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RIFT's 3.1 Storm at Sea arrives next week -- with capes
There's a preview of RIFT's new Tyrant's Throne content on the game's official website. On January 28th, Trion says, players will see some "titanic zone events" as well as a new 20-player raid, a 2-player chronicle, and more. The journey into RIFT 3.1 Storm at Sea is nearly at hand. On January 28, players will make landfall at the harbor of Tyrant's Throne – just in time for titanic zone events that bring ancient akvan lumbering out of the abyss! Ascended will have one week to wipe them from the island before the opening of Tyrant's Forge, a new 20-player raid pitting the strongest Guardians and Defiant against the Dragon Queen of Air. The most important bit, of course, is capes. Yes, capes. "New capes debut for all," says the studio.
Red 5 tweaking Firefall's reputation system
Firefall's latest news blurb concerns reputation. It's not all about grind and 20 different currencies that will clog up your inventory, though. In fact, Red 5 says that the work-in-progress rep system will ultimately feature reputation points that function like experience. Which, OK, is still about grind. But yay for inventory space! The devs are also enthused about the future of the rep system, which they say will make use of Firefall's NPC corporations that "aren't much more than flavor" in the current build. You can read all about rep at the official Firefall website.
Echo of Soul unveils new NA website
Echo of Soul is quickly becoming known around these parts as a title that is talking big talk prior to its North American debut, and now the Korean fantasy game has a new website to match these boasts. The US version of the website has now gone live, with information, art, community hub, and the vitally important beta sign-up button. It also has a short section on the game's mobile app that will feature access to chat and trading. Echo of Soul's North American beta test is planned for sometime this spring. [Source: Aeria Games press release]
Take a tour of DCUO's Amazon Fury raid with the devs
Coming soon to DC Universe Online is the Amazon Fury Part II DLC, because Amazons are not known to be timid, quiet souls. All about the fury, they are. Anyway, part of this upcoming patch is the new Halls of Hades raid, and the devs are inviting you to go along with them on a tour of this intimidating experience. We've got a 43-minute video of the Halls of Hades with devs and test center players after the break if you want to get a good feel for what's going to be faceplanting your heroes in the near future.
Pre-orders for Marvel Heroes' Winter Soldier are now open
After years of being mostly notable for being supposedly dead, Bucky Barnes turns out to have actually been kept alive as an elite assassin known as the Winter Soldier. You know, as comics do. The important things to note about the character for our purposes are the fact that he's coming to Marvel Heroes and you can pre-order him right now. You can also hear David Hayter voicing him as a closely related cousin of Solid Snake in the video past the cut, but that probably shouldn't influence your purchase. The hero pack is at a 10% discount before the character is released and includes the character himself, two costumes for Bucky (comic and MCU incarnations), an extra hero-specific inventory, six Fortune cards, and a retcon token. With the discount, it's just a hair over $16; if that sounds like a bargain for playing a mildly psychotic unfrozen Hydra assassin, you can pick it up now.
SWTOR Q&A mentions 12x, soloable flashpoints
Werit has posted a Q&A with Star Wars: The Old Republic's community team. It touches on the well-received 12x experience boost, which BioWare says it will be discussing "later this year." There's also a bit about making older flashpoints soloable and while BioWare says it doesn't want to make all group content accessible to single players, it does have "some major story moments that [it] would like every player to see."
APB: Reloaded coming to PS4 and Xbox One in Q2 2015
Last fall we heard that APB: Reloaded was reportedly working on bringing the crime spree MMO to consoles but was struggling with the companies to make that happen. Fortunately, it seems as though all of the details have been paved out, as APB is gearing up for its console debut in the latter part of the second quarter of this year. APB: Reloaded will be coming to both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as a free-to-play title, although it will require Xbox owners to be part of the Xbox Live Gold service. The console adaptation is being handled by a joint effort between Reloaded Games, Deep Silver, and The Workshop. The Workshop CEO Peter Akemann says that the title will shine on the new hardware: "Because APB is such a technically complex game, featuring thousands of destructible objects and heavily customized players and vehicles in every scene, we are thrilled to help make APB a reality on these brand new high performance hardware platforms." To date, APB has had five million PC downloads since 2011. [Source: Reloaded Games press release]
RuneScape opens RuneLabs for player suggestions
If you have a terrific idea that you'd like to get implemented into an MMO, then RuneScape's your best bet these days. The ever-creative MMO recently launched RuneLabs as a formal structured suggestion process that will take the best player ideas and make them an in-game feature. RuneLabs works like this: Players will make a pitch to that month's studio-assigned criteria. If it gets enough community support, it will be reviewed by Jagex and (barring a studio veto) voted on by fellow players. The winner of the poll will go from concept to reality. You can watch an amusing video explaining RuneLabs after the break!
Skyforge unveils the Gunner
The Beatles once opined that happiness is a warm gun. Skyforge's Gunner class has a warm gun that also transforms into different modes and allows the class to call down orbital strikes, so one can only conclude that it is a very happy class indeed. Its opponents are somewhat less so. You can see the class in action in the video just past the break, or you can read through the reveal page to get a better idea of how this multi-mode class will play. The cannon has three main modes as well as a variety of sub-firing options, allowing gunners to mow down targets at long range with missile barrages or take out hardened targets with bursts of plasma. Since it's meant to stay at range, the class also sports a variety of defensive tricks like teleporting back and forth. It's exactly the sort of class for you if you like having a big gun, even more so if you want that big gun to shoot all sorts of different stuff.
DDO trumpets the start of its Winter Games
Just because we're in the heart of winter in the northern hemisphere doesn't mean that we can't enjoy snow-themed festivities! That's the attitude of Dungeons and Dragons Online, which has started a slew of activities under its Winter Games umbrella. For starters, there's the Midwinter Festival in the Forgotten Realms which includes speed skating, snowflake collecting, and vole smashing. Meanwhile in Eberron, the ever-popular Risia Ice Games are back with more ice sliding action. Then there's an ice skating rink in the harbor, an ice jump off a cliff, and a frozen half-pipe in the Bogwater Tavern. Participation in all of these activities will not only result in embarassing fun, but rewards from the various tokens won.
Forsaken World's Freedom Falls expansion coming February 4
Forsaken World's upcoming expansion is called Freedom Falls. When, exactly, is it upcoming? That would be February 4th, according to a Perfect World press release. Said release also tells us that Freedom Falls features a new playable race and class as well as a new high-level progression path called Apotheosis which allows players to "join the ranks of the gods of Forsaken World." New zones include the Land of Origination and the Polar Borderlands region. [Source: Perfect World press release]
Firefall is prepping an all-new crafting system
Good news for those disillusioned with the state of crafting in Firefall: Red 5 is preparing an "all-new crafting system" to replace the current setup. New crafting dev Gortok spoke a little to this on the forums over the past month, saying that as a person who's designed four such systems for MMOs, he finds Firefall's crafting both pointless and grindy. Fortunately, Gortok has ideas to make it all much, much better: "It will take some time, and my plan is to actually rip out the existing recipes and research, replace the entire thing from scratch, and implement an entirely new system for the actual act of crafting. There are a lot of great things that we lost, and I want to bring some of those feelings back without the complication and confusion" Some of the changes include restructuring research, consolidating recipes, crafting in batches, and making thumping "more desirable" again. [Thanks to Eri for the tip!]
EverQuest patch improves the look of old NPCs
Happy EverQuest Patch Day, Norrathians! The team has put out the usual hodge-podge of fixes, tweaks, and updates to make your play experience all that much better. Go tell yourself back in 1999 how you will be living the high life now that this patch is out in 2015. Today's patch makes it easier to land hits with The Darkened Sea melee abilities, increases health of high-level mercs, improves older NPC character models, and improves water-related sound effects. You can read the full patch notes to see if any of these changes will impact your adventures.
Choose My Adventure: A bit of TERA sightseeing
There's no question that TERA is one of the most beautiful MMOs on the market. Its open world features gorgeous terrain, cool set pieces, and lots of variation for the screenshot-obsessed. So when Choose My Adventure's voters elected to send me exploring last week, I was more than happy to oblige. I wouldn't accomplish much Fate of Arun stuff, but at least I'd get to see some sights! I also, somehow, learned a bit more about the Warrior class and how to effectively deploy it in combat. It's been a long, hard crawl, but I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of my combo abilities and my evasion techniques. I'm definitely dying less and even occasionally having moments when I feel totally in control of the actions my character is taking and the reasoning behind them. I almost feel... good. Until the next BAM smacks me down, of course.
Wings Over Atreia: Aion entices returning players, removes reviled manastone mechanic
If you haven't checked back into Aion in a while, now might be the time to start plotting your return. Next week on January 28th NCsoft is introducing a special new experience for those who have been away from the game for more than 30 days; it includes special zones called Abbeys that provide exclusive bonuses as well as quests and gear upgrades. Even better, if one of the reasons you left was the frustration involved in losing all your equipment's manastones when you failed to socket a final stone, you'll be even happier to learn that that particular mechanic is being removed from the game! That's right: Aion players will no longer risk losing already successfully socketed manastones when trying to put another one in (a much needed change that I championed years ago!). We've got the scoop on these new changes from Associate Product Manager Sean Orlikowski -- along with news of an upcoming Shugo event instance and the breakthrough system that raises enchantment levels -- in this special return of Wings Over Atreia.
World of Warships gets carriers, weekend beta event
Wargaming has officially introduced the aircraft carrier to World of Warships. The class launch brings the total number of playable warship types to four including the destroyer, the cruiser, and the battleship. "Aircraft carriers offer a unique angle to combat, delivering RTS-style gameplay and the ability to launch three types of warplane squadrons (fighters, dive bombers, and torpedo bombers) against any opponent," the company says. In other WoWS news, Wargaming is planning a three-day testing event called Wings Over Water. It starts on January 23rd and runs through the 25th. Click here to sign up, and don't forget to watch the trailer after the cut!
Global Chat: Guild Wars 2's economy is broken
Guild Wars 2's economy remains a hot-button issue even two-and-a-half years after its release. In this week's exploration of the blogosphere, one writer pulls out all the stops to let you know what's broken about this MMO's economy -- and how it can be fixed. In addition to this thoughtful read, Global Chat will hear some snark on silly hotbar icons, pontificate about poor MMO names, deliver The Repopulation first impressions, and invite you to participate in a grand MUD experiment. Let's get going!
Trove unveils a trailer for the Ice Sage class
We understand what you're worried about, dear readers, so allow us to reassure you. In the trailer past the cut, there are no references to an animated film from the Disney corporation about cold. There are also only two ice puns, and they're "puns" only by the most generous definition of the term. More like ice-related references for Trove's Ice Sage. Of course, part of the reason for this is probably the fact that the trailer lasts a grand total of thirty seconds, so there wasn't all that much time for ice-based humor. But if you want to see the class in action, you can do so, and isn't that what you're really after? Glad to hear it. Jump on past the break and chill out.
Sky castles and a gun-using class coming to TERA in 2015
Peer into the ball, strange bear thing with a skull cowboy hat, and tell us what future TERA holds. Or better yet, we could just read the brand-new producer's letter with all sorts of spoilers about the coming year! But the ball, that's cool too. The team is gearing up for an ambitious 2015, if this letter is any indication. Plans for February include sky castles for guilds, the Sky Cruiser Endeavor dungeon, and a 5v5 version of Champions' Skyring. Past that, TERA will host more frequent small events, a community costume design contest, the opening of the Dreadspire, and a brand new "gun-toting" class. Finally, the team promises to be better about talking to its playerbase. "As for our communication of the process -- yes, it has to get better, and it'll start with me," Producer Treeshark said.
Neverwinter: Elemental Evil bringing the Paladin, higher level cap
Elements are the "in" thing for 2015, especially in the Dungeons & Dragons universe. First we found out that DDO will be implementing the Temple of Elemental Evil this year, and now we've gotten word that Neverwinter's newest module will be called Elemental Evil (it's no coincidence; both titles have a relationship with Wizards of the Coast, who likes to do these tie-ins). This module will be a significant one when it comes early this year. Elemental Evil will add a new class to the game, the Paladin, and increase the level cap from 60 to 70. The increased level cap means more skills and quests for all eight classes. Cryptic also announced that future updates in 2015 for Neverwinter will include the player guild housing Strongholds system, the Xbox One launch, and the arrival of popular D&D characters. [Source: Cryptic press release]
