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Dungeons & Dragons Online to launch Update 12 on November 9th
Do you feel as if there's a hole in your Dungeons & Dragons Online experience, a hole that could only be filled by the launch of Update 12? Well, then, you're in luck. It looks like Update 12 will be going live on November 9th, just over a week from today, ushering in a new round of changes for players to enjoy. And not just changes -- the game is actually ushering in an entirely new class, the Artificer, unlocked as a favor reward by playing through content of this update and its predecessor. Not your speed? That's all right; there are plenty of other features listed on the official update page, including the new Challenges system, armor appearance kits, and new hirelings that outclass your character's raw level. It should bring quite a bit of entertainment to both subscribers and free players alike, so if you've been awaiting this patch with bated breath, best mark your calendar.
Allods Online previews the Mausoleum of Sparks
One of the most traditional challenges in video games is having players face off against waves and waves of enemies, testing endurance as well as reaction time. Allods Online is putting forth its own version of this challenge with the upcoming 2.0.6 patch via the Mausoleum of Sparks, and if you can't wait to face off against the gauntlet, the game's development team has put together a preview to help sate your appetite. As explained in the preview, players won't be facing these waves unaided; health bonuses, regeneration bonuses, and other buffs obtainable from the machinery of the arena. However, the resources for upgrading the area are limited, so it'll take strategy to ensure that you can make it through all of the waves in store. There are also rewards for the groups that perform the best in the trial, all giving Allods Online players more incentive to take part in the new challenge.
The Daily Grind: What challenges have you added to your game?
I'm always fascinated with stories of players who deliberately add challenges to their MMO gameplay. Sometimes you hear about folks who try to get to the level cap without killing a single creature, or people who play with naked (unarmored) toons, or those who make it their mission to complete every single achievement and quest there is. I see self-created challenges as an attempt to add spice and flavor into games, usually after you've long since gotten bored of the most efficient leveling path. Some players think up these challenges to add a slice of sandbox-style goals into an otherwise theme park-oriented title. Right now, one of my characters in Lord of the Rings Online is attempting to do every single solo quest in each zone before going elsewhere. It's challenging to slow myself down and get over that desire to progress and go for the big XP rewards, but it's a ton of fun so far as well. So, big or small, what challenges have you added to your game? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Daily Grind: What's your least favorite sort of boss fight?
If you study a fair bit of literary theory, you'll come across the idea that there are only a handful of different stories at the most basic level. The same is true of boss fights in most MMOs -- while there are variants, you can generally break a fight down to its component elements. DPS races, gear checks, endurance fights, add management, positioning battles... from World of Warcraft to Lord of the Rings Online to City of Heroes, there are going to be fights where you have to avoid standing in things while killing the boss gradually. Of course, each of these fights can bring different challenges, but not all of them are entirely welcome ones. So which set of mechanics do you find the least appealing? Do you find positioning fights irritating as they completely disregard character stats in favor of dancing? Do you dislike DPS races where everyone just brainlessly pounds on the keyboard? Are you sick of burning down non-entities in order to fight the actual boss? Or is there another mechanic altogether that gets your goat? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
PAX East 2011: Stalking through DDO's Update 9
One of the scariest games I ever played has to be the original Silent Hill. A nearly empty town shrouded with fog and featuring one of the most terrifying elementary schools ever devised? Yes, this is why I didn't sleep much in 1999. So when I started to get flashbacks as Fernando Paiz took me through the creepy alleyways of Dungeon and Dragons Online's upcoming update, I had to excuse myself and run around the PAX East show floor for a few minutes while shrieking like a tormented cat. OK, it wasn't that frightening, but I definitely was getting a Silent Hill vibe from the latest adventure pack that Turbine has crafted for the game. Coming "soon" (TM, all rights reserved, void in Utah and the Yukon Territories), DDO's Update 9 promises to bring a wide assortment of lavish treats to a hungry populace. At the center of it is a level 15 quest chain that centers around mysterious abductions, a skittish population, and nightmares made flesh. Hit the jump as I recall my brush with certain death in these adventures and relate the other jewels of Update 9!
NYCC 2010: The City of Heroes Issue 19 panel
It's the end of the convention season, and City of Heroes fans on the East Coast managed to get one last treat -- another chance with the development team that had long been anchored firmly on the other side of the country. The team's panel in March at PAX East saw the revelation of several new facts about the game, including the first announcement of Kinetic Melee and Electric Control, and the panel that closes out the year at New York Comic Con contained several interesting new facts as well. Melissa Bianco, David Nakayama, and Jesse Caceres were all in attendance, with the panel overseen by community representative Tia Parurahi. With Going Rogue having been out for nearly two months, this panel focused on the upcoming Issue 19 and what the changes mean for the game, as well as how much the development team is ramping up production to improve the game all around.
Exclusive City of Heroes developer diary on the design of Dual Pistols animation
Even if you hate the ranged powers in City of Heroes with the heat of the sun, it's impossible to deny how stylish the animations for Dual Pistols look. The amount of movement in every single power makes the set feel organic and action-oriented, regardless of any other mechanical elements. But what went into making one of the marquee power sets for Going Rogue look so fluid and interesting? Nelson Tam, an animation artist for Paragon Studios, was the mastermind behind the gun-fu on display for heroes and villains alike. In our exclusive developer diary, "How John Woo Inspired my Gun Fu," he explains how the animations came to life, from the earliest point of conception to the finished product that players can enjoy. City of Heroes players have clamored for the set nearly since the launch of the game, but as the diary explains, it wasn't necessarily quite so easy to get it to look right in the game. Click on past the cut!
Red Dead Redemption to get Rockstar Social Club exclusive challenges and more
Rockstar Games has unveiled how it will be using the Rockstar Social Club service for Red Dead Redemption, and cowboys (and girls) looking for a little extra horsin' around won't be disappointed. The Social Club is offering achievements and challenges on top of the game, so, for example, one early mission that has you horsedragging an outlaw around will have a target time, and Social Club members who beat that time will get access to a special "Guns Blazing" cheat that gives your shots the chance to light enemies on fire. There will also be game-wide challenges, including one later this month that will require everyone playing the game to hit a certain amount of money raised, with an Xbox Live or PlayStation Home avatar T-shirt as a prize. There will also be community news, multiplayer events, special leaderboards and lots of stats tracked on the Social Club website. 100% completion is even "exclusively" in the Social Club, so presumably the only way you'll be able to know that you've done everything the West has to offer is to log on with a Rockstar Games account and find out. Kind of peculiar that information isn't in the game itself, no? At least signing up for the Social Club is free, so if you're planning to ride the plains next week, might as well do it now.
Unlock items in Guitar Hero 5 through song 'challenges'
The neat features in Activision and Neversoft's Guitar Hero 5 -- that's the next full-band installment in the franchise, if you'll remember -- keep on piling up. The latest addition is what Neversoft calls "challenges." Sure, the name lacks creativity, but the feature itself is ingenious -- each song contains an additional goal that, when completed, unlocks new items for your faux-rocker.For instance, the end of David Bowie's "Fame" contains the titular word 24 times in a row, starting at an inhumanly high pitch and then descendng. If you hit five of the "fames," you unlock the gold challenge record, 20 "fames" nets you a platinum challenge record, and hitting all 24 "fames" gives you the diamond challenge record. Also, if you can make it through all of Rammstein's "Du Hast" without tearing your ears off, you get a multi-diamond challenge record.Okay, that last one was fake, but for more real song-specific challenges, Destructoid's got a huge list of examples.
Scoreloop introduces Scoreloop Community for the iPhone
We've talked about OpenFeint quite a few times on the site before (and even interviewed the creators), but while they're definitely one of the biggest names in creating gaming communities for the iPhone, they're not alone. A company called Scoreloop has today announced a service called "Scoreloop Community," made up of two different features: a web presence, and a downloadable application for the iPhone that hooks right into other developers' games and apps and allows players to create avatars, view friends and their activities, and share challenges and high scores with others. Just like OpenFeint, Scoreloop says they're offering an easy-to-implement solution for push notifications, letting players send and receive messages (as well as promote and encourage usage of games in the service) and earn achievements and tokens.Of course, the real test for services like this will be in the implementation -- while OpenFeint claims a nice stable of developers, we still haven't seen too many apps take advantage of the latest and greatest versions (Pocket God is an extremely popular app that has implemented OpenFeint, but they use an older version of the software that doesn't have nearly as many features as the latest). Scoreloop says they've got over 50 game commitments from third-party developers already (it sounds like Zombie Pub Crawl is their biggest title yet), but even then, it remains to be seen exactly how devs will implement their functionality, and how players take to the service.If you're a developer looking to implement push notifications and social challenges and networking in your app, it seems that there's no shortage of companies willing to step in and help you do exactly that (you can download the free SDK, if interested, on Scoreloop's site). But in terms of how consumers view and will use these networks, it's still a very wide open field.
511 characters per quest
One of the most interesting things we heard from Jeff Kaplan last week (besides that he agrees the Green Hills quest sucks; won't do that one again) was that quest designers are given only 511 characters (not words) to put their quest text in.It's surprising to think that they've created all the backstory, throughout Azeroth, in just 511 characters at a time. But even Kaplan said the limit is a good thing: it means Blizzard has to show story to the player rather than tell it.Still, doesn't seem easy to Crap. Out of room -- that's 511 characters. Of course, they can fudge things a bit by having those "story quests" where characters can use multiple pages to build up their background, and the 511-character limit doesn't apply to all of the dialogue -- some of the later quests have pages and pages of dialogue as the quest goes on. But squeezing enough information to keep a player interested in just 511 characters is quite a feat.
Anti-Aliased: Serious business guys, serious business
This is one of those quintessential arguments that pops up time and time again amongst gamers, guilds, groups, and communities. It's an argument that divides people, pisses off people, and causes countless more gamers to alienate other gamers. How serious should you be about playing your game? Of course we laugh about a topic like this one. Games aren't suppose to be serious, that's why they're games! They're suppose to be fun and enjoyable. If you're not having fun, then you're doing something seriously wrong. For the most part, all of this is true. Yet, there are small segments of the games that we play that actually can require everyone to sit down and "get serious."We see it in raiding tactics, player vs. player tactics, loot distribution, and many other areas (including the entire universe of EVE Online, which seems to be played very seriously.) We've even dedicated a segment of our culture to this type of behavior -- the "hardcore" crowd.So, let's go forward and look at the question, "Are games getting too serious?"
Virtual worlds industry leaders provide forecast for 2009
The Virtual Worlds Management Industry Forecast 2009 (say that three times fast) is now available. What is this Forecast, you wonder? Virtual Worlds Management -- a provider of media, research, and online services related to virtual worlds -- collected the responses from over 60 industry leaders on issues ranging from business/product goals and challenges to be faced, to how they'll adapt to economic changes in 2009. The Forecast for 2009 is a condensed bit of collective knowledge from the movers and shakers in the virtual worlds industry, and certainly worth a read if you're curious about where virtual worlds may be heading over the coming year.
Ulduar and Blizzard's "hard modes"
We're only a day into 2009, and we've already got an update on one of our predictions. Vaneras has appeared on the EU forums talking about Ulduar's difficulty level and he says that yes, it will make a PTR appearance, and yes, it will be hard, but probably not in the way that we'd expect. He says that Blizzard is pleased with the way the "Sartharion with no drakes" worked, so they're planning to expand on that idea in the upcoming raids, by including more "hard modes" and more achievements, with "an increase of reward level if successful."So the odds are that we'll still see Ulduar's normal mode downed within days if not minutes on the live realms -- it won't actually be "hard" in the sense that the guilds with high level gear won't be able to plow right through it. But there will likely be multiple challenges within that are very hard, and achievements that will likely reward special gear or titles that will take guilds a while to do. This probably won't satisfy most of the really hardcore raiders, but we've been over this one -- Blizzard would rather have the majority of the playerbase play these raids, and since challenges and achievements don't take as much development time, that's what the minority of really hardcore players will get.Of course, as with everything, we'll have to see how it works out -- Blizzard is clearly trying to make sure everyone coming to these raids finds what they're looking for in terms of a challenge. Ulduar itself might not be as hard as we predicted, but if Blizzard really ramps up the "hard modes" within the instance, it could be a while before we see anyone able to topple all of the challenges in there.
Wii Warm Up: Smash 'achievements'
Whether or not you've gotten the chance to play Smash Bros. Brawl, you've probably heard about the game's achievements challenges and rewards. This system is somewhat similar to earning achievements in Xbox games, although not quite. We really like how Brawl handles challenges, but what do you think? Do the challenges add any depth to the game? And, how do they stack up when compared to achievements on Xbox titles?Also, if you do own the game, have you used any golden hammers yet to unlock any rewards? If so, on what challenges?
SGW builder describes the challenges of making an MMO
French Stargate SG-1/Atlantis fan site Stargate Fusion landed an interview with Stargate Worlds world builder Josh Kurtz. The interview understandably represents a Stargate SG-1 fan's interests more than it does those of a gamer, but presumably if you're interested in SGW at this early point in development you're already a fan of the franchise to begin with.Kurtz talked about the relationship the SGW team has with the producers of the TV series and about the rules the team follows to make sure they stay faithful to the source material. He also described the challenges of making an MMO, saying "the MMO market is a dangerous place because to be honest the exploration of how to build one and what will make a good one has only just begun."He's confident (of course) that the team at Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment is going to be able to rise up to the occasion and produce a top tier game.[Via WarCry]
A vegan character, and other self-imposed boundaries
I really like Pinkywinky's idea that she posted over on the forums-- she's running her character as a vegan, which means no meat (she's a mage, so she only eats her own conjures), no killing of non-hostile animals, no leather wearing (again, as a clothie, no real problem with that), and no attacking anything that doesn't attack her. Of course, that doesn't fit the strict definition of vegan, but you get the idea-- she's giving herself her own boundaries inside the game world, and challenging herself to stay within them.We've seen players do this before (the naked troll is probably the most well-known example), and it's fascinated me every time. WoW is not really a tough game, and so there's all kinds of ways you could make it harder or set up an interesting challenge, either for roleplaying reasons or just to keep it fun. I've always wanted to try play the game without ever talking to anyone at all-- that means no quests, no training, no groups (no talking to players either), no repairs (I'd have to just wear drops as I got them), and no professions. It would be really tough-- I'd probably have to make an exception on the training thing, no matter which class I chose, but I think it would be possible, and it would definitely give a new bent to the game.Have you ever gone without in WoW, just to see if you could?
Breakfast Topic: Certain death
I think I have an addiction to dying. Especially on characters I don't really care about. I was recently playing on the test servers and decided to run my orc all the way to Stormwind (not so bad with an epic mount!), just to see how far I could get. Mage District, in case anyone's interested.A week later, I was passing some time fishing in pleasant solitude -- just me and the rod -- when an orc ran past me. Again, this was in Stormwind, but this time I was playing as Alliance. I admired his guts, but then moonfired him to death after a guard had softened him up a little. It's karma.Ever since these oddly similar orc incidents, I've tried to get my alts into strange and dubious places to die. Jumping off tall rocks -- check. Seeing how many fast-running mobs I could kite before they overwhelmed me -- check. PvP flagging in Hillsbrad -- check. The unnerving thing is that the deaths of all my alts combined are outweighed by the deaths of my main character -- PvP and raiding on a new boss all combine to make so much mincemeat of me. Have you an addiction to death? Do you enjoy death, see it as an inconvenience, or try to avoid it altogether? Are you attached to the happy smiling face of your wisp or ghost more than your flesh-and-blood character?
