. Maybe you want to see what it's like to be a good girl or a bad boy, for once. The neglected Tideborn players won't be left out of the beach party, either -- they can now acquire Demon and Sage skills, as well as a few other new skills for the Assassin and Psychic classes. Grab a few pals for a quick game of "Kill the Nien Beast," as the grumpy Gus returns for another swipe at Archosaur. This Public Quest was so popular during the spring that it just had to come back for round two. Finally, for the remainder of the month of May, catch a wave at the Double XP Event -- hang ten with double XP, double Spirit and double items!
Aion's 1.9 patch to right XP wrongs
Everybody loves double-experience weekends, right? For a while now, they've been shoring up the XP gap in Aion, helping to push players over the hump of the long grind. While there's an upcoming double-experience weekend starting this Friday, the Aion team has informed the community that these golden days of glory may be short-lived, with these special weekends becoming a rarer occurence in the future. This seemingly-depressing announcement is actually because Aion is switching from "shoring up" to "fixing" XP issues. On June 2nd, patch 1.9 will hit Aion's servers, and with it a host of solutions to the XP gap. The Aion community team has laid out three ways the XP will flow like rivers of honey. Wait, that would be slow and sticky. Let's go with Jell-O. In any case, 1.9 will add more quests, increased XP for quests and a new "Energy of Salvation" system that awards experience bonuses the longer you play. So while double-experience weekends might become a scarce event in Aion, it's hopefully for the best overall. Read the letter and let us know what you think!
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Tripping the XP fantastic
City of Heroes has the best pseudo-seasonal event anywhere: the double XP weekend. Forget holidays that you're usually sick to death of in which you can get some arbitrary gimmick powers, it's cold hard character boosting that really gets everyone excited. And if those of us that play the game weren't swimming with enough alts, we also had our chance to scream up with dual pistols. In summary, it was poised to be the best Christmas ever, except for the minor detail of not being Christmas. Going into the weekend on Friday. I had three major priorities. I wanted to level one of my two "mains" which had been suffering from some neglect, I wanted to bring a villain to 20 or as close as I could manage, and I wanted someone with paired handguns. A tall order, even for a doubled-up weekend, but I live for challenges. Or I'm a glutton for punishment, one or the other. Read on past the break for the path of events and some observations about the leveling game, and perhaps even a bit of enlightenment.
The Daily Grind: Taking part in the doubled experience for City of Heroes?
If you've ever played City of Heroes before, you most likely got the e-mail enticing you to take part in the game's ongoing doubled experience weekend, during which all inactive accounts get a brief chance to return to active duty. And with the game's second expansion on the way, there are plenty of people taking just that opportunity to spring back into the game. Veteran players, by the same token, have something to be enthusiastic about -- with the preorders for said expansion being open, they can get their hands on the highly-anticipated Dual Pistols powerset and speed past the low-level areas in record time. The short version is that if you still have an interest in City of Heroes, now is a prime time to be giving it some of your gaming hours. So what about you? Are you a lapsed subscriber lured back in by the promise of a trial to see what's changed and improved? Or are you a longtime player interested in seeing the new powers in action? And as a special bonus question, are there other games you would like to see run a similar double-rate and reactivation weekend?
Bounty Bay Online celebrates three years of operation
It's been three years since Bounty Bay Online has set sail for the high seas, yet it doesn't feel like it, does it? Sure, Frogster Interactive's pirate MMO may not bring home the chests of gold like its big sister, Runes of Magic. But the game is still gliding along with a decently sized community who are more than willing to spend their rum money on it. So there's no better way to celebrate 3 years of operation than by running some promotions for the community! The promotions certainly aren't bad, as they already involve double experience going from today until the 24th, and double cash shop points (buy any amount of points, get that same amount of points again for free) until the 25th. The celebration will be continuing until March 31st, so be sure to log on and reap some of the rewards. Nothing like discounts and faster leveling to say thanks to the community!
Aion's community address for January
Approaching the end of the month means it's time for another Aion community address. It's reliable enough to set your watch by, assuming your watch runs in one-month increments of time. This address promises an increased number of double experience weekends, with one currently running to help players accelerate their leveling. It also promises that character re-customization and gender changing services are on the horizon for players who would like said services, and briefly discusses the need for ongoing improvement in the website. There's a scarcity of hard facts, however, beyond a promise that some of these features should be available in early February. If you were guessing that the community seems a bit... unhappy about this, you'd be guessing right. The comments for this particular entry already stretch into the triple digits, with several players calling for server merges and additional content. It also has no mention about the recent security issues that NCsoft has been contending with, a somewhat sore point for several players. Coupled with the January Eye On Community, the natives seem to be getting a tad restless, especially with no news on the many features previewed in the Visions trailer. We're sure that Aion's team is hard at work, but the fan community seems a bit less docile than before.
Double experience in EverQuest this weekend
There's a new Tip of the Week being shared with the EverQuest community on the official forums -- kill stuff this weekend. Okay, so most players would have been killing stuff anyway, but the reason for the tip comes from the fact that there's more experience on offer than usual:EverQuest adventurers will be surrounded by a magical DOUBLE experience increase. And double XP means 100% extra XP, or 200% XP... Whichever way you want to look at it, that's a lot of XP! Happy adventuring!The experience rate will be doubled from 10:00AM PDT on Friday the 22nd, all the way through til 10:00AM PDT on Tuesday the 26th. This is actually a full four days worth of 2x experience gain, so if an extended EverQuest weekend was on the cards for you sometime in the near future, this might be the time to put that plan into play.
Twice the experience for Paragon's heroes this weekend
We know how busy things can get after the start of the year. Kids head, grumbling, back to school; college is open for another grueling term; work may just seem like a string of meetings about the next year - to the point where you think if you hear the word "budget" one more time, you're going to go medieval on someone. Those guys from Office Space? That fax machine? Yeah, they won't have anything on you when you finally toss the Power Point projector through the window.The good news is that if you're looking to escape all those worldly frustrations this weekend, City of Heroes has just the treat for you. All the Heroes and Villains of Paragon, recently having taken on Day Jobs of their own, are getting a break in the form of a weekend stuffed full of double experience! So if you've got an alt that you've been considering running up, or just want a break from hanging out in Pocket D or Atlas Park, grab some friends and go get your mission on for tons of sweet, sweet double experience. And hey - you can always imagine some big nasty boss is really that Power Point projector you've come to loathe so much.
