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Turbine lifts LotRO's Rohan NDA, unveils Mac client
On the flip side of the news earlier that Turbine is delaying Riders of Rohan until October 15th is the word that the studio has dropped the NDA for LotRO's fourth expansion. Community Manager Rick Heaton announced the lift on the forums: "Today we have officially released Riders of Rohan beta testers from their NDA. Beta testing will continue as we move towards our new release date of October 15th. In the meantime, those beta testers who wish to share their thoughts and experiences thus far with the general community are encouraged to do so here." With the NDA lift comes news that Turbine has been secretly working on a native OSX client for Mac players. It remains to be seen whether or not this client will be available with Riders of Rohan's launch.
What happened to Gatheryn?
We've recently received a tip-off to a lack of communication from the developers of the social steampunk MMO, Gatheryn, in recent months, signaling what could be the collapse of the game. The website is still up and running, but the closed beta signup page has vanished, the download game link is broken, and the game's servers are down for the count. Players are asking for assistance or information on what's going on with the game on the beta forums, but things are very, very silent. The current forum rumor (must have forum access to read link) is that Mindfuse Games has run out of funding and is shutting down the game, but that rumor has been posted by a forum account that only has one post and does not possess a developer tag, making the rumor extremely unverified. We have contacted Mindfuse Games for comment, but have yet to receive a response. [Thanks for the tip, Torsten!]
Wrath of the Lich King beta quietly ends
Crygil sprung an odd announcement on us all tonight shortly before 2 a.m. EST: The Wrath of the Lich King beta is over.I actually did a double take when I read this. Date check out? Yup, 11/4/2008. Time? Yup, 1:52:22 a.m. EST. Actual blue poster at forums.worldofwarcraft.com? Yup.Ouch. Beta over at 2:00 a.m. PST.No end event? No advanced notice? Just goodbye?This hurts.It's kind of like that girlfriend who you thought was really great, only to find one morning when you wake up that she's gone and all her stuff isn't there anymore. All you're left with is a note: "It's over."Well maybe it's not that bad, but still. I know I wasn't the only one expecting an end event like they've had during past betas, or during some PTRs. Those were fun, had lots of people and interaction with Blizzard. There was even one PTR event where a few other writers and I got whisked away by a GM.I gather we'll all have to wait to experience an end event in the future. Oh well. At least we have the memories of past fun to look back on.%Gallery-18020%
Forum Post of the Day: How do you like DEM clams?
I love it when an amusing blue response to a forum post crops up, and this one made my day. Earlier in the week, Ghostcrawler made a light-hearted and funny little post mimicking a Beta tester testing a talent tree that includes such gems as "Clever Banter" and "Sarcastic Yet Suspiciously Unfunny."At the end of it, she announced that clams are becoming stackable items in order to cheer us all up.As good-natured as all forum-goers are, the jokes surfaced about how amazing this change is, how it's going to crash the clam market, and how Blizzard is clearly pandering to casuals again. In response, Ghostcrawler wrote up the product of a fictitious emergency developers meeting, held with the goal of bringing clam-related things to do for the hardcore. I actually laughed out loud: this one is not to be missed.
Scattered Shots: The dev team takes on PvP
Welcome once again to Scattered Shots, WoW Insider's spot for all things Hunter, except for the stuff Big Red Kitty covers. Daniel Whitcomb will be your host today (a day late, for which he apologizes) as David Bowers tries to shake off some extra aggro. The state of Hunters in PvP is perhaps one of the most debated subjects in WoW PvP. Some call Hunters overpowered for their dispelling Arcane Shot (which is going away in Wrath, to be sent to the non-damaging Tranquilizing Shot), while others point to their low Arena representation and the ease of using line of sight to negate most of their DPS and Abolish Poison to get rid of their main PvP utility as proof that they need buffs. Regardless, even the devs acknowledge that Hunters probably need some help in PvP, and class designer Koraa recently spoke on the subject on the Beta forums. In his post, he covered the problems he sees Hunters having, and how Blizzard will be helping with those moving forward into Wrath. Unfortunately, his solutions seem confused in and of themselves. They involve giving Hunters more melee attack power (instead of more way to break from melee so they can use their ranged weapon) and a variety of talents scattered around many trees in such a way that it will be difficult for a solid PvP build to get them all. And, as I mentioned in a post yesterday, they still aren't giving pets resilience. Other Hunters such as Megatf have done an excellent job responding to some of Koraa's points in the thread itself, but I'd like to address and respond to the post myself in this week's column, and see how they stack up to the problems Hunters face in small scale Arena PvP.
Scattered Shots: Beastmastery in Wrath of the Lich King
Scattered Shots is for Hunters. Your host this week will be Daniel Whitcomb, who will continue his foray into the wide world of Wrath of the Lich King talents. Beastmastery has pretty much dominated the world of Hunters in Burning Crusade, with Serpent's Swiftness alone nearly singlehandedly allowing for the most efficient damaging shot rotations possible -- With a little bit of wrangling between haste and ranged weapon speed, of course. While the changes to Auto Shot clipping in Wrath will likely make shot rotations as we know them a thing of the past, Beastmastery is still looking to be a very viable tree in Wrath of the Lich King, thanks to some clever synergies and some amazing pet buffs.
Breakfast Topic: Achievement Suggestions
By now, you've hopefully had a chance to look through all the Achievements that we'll be seeing in the Achievement system to be released with WotLK. There's definitely a lot of them, and they seem to cover almost every possible angle of the game. Still, there's bound to be one or two good ones Blizzard missed. In this Beta forums thread, which is apparently being watched by Tigole, people have begun offering some pretty good suggestions for possible achievements that could be implemented in the future. Gish of Lich King suggests that one could get achievements for collecting full tier armor sets. Pez of Lich King suggests class specific achievements such as number of Mage tables summoned or number of lock boxes picked. I'd like to hear your suggestions too. Is there an Achievement that you'd like to see in Wrath of the Lich King?
Playing with talent calculators
Now that the NDA has been lifted from the official Alpha testing, and Beta is beginning, there's some real information out there about what the various classes' talent trees might look like. Of course, anything is subject to change, but it seems as though some classes, hunters and paladins in particular, are getting a much-needed overhaul. If you'd like to play around with your could-be future talent tree, both Wowhead and MMO Champion have updated their talent calculators to reflect the information revealed from the Alpha once the NDA lifted. When you're bored with that, you can head over to the official Beta forums and surf around.
Wrath of the Lich King Beta forums open to the public
You can now get your beta discussion going on with Blizzard via the Wrath of the Lich King Beta Forums, which have been made open to the public. This means you do not have to be in the beta to view the forums, but you do have to have to be in the beta to post in them. This is great news for those of us who want to keep track of all things Wrath, with comments and discussion happening right from Blizzard. They'll surely be a treasure trove of knowledge during the upcoming testing phase.It's turning out to be quite an exciting beta night. Stay tuned for more.
Forum Beta Testing: Finished!
I don't know about you, but I hate the World of Warcraft forums. Popular threads eventually break, meaning you can no longer browse through them (though people can keep posting to them), lending to the potential loss of much useful information (or much useless spam - but it's hard to tell!). Needed information is impossible to find due to a very poorly implemented search feature (perhaps it worked once upon a time, before the forums got so big). And I could go on! But at any rate, this is why I'm glad to see the new forums that Blizzard has been beta testing. And the beta testing period is now closed, meaning the forums should be released for general use soon. To that I can only say... yay!
Beta Forums Stress Test
Remember the new forum system Blizzard's been testing? Well, tomorrow they're going to be running a stress test of the new forums - by making the existing forums read-only for the duration of the test. So tomorrow afternoon, all of the action you'd usually see at forums.worldofwarcraft.com will be relocated to beta.worldofwarcraft.com. So let's see if the new forums system is any better than the old - be sure to run over and post, reply, or just spend some time reading the beta forums.
New Forums Up, Old Forums Down
While the shiny new beta forums are up and running, the old forums - with all their sticky posts and archived information - are offline. Drysc claims they're offline due to an unrelated issue and should be coming back, though the continued downtime is the longest in recent memory (starting late Thursday night). In the mean-time, conspiracy theorists speculate that the old forums have been pulled down to force players to test the new forums. However, while we're waiting for the old forums to rise from the dead, the beta forums do provide a source of entertainment, and in some cases information, as the same questions get asked and answered.
