Tony-Tang
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SOE Live 2012: Dragon's Prophet invigorates sandbox hopes
While I can't exactly say that the best report was saved for last (there was so much awesome at SOE Live 2012), I will say the Dragon's Prophet announcement was the most unexpected exciting news of the weekend. A new sandbox game, with dragons! I'll admit -- I should have seen the writing on the breakfast table. When I sat down for the meal that first day, my table-mate John Smedley, CEO of Sony Online Entertainment, mentioned that the others seated with us were making a dragon game. He then introduced them as developers of Runes of Magic. It was only later when the press learned a new game would be introduced that evening that the connection clicked! After the official announcement, I looked forward to learning even more about the new dragon-laced world. I was pleased to sit down with Smedley and those members of the Runewaker team again -- namely, CEO John Tang and VP of Business Development Tony Tang -- this time to discuss the new partnership and the upcoming free-to-play game.%Gallery-169367%
Lost Pages of Taborea: Mana strike
When In the Depths of the Forest went live in Runes of Magic there were cheers heard across Taborea, but players soon protested. Along with all of the new content, Runkewaker also added a nerf in the form of increased mana costs for many of the skills in RoM. On top of the existing base mana costs for skills, a percentage modifier was added that significantly increased the cost to use skills as you leveled up. Many players were unhappy with the skills being balanced in this way and went as far as staging cross-server in-game strikes in Varanas' Central Plaza until something was done. Only a few days after the patch went live, a new hotfix was applied to RoM which removed the balancing act completely. Tony Tang, the Vice President of Business Development at Runewaker, issued a statement to announce the removal of the balance, but he also clarified that the company was confident a change would need to be made to address the issue of the game becoming less challenging. In this week's article I want to take a closer look at why many players were upset and point out why I think the balance may be for the better.
