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Choose My Adventure: Lineage II by a landslide
It was no contest from the get-go. Lineage II took an early lead in last week's poll and firmly held on to it. Color me shocked. I really thought that a few of the entries would be closely tied. Some contestants recently added some juicy content releases, but Lineage II crushed them, and all the others, by getting 1,320 votes. The runner-up, Black Prophecy, only managed to secure 299 votes. All its servers going F2P and the release of Age of Discovery weren't enough to put EverQuest II in the running. The F2P population boom in DC Universe Online's and its recent Lightning Strikes update weren't enough to create competition. Nope. The allure of Lineage II's F2P mode and the launch of the Goddess of Destruction expansion were just too much for voters to pass up. Now it's your turn to start steering my course in the lands of Lineage II. Race, class, gender and my first class-transfer are all on the table. I've tried to make voting as easy and clear as possible, but given how each race, and gender determine which classes you can choose from, you should make an effort to understand how all the choices work. Here's one example: Voting Dwarf and then Mystic is wasting a vote because Dwarves can only be Fighters, and it skews the results for those who are voting for a race that can be Mystics. You'll see what I mean.
Lineage II: behind the gates of the Steel Citadel
Here at Massively, we've always striven to provide you with as much information as we're able to gather about our favorite games. Well, we were lucky enough to catch up with Tim Tan -- North American Producer for NCsoft's Lineage II property -- and had the chance to discuss with him his views on Lineage II itself, the Hellbound expansion, and his feelings about the game's fourth anniversary. With him was Jessica "Alyra" Folsom, Community Manager for Lineage II, so we took the opportunity to pick her brain, as well.For those unaware of the excitement, Hellbound went live on 23 April, the same day the Lineage II team launched Luna, their brand-new European server. Tie both of those events in with the fourth anniversary of their title, and you can see why Tim's so excited about the success of this labor of love. Okay, labor of love, and a lot of coding. Closing the last link in the chain of the First Throne saga, Hellbound brings into existence the horrors and triumphs foreshadowed in earlier installments.
One Shots: Meet the Kamael
For today's One Shot, I'd like to introduce you all to the mysterious Kamael -- the new Lineage 2 race that will be available to all when their next expansion hits. The Kamael have an interesting history: while the other races of the world were created by the Gods, scholars speculate that the Kamael were created by the Giants to fight the Gods. (Unlike the other races, who decide when starting out whether to be a fighter or a mystic, players wishing to play the Kamael will only have the option of fighter.) And beyond a unique story-line, the one-winged Kamael just look cool: who wouldn't want to play one?Do you have a screenshot of your own that you think expresses a unique or memorable moment in your favorite MMO? Send them to us with a description (including game name and location) and you may see it posted here for tomorrow's One Shots.%Gallery-9798%
Lineage 2 expansion out on test server
If you've been hanging out for Lineage 2's upcoming free expansion, The Kamael, then you may be interested to know that the content is available for testing, right now. Curse.com noticed that the game's public test server now includes the new content, so players can go and try out the Kamael and their not-suitable-for-flying single wing.You will need to have an existing Lineage 2 account to be able to log in to the test server, and if you don't have the test client yet, it can be downloaded from Fileplanet. The news story on Curse.com includes a few links to the test server's forums, and a post on those forums that contains a list of testing notes for The Kamael, so if you're interested in giving it a try then be sure to check those out.There is no officially confirmed release date for The Kamael just yet, so if you're really hankering to try it out, it would be better to jump in to the test than wait around and hope it comes out soon.
Lineage II free expansion, The Chaotic Throne: The Kamael, and new gender-bending service
A new official website has launched to show off the features of upcoming Lineage II expansion, The Chaotic Throne: The Kamael. It is to be a free major content update, featuring the titular Kamael, a soldier race with a single angel wing. Let's hope they aren't trying to fly anywhere with half a wingspan and heavy armor. They will have a new class tree, with a few of the final class choices being available exclusively to one gender. Males get the melee-centric Berserker class, and females can be the ranged-attacking Abalester. On the subject of gender, the expansion will also see a few new services introduced to Lineage II. Two of them are fairly mundane, but useful, a character transfer service and name change service. However, the third ought to raise a few eyebrows (and has already been commented on at Warcry's Razorwire), as players can organise to change their avatar's sex. Razorwire speculates that this may be to do with a ban in China of cross-gender MMO play, but this was only in one game, King of the World, and they confusingly only prohibited men from playing female characters -- women can still play whatever they want, provided they prove their gender by webcam. Riiiight. Moving on.The Kamael also contains some new areas to explore. Isle of Souls is a low level zone for the Kamaels to start in, and there will be new high level and raid content elsewhere. Additionally, Fortress Battles will be introduced to allow sieging to happen at any time, instead of needing to wait for a castle siege to occur. Follow the link below to check out the preview site for yourself.
