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TOME: Immortal Arena MOBA lands on Steam today
KIXEYE's brawler-MOBA -- not to be confused with those other daisy-picking MOBAs -- TOME: Immortal Arena officially launches on Steam this afternoon. TOME's claim to fame is the voice of Evil Dead's Bruce Campbell, who acts as the title's in-game announcer. Feature-wise, it boasts short matches, in-lane healing, no last-hitting, auto-buying, and 20 playable characters to date. The latest trailer awaits your eyes below.
PAX Prime 2014: Tome makes for a more aggressive MOBA
One interesting trend that I noticed among the up-and-coming MOBAs that I previewed at PAX Prime this past weekend was how there's this real desire to challenge the status quo and cut out what's hurting rather than helping the genre. Tome may not look much different than its contemporaries, with a grounded fantasy setting and typical setup, but underneath the hood it's sporting a few ideas that should make it more friendly and convenient to a larger audience. The team's decided against including last hitting while putting in handy features such as healing quickly and buying items anywhere while not in combat. Another core principle of Tome is that it embraces aggressive gameplay. Matches should take 12 minutes or less to complete, with design elements such as hardier minions and limited ammunition towers making turtling an undesirable option.
Unraveling DDO's Web of Chaos: Turbine talks Update 13
The vanguard of the free-to-play MMO movement is bearing down on the industry this spring, as Dungeons and Dragons Online prepares for its sixth birthday, its 13th update, and its first expansion. We sat down with Turbine Executive Producer Fernando Paiz and Senior Producer Eric Boyer to talk about this coming Monday's Update 13 and what players have to look forward to once it goes live. Update 13 comes at what could be seen as a renaissance in the game's history. Following DDO's transition to F2P, Turbine saw an upsurge in players and profits that continues to this day. Paiz said that "the game is doing very well," and while he did not disclose numbers, he feels that DDO's status as one of the first F2P adaptations gave it a lead that others have yet to overtake. Even so, with only five updates in 2011, it's hard to deny that DDO has faded into the background somewhat as newer titles and more recent F2P transitions hogged the spotlight. Turbine means to rectify this: "I think it's safe to say that this year we're making some noise again," Paiz said confidently. He went on to share just why this Monday's patch will be one of the most pivitol in DDO's history.
Waging WAR: Finding the sandbox
In this installment of Waging WAR, Greg takes a look at Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning from a few different angles and goes in search of the proverbial "sandbox" in a game that contains neither sand nor boxes. Somewhere along the line during my childhood, I developed a habit for playing games with nearly every game I've ever played. I can even remember a time in my early teens when I sat down with a few friends and collaborated on making our own version of battlechess. Pages of chicken-scratched rules and several dice results-tables later, and we were off and running for a solid week of the most entertaining chess matches I've ever played. Or there was that time with The Sims when I started creating experimental families and then leaving my computer on overnight and not interacting with them, just to see how successful they could be without my help. I could bore you for hours on end with examples of how I twisted the rules and made my own games from the games I've played. I suppose I can blame my penchant for metagaming on my early introduction to pen-and-paper roleplaying (i.e., D&D 1st Ed., to be specific). All I had was a sheet of paper, a handful of dice, a description of the world around me, and my imagination. By its very nature, PnP gaming is sandbox gaming. The reason I'm bringing this up now is that, until WAR, I had pretty much been able to "find the sandbox" in any MMO I was able to get my hands on. Whether it was building hardcore Dungeons & Dragons Online characters, roleplaying in City of Heroes, or achievement-chasing in World of Warcraft, I've never really been troubled with finding something to do when the grind started to wear me down. But now, with WAR, I'm finding most of my old tricks for MMO metagaming just aren't working. To read about what I've tried, and why it didn't work in WAR, follow along after the break.
A one-month review of WAR's Tome of Knowledge
Some of us at Massively are fans of "Waaagh!", a Warhammer Online blog written by Syp. He recently put together a review of Warhammer Online's Tome of Knowledge, one month in. The Tome of Knowledge is one of the more interesting features we've seen in an MMO to date, and may well open new avenues for other MMO developers to explore as the industry matures. That said, it's certainly not perfect. Syp breaks down how the Tome of Knowledge alternately exceeds and fails to live up to his expectations. This comprehensive look is broken down by category: Unlock Rate, RvR Unlocks, Secrets vs. Goals, Stories and Quotes, Fluff and Rewards, Titles, Bragging Rights, Nudity and Chickens, Limitations and Absences, Tome Tactics, User Interface, and Out of Game Experience. That's a fairly thorough assessment of the Tome, we'd say. Syp does have one caveat though: "This list isn't a series of 'Why I hate the Tome', but hopefully you've read it as 'I am quite fond of the Tome and want to see it get a lot better' analysis and suggestions." Be sure to have a look at Syp's "The Tome of Knowledge: A One-Month Review" for a comprehensive analysis of one of WAR's most unique features, and see if you agree with him. Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out our Warhammer guides: Massively's Character Creation Guide and our WoW Player's Guide to Warhammer. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!
Anti-Aliased: WAR, huh, what is it good for? pt. 2
With that said, let's get to the big gorilla -- the Realm vs. Realm combat. On the surface, it looks good. Letting people walk into clearly defined battlefields to fight over with incentives in the form of quests from the specific RvR warcamps and not to mention exp for killing other players as well as renown points, it looks like it's a winner. And, to be extremely honest, the system does win when you get a bunch of players in one place. "Player vs. player combat comes extremely naturally to WAR to the point where sometimes I forget I'm in PvP because I'm having so much fun." Player vs. player combat comes extremely naturally to WAR to the point where sometimes I forget I'm in PvP because I'm having so much fun. Yes, that line just came from the guy who'd rather do reputation grinds than visit Alterac Valley in World of Warcraft. I despise PvP, I despise battlegrounds, and grinding reputation is fun compared to getting killed every three seconds and then teabagged.WAR makes sure that each person can actualy survive in PvP, have a chance to get away, and they make it into a worthwhile endeavor. Even if you lose a scenario, you can still turn in the specific PvP quest and get experience because you completed the scenario. PvP is tactical, interesting, and just overflowing with rewards. That's a good system.The bad news comes in the form of World RvR battlegrounds. Once again, they're barren wastelands. No I mean that, they are barren wastelands. Haven't you seen the screenshots? (Insert rimshot here.) But, there's not enough people to really support the battlegrounds system. What we really have here is a "go in, take what you want before someone notices, and leave" system. Sure, there are quests that have owners of the landmarks "check up" on their property -- "Should that problem stop you from playing Warhammer Online? Absolutely not." quests that will bring the enemy back to their control points -- but even those aren't being taken advantage of by the players.So, what is WAR good for? WAR is good for a bloody fun time. The game's systems are all well done and are fun to play. The problem is that WAR is missing the fundamental oil in the machine, people to WAR with. The endgame is secure, as everyone is going to end up there, turning the endgame into a giant, vicious struggle (as it should be) but the first and second tiers are going to struggle no matter what. Even in overpopulated servers just a short while from the launch, we're already seeing signs of attrition in the design. Mythic simply thought they'd have more people constantly flowing in or making new characters.Should that problem stop you from playing Warhammer Online? Absolutely not. The state of the game is still strong, and it's still more fun than you can get in any other game. In fact, if you jump in, you're going to only going to help in curing the problems it has. So go ahead, WAR away. The game is good for it. Colin Brennan is the weekly writer of Anti-Aliased who finally is having fun with RvR. When he's not writing here for Massively, he's over running Epic Loot For All! with his insane roommates. If you want to message him, you can do so in Second Life (SL: Seraphina Reymont), or send him an e-mail at colin.brennan AT weblogsinc DOT com.
Anti-Aliased: WAR, huh, what is it good for?
Well, Warhammer Online, in the very least, let me get away with putting that song in the title.We're in the thick of it now -- WAR has launched and been installed on the machines of many. Some proclaim it to be the new timewaster, others find it to be a rip-off of World of Warcraft, and still others believe that it is, in fact, the digital messiah.Well I don't know about digital messiahs, I just work the game design angles. And when it comes to game design, WAR is filled with new ideas. I like new ideas as much as the next person, but new ideas aren't very good when they don't work. Does WAR go the distance? I'll be glad to tell you, and you know I'm not going to pull punches.
