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Allods Online previews patch 3.0.4, spills new server details
Allods Online is constantly on the move, and as such, the team recently announced that the next update will be coming soon to the game. In addition to a brand-new North American server, patch 3.0.4 will witness significant changes to the mentoring and questing systems. Mentoring came with the previous update and is still being fine-tuned. With 3.0.4, mentors will be limited to 10 apprentices per character. Apprentices can be dismissed if a player is over the 10 limit and wants to add a new one. The dev team also announced a mentor/apprentice quest line that will give rewards to both. These quests can be accessed starting at level 10 and completed once per five levels beyond that. Patch 3.0.4 will also include more improvements to questing. The quest tracker and find quest feature are slated to become more intuitive, and the automove ability has been expanded to allow the system to run players through multiple zones in one go. The devs examined the quest flow as well and adjusted it to make it smoother in certain areas. The new server announced yesterday will be called Avilon and was created in response to a larger-than-expected influx of players onto the single North American shard. Players will not be able to transfer existing characters to Avilon, as the devs want to keep the server fresh and fair for those who roll there.
Details on WAR's new user journey and apprentice system
Warhammer Online may have traveled a rocky road this past year but with each new patch, the game gets better and better. The latest patch installment to hit the public test server is 1.3.2, which features a New User Journey, Apprenticeship System, career balance changes, and further improvements to performance, stability, and RvR.The two biggest items being tested right now are the New User Journey and Apprenticeship System. The former introduces new players to the game much more effectively and efficiently, funneling them into the same starting area (Chaos vs. Empire), auto-adding them to a starter guild, and much more. The latter allows highly ranked players to drop their level (stats and abilities capped formulaically) and lowly ranked players to raise their level in order to play together.As for RvR, fortresses are being removed from the zone capture system, which should result in more frequent city sieges. Whether this is a good or bad thing is yet to be determined because depending on your timing you may not be able to join your friends due to the current instance mechanic. Keep warfare will now benefit from a new difficulty mechanic as well, which grants more rewards when more combatants are present.Check out the full 1.3.2 patch notes for all the gory details!
The Force Unleashed sells 1.5 million copies in its first week
It looks like we should've taken those book sales as an indication of how hungry Star Wars fans were for something new. The latest game to bear the Star Wars name, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, has managed to sell a whopping 1.5 million copies in its first 5 days on shelves. The Force is strong with ... uh, yeah. Sorry.Darrell Rodriguez, president of LucasArts, didn't expect such high numbers, apparently. "We're blown away by the response to the game." So, how many of you picked up the game? Did it blow you away or have you found it to be sub-par? Gallery: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Wii)
Forum post of the day: How to Rogue
We learn a lot form playing on our own, but by doing only that we can miss some of the nuances of our class. We can also read up on classes on websites like this one or specialty forums. Some people would like to be taught in a more direct manner. At some points, we've all taken others under our wings to show them the ropes. Most of us have gotten a few pointers along the way. We have mentors in most of our roles in life, so doesn't it make sense to have them in WoW as well? It can be hard to directly ask for assistance, especially in a places as prone to ridicule as the WoW General Forums. Apollymi of Greymane is looking for someone to teach her to be a better rogue. She said she's read the right guides but hasn't gotten the necessary experience to match other Rogues. She's looking for someone to mentor her in all things Roguish.
Gonna try with a little help from my friends...
As much as players and designers have lauded the Massively Multiplayer genre for being the social future of gaming, allowing players from disparate geographic and sociological backgrounds to come together in a virtual space to accomplish goals together, they're often still very anti-social experiences. As Van Hemlock explored in a blog post recently, the City of Heroes series is really one of the few games out there that let players of disparate levels play together in a meaningful experience.In some ways, its strange that more games don't offer the same kind of Sidekick/Exemplar system, where players can have their attributes raised or lowered to an appropriate level to be able to play with friend. As Van Hemlock discusses, part of it has to do with the way the CoX battle systems work. By working with relative percentages instead of absolute values, it's easier to tweak content difficulty by level. But some of it also just seems like willful disregard for how much more difficult keeping up in-game friendships is when you level at different rates. In any case, we were delighted to see that Age of Conan has its own sort of apprentice system already in place, and we hope it becomes the trend in the future.
Where's J Allard? Working at Wal-Mart
When we interviewed Peter Moore at E3 we asked him right away, "Where's J Allard?" Peter said he was riding BMX bikes or some such nonsense, whereas Dean Takahashi says he's been working on a top secret Xbox portable project. Turns out they were both wrong: J's been busy making guest appearances on television's The Apprentice! That's a pretty public showing ... so is he the face of the 360 or not? Really, I'm confused.On Monday's episode of The Apprentice, J was there to judge the results of the contestant's Xbox 360 Wal-Mart displays. You can check out photos and a summary of the show on NBC's website, or download the show from iTunes (link). Heads up to NBC, it's "J" not "Jay." It's not spelled out like Homer's middle name, it's just a letter. Why? 'Cause it's just cooler that way, okay?[Via GamerBabble](Update: Corrected my Homer-history. D'oh!)
