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The Secret World adds a new set of side missions
Are you ready for more Tokyo action in The Secret World? A sextet of side missions is now available for owners of the Issue #9 content, kicking off with a bank heist and moving on to handle rockabilly gangs, surveillance cameras, and a Flappy nest. It's a full dose of sabotage, investigation, and the usual joy of finding supernatural creatures and beating them down with your own supernatural powers. So what do you get for all of these antics? A free Deep Mystery Box, which is nice, but you also get the Lorenzian Fabricator, which allows you to move to Tokyo from anywhere in the world. That's quite useful if you've got places to be and problems to solve elsewhere. This update also allows players access to the new Efficiency and Proficiency skills to improve AEGIS mastery, so owners of the game's most recent major update will want to hop on board and start exploring the new missions.
Assassin's Creed Unity video steals your attention
Ubisoft issued a new walkthrough video today for Assassin's Creed Unity to showcase the game's cooperative multiplayer mode, taking players through a heist mission. The PS4, Xbox One and PC game's launch was recently delayed to November 11.
NASA panel says Curiosity needs to drive less and drill more
NASA is not getting its money's worth of Curiosity, according to a review panel looking at seven planetary missions. The senior scientists criticized the nuclear-powered Mars rover, saying it needed to take more than the eight drill samples scheduled for the rest of its mission. It added that Curiosity has done too much driving (which has severely damaged the wheels) and peripheral activities like searching for clouds. As a result, it rated the rover lowest of the seven missions reviewed, despite the fact that it cost the most. Meanwhile, the Jupiter Cassini mission, which has produced a spectacular cache of images and scientific data, received the highest rating and will be extended at least three years. Despite the ranking, Curiosity was still graded "very good" and all seven missions will retain their funding. That includes the indefatigable Opportunity rover, still trucking after a decade.
Massively Exclusive: Previewing Path of Exile's Tora, Master of the Hunt
The newest expansion to Path of Exile is all about the eponymous Masters -- their goals, their attitudes, and what they can teach the player. Tora is fairly straightforward in all of the above. She is all about the hunt, taking out the monsters that surround Wraeclast, and in her own words, she wants to root out the corruption that has taken root in her world now, before it does any further harm to the natural balance. I had a chance to speak with producer Chris Wilson about Tora and the expansion as a whole the other day, and he happily shared details both about Tora herself and one of the new challenge leagues that will be going live with the expansion on August 20th. Hop on past the break to see Tora's video introduction and to learn more about what players can expect from the huntress, the challenge league, and the expansion in general.
Final Fantasy XI's August update is live
At long last, players in Final Fantasy XI won't need to use macros to handle gear-swapping; the game's August update adds an equipment set manager to let you swap sets easily and painlessly. Oh, and it adds new Seekers of Adoulin missions as well as a variety of other content, so that's nice. But really, no equipment-swapping macros any more -- that alone should change people's lives. The update also adds Alluvion Skirmishes, new alter egos, and new NPCs to direct players toward quests, tutorials, and maps. Players will also benefit from a variety of job balance improvements and new ways to spend job points, not to mention the addition of new items as both craftable items and battle rewards. Whether you've been playing the game for a long time or just started jumping into it recently, there's plenty to enjoy within the update, and it can be downloaded now.
Defiance drops patch 2.1 on Monday
Ready to roll out into more Defiance content? You'll have to wait... until the weekend is over. Patch 2.1, Alter EGO, is going live on July 14th, bringing a new mission and two new factions into the game. The new mission helps keep the game's lore humming along and should provide plenty of interesting revelations, as players investigate the apparently resurrected Karl Von Bach and his newfound desire to just give EGO implants to whoever wants them. Meanwhile, the two new factions are the Tarr Family and the Defiant Few; the latter faction is headed by Camden Pace and promises big rewards to anyone who aids her goals. Players are also promised a new mission line and a new arkbreak in the coming weeks. If that's just what you've been waiting for, load up your gun and get ready to roll out when Monday comes around. [Thanks to Gaius Cavadus for the tip!]
EVE Evolved: Everything we know about Rubicon
Back in April, EVE Online Senior Producer Andie Nordgren delivered an incredible long-term vision for the game's future that included deep space colonisation, player-built stargates, and players controlling practically everything that's currently run by NPC empires. This vision sets the tone and direction for development over the next ten expansions, each of which will introduce a small component of the overall goal. In a live interview session earlier this week, CCP revealed the first steps it will take toward space colonisation in its upcoming winter expansion. Named Rubicon, the expansion will be in players' hands on November 19th and promises to give individuals and small groups unprecedented control over the sandbox. It will let players fight over planetary customs offices in high security space, significantly buff the ability of small ships to participate in hit-and-run style warfare, and even introduce a new set of personal deployable structures that can be hidden anywhere in space. All this comes alongside two new Sisters of EVE ships, twitch livestream integration, and significant balance changes to Marauders, Interceptors, Interdictors, and Electronic Attack Frigates. In this week's EVE Evolved, I run down all of the new features and changes announced so far for EVE Online's Rubicon expansion.
Chaos Theory: Three ideas to improve TSW's replayability
In my opinion, a lot rests upon The Secret World Issue #8's shoulders. While the past few issues have offered up top-notch story arcs, I gobbled them up quick and then looked sadly at an empty plate while wishing for seconds. It's the blessing and curse of quality content that takes a lot of time to make and far, far less time to play through. So our eyes are on the promise of Issue #8's scenario system and the possibilities that it might bring. MJ did a great job of touching on the potential there, but I'd like to add that the game sorely needs a system like this because there are only so many times you can run the same missions and dungeons before getting really restless. It doesn't have to be just up to scenarios to cure the replayability blues, however. Off the top of my head, I can think of three ways that the devs (given appropriate time and resources, of course) could add more layers of fun and activity into the current framework of The Secret World.
NASA details mission to discover whether Europa moon is habitable
With potential oceans flowing below its icy surface, NASA thinks Jupiter's Europa moon is promising candidate to harbor organic life. As such, the space agency and its JPL laboratory are looking to send a lander there within a decade, and have detailed what it wants it to explore in a new paper. Key goals include measuring the organic content of surface and near-surface chemistry, exploring mineralogy, measuring the thickness and salinity of the oceans and ice, imaging surface formations and looking at microscopic ice and non-ice grains. Researchers also looked at potential landing sites, and were torn between a more interesting, active site like "Thera Macula" and a more stable location with ancient geology. NASA's Juno mission, launched in August 2011, is expected to help settle such issues when it probes Europa from orbit starting in 2016. Though it'd be hard to top Curiosity's setdown, a Europa landing could be even more dramatic, considering the moon is over 10 times farther away than Mars and never gets above minus 370 degrees Fahrenheit.
Champions Online previews upcoming Carrier Wave mission
Champions Online's heroes were instrumental in stopping an attempted hacking, but they're needed again once the source of the hacking attempt is discovered. The second mission in the game's current Fatal Error arc will be available on Thursday, and it sends players straight to the source: Cyberlord's carrier in Canada. Players are tasked with getting on the ship and stopping Cyberlord before he tries again, since that's much easier than just stopping his hacking attempts every single time for another few years. Needless to say, the mission will involve bashing through robots on the decks down to the core of the ship, with new perks and titles available for anyone who defeats enough robots. Players can also earn new Cybernetic Boots for taking part in the operation to prevent another hack attack. For more information on in-game action figures obtainable through this mission, take a look at the official preview, and be sure to finish the first part of the arc before the second comes out tomorrow.
US and Russian space agencies to launch first year-long mission on the ISS
If you thought that year out around Europe was an eye opener, how about 12 months on the International Space Station? That's what's in store for two unnamed astronauts. Currently, the maximum stay on the ISS is six months, but in 2015, one Russian, and one American will work their way through the whole calendar, in a trip that could help pave the way for deep space travel. Plenty of data has already been collected about the effect microgravity has on the body, but less is known of the longer-term implications. NASA is already considering sending manned expeditions to near-Earth asteroids and Mars in the coming decades -- but the results from this excursion could prove invaluable. The names of the chosen two haven't been revealed, and the Soyuz capsule's (currently unaccounted for) third-seat has also sparked talk of another person possibly coming along for the ride. Time to re-plan that gap year?
EVE Evolved: Four ways Guild Wars 2 is like EVE Online
With its single-shard server structure and sandbox ruleset, EVE Online seems to have little in common with a sharded fantasy themepark like Guild Wars 2. But dig a little deeper past GW2's fluffy exterior and you'll find it shares some core game mechanics and ideas with the world's biggest PvP sandbox. GW2's Trading Post bears a striking resemblance to EVE's Jita 4-4 market, and many of the same market tricks that work in New Eden have proven just as effective in the land of Tyria. EVE's PLEX system lets people buy game time for in-game ISK and undercuts illicit RMT by giving players a legitimate way to buy ISK, a system that's very closely mirrored in GW2's gem trade. GW2's Karma system resembles a heavily restricted version of EVE's loyalty point mechanic, and PvP in both games may be more similar than it appears. The same strategies that work for faction warfare fleets in the depths of space are currently helping guilds win World vs. World vs. World PvP. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at four Guild Wars 2 game mechanics that are similar to those in EVE Online and how lessons from EVE can be applied to GW2.
EVE Evolved: Making your first billion ISK
A lot of the people I introduce to EVE Online ask about the possibility of playing for free by buying game time codes with in-game ISK. It's a legitimate way to turn EVE into a free-to-play game, but the rising price tag of a 30-day PLEX can make it seem as if only veteran players can afford to do it. New players typically scrape together just a few million ISK by the end of their free trial periods, making the 500 million per month required to pay via PLEX seem like a tall order. With the right guidance, a new player can actually pull in over a billion ISK in his first month or two of play and quickly become able to afford a PLEX each month. Farming missions requires a bit of time investment but can pull in 20-30 million ISK per hour once you're set up, and exploration and salvaging can lead to some unexpected big hauls. There are also plenty of newbie-friendly corps that run group activities, and those who aren't interested in grinding to their first billion ISK might try their hands at trading or turn to a life of crime. It's all possible in the sandbox. In this week's EVE Evolved, I give some practical tips on making your first billion ISK, from scraping together the seed capital to buy your first big ship to reliable farming methods and some more underhanded methods.
EVE Evolved: EVE Online's new tutorial
If you've ever tried EVE Online and couldn't make it through the cumbersome tutorial, you might want to revisit it. The new player experience received a huge update with the recent Inferno 1.2 patch, which visually updated the starter tutorial and revamped the rookie ships and free frigates players are given. The new tutorial is fully up to date, even introducing recent gameplay updates like the "loot all" button on cargo containers and the new interface for accessing agent missions while in space. A lot of effort has been put into the updated tutorial, but has it really made a difference? This week I gave it a try to find out. Last night at around 6 p.m. EVE time (GMT), there were over 38,000 players online, and only 1,200 were marked as trial accounts. I logged in to find 2,800 players in Rookie Help, a mandatory help channel exclusively for characters under 30 days old. That means just over 7% of characters logged in at the time were either rookies or veterans starting new alternate characters. With only 1,200 of those characters being on trial accounts, a healthy number of the remaining 1,600 must have been recent signups on fully subscribed accounts. Even the most cynical player has to admit that these are encouraging numbers of new players. In this week's EVE Evolved, I give the new EVE tutorial a spin to find out whether now is a good time for new players to sign up.
The Soapbox: The quest to save quests
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. Semantic shift is a phrase I've recently acquired for whenever I want to sound insufferable at parties. It refers to the phenomenon of a word's usage changing over time, sometimes to the point that it's completely the opposite of whatever it originally meant. I believe that the word "quest" has undergone a semantic shift in the MMO community (and video games at large). What once had roots in the long, difficult journeys that take place in life and fiction has quickly become reduced to a trivial task of gathering, killing, or clicking in-game. The sheer volume of such quests and that meaninglessness of their charges has reduced the word to bargain basement kitsch. If we're supposed to be heroes, why then are so many of the quests we're given are no more exciting than going to the grocery store? "Quest" as a word has lost much respect in the community, almost completing its semantic shift such that it's almost pejorative. Yet there is a movement right now to reclaim the word and restore it to its proper meaning, and it's happening right in front of our eyes.
Some Assembly Required: City of Heroes' Mission Architect
The few. The proud. The quest writers. At the best of times, the fruits of their labors guide us along in our progression of a local or global story, immersing us in the world. Even the nefarious "kill 10 rats" versions can be mini stories that pull players in when done well. But how many of us have ever had a "I could do better than that" moment or have simply wanted to live out a personal story or share in a customized grand adventure with our friends? Someone wished upon the right star because with features like the Mission Architect in City of Heroes you can do just that. I am just going to come right out and say it -- the quest builder is one of the greatest boons ever for player-generated content in MMORPGs. Besides housing, it is the feature du jour for the creative crowd; I honestly can't see how any game can actually go without one. During this latest round of Choose My Adventure, I had the opportunity to check out the system in City of Heroes and revel in the creativity of others as well as try my hand at developing missions. And I tell you, it is addicting. Feel like trying your hand at shaping some stories for heroes (and villains) to star in? Stick with me, kid, and you'll be directing your own missions in no time.
Spiral Knights update introduces new mission types and more
It's been a little while since we heard from Three Rings' free-to-play dungeon-crawling title, Spiral Knights, but today we have some new information regarding the game's latest patch, and it brings a whole new degree of structure to the title in the form of new mission types. The team is adding four different types of missions in order to give players a solid path of progression as well as a quick fix for players who don't have a ton of time on their hands. The first of the four mission types is known as a rank mission. Rank missions comprise the main campaign of Spiral Knights and will allow players to climb the ranks of the organization. Each rank mission will grant players pre-set awards in addition to any loot found on the mission itself. Prestige missions, the second type of mission, are daily tasks that will reward players with prestige. Players with high prestige scores will receive an unspecified bonus sometime in the future. The third mission type, expansion missions, operate similarly to rank missions in that they "feature set rewards," but the missions must first be "unlocked with purchase," though as of now we don't know whether that means a microtransaction or an in-game-currency purchase. Lastly, we have arcade missions, which are the same arcade missions that players know and love, except now they can be joined directly from the mission interface instead of making you run to the arcade itself. For the full details on all the new mission types and features being added in the new patch, just head on over to the Spiral Knights forums and take a look.
NASA films dark side of the moon, finds no evidence of Brain Damage (video)
Take a moment to Breathe, because this one's kind of heady. NASA has just published a new video of the Dark Side of the Moon and, contrary to popular belief, it's not really all that dark. (We'd probably describe it as a subdued gray, if we had to, but feel free to go with Any Colour You Like.) Compiled into a 30-second video clip, this footage provides a cursory glimpse of the moon's hind parts (its "B-Side," if you will), panning over the rock from north to south, in all its crater-y glory. It's all part of an initiative from NASA's Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL), which presumably spent a lot of Time and Money to build its twin spacecraft, nicknamed Ebb and Flow. On January 19th, the lab sent the pair up to that Great Gig in the Sky, as part of the GRAIL MoonKAM mission -- a "progressive" educational outreach program geared toward middle school students. Ebb was charged with filmic duties, and did a remarkable job of shooting On the Run with its MoonKAM camera, returning high res footage to NASA's engineers, and giving both Us and Them something to think about during the next lunar Eclipse. See the video (along with its eerily sync-able counterpart) after the break, and if you've got any questions about it, please don't hesitate to Speak to Me.
Zuckerberg outlines idealistic Facebook mission in IPO filing
IPO filings aren't just a great way to raise money, they're also a perfect place for young CEOs and idealistic internet companies to grandstand and proclaim their altruistic motives. Whether or not you buy what they're shoveling selling is something different. Google had "do no evil," now Facebook has it's own mission statement, though, it's admittedly quite scatter brained. Buried deep in the IPO filing is a letter from Mark Zuckerberg to investors in which he lays out Facebook's mission and role in improving the world. Zuck doesn't think his social network is about poking cute girls and tilling virtual fields, he "hope[s] to change how people relate to their governments and social institutions." And, lest you think every move is some calculated ploy to free you from the burden of cash or personal information, the billionaire CEO explains, "we don't build services to make money; we make money to build better services." For the complete letter head on after the break. Trust us, whether you trust and like Zuckerberg or not, it's an interesting read.
NASA looks to send landers to Europa in 2020, wants to break the ice
There's still a lot of mystery surrounding Jupiter's moon Europa, but researchers at NASA seem fairly certain that there's a watery ocean lurking beneath its icy exterior. Their theories may finally be put to the test later this decade, thanks to a concept mission crafted by astronomers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. According to Space.com, JPL researchers have come up with a plan that would send a pair of landers to Europa by 2026, in the hopes of finding out whether the rock has ever supported life forms. The endeavor certainly wouldn't be easy, since Jupiter blankets its moon in heavy radiation, but researchers think they can mitigate these risks by sending in an extra lander as backup, and by keeping the mission short and sweet. Under the plan, each 700-pound robot would use a mass spectrometer, seismometers and a slew of cameras to search for any organic chemicals that may be lodged within the moon's ice. Neither craft will sport a protective shield, so they'll only stay around the planet for about seven days, so as to avoid any radiation damage. At this point, the mission is still in the concept phase, though the JPL is hoping to launch both landers by 2020. JPL researcher Kevin Hand was quick to point out, however, that this would be a "habitability mission," and that NASA doesn't expect to find any signs of current life on Europa. Lars von Trier was unavailable for comment.
