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Aion pets sighted on Korean test server
Word of the recently released 2.0 patch to the Korean test servers has created a bit of a buzz in the North American Aion community. Among the huge list of tweaks and additions was the mention of player pets of both the vanity and utilitarian variety. While detailed information remains scarce here in the West, a few images of the pets have begun to show up on Korean MMORPG web sites, including these images over at MMOSite. In addition to the images, there are brief descriptions of each type of pet, including one that apparently alerts its owner to the presence of an enemy player. Along with this 'alertive' pet, there are warehouse pets (which as you might expect, offer additional storage), productive pets (which may give you a rare gameplay item when you feed them), and decorative pets that serve no particular gameplay function. The article also hints at an 'emotive study' system through which your pet can learn various abilities, including flight. Check out the images over at MMOSite.
Chinese WoW partial relaunch pics, comparison shots of censorship
MMOsite.com has nabbed some pictures of the return to the Chinese World of Warcraft. As you know if you've been paying attention, the game has been offline over there for a few months now, but the game just recently got approved to go back online, and so they're in the middle of a "partial relaunch" (which I believe is taking the form of a closed beta) and the servers are crowding up again. As you can see, there's a stampede (much like ours) going on in Thunder Bluff -- looks like players are happy to be online again.They also have some comparison images of the censorship found over there. Anything with skulls or bones on it is out, and the offending images have been replaced with piles of dirt and bags and debris. Blood appears as black oil rather than red liquid, and even player corpses are out. As you can see, everywhere players die, there are instead little graves and tombstones around. Very interesting. No idea if this actually "helps" in China (or what the point of the censorship is -- seems as though it's a cultural thing, more like it's a respect for death and dead bodies rather than worrying about whether people will be disturbed by the mention of violence), but of course the government over there has final say on what goes into the game, and apparently this is what they approved. Hopefully Chinese players will be headed back to Northrend before long.
Yet another Stargate Worlds interview, this time with actual details
There have been a couple talks with Stargate Worlds devs or reps this past week. There was the live chat last Friday, and then there was the Kevin Balentine interview at WarCry that we wrote about yesterday. Some vague revelations were made, but both instances were light on details.Well, there was another interview this week, this time at MMOsite.com, and we were pleasantly surprised by the amount of information contained within. Kevin Balentine listed several of the races and classes and explained character advancement and combat a little bit. For example, Goa'uld characters include "the classic Goa'uld with minions, the stealth-oriented Ashrak and a combat-oriented Goa'uld." The floodgates of information still aren't completely open, though; the rest of the interview was the same fluff we've been seeing time and again.Oh, and Balentine assures us that beta time is "rapidly approaching." So that's kind of exciting.
