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Shroud of the Avatar taps Dragonlance author as lead story designer
Fantasy author Tracy Hickman will be the lead story designer on Richard Garriott's latest venture, Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues. Hickman is a New York Times best-selling author, perhaps best known for his Dragonlance and Death Gate series of novels.In the above video, Hickman argues that the graphics, sound and physics engines of computer games have "made quantum leaps forward," it's the gameplay that's lacking any real progression. "In fact, gameplay hasn't changed that much for 30 years," Hickman added. Shroud of the Avatar is currently sitting in the low $900,000 area. With over three weeks left to go before the Kickstarter campaign comes to a close, the goal of $1 million seems well within reach.
Arcane Brilliance: Why I still love my mage
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we take a short break from talking about pandas and mists and the delightful Asian-flavored turtle-nation where the pandas and the mists combine to form a giant kung fu turtle panda Voltron super expansion of glory. But don't worry, the break will indeed be short. Because pandas. Let's all join hands, cast Alter Time together, and journey back to the halcyon days of early 2008. George Walker Bush was nearing the end of his time as the leader of the free world, a visibly checked-out Britney Spears was auto-tuning her way to the top of the charts while simultaneously losing custody of her children to this guy, we were all playing the first games in the Rock Band and Mass Effect series, and the Hollywood screenwriters strike was nearing its end. Which, thank god, because the world needed Ron Swanson. And in February of that year, I started writing for this wonderful website, beginning with a column titled Why we Mage. In that column, I endeavored to crystallize my deep and abiding affection for the mage class in World of Warcraft. A dash of my deep and abiding loathing for the warlock class may have seeped in there, too, as warlock loathing tends to do. A great deal of time has gone by since then. Over four years, to be precise. I just finished Mass Effect and I still play Rock Band, mostly for the Iron Maiden songs. It's 2012. We've killed Arthas and Deathwing, Ron Swanson just got renewed for a fifth season, and somebody's remaking Herzog Zwei. And oh yeah, I still love mages.
Dragonlance: A property ripe for the pillaging
I'm surprised this hasn't happened yet. In the Dragonlance series of novels, published by Wizards of the Coast (having bought it from TSR), the world of Ansalon is full to bursting with the standard Fantasy tropes: wizards, warriors, monsters, etc. In fact, the first series of books, beginning with Dragons of Autumn Twilight, could easily make a fine quest storyline, if you make allowances for picking up new characters along the way.There's a decent selection of races to play (humans, elves, half-elves, dwarves, kender) and classes (barbarian, cleric, thief, fighter, mage), but I imagine the draw of such an MMO would be in getting to meet and even play alongside famous characters from the novels themselves, like Raistlin Majere, Tanis Half-Elven, and Tasslehoff Burrfoot. Now, I'm not saying we here at Massively have any inside knowledge of a Dragonlance MMO coming out in the future, but the series is so popular, a developer could certainly do worse than to work on this ... I'm just sayin'.
D3 announces Wii exclusive Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire
D3 Publisher has got hearts in their eyes for the Wii and plan on bringing an exclusive title Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire to the console. A third person action adventure based on an original story by DragonLance author Richard A. Knaak, the title will feature an "intuitively designed, two-handed Wii control scheme and use both arms simultaneously to emulate the dragon's arms, wings, tail, fire and more," allowing players to "battle colossal enemies and embark on quests to upgrade their weapons and make them even more powerful over time." The game is currently under development at Japanese development studio Land Ho.With the possibility of Project H.A.M.M.E.R. being canceled, looks like this is the only hack-and-slash game coming to the console in the immediate future. Still, having never read DragonLance, we find ourselves sitting on a very tall fence on this one.
