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Elder Scrolls Online gets another third-party auction house
TESO Elite Marketplace isn't the only attempt out there to fill in the hole of a missing Elder Scrolls Online auction house. ZAM announced today the start up of ESO Outpost to meet the needs of buyers and sellers. The service uses "a web-based interface and companion add-on" to buy and sell gold and items. The addon includes a customizable description field, optional screenshots, comments section, tracking, and post-trade feedback.
Minion rounds up Elder Scrolls Online addons
It's Addon Day here at Massively, and as such we have another handy-dandy platform to help you manage your mods. ZAM has started an open beta for Minion, an addon management software designed to work with Elder Scrolls Online. Minion will help you install, manage, and update your addons for next month's ESO. It includes automatic updates and options to support additional future titles (such as World of Warcraft) and it claims to be safe from viruses, malware, and keyloggers. Minion is available for both Windows and OS X systems.
Activision Blizzard makes up with the ESA
After taking its toys and going home in 2008, Activision Blizzard has kissed and made up with the Entertainment Software Association as announced in a press release this morning. The ESA is not only in charge of organizing E3 each year, but it's also seen as the political arm of the gaming industry. This, along with the joining of Tencent (owner of Riot Games, Epic Games, and the ZAM Network), brings the ESA's membership to 37 companies. Does this mean we'll see more of Blizzard's goodies at E3 while other large companies are skipping the industry expo? Could this be an act of desperation on the part of Activision Blizzard or the ESA? Let us know in the comments! [Source: ESA press release]
End of Nations' elite units and 56-player battles
Trion Worlds is on the cusp of opening the doors for End of Nations' July 20th closed beta event, and its staff is busy talking up the free-to-play MMORTS to any and all who will listen. French Community Manager Franck Vacher spoke with ZAM about controlling a chaotic battlefield and how the game is developing in these late hours. While End of Nations has instanced battles as small as 2v2, the crown jewels of the system are its massive 56-player battles. Vacher said that the team is preparing to test the large battles and gives a good reason that players will want to do their best to take over the game world. "Usually you get some type of bonus -- for example, a loot bonus of, say, five percent -- because you control the territory," he said. "For some of the maps, it changes the objective. On the Bluewater map, you're defender or attacker, so your objective will be completely different." Vacher also commented on the new elite units that were recently added to the game. "It's hard to say [whether] they're overpowered or underpowered -- sometimes when I'm playing, I don't take any heroes because they don't fit with my other units. We'll be working more on balance in the beta, as our alpha's been more about the technical aspects of the game."
TERA Tome database unleashes the mysteries of Arborea
TERA players, have you been spending weeks trying to find that one perfect weapon? Or maybe you just want to know which mob drops the crafting mats you need to pimp out your gear. Either way, the ZAM Network is here to help. En Masse Entertainment has announced on the official TERA site that ZAM's TERA database, alliteratively named TERA Tome, is live and kickin'. The current version of the site includes all of the nifty features that players have come to expect from ZAM's MMO databases, such as information on quests, items, and abilities as well as helpful forums and comments. Players trying to get a handle on their character's build should also find the site handy thanks to its useful glyph calculator that allows players to survey all currently available glyphs without the need to set foot in the game. Just head on over to the recently launched site to crack open the tome.
Tencent grows its empire with SURA Online
If you haven't heard of SURA Online yet, well, consider yourself enlightened. The online action title is renowned for its fast-attack combat system inspired by martial arts cinema, and ThisIsGame reports that SURA has been picked up for worldwide distribution by Chinese mega-publisher Tencent. SURA boasts three races and six classes, and TIG compares its fighting mechanics to the Tekken series (you can see an official gameplay trailer after the cut, below). Tencent is a major player in the global MMO market; much of its revenue stems from the sale of virtual goods via its Q Coin currency. Interestingly enough, the company also acquired the ZAM Network in February.
New contest celebrates the launch of Torhead
If you've been following Star Wars: The Old Republic for long enough, you're probably tired of hearing it compared to World of Warcraft. Unfortunately, the launch of the beta version of Torhead isn't going to ameliorate those comparisons, as it's clearly meant to function in the same fashion as Wowhead (and is designed by the same team, no less). Even if you're not lucky enough to be in the beta yet, you can scour through the database and play with the skill calculators already. To celebrate the launch, the site staff is kicking off a contest, and appropriately enough, the more helpful content you upload to the site, the more contest entries you get. The grand prize winner gets a new Razer Naga and an Astro A40 Gaming Headset, both of which should be quite useful once the game launches. But even if you're not in the beta, you can still browse and comment to enter, something that might help assuage the waiting.
BlizzCon 2011: Reader meetup recap
This year's reader meetup was our best yet. We hit venue capacity of 2,200 attendees within the first hour of the event, blowing away last year's attendance record by a wide margin. A little over two hours into the six hour event, over 3,000 attendees walked through the doors. After that, we lost count. We only brought 3,000 wrist bands to hand out at the door. Every single one of us at WoW Insider, Wowhead, and Gamebreaker.tv had an absolutely wonderful time meeting and greeting our fans. We gave away countless prizes, drank endless drinks (as you can tell from our attendees' Twitter accounts), and had a generally great time. As we do every year, the moment BlizzCon comes to a close, we're going to buckle down and get to work on next year's event. Your feedback is absolutely welcome. If you didn't get to attend and our livestream last night simply wasn't enough for you, below is our gallery of the reader meetup. %Gallery-137254% The news is out -- we'll be playing Mists of Pandaria! Find out what's in store with an all-new talent system, peek over our shoulder at our Pandaren hands-on, and get ready to battle your companion pets against others. It's all here right at WoW Insider!
"Solid one-two punch": Trion responds to account hacks
The saga of RIFT's account security woes continues, as Trion World's Scott Hartsman responded to the hacker attempts, reassuring fans curious about what steps were being taken to secure their accounts. Citing "constant attacks" since the launch of RIFT that have impacted 1% of accounts, Hartsman said that the team is blocking hackers and botnets as quickly as they are identified, but that this will also be an ongoing process. "Both the login fix and the Coin Lock addition have been doing their part in signficantly reducing overall incidents over the last 18 hours," Hartsman wrote. "Neither one is a silver bullet, but so far it is looking to be a solid one-two punch for the weekend." According to his post, Trion will be hiring additional staff to tackle the problem, and is working on a "two-factor authentication" process for the future. Hartsman also praised the efforts of the player who brought a serious log-in vulnerability to the team's attention. ZAM tracked down the player for an interview, who himself had his account hacked in early March. The player is an "ethical hacker" who owns a security software company and realized that these hacks were not the fault of the player, but an exploit that had been discovered.
ZAM opens up a full database for RIFT
Databases are a good thing for an MMO. When you have buckets of different items, quests, stats, enemies, bosses, and so forth, it's good to be able to reference a wide variety of different data on the fly. Wowhead is pretty much the gold standard for database services, giving World of Warcraft players the opportunity to use talent calculators, compare items, and browse a comprehensive quest database with ease. ZAM, the parent company of Wowhead, is porting that same all-encompassing database over to RIFT with today's launch of the appropriately named RIFT Database. Although the system has just gone live, it already includes a robust listing of abilities, items, and quests for players to browse, as well as details on the various collections available in-game. Complete with a soul calculator, the new repository of knowledge should be welcome for any and all RIFT players looking for quick and easy reference. About the only thing it currently lacks is an option for integration into browser, but given time, it seems inevitable that the database will just keep improving.
Plan your perfect character with the RIFT soul calculator
One of the greatest strengths of any MMORPG is its community. Regardless of the size of a title's playerbase, it's practically a given that the demographics will include folks with the skills (and the goodwill) to make the experience better for everyone. Usually this happens free of charge in the form of web-based tools and analysis, and the latest case in point comes to us courtesy of ZAM and its new RIFT soul calculator. The tool allows rifters to experiment with builds all the way up to the game's level 50 cap (even though RIFT's current beta phase doesn't allow for endgame play). ZAM's announcement post carries a beta qualifier of its own, as the soul calculator is still under development and may feature a lingering bug or two. RIFT is a subscription-based fantasy MMO developed by Trion Worlds which launches on March 1st. You can learn more about the game and sign up for beta via the official website.
RIFT challenges unwritten rules of the genre in a new dev diary
"There are countless unwritten rules for creating an MMO world that successful designs in past games have impressed upon the entire industry. No monsters on the roads; never stop the player from questing or doing what he plans to do; group content should always be separate from solo content. While I will acknowledge that these sorts of rules of thumb are the guidelines that we designers live by, challenging them is where we have found a lot of success in RIFT." Thus sayeth Will Cook, Trion Worlds' content designer for RIFT. In a new developer diary over at ZAM, Cook explains how challenging stale MMO conventions opened up a whole new world of possibilities for the dynamic content in the game. By allowing enemy invasions to use roads, bosses to conquer quest giver outposts and rifts to pop up unexpectedly, the team was able to make an "anything goes" atmosphere over top the traditional PvE treadmill. One of Trion Worlds' biggest goals, Cook says, is to create "emergent experiences" that are never quite the same twice. Even though such content can be and often is disruptive to players running quests and working on other solo projects, it's proven to be exciting and interesting enough to draw these players in without complaint. Cook thinks that if you give it a chance, you'll get hooked: "You can't help but get carried away in the fun of a living world where you can see the effect of action and inaction."
Critical feedback on the road to RIFT's launch
Criticism, even well-meaning constructive criticism, is never easy to take. "Dealing with constant, live feedback is not always easy. Sometimes it can be a morale hit when people are overly critical of a feature," Trion Worlds' Russ Brown admits. In a new dev diary over on ZAM, Brown explains just how important feedback is to the development process, and how Trion is handling it as the team fine-tunes RIFT for launch. According to Brown, working on an MMO is different from working on a single-player title because one encounters -- and invites -- a lot more feedback on an ongoing basis. This turns out to be a double-edged sword: It can be disruptive to the team's schedule and require a lot of extra work in response to concerns and issues, but the feedback can also result in a much better product all around. Ultimately, Brown feels as though the team is actually paying attention to the players: "There have been times when I've come into the office in the morning to find work done by an entire group of developers staying late the night before to fix an instance or invasion. Not because some stuffed shirt told them to, but because they care, and just like the players in our alpha/beta, they want to make the best damn product possible. The only way to do that is to listen to your customers and react."
En Masse's Brian Knox details the Slayer's evolution
Is he a Rogue? Is he a Warrior? Is he an '80s thrash metal band? Whatever TERA's Slayer may be, En Masse hopes that you will find him bad to the bone. En Masse's Brian Knox sat down for an interview with ZAM about how the class was evolving and changing during development. Originally, this Rogue/Warrior hybrid had heavy armor, but due to his extreme DPS output, the devs decided to concentrate more on movement and dexterity instead of damage absorption, and they downgraded his armor to reflect this. When asked about the class' defining traits, Knox listed a combination of two skills -- Knockdown and Leaping Strike -- which, when used together, would both throw a foe off his balance and deal him significant damage. Knox spent time also talking up the Slayer's roguish abilities, such as being able to speedily dash up behind an enemy and backstab for big numbers. Unlike most MMO rogues, TERA's Slayer is limited to using one (1) big honking sword, but En Masse doesn't think this will hurt the class' appeal in the slightest. You can read the full interview at ZAM, and don't miss our exclusive Slayer lore piece!
Rift looking to be the social, outgoing type
It seems as though one of the holy grails of MMORPG development is to encourage players to be social and group up without forcing them to do so like back in the olden days of yore. Rift's creative director, Scott Hartsman, thinks the dev team's found the key to this problem: "We want our MMO to be a social experience and we've realized that it's not that people don't want to be social, it's just because they don't want to be inconvenienced." In an interview with ZAM, Hartsman details how Rift: Planes of Telara is hoping to change the minds of players about teaming up for the game's signature instances. While a character can solo through them just fine, the more players that enter a rift equals greater amounts of experience and loot for everyone. Rifts will adjust both loot and difficulty based on the number of players involved, and Trion Worlds expects that this will go a long way to combating antisocial behavior that MMOs have encouraged. Guilds are another facet of socialization on which Trion plans to focus. "One thing we haven't talked much about is people getting together to build their guild up and build a structure (in the metaphorical sense) that provides you and all of your friends benefits," Hartsman said. You can read the full interview, including details on PvP, at ZAM.
Make love not war: STO's Craig Zinkievich shows off the Federation Diplomatic Corps
As everyone knows in the television business, the second season of a show is usually tons better than the first (unless it's Heroes, for some reason). Considering how well Star Trek Online's Season One update was received across the community, the STO team has a lot of work to do to meet and exceed that standard with the upcoming Season Two. Cryptic plans to roll out one of these bigger updates every three months, which puts Season Two smack in the middle of July. ZAM caught executive producer Craig Zinkievich on the way to his ready room for a chat about Season Two. The big discussion revolves around the launch of the Federation Diplomatic Corps, an effort to provide an additional emphasis on exploration, diplomacy and anthropology that STO's combat-centric gameplay has so far been lacking. Apparently, players will have to rise through the diplomatic ranks almost like a separate leveling system as they engage in first contacts and the like. We'll just have to wait and see if they introduce a "lengthy patronizing Picard-style speech" as one of the skills. Zinkievich also pontificated on ship interiors and the new Dabo minigame, both of which are much-requested features to help Star Trek Online feel more, well, Trekky. You can get your captain on by reading the full interview over at ZAM.
TERA berserker interview, part two
TERA, the upcoming action fantasy MMORPG from En Masse Entertainment and Bluehole Studio, is looking to put a fresh spin on both genre combat and the traditional healer/tank/damage dynamic. One way the designers are attempting to do this is through individual classes that play a bit differently from what you might expect. Take the berserker for instance. Rather than opting for your standard meat shield, Bluehole has given the class significant DPS capabilities as well. En Masse's Brian Knox and and Scott James Magner recently chatted about the berserker's unique features in part two of a lengthy interview with ZAM.com. "You want to be a target as a Berserker, but you also want to be targeting. And that's not a word we use a lot for this game. We talk about action and the way we play, but you are a destination for damage, just as you are an output of damage going the other direction," Magner says. Check out the new interview segment, as well as the previous installment, at ZAM.com.
TERA invites the Berserker to visit for tea
When you heard that one of TERA's classes was to be called the "Berserker" and you either thought of either the 80's arcade cabinet classic or an obscure song from the movie Clerks, then we could be fast friends. In any case, TERA's Brian Knox and Scott James Magner sat down with ZAM to talk about this brutal class and why it might appeal to the barbarian in all of us. TERA's Berserker is a two-handed axe wielder who has his weapon constantly in motion. The relatively short range of the class means that Berserkers have to get up close and personal with any foe they're fighting, but the increased risk of such moves are paid off with some of the highest DPS of the game. Because TERA uses both collision and positioning in its combat system, it's essential for the Berserker to hit with the blade and then duck away before getting slammed in return. Get too close, and you'll end up hitting with the hilt and wondering why the monster is laughing at you. You can read the full interview at ZAM and check out a series of screenshots detailing one of the Berserker's key moves. The official TERA site also has an outline of the class, along with a video for your eyes only (it will self-destruct after viewing).
BlizzCon sold out; additional conventions cannot be launched
If you had planned to spend the summer mowing lawns and scraping together enough dough to attend BlizzCon this fall, you're already too late. After going on sale this past Wednesday, all 20,000 tickets to the event were snatched up quickly. ZAM reports that the first batch of tickets on Wednesday were sold out in 23 minutes, and the second batch on Saturday in 28 minutes. The official Blizzard Store page simply notes now that "BlizzCon 2010 Tickets Currently Unavailable." This is certainly no surprise considering that past BlizzCons proved to be one of the most popular conventions of the year, with ticket scalping at a premium. Currently, some desperate Blizzard fans are combing through eBay for scalped tickets, although high prices and Blizzard asking eBay to crack down on such sales make this a difficult alternative. Blizzard is also requiring photo ID this year to match tickets as a way to limit these transactions. Fortunately, there is hope for Blizzard fans: they will once again offer virtual passes to the convention through DirecTV as a Pay Per View event available through satellite and multi-channel Internet stream. The virtual pass enables fans to watch all of the presentations and panels, as well as receive an exclusive in-game item, all for $39.95.
ZAM interviews TERA's Brian Knox
En Masse Entertainment's Brian Knox answers some moderately tough questions about the studio's upcoming TERA action MMORPG. The interview, courtesy of ZAM.com, touches on a little bit of everything including what makes TERA a next-generation title, enemy challenge levels, and the difficulties in appealing to both hardcore and casual gamers. "The good thing about action combat is that it lets the player's skill determine the complexity. We worked very hard to make the game intuitive for any gamer, and we believe players will really be able to stretch the system. For example, one person playing as a sorcerer might be more inclined to use area-of-effect skills and dodging, whereas another may choose to use direct damage skills and focus on healing. Each class has a lot of variables, and gamers are going to be able to play the game the way they want," Knox says. You can check out the full interview at ZAM.com.
