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PS3, Vita dungeon crawler Warrior's Lair canceled
Warrior's Lair, one of the first games announced for the Vita, is officially canned. Sony Computer Entertainment confirmed to IGN the PS3 and Vita cross-play action-RPG, first unveiled as Ruin back at E3 2011, is no longer in development. The news comes just over a year after rumors arose of the game's demise, amid rumblings of layoffs at co-developer Idol Minds. SCE had taken Idol Minds off the project, and tasked Sony San Diego solely with its completion. Sadly, that's not come to pass. When it first introduced Ruin, Sony focused on the cross-play, now an established feature across other games. With that selling point somewhat diminished, there unfortunately may not have been enough left to convince Sony to take the game forward.
PS3/Vita title Warrior's Lair not canceled, says Sony
Sony acknowledged in a matter-of-fact response the cross-platform PS3/Vita title Warrior's Lair -- previously known as Ruin -- has not been canceled. We followed up with the publisher last week after forum murmurings (some since deleted) claimed the game had been canned and over half the staff at developer Idol Minds were let go.To the first point, a Sony representative plainly stated, "Warrior's Lair is still in development; it isn't cancelled."As to whether the game is still in development at Idol Minds and if there were any layoffs? Idol Minds has not responded to our request for comment.Warrior's Lair was revealed at last year's E3 as a Diablo-style RPG with interesting social features.Update: Idol Minds is no longer on the project. Still no word from the company about layoffs.
PS3 / Vita RPG 'Ruin' now called 'Warrior's Lair'
Update your files, adventurers. Developer Idol Minds' hack-and-slash RPG, Ruin, which allows you to share save files and play between PS3 and PS Vita, now has a new name ... and it's about as generic as the previous one. It's called Warrior's Lair now. We don't know when we'll get to play Warrior's Lair again, and it's not part of the PlayStation Vita launch lineup, but as soon as we hear something we'll leave a message at the tavern. That is how warriors get their information nowadays, right?
PlayStation Vita title 'Ruin' connects to PS3 for continuous client gameplay, we give it a swing (video)
Cross-platform gaming is a wonderful idea, but Sony's showing off something even more impressive at E3 this year -- a game that you can starting playing on either PS3 or the PlayStation Vita handheld and immediately transfer to another console. Ruin leverages cloud storage to save your entire hack-and-slash RPG game, right down to the positions and actions of every nearby enemy and the structures you've destroyed. Then, a second or eight after you hit load on another machine, you're right back in the very same fight. Resuming on console or handheld and picking up exactly where you left off -- yep, it's a bona fide continuous client, and we had to give it a try. So, off to Sony's E3 2011 booth we went, to seek out developer Idol Minds.With both Vita and PS3 connected to a local router, it was both as simple and as mind-blowing as you'd expect -- simply save on one (no matter what you're doing), load on the other, and everything (save certain scripted animations) loads exceptionally quickly. In fact, Idol Minds VP Jeff Litchford said that while show floor conditions necessitated the local router, Ruin's cloud resume functionality would even work over 3G, as the save files are actually fairly small, on the order of 250KB. He couldn't tell us whether you'll have to purchase two copies of the game to make the magic happen (we're hoping not), but he did have some good news on the cloud storage front: it won't cost a thing to save your game data, not even a subscription to PlayStation Plus.Sean Buckley contributed to this report.
Ruin preview: Hack and social
Perhaps the PS Vita game with the highest profile after Sony's E3 press event is the working-titled Ruin, a hack-and-slash Torchlight-style RPG with some interesting social features. Developer Idol Minds (Pain) showed off the title during the event right after the PS Vita's official introduction, and as soon as the event ended, we ran to see just what the game would be like. What we found was a pretty traditional, if simple, dungeon crawler. At least a prototype of a dungeon crawler -- Ruin's most interesting features, like the social elements that will let you both build and equip a dungeon of your own, as well as attack the dungeons of your rivals, are still all theoretical so far. But the mechanics are there; as an Infernal Warrior (the only race/class combination on display, though Humans and Elves will also be playable as an Assassin or one of two other classes), I got to take down a small dungeon of enemies and collect the tasty (placeholder) loot that issued forth.
Ruin to bring social-action-RPG hybrid to PS Vita and PS3
Sony has announced a fairly neat sounding application for the PS Vita's beefy social networking features -- it's a "social-action-RPG" called Vita, which sees players create their own hero and lair, and siege the lairs of their friends (and rivals!) The top-down, Diablo-style lootfest will also have a PS3 version, which allows players to transfer (transfarr?) their saves between the two versions at-will.
Darksiders dev diary contains your daily recommended dose of epicness
There's a lot to absorb in the latest developer diary for THQ's celestial adventure title, Darksiders: Angels fighting demons, demons fighting horsemen of the apocalypse, horsemen fighting angels, giant worm monsters, the Apocalypse and, best of all, a horse that nearly killed Joystiq's own Kevin Kelly. Basically, we're saying that it's going to be tough to top the video you see above at any point today, as we doubt another video will force one of us to flash back to a moment in our lives where we experienced pure mortal terror.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Fine threads and feisty pets for warlocks
Even more tweaks to the warlock talent builds made it onto the PTR's 3.3 build yesterday. This time we see more buffs for pets. The Imp, the destruction lock's pet of choice, will now benefit from the Ruin critical strike damage bonus. So instead of having its critical Firebolt hits doing 150% of normal damage this will now be 200%. This will work out as a 10 to 15% damage increase for the imp. Since the Imp accounts for a little under 10% of a destruction lock's damage I think this should be a straight buff of just over 1%. Felhunter's have also had a buff but this one seems slightly odd. On paper it looks exactly the same as the the one for the imp -- Pandemic has been extended to include Shadow Bite in dealing 100% extra damage on a critical strike. The confusion lies in that Shadow Bite seems to be doing that on the live servers already. When tested on the PTR with Pandemic, however, its criticals are looking like they are doing 150% extra damage. It seems this change is going to need some further work, even if it is just to clarify the language. With this confusion, I'm less certain what impact the change will have on affliction DPS but expect it to be something like half of that for destruction. However it shakes out, this is a further buff for warlock damage. It's certainly nice to see some continued attention being applied to lock mechanics as we progress with the patch testing.
Patch 3.0.2 primer for Warlocks part III
DestructionLong considered the most efficient raiding spec throughout the Burning Crusade, Destruction will get a run for its money with the new and improved Affliction. It also remains to be seen if Blizzard's efforts at steering the spec clear of mindless Shadow Bolt spamming will prove successful. Certainly, there's more emphasis on Fire spells this time around, which we'll see deeper into the tree. If you do spec deep Destruction, do tell me how it goes. Send me a postcard from Naxxramas.Change is felt right off on the first tier as the popular Bane is moved up here. It's exactly the same, so getting it a tier earlier is a definite buff. Improved Shadow Bolt is unchanged, but I'd hold off on putting points here. Unless you're determined to pursue a Shadow Bolt spam spec, there're a good bunch of talents deeper in the tree to spend your points on.Cataclysm swapped places with Bane but was buffed in a sense because it now just costs 3 points for a 3% cost reduction but now grants crucial +Hit. We'll need it as we level up and re-gear in Northrend. Three points here is mandatory. In more point-saving generosity, Aftermath was reduced to a 2-point talent for the same effect. Does it make the talent any better? No, it still sucks. But now it sucks for three points less.On tier two we also see Molten Core, a new talent introduced to mix things up a little for Destruction. Molten Core encourages the use of DoTs, which are likely to proc it more than Shadow Bolts. This is great talent for Destruction Warlocks looking to specialize in Fire spells, as well as low enough in the tree for other specs such as Demonology, to pick up. If we want to diversify our play style, we should put three points here.If you're only branching out to Destruction from another tree, you might be faced with the decision of choosing between tier three's Shadowburn and a 51-point talent. I'll say it right off that you should skip Shadowburn. On the other hand, if you're moving deeper into Destruction, pick it up because you'll be sure to find a use for it. Five points in the more accessible Ruin is mandatory, as well. We can skip Demonic Power, which is essentially Improved Lash of Pain and Improved Firebolt rolled together. [EDIT: Sephirah correctly reminds me that Demonic Power ups DPS directly because we're going to have our Imp attack, anyway. So, score some points for Demonic Power!]The unchanged Destructive Reach on tier four is mandatory while the other talents are completely optional. If we're looking to PvP as Destruction -- why not? -- we should pick up Intensity not just for the pushback protection but because it's a prerequisite for a stun effect. We'll save points by skipping Improved Searing Pain. No, really. We're going to skip it.Devastation was moved to tier five, swapping places with Ruin. Now it's one talent point for a 5% crit, which is one of the best single point investments we can make in any tree. We'll also want to get Improved Immolate because aside from the fact that it's been buffed from 25% to 30% for two talent points less, we'll need it to get something really cool deeper in the tree. Besides, Blizzard really wants us to use Immolate. Pyroclasm is entirely optional, even for PvP considering the only spell we'll really use that can proc it is Conflagrate.We want Emberstorm. It's that simple. 10% more damage from Fire spells and a faster Incinerate is sweet. Also on tier six is the reworked Nether Protection, which now procs off any spell. It no longer grants immunity, but a damage reduction from any school. In some ways it's a buff since it can protect against Frost or Holy, for example, but it also no longer confers immunities to Silence or other Shadow spells (which probably wasn't intended to begin with). Unless we want more mitigation in PvP, we can skip that.Tier seven is where it begins to get a bit tight. We want Conflagrate, since it's an excellent one point investment. If we're raiding, we can actually skip Soul Leech since we really should be healed, anyway. If we solo or PvP, it's a great talent to have. It also opens up opportunities for our pet on the next tier. Backlash is another PvP talent for those time when Rogues or Warriors are being mean to us, but because there's a 3% crit bonus, I'd say we pick it up. Up next is Shadow and Flame in tier eight, which we'll max out because it scales Shadow Bolt insanely and tempt us to just spam the thing. Fortunately it also affects Chaos Bolt and Incinerate, so we may steer clear of the evil path of mindless Shadow Bolt spam. Since we skipped Soul Leech, we're obviously locked out from Improved Soul Leech. But feel free to pick it up for pet loving if you have points to spare.On tier nine, I'm skipping Shadowfury only because we've been moving away from PvP-centric talents in this post. I know, I know, some of you insist that Shadowfury is awesome for PvE, so you can very well spend that talent point there. It's just one point, anyway. What I'm really interested in is Backdraft. Didn't I say Improved Immolate would lead to something cool? Well this is it. It's a mini-Bloodlust or Heroism for three spells. Because Destruction is all about cast times, 30% haste is gold.Then we get Empowered Imp on the same tier. Check out that icon. That's one badass Imp. If little Rupjub crits, I crit. Well, almost. I get 20% more crit on my next spell, which is pretty darned good. The idea is to get the Imp into the action by spending talents to make it hit hard enough. He'll crit eventually. Here's where we can revisit Improved Soul Leech to keep the little guy topped up. See, I told you to hold off on getting Improved Shadow Bolt.If you find spamming direct damage spells a little mind numbing, you can invest some points into Fire and Brimstone. Didn't I tell you that Blizzard wants us to use Immolate? Well, here you go. Immolate will hit hard with this talent. The cool -- or uncool, depending on how you look at it -- is having to watch Immolate's duration hit the 5 second mark before throwing out a Conflagrate. Yes, I know this screws our timing up, but someone's bound to make an AddOn to tell us when to cast Conflagrate. Right? Anyone? Bueller?And then there's Chaos Bolt. It's a 51-point spell on a 12 second timer. Sure, it pierces through absorption effects and all that stuff... but 12 seconds? I mean, I can't kill a Pally with it anymore and I can only cast it every 12 seconds. Well, we're getting it anyway. We've gotten this deep, right? Besides, it deals whopper damage and it's great for teaching those Shadow Cloaked Rogues a lesson. It's a pretty decent one point investment and can do wonders once we figure out how to work it into our newly confusing and complex (but fun!) rotations.Well, that's the last of our Warlock talents primer for 3.0.2. I hope that helped you decide which direction you want to take your Warlock when the realms go up. I'm leaning towards a hybrid myself, but Haunt is so deliciously sexy... << BACK Zach helps guide you through the changes in 3.0.2, so you can be enthralled in all the demonic love Blizzard's thrown together. Check out other 3.0.2 Talent Guides, too, as well as everything about the so-called Echoes of Doom.
Joystiq hands-on: Darksiders: Wrath of War
One of the biggest things we missed at E3 this year was the upcoming Vigil Games / THQ title, Darksiders: Wrath of War. How we managed to miss this one is still unclear -- we can only assume that it was in our blind spot the entire time. So, during our recent jaunt down to Austin for the Game Developer's Conference, we made time to stop by Vigil and take an in-depth look at the the team's debut title and two-year labor. Luckily, they weren't holding any grudges against our non-existent E3 coverage and were nice enough to give us a huge chunk of time with the game and the designers.Concept artist and Vigil founder Joe Madureira and lead designer Hadyn Dalton sat down with us for two hours, taking us through the game and showing us levels that haven't been released to the public just yet. We got to take control of protagonist War and do battle with enemies, solve puzzles, and even take his massive warhorse Ruin for a spin. Check out the full writeup after the break, and be sure to check out the gallery, full of exclusive images from the game, just below. If you've been itching for a Joe Madureira Battle Chasers fix, this might be about as close as you can get.%Gallery-33091%
Blood Pact: Destruction in Wrath Beta
And then there's Destruction. I'll be honest and admit I was never a huge fan of Destruction. Spamming Shadow Bolts and -- this was what made it oddest for me -- having no pet out didn't feel right at all. I believe that Warlocks are a pet class, and sacrificing our pet for more DPS throughout entire encounters was off, even if it was the infernal thing to do RP-wise. The classic 0/21/40 raiding build essentially made our demons a 6 second cast buff.Things are going to be somewhat different in Wrath of the Lich King, although Destruction is still pretty much the tree for blowing up things into oblivion. A lot of the talents incentivize mixing up spells and steer away from chain casting Shadow Bolt. A talent deep in the tree also rewards keeping a pet out. The tree is essentially a crit tree, the tree to make things go boom, although Blizzard clearly wants Destruction Warlocks to throw other things into the mix.
Instant Corruption and other infernal joys
Hot on the heels of Blizzard asking Warlocks for feedback on Metamorphosis, the Wrath development team shows how amazingly fast they work and how they actually listen to players. Koraa and Ghostcrawler materialized into the Warlock Beta forums to announce -- simultaneously on separate threads -- that Metamorphosis was going to change significantly in an upcoming Beta build, with the changes happily incorporating most of the feedback that players threw in.First of all, Metamorphosis will no longer replace a summoned demon -- a no-brainer feature that should have been there from the start considering that most talents in the tree buff up the Warlock's demon! It will also now increase armor by 600%, up from 360%, a coefficient that scales better with a Warlock's base armor of... cloth. Significantly, the demon form will now also increases all damage by 40%, after players realized that turning into a demon with many melee abilities and being cut off from normal spells actually reduced their DPS. Speaking of normal spells, Warlocks in demon form can now cast those, too. These changes come in addition to a few others that Blizzard is working on such as a few demon form-exclusive abilities -- and it seems like Demonology will finally be truly, diabolically fun. [EDIT: In my excitement I forgot to mention that the spell was reverted to a 5-minute cooldown and the form lasts 45 seconds. Still awesome!]I griped about this on the last Blood Pact along with a throng of other Warlocks, and it seems like Blizzard has heard us -- Corruption will now be baseline instant cast! It's a change that has been a long time coming, and it's finally turning real. Improved Corruption will instead increase the damage of Corruption by up to 20%, effectively negating Empowered Corruption and hopefully freeing up space for a new, exciting talent or at least more points to use in an already bloated tree.
Found Footage: Blending an iPhone 3G
Sure, we all worry about dropping our precious electronics (like our iPhones, iPods and Macs), however, the folks at Blendtec laugh in the face of danger. That's because they tend to blend things. Very expensive things. Like this iPhone 3G. On an iPhone/iPod touch? Click here to watch this video in YouTube.app.
New European server, Blade's Edge, opens today [Updated]
The Ruin Battlegroup of the European servers will be getting a new English language PvE server named Blade's Edge, Thundgot has announced. It will be a completely new realm, which means no transfers allowed for the first few months. In addition, the Ahn'Qiraj gates will be closed -- which means this is your chance to get a group over there and start powerleveling toward the Qiraji battle tank and the Scarab Lord title. Apparently, some people have been complaining about queue times in the Ruin battlegroup for some time, so hopefully this should ease those problems once people get on and start leveling. The server will open today at 17:00 Paris time. Good luck to everyone who decides to reroll there! Update: Strike that, it looks like they decided to let the it go live right after maintenance. Thanks for the heads up, Roelof.
Server crashes plague Ruin battlegroup and others
It seems to be an unfortunate reality of WoW, if not MMORPGs in general: When a new patch goes live, more often than not, it's going to be a bit rocky on the servers for a while. Patch 2.4.2 is no exception, Many servers are having trouble staying up, including most of the Ruin Battlegroup, which according to a few our tipsters has been having more than its share of trouble lately. Blue Poster Vrakthis has assured posters on the Customer Service Forum that the Realm issues are being looked into, but so far, there does not seem to be a solid reason for the downtime other than, hey, it's patch day! EDIT: It has now been confirmed that the downtimes were intentional for the purpose of emergency maintenance. The downtime should be minimal. As of the time of this writing, the following servers are down:
15 Minutes of Fame: Arena team Smites its way to the top
15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – both the renowned and the relatively anonymous, the remarkable and the player-next-door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about at 15minutesoffame (at) wowinsider (dot) com.Meet 5v5 Arena team M L H of Argent Dawn, ranked 7th in the Ruin battlegroup when we spoke with them recently and holding strong this week at 12th with a team rating of 2340. M L H's claim to fame: they are currently the highest-ranked 5v5 team that includes a Smite Priest. The core of this chilled-but-skilled team is a Boomkin Druid, and their secret to their success is the savvy deployment of four healing-capable DPS classes. In this lengthy interview, 15 Minutes of Fame sat down with the whole team to get their insights on PvP, strategy, team composition and a brand new video of the team in action.M L H of Argent Dawn, Ruin battlegroupEntal, Elemental Shaman Grackel, Disc/Holy Priest Iashu, Holy Paladin Vorgestellt, Frost Mage Molimo, Balance Druid
Atari may get the boot from Nasdaq
If Atari's financial woes weren't already a beacon that the legendary game company has fallen far, their notice of potential delisting from the Nasdaq stock exchange should pretty much seal the deal. Atari received the notice from Nasdaq because they did not file their financial report for their fiscal year ending March 31.Atari says they haven't filed yet because they're still trying to figure out what accounting entries they need to make. With any luck The Witcher and Alone in the Dark will help the company out this fiscal year. Heck, for all we know, My Horse & Me could be Atari's killer application which will help them ride into the land of fiscal fortitude.
DS Daily: Multitasking
One of the great things about the DS and other handheld systems is that they don't require the use of the TV. Because of this, we often find our DS time and our TV time combined. Portrait of Ruin is bliss by itself, but if we can watch "Darmok" while playing it, it's even better. We're kind of busy here at the bustling DS Fanboy compound-- we have to pack as much relaxation into our downtime as possible. Occasionally we'll realize that between the DS, the TV, and the laptop, we've got four screens in front of us, and then we get a little scared that we're going to go crazy very quickly.What about you, readers? Do you play while watching TV? Or while doing homework, or participating in chats for online classes? Or is two screens at a time enough?
Castlevanias on sale at Amazon
If you live in the US, you have a DS and you don't have both Castlevania games, today is the day you will fix that problem. Amazon.com has Portrait of Ruin on sale for $20.99, and its predecessor Dawn of Sorrow for $19.99. Buy them together, and you get free shipping.That's two of the best games released in the last few years, for less than a copy of Pimp My Ride for the Xbox 360. It's a pretty excellent deal.[Via NeoGAF]
Castlevania: Poster of Awesome
Okay, so you think you're cool because you got the preorder bonus package with your copy of Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. Well, you're right. You are cool, and we are jealous.But here's a Portrait of Ruin promotional item that we can all covet together. This poster comes with the soundtrack CD, and features art from Suikoden character designer Fumi Ishikawa that we wish had been used in the game. Oh, and about the actual item this poster is included with-- did we mention that the actual Portrait of Ruin music is amazing? We almost forgot about that part.This poster is only being included with the first shipment of CDs, and, of course, this package is only available in Japan. We grudgingly accept that; our wallets ill need a drain such as a $21 CD.
