dungeon-running
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Blade & Soul beta videos show more Assassin footage, dungeon combat
Blade & Soul's closed beta phases are a tough ticket for American game journalists, but luckily many of the Korean testers have been capturing their experiences and uploading the videos to YouTube. MMO Culture has collected a few of these choice morsels, and there is a range of gameplay on display including more Assassin class combos and abilities (this time in a game context instead of a promotional clip) as well as quite a bit of dungeon-crawling footage. The videos, which you can view after the cut, show a mixture of solo and group play in a couple of different environments. While most of the clips are around 10 minutes in length (or under), there's quite a lot to take in if you're unfamiliar with the martial arts MMO. Blade & Soul is being developed by NCsoft and is currently undergoing its second Korean closed beta test. The company has yet to announce plans to market the title in Europe or America.
15 Minutes of Fame: PvE twinks turn lowbie instances devilishly difficult
From Hollywood celebrities to the guy next door, millions of people have made World of Warcraft a part of their lives. How do you play WoW? We're giving each approach its own 15 Minutes of Fame. PvP twinking is a fairly well-known, widespread phenomenon in World of Warcraft. The idea is that players stop leveling at the very top of a particular PvP level range bracket, dig in with all the mix-maxed gear and enchants they can muster, and proceed to mop up the battleground kills. Anyone who's run a few battlegrounds on the way up through the levels has encountered that shockingly strong player who tears him a new one. We've even profiled a prolific, multi-level twinker (twinkie?) right here on 15 Minutes of Fame. What you might not be as familiar with -- we weren't! -- is the idea of PvE twinking. Allow us to introduce a hardy band of adventurers on Blackwater Raiders (US-H) that's running each and every instance at the bare minimum level that players are eligible to enter. Ragefire Chasm at level 8? You got it. Deadmines at level 10? Aggro Magnet Central -- but yeah, you got that, too. "It's surprisingly fun playing these classic instances that we've all done hundreds of times at such a low level compared to the mobs," gushes party leader Gilgalad. "It can take hours to clear an instance that typically takes 20 to 30 minutes for an appropriately leveled party. Some of the boss mechanics that are typically a trifle to a normal party become incredibly difficult to deal with when you are 10 levels below the boss. Arugal in Shadowfang Keep was particularly tough and required quite a few attempts before we came up with a strategy that worked."
Breakfast Topic: Silly, unconventional, and amazing dungeon runs
One of my favorite memories of WoW came from a year and a half or so back, when Alex and I were both leveling a pair of DPS Warriors as alts, mine a Gnome female, his a Night Elf male whom he RPed as being absolutely insane and having an unhealthy love of cheese. We had a friend who was leveling a Druid, another who was leveling a Shadow Priest and a third who was leveling a Warlock. So, it seemed on a lot of nights, all 5 of us would get together and take on whatever dungeon was in our level range. We conquered most of the mid-level dungeons once or twice this way, with no tank -- Alex would just charge ahead screaming and pull a bunch of mobs -- and somehow (we were never sure how) we generally killed them while staying alive. Often, neither of us Warriors made a special effort to tank, we just somehow DPSed them to death before they killed us.
