Retribution
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'The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners' sequel is on the way
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners sequel is in development.
New 'Overwatch' map brings the battle to Italy's canals
Last month, players of Blizzard's hero shooter Overwatch took a trip into the game's fictional past with a new temporary game mode, Retribution. The brawl portrayed heroes escaping through the streets of Venice after a clandestine mission gone wrong. Though the event ended on Tuesday, players can still roam (and fight) around gorgeous Italian canalways as the latest map, Rialto, is added to the game -- along with a few hero changes in the latest patch.
‘Overwatch’ event retelling the heroes’ shadowy past is live
After plenty of teasing, the Overwatch team revealed the game's next event, Retribution, would feature a mode telling the story of some of the game's ruthless heroes. Now it's live, and until April 30th, players can dive in to explore when the shadowy BlackWatch squad went up against operatives from the rival Talon organization. And, of course, earn a bunch of new skins.
The next 'Overwatch' event is a Blackwatch mission in Venice
After a week of teases, Blizzard has finally revealed what's in store for the Overwatch Mission Archives, the new title for the events following last year's Uprising. During the Overwatch League competition, Jeff Kaplan unveiled this year's event, Retribution, a new PvE brawl that sees four members of Blackwatch (Moira, McCree, Genji, and Reaper) taking on Talon operatives in Venice after dark.
EVE Evolved: EVE needs real colonisation now
MMOs have absolutely exploded in popularity over the past decade, with online gaming growing from a niche hobby to a global market worth billions of dollars each year. Once dominated by subscription games like EverQuest and World of Warcraft, recent years have seen free-to-play games take centre stage. Global MMO subscriptions have been reportedly shrinking since 2010, and EVE doesn't appear to be immune to this industry-wide trend. Though February 2013's figures showed EVE subscriptions have technically grown year-on-year, those numbers were published just after the Chinese server relaunch, and CCP hasn't released any new figures since. Developers have done a good job of catering to current subscribers and polishing existing gameplay with the past few expansions, but the average daily login numbers are still the same as they were over four years ago. EVE will undoubtedly hook in plenty of new and returning subscribers when its deep space colonisation gameplay with player-built stargates and new hidden solar systems is implemented, but time could be running out on these features. Hefty competition is due in the next few years from upcoming sandbox games such as Star Citizen, EverQuest Next, Camelot Unchained, and Elite: Dangerous, and CCP will have to release something big soon to bring in some fresh blood. In this week's EVE Evolved, I ask whether CCP should focus on new players and suggest plans for two relatively simple colonisation-based expansions that could get EVE a significant part of the way toward its five-year goal in just one year.
The Light and How to Swing It: Retribution after patch 5.4
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions! Back in June (Wow, seriously? Tempus fugit, I suppose.) I shared my thoughts on some of the changes coming in patch 5.4. As is typical for me when it comes to change, I was a bit harsh in some of my pre-judgments and, now that we are well into the newest content Blizzard has to offer, I'd like to revisit a few of those points. Inquisition's longer duration Originally I was not very happy about this change. I felt that maintaining a relatively shorter duration buff was part of what distinguished a "good" ret paladin from a "bad" one, as if squeezing out a tiny amount of extra DPS would make a dramatic difference in performance, and that making it easier to maintain would make the spec utterly boring and unchallenging. Boy, was I wrong. It took some getting used to at first, for as Inquisition's duration doubled the WeakAura bar that I used to track it remained the same, resulting in far too many early refreshes than I care to admit. But after the honeymoon I had settled into our new relationship pretty well. It may only be an additional 30 seconds, but it did wonders for setting my mind at ease when I went to refresh it. I still wonder if this is where the devs will stop with it, or if they'll eventually make it passive or allow other abilities to extend its duration (essentially making it passive anyway). I would like to think that Blizzard has learned a great deal from how much tanks are enjoying active mitigation and realize that, on the whole, "active" is fun whereas "passive" is not.
The Light and How to Swing It: Strength DPS gear in Siege of Orgrimmar
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions! A new patch means more gear, and more gear means another gear list. Let's get to it before I change my mind and write about how awful it was trying to solo Valithria Dreamwalker in 10-man heroic Icecrown Citadel as holy -- I still can't shake the nightmares. Unless otherwise noted, the following gear can be found within the Siege of Orgrimmar raid. Non-tier pieces appear in normal, warforged, heroic, and heroic warforged varieties, similar to the gearing scheme in Throne of Thunder. Oh, and although I covered Siege of Orgrimmar two-handed strength weapons in a previous article, I will briefly repeat their drop locations for the sake of completeness. Head Helm of the Night Watchman – drops from the Spoils of Pandaria encounter. Thranok's Shattering Helm – drops from Galakras. Helmet of Winged Triumph – token drops from Thok the Bloodthirsty. Magdalena's Murderous Crown – drops from Ordos on the Timeless Isle, and named after death knight theorycrafter and community member Magdalena. Neck Juggernaut's Ignition Keys – drops from Iron Juggernaut. Malkorok's Tainted Dog Tags – drops from Malkorok. Anafielle's Spiked Choker – drops from Ordos on the Timeless Isle, and named after ret paladin theorycrafter and community member Anafielle.
EVE Evolved: Strategic resources for everyone!
The past four EVE Online expansions have mostly focused on adding small features and overhauling old game mechanics and content that were beginning to show their age. Crucible delivered dozens of small but highly-requested features and gameplay improvements, and Inferno and Retribution continued with overhauls of several aging PvP systems. Even Odyssey contained mostly small features and revamps, its biggest gameplay features being a new hacking minigame and a streamlined scanning interface. It's been several years since EVE has received a truly massive and game-changing feature like wormholes or a sovereignty revamp, but that may all be about to change! CCP recently announced its intention to start reaching for big ideas again, but this time set over a more realistic timeframe. If everything goes according to plan, the next five years could see the introduction of player-built stargates and true deep space colonisation. I wrote about the potential of this concept last week and looked at some of the big features we'd need to make it a reality, but I didn't really delve into my personal favourite idea for a potential future expansion: New strategic resources and player-created deadspace complexes. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at how strategic resources could be used to get even individual players invested in something worth fighting for, and how player-created deadspace dungeons could be a great way to introduce them.
Weapons and stats for ret paladins in Siege of Orgrimmar
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions! Weapons have always been my favorite piece of gear. They're iconic and powerful; they define our spec more clearly than any spell or ability. So when I stepped into Throne of Thunder and finally saw Zerat, Malakk's Soulburning Greatsword drop, I took one look at my aging Shin'ka, Execution of Dominion, a pale copy of its normal and heroic variants, and quickly tossed the axe aside. And then did the same thing to Zerat when we saw Uroe, Harbinger of Terror drop from Lei Shen. And again when a heroic Greatsword of Frozen Hells gracefully tumbled from the heavens and landed on the corpse of Horridon, nestled in whatever pockets or pouches or sacs a massive direhorn may have. As patch 5.4 and the Siege of Orgrimmar loom on the horizon, some exciting and deadly instruments wait to be plundered. Since this will (okay, might) be the final raid of the expansion, now is a good time to reexamine our stat weights before we make any judgment calls on the bludgeons that those savages have to offer.
3 things retribution paladins should borrow from windwalkers
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions! After about a dozen or so failed attempts, I am finally leveling a monk. I'm not sure I could even tell you why I failed to push myself past level 20, but almost every jade-colored Grid square I had started would eventually meet the business end of the word "Delete" before learning how to ride a bike. Now I am jabbing and kicking my way into Outland and, somewhat shamefully, am having a complete blast. I almost feel bad that my weekly playtime on the monk is exceeding that of my paladin by a significant margin, though after reading through the forums and seeing many posters make comparisons between ret paladins and windwalker monks, I don't feel quite as bad. Indeed, in many ways my monk reminds me of my paladin -- a melee class using a secondary resource reminiscent of combo points and maintaining a damage-increasing buff feels right at home. Still, though, there are a number of major differences between the specs, enough to make me a little jealous of what monks have that paladins don't.
Two great things about the contemporary ret paladin
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions! Patch 5.3 has turned out to be a great time to be a ret paladin. Well, in my opinion it's always a great time to be a ret paladin, but this new patch and the changes it brought with it really drive the point home. Granted, the only change we saw was a buff to our weapon-based damage via Sword of Light, which, while being a welcome boost to our DPS, isn't necessarily the most earth-shattering, game-changing thing in all of Azeroth. Still though, it opens some doors and allows us to be more competitive in the DPS game. I have to admit, my inspiration for this column came from reading Matt Rossi's warrior column, The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Survival and the modern warrior. As I was reading through the piece, I found myself unconsciously caressing my keybind for Divine Shield, no doubt a realization of how blessed we paladins are when it comes to self-preservation mechanics and abilities. Some of the troubles that Matt detailed I have either sidestepped or easily handled with our generous toolbox, and his angst has given me a newfound appreciation for the veritable arsenal of useful spells at our disposal. This week I'll be touching on a couple of our newer abilities that have proven time and time again to be so valuable and effective that I can't imagine playing a paladin without them.
EVE Evolved: Ten years of EVE Online
Tomorrow marks a huge milestone in MMO history as sci-fi sandbox EVE Online officially turns ten years old. Released by a tiny icelandic development studio whose only previous release was a board game featuring Reykjavik's favourite cross-dressing mayor, EVE has slowly grown over the past decade to become one of the industry's biggest and most stable subscription titles. Following 2011's monoclegate scandal that led to around 8% of players quitting and CCP Games shedding 20% of its employees, this year saw EVE Online climb to new heights as it regained the playerbase's confidence and smashed the 500,000 subscriber barrier. As a special side-note, the EVE Evolved column also turned five years old last week; it has now officially been running for over half of EVE's lifetime. The past year has been remarkably successful for CCP, with both of the year's EVE expansions being extremely well received and console MMOFPS DUST 514 finally starting to take shape. The Inferno and Retribution expansions fixed a staggering number of small issues that were broken in the game while also making big changes to bounty-hunting, piracy, and PvP across the board. We also saw huge emergent events like the Battle of Asakai, a $6,000 ship kill, and the five trillion ISK faction warfare exploit this year. With DUST 514 officially launching in just over a week on May 14th and players fired up about the upcoming Odyssey expansion, the future's looking bright for EVE Online as it heads into its second decade. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look back at some of year's top EVE stories, stories that touched real life, and what the future holds for EVE's second decade.
A guide to Guild Wars 2's Molten Weapon Facility dungeon
Massively's Richie "bogotter" Procopio is concerned for you. He's concerned that you might not have tried out Guild Wars 2's Molten Weapon Facility dungeon, the latest installment of the game's "Living Story" arc Flame and Frost: Retribution. He's equally concerned that you might have missed the memo about just how temporary this dungeon really is: It's over on May 12th, meaning you don't have long to check it out before it's gone. Forever. But it's all good because Richie has put together a brand-new video guide to the dungeon, so you can either watch it and get a jump on playing through the zone yourself this weekend or just live vicariously through him, which would certainly involve less death. Enjoy his walkthrough after the break! (Dead goat sold separately.)
Flameseeker Chronicles: It's time for some retribution in Guild Wars 2
Another patch day is upon us. Among other things, Guild Wars 2's Flame and Frost: Retribution is bringing in a new living story dungeon and some much-needed structured PvP improvements. Over the weekend, members of the press were invited to preview some of the incoming content. I'd like to talk about it with you, so be warned that there are spoilers for the living story dungeon ahead. Something that I found particularly interesting about all of this is that the Molten Weapons Facilities dungeon is going to be available for less than two weeks. The dungeon is due to exit on May 12th. I had expected it to be time-limited, of course, but I think I was expecting a little more time than that. Anyway, let's dive right into it.
Flameseeker Chronicles: April's Guild Wars 2 patch brings custom arenas, spectator mode, and a living story dungeon
It is time to start talking about Guild Wars 2's April update for reals. I've got some serious knowledge to drop on you regarding the Flame and Frost: Retribution update, so let's get right to it. Retribution will be the final installment of the Flame and Frost living story arc. To tie everything off, we're getting a new story dungeon that'll take us deep underground into the Molten Weapon Facilities. Structured PvP is getting some love in the form of custom PvP arenas and spectator mode. Guilds are getting more missions and new rewards. The gem store will be getting new stuff. Let's dive in and look at some specifics, shall we?
EVE Evolved: Five years of EVE Evolved
About five years ago, on April 27th, 2008, I joined the Massively team and wrote the very first issue of the EVE Evolved column. Five years later, the column is still going strong and delivering its weekly dose of EVE Online to thousands of readers. I used to worry about running out of ideas to write about, but regular game updates and hilarious player shenanigans mean there's always something interesting going on in New Eden. When EVE hits its 10th anniversary in May, this column will have been running for just over half of the game's lifetime. In that time, I've written over 250 in-depth articles, guides, in-game stories and opinion pieces on EVE Online and a few on DUST 514. As usual, I'll be celebrating this anniversary by rounding up this year's column highlights and giving away two 30-day Pilot's License Extensions to two lucky readers. To enter the competition, write a comment explaining which EVE Evolved articles from this year you liked best and what topics you'd like to see covered in the coming year. You will need an active EVE account to claim the prize, so be sure to include your character name in your comment if you want to be in with a chance. If you'd rather not give out your character name or don't have an EVE account but would like to give the game a go, you can sign up a new trial account and use the name of your new character. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look back at the highlights from the column's fifth year!
Guild Wars 2 wraps up Flame and Frost living story this month
The current "living story" event that's been progressing in Guild Wars 2 over the past few months is set to unveil its final chapter at the end of April. Flame and Frost: Retribution will debut on April 30th, and ArenaNet has a short preview as to what we should expect. In the living story finale, players will strike back against the Molten Alliance -- a team-up of the Flame Legion and Dredge -- by charging into the enemy's weapons facilities. Players will fight alongside event co-stars Rox and Braham to battle "a final hybrid menace." Could it be the unholy pairing of Twilight fandom and hipster subculture? Only time will tell! Catch up on the previous installment of Flame and Frost in a recent column of Flameseeker Chronicles.
The Light and How to Swing It: Swap seals, not sandwiches
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions! Not being particularly captivated by anything in patch 5.2 so far, I've recently picked up a prot warrior and have carried him through some of the lower level areas. This isn't the first time I've tried leveling up a warrior; back in Wrath I had a level 80 fury warrior that was loads of fun, at least until Blizzard nerfed Titan's Grip and my poorly equipped berserker cow lost his ill-gotten mojo. Since then I've tried to recapture that magic but there was always something that bugged me about the warrior playstyle: stance dancing. Being forced to choose between creating complicated macros or increasing my number of keybinds by some unseemly factor, I have typically opted for the hidden choice that was retiring the character. Thankfully this aspect of the warrior class seems to have been toned down a bit in Mists, so I figured I'd give our shielded brethren another go. As paladins we don't have to deal with stances that lock us into or out of certain abilities (though many have pleaded with Blizzard to change that), but we do have something similar -- the seal system. The Swiss Army seal If you happened to pick up the paladin class sometime after vanilla WoW, you were fortunate enough to level up under the new seal regime. Under the old system, seals were a short-duration buff that was immediately consumed upon casting Judgement (back then they didn't skimp on the vowels!) I vaguely remember this mechanic, back when my friends first introduced me to the game. I very much disliked having to recast my seal so often, as many others did, I'm sure.
How to key-bind your retribution paladin
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions! There are few things more frustrating while playing video games than being unable to control your character properly. In select cases this can be due to some fault in the game itself, but more often than not it tends to be a hardware malfunction. I had an increasingly difficult time playing Halo 3 when I would whip my controller at the wall in a blind rage every time someone would counter-snipe me just when I found a particularly good perch. Recently though, my troubles have been with my mouse. My Logitech G500 has served me well for a few years but countless hours of furious clicking in games like Diablo III and Torchlight II have taken their toll. After some careful deliberation I decided to get the G500's older brother, the Logitech G600. I felt, playing as much WoW as I do these days, investing in a self-proclaimed "MMO mouse" would be sensible. When I got the mouse and unboxed it, however, I was not prepared for just how many buttons this thing has. I sat with my spellbook open trying to find the most reasonable arrangement of keybinds for longer than I care to admit. Eventually I settled on a group of binds that I'm slowly but surely getting accustomed to, though not before I "misclick" and toss a Hand of Protection on a hunter. This week I'd like to go over keybinds, discussing some general tips and going over two different schemes that I've used that hopefully some of you will find useful (unless you're left-handed, in which case I apologize that these tips may not be all that helpful for your sinister situation). If you have another setup you'd like to share, please do!
EVE Online hits 500,000 subscribers, heads into second decade
Most modern MMOs launch to an initial flurry of sales followed by a steady decline in player activity, but sci-fi MMO EVE Online has lived life in reverse. The game initially failed to secure a large number of launch sales but has since grown organically into one of the most successful subscription MMOs on the planet. EVE developer CCP Games told Massively today that the game has now officially broken the 500,000 subscription barrier. Subscription numbers hit the 450,000 mark following the relaunch of EVE's Chinese server Serenity in December of last year, and they have continued to climb ever since. This new subscription milestone is attributed to the success of EVE's recent Retribution expansion and the anticipation building over upcoming console MMOFPS DUST 514, which is set on actual planets in the EVE universe. EVE is due to hit its 10th anniversary this year on May 6th, and developers have been taking the opportunity to look forward at what the coming decade will bring to the game. We caught up with CCP for a quick peek at the studio's plans for the future and to find out what kind of announcements we can expect from EVE Fanfest in April of this year.
