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Flameseeker Chronicles: Looking forward to Guild Wars 2's feature pack
The dust has barely settled on the Battle for Lion's Arch: Aftermath release, but ArenaNet is already releasing blog posts to discuss Guild Wars 2's April 15th feature pack. What's a feature pack? Well, it's exactly what it says on the tin: We'll be getting a big chunk of gameplay updates, quality-of-life improvements, and balance tweaks that don't fit into the living world or have story components. I usually refer to this stuff as "stuff," but "feature pack" definitely sounds more classy. As I write this, we've gotten posts on three of the topics locked up in the official feature pack site's nifty little sidebar doodad: one covering updates to the trait system; another to outline balance changes for runes, sigils and professions; and another to talk about swapping critical damage percentage for a new attribute called Ferocity. I have a lot to say about traits, but I'm also going to spend some time speculating on the next two blog posts in the lineup. There's nothing I love more than making half-baked predictions.
Rampant Speculation Theatre presents: Australian Classification Board rates 'Rabbids Rumble'
The Australian Classification Board has issued a rating of "G" to Rabbids Rumble from Ubisoft, which doesn't exist. Okay, well, not officially anyway. We're sure something exists, and that the Australian Classification Board rated it, but Ubisoft has yet to publicly acknowledge its existence, whatever it is. Just like every other time we've been present with a leak that completely lacks context, Rampant Speculation Theatre has some ludicrous, baseless guesses totally reasonable ideas about what Rabbids Rumble might be. Not to miss the brawler gravy train, Rabbids Rumble will be a Smash Bros.-esque fighter starring all the extremely recognizable characters we all know and love from the Rabbids franchise, like, uhm, the white one, or the one with the ears. Launch is tentatively set for "whenever PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale comes out." Other entirely made up sources claim that Rabbids Rumble is actually a hyper serious seismology simulator, wherein the player takes control of a Rabbid Seismologist that must analyze tectonic recordings from around the globe. Microtransactional progression is implemented via seismometer upgrades that can either be earned in-game, or purchased as DLC.
Rampant Speculation Theatre presents: Microsoft registers XboxFL.com
Microsoft has registered XboxFL.com and XboxFL.net, according to whois records unearthed by the bloodhounds at Fusible. At the moment, both URLs redirect to Bing, though we highly doubt that will be the case forever. As is our way here on Rampant Speculation Theatre, we've got some wildly unlikely totally plausible guesses regarding the domains' potential purposes: "XboxFL" actually stands for "Xbox Football League." The service will be a browser-based fantasy football simulator with heavy integration into both the console and Windows Phone versions of Xbox Live. Alternatively, "FL" could stand for "Featured Losers," which would mean that XboxFL.com is an embarrassing hall of shame for Xbox Live users that performed far, far below average in that week's most popular games. Avatars are bound to wheels, Hunchback of Notre Dame style, while site visitors play sponsored flash games to pelt them with rotten fruits and dead rodents.
Rampant Speculation Theatre presents: 'Xblaze' announced by Arc System Works
Arc System Works, the development house responsible for the Guilty Gear and BlazBlue series of fighting games, has announced the first entry in what it mysteriously refers to as its "Adventure Project." The game, Xblaze, will be released this fall on unknown platforms in unknown regions, and may tie in with the BlazBlue universe/mythos. No further information is yet available, so at this point the game could be virtually anything. In true Rampant Speculation Theatre fashion, our hastily concocted educated guess is as follows: It will be revealed that the "X" in Xblaze is actually pronounced "cross," ala Street Fighter X Tekken. Yes, Xblaze will be the first cross-over fighting game ever to cross over with itself, pitting characters from BlazBlue against characters from, uh, Blazblue.
