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DC Universe Online unleashes the Halls of Power
It's been years since DC Universe Online launched, and yet players have spent all of that time without nearly enough material on the New Gods. But that's changing now; the Halls of Power part I DLC has just been released, and that includes exactly what you'd expect if you know who the New Gods are. Darkseid's son Kalibak and the villainous Mantis are seeking out relics beneath the surface of Apokolips and New Genesis, leading Mister Miracle and Big Barda to recruit heroic forces to stop their malevolent designs. The DLC contains two new Raids and one new Operation for eight players, along with an Alert and an Operation for four players. It also offers six new Skill Points, new styles and gear, new feats, and all of the other widgets like base items that you'd expect. This content is available now for players on both consoles and PCs, so even if you're not versed enough in DC lore to understand what's going on, you can still take part and start smashing (or helping) the villains. [Source: Sony Online Entertainment press release]
GameStop may seek exclusive content during a game's development
GameStop is contemplating taking a greater interest in games during their development in order to secure exclusive content. Colin Sebastian of investment firm R.W. Baird recently discussed GameStop's future with the retailer, then told investors in a note that GameStop "indicated that software publishers are more enthusiastic about partnering with it." For example, publishers may offer "exclusive content on each major game release," and in longer terms, "future models may include GameStop offering exclusive gameplay" for games. While GameStop already secures exclusive content for some major releases, this means the retailer may involve itself earlier in the development process than usual. As Sebastian clarified to GamesBeat, the retailer would be "getting involved at the time of game development where there could be some content exclusive to [the retailer] included in the game." GameStop spokesperson Jackie Smith also added that the company is working with development partners "to get both physical and digital exclusives for our customers." [Image: GameStop]
WildStar previews the zones of the Strain drop
The first major update for WildStar is due out in early July, and it's bringing plenty of content along with it including two zones for players to explore. Blighthaven and the Northern Wastes are being unveiled in more detail today, both of which contain plenty of opportunities for adventurers to take on all sorts of new challenges. Blighthaven is a landscape dominated by the Strain's mutated minions along with uncontrolled Eldan machinery, featuring such comfortable-sounding regions as the Cankertube Swamps, the Globellum, the Sanctuary of the Keepers, and the Genesis Chamber. It's prime territory for new content to explore what happened to the Eldan as well as understand the virulent opponent that is the Strain. The Northern Wastes, meanwhile, brings players back to the Northern Wilds after the events in the early game, with both Dominion and Exiles struggling to claim the territory... until a new threat emerges from the Eldan bio-labs in the area. New events, challenges, missions, and path content awaits players in the zone. It's all adding up to plenty of content for a first update; you can check out the official reveal page for a few extra details. [Source: Carbine Studios press release]
E3 2014: The Division gives you high-tech tools and upgradable bases to save NYC
Ubisoft interviewed... itself, we guess, by chatting up The Division Game Director Ryan Barnard about some of the high-tech gadgets and interesting locales that players will encounter. The team's been showing off the ECHO function, a way to gather intel by projecting a colorful holographic visual. These will be used to help further the story and allow for mystery-solving during quests. "They're in places that would have information that could be relevant or important," Barnard said. Barnard was coy about the story details but said that players will be fighting against factions like the Cleaners to save New York City. He also mentioned that players will be unlocking bases as they progress. Unlike static gameplay hubs, these bases will have upgradable modules that can be improved through various co-op activities. You can catch The Division fever by watching the E3 trailer after the break.
Dungeons & Dragons Online launches Update 22
Are you ready to buckle your swash? Has your swash been buckled in anticipation? Do you own a variety of buckles and swashes? Because Dungeons & Dragons Online has just released Update 22 onto the live servers, and that means that Bards will have plenty of buckleswashing to do with the addition of the Swashbuckler enhancement line! Dance, parry, crack horrible puns, and stab at people while still retaining all of the usual song-based mechanics of Bards. It's free for everyone! Update 22 also includes an epic-level upgrade to Three Barrel Cove, perfectly complementing the newly swacklebushing methods of Bards. There are also major improvements to guild levels and guild airships, allowing guilds to hit level 200 while sporting new and improved facilities on new and improved airships. And there's new stuff in the cash shop, too, giving DDO players plenty to do if they ever tire of the interactions of swashes and buckles.
E3 2014: The Division will get content updates on Xbox One first
While The Division has been delayed until next year, players will have their choice of platforms on which to play it. Unless, of course, those players really want to have the newest updates every time, in which case they're going to need to play on the Xbox One. At Microsoft's E3 opening presentation, developers revealed that content will come to The Division on the console first, prior to the PlayStation 4 or the PC. The announcement was accompanied by a brief gameplay trailer and some recap of the game's mechanics and setting. While it was originally scheduled to launch this year, the game was officially delayed until 2015 last month. Massively's on the ground in Los Angeles during the week of June 10-12, bringing you all the best news from E3 2014. We're covering everything from WildStar and Landmark to Skyforge and H1Z1, so stay tuned!
Netflix's first show from the UK could be a £100m drama about the Queen
Netflix is going big on original programming: House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black are proof of that. However, no such content has so far come out of the UK. That could be about to change, after the streaming giant reportedly beat both the BBC and ITV to secure a new 20 episode biopic of the Queen, corgis and all. According to Broadcast Now, Netflix is on the verge of finalising a £100 million deal for the series, titled The Crown, which will centre on the Queen's "ascent to the throne at the age of 26, to the present day."
Blizzard should rethink their content release model
Blizzard changes many things for each new expansion: raid structures, class spells and talents, game systems, UI elements -- few aspects of WoW survive an X.0 patch untouched. It's time for Blizzard to change the one thing that has stayed the same since The Burning Crusade: the "event patch" release cycle. In WoW today, every patch is a big deal. We get previews. We get a trailer. We get fancy artwork with the X.X numbers. The patch release is an event. Every patch has tons of content for nearly every aspect of the game. It's exciting -- there's almost too much to do. When a new patch releases, we're in WoW heaven. Then months go by and that content grows stale. Blizzard doesn't give us new content at that point, but peeks at future content. We're starving for a delicious content meal, but we can only look at pictures of the food. It's a feast and famine cycle that has to end. It creates this massive gap between the final content patch of one expansion and the release of the next. We must cross it once again in 2014. Players put up with it because we know Blizzard will deliver, eventually, a tremendously fun experience. But should we have to endure this, still, after the game has been around for almost ten years? It's time for Blizzard to rethink the way they release content.
Samsung's giving you more to watch on that ridiculously expensive 4K TV
If Amazon, Netflix and DirecTV's promised 4K content aren't enough to entice you to pick up an ultra high definition TV, maybe this will help: Samsung is now giving buyers of its new curved TVs eight UHD films for free. The films are actually part of the company's UHD video pack, a $300 1TB hard drive pre-loaded with three documentaries, Night at the Museum, The Counselor, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, G.I. Joe: Retaliation and World War Z. Sony has a similar promotion tied to its UHD sets, an effort to assuage buyer fears that there won't be anything to watch on their expensive 4k display. Sammy's freebie applies to all new purchases of its 55, 65 and 78-inch curved UHD sets from now until the end of June. Already have one? Check out the source link below to nab your new hard drive.
Saudi Arabia cracking down on local YouTube producers
Saudi Arabia's youngish population isn't crazy about local TV, so they've naturally turned to a substitute: YouTube. As a matter of fact, the country features three times the per-capita viewing as the US, to the point that Google reps conducted a roadshow teaching local producers how to make money. But according to the WSJ, authorities there aren't crazy about all that since they have no control over what gets posted on the "broadcast yourself" site. As a result, the kingdom is planning to regulate content produced in the country, with guidelines on alcohol, nudity and of course, wanton "drifting" videos (as shown below). It likely boils down to "security," though, as the nation has previously detained producers critical of the royal family. And that, unfortunately, is a movie we've seen before.
Should there be another kind of five player dungeon?
The first dungeon I ran in World of Warcraft was the Deadmines. Not the Deadmines we have today, of course, although the layout is largely unchanged, but the original, Edwin VanCleef helmed Defias operation. From there, it's been a lot of years and a lot of dungeon crawls (not just in WoW, either - I've been crawling around in dungeons ever since the Caves of Chaos were build adjacent to a Keep on some Borderlands) and so I've come to have some opinions on dungeon design and variety that I think are worth nattering on about. In general, some of the dungeon complexes released with the launch of World of Warcraft took labyrinthine to new extremes. As much as I love it, Blackrock Depths is a positive pain to navigate for a new party - it was terrible before the dungeon finder existed, it's not any better now. Modern dungeons tend to have moved as far away from the 'sprawling mega complex' design as possible. Current dungeons tend to be what I call 'bite sized' in comparison - smaller, self contained wings or experiences that contain between three and four bosses, to be consumed in a 20 to 30 minute chunk of time with four strangers via LFD. It's understandable and even unavoidable that this had happened, but I think there's some wisdom in considering how to have a happy medium between these extremes. Dungeons like Dire Maul, for instance, saw minimal change in Cataclysm because it was already perfect for the new system. Three wings, mostly self contained (one could previously get from north to west via a tunnel into the library, which was removed) with a reasonable assortment of bosses, tied together by theme yet distinct in terms of what you faced in each. Maraudon, on the other hand, is still a sprawling, difficult to navigate dungeon made worse by the addition of incredibly arbitrary starting locations that the dungeon finder only exacerbates.
The Mog Log: No one likes FFXIV's Pharos Sirius
Every night, I sit down at my computer and I play the high-level roulette game in Final Fantasy XIV. There are five possible results. Amdapor Keep and Wanderer's Palace are the "win" results, the super-easy runs that can't even scrape dents into my armor. Copperbell Mines and Haukke Manor take a little more doing and a bit more attention on my part, and my shiny white Paladin armor is looking a bit scuffed up by the end. But they're still not bad. They're certainly doable. But there's always that 20% shot that I'm getting thrown straight into horror. The camera pans in to show a ruined lighthouse filled with crystals and a couple birds, and as soon as the cinematic ends, people are already asking "can we vote to abandon?" This seems to be the consensus: that it's not even worth trying to do Pharos Sirius start to finish. And when you look at the dungeon as a whole, it's not hard to see why no one likes it.
The case for catch-up dungeons
The 'catch up' dungeon was a commonplace design in Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm, one that's fallen out of favor in Mists of Pandaria to be replaced by the Timeless Isle and Raid Finder. It's understandable that this should be the case - designing a dungeon or dungeons is a lot of work, and it means other content (like, say, an open world zone like the Timeless Isle) won't be delivered. And as a catch up mechanic, the Timeless Isle is in many ways superior to a five man dungeon. Art assets were reused and gear randomized - you get a piece for your class and spec, but it's not necessarily ideal for them, so there's benefit to keep farming the zone. Furthermore, there's an upgrade mechanic in place (Burdens of Eternity) that will allow you to make pieces that are much closer in quality to current raiding, giving you even more incentive to keep running it. However, I'm much more a fan of the catch up dungeon. As much as I like exploring on the Timeless Isle, there comes a time when you've explored all that you can, and the Isle stops having any use for you. Even for a dedicated alt-maven, it's lack of weapons (yes, I know you can get some weapons, but even after the upgrade in 5.4.7 they won't be very good) at a reasonable cost makes it less appealing to me. The Timeless Isle trades the random drop factor of catch up dungeons for near certainty - you will get every piece you want, eventually. It's an efficient and workable system and I dislike it. In comparison to Wrath and Cataclysm it lacks in the following areas:
The Daily Grind: Would you prefer new story content or new features?
Say there's a big content update coming for your favorite MMO in the next month and a developer calls your phone, beseeching you to make a decision. The team doesn't have enough resources to deliver both new story content and new features, the dev explains, so would you kindly choose one of those for the team to deliver? In other words, if you had your way, would you prefer additional quests and stories and zones in your game, or would you prefer new game systems and features? Personally, that's a tough call to make. I love me some great stories, but new features and systems typically get me far more excited. I think the latter enriches and grows the game more than the vertical building that more zones provide. What do you think? 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: How patient are you with explanations?
I run a lot of random dungeons in Final Fantasy XIV. It's not uncommon to wind up grouped with someone who hasn't seen one of the newer dungeons, or even someone who just happened to forget the mechanics in a lower-level fight. That's fine, and I have no problem explaining the fight in detail to people. What gets my goat is trying to re-explain as someone either ignores the directions or does exactly the opposite time and again. Some people are far more patient than I am. I've watched players explain the same mechanics a dozen times without ever showing signs of irritation. And of course, there are people far less patient than I -- people who explain the fight only once in mangled shorthand or even outright refuse to explain anything. So what about you, dear reader? How patient are you with explanations about fights, areas, mechanics, or anything else in your game of choice? 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: Is there an ideal patch schedule for games?
Guild Wars 2 is very proud of its every-two-week patches, but I find that those frequent patches wind up being so small that they're not really engaging. This is no fault of the developers, really; two weeks is not much time to design anything substantial. It's fast, but is that enough? By contrast, Final Fantasy XIV packed a lot into its first major patch post-launch, which is a good thing, as it was released nearly four months after the relaunch and came when a lot of people were pretty burned out by the options in the game at that time. Having gotten most of the relevant content into farm mode myself, I can say that the next update definitely needs to come along faster than the last one. That put me to thinking: Is there an ideal patch schedule for games? Is there a sweet spot with enough time to develop new content and not enough time for people to get bored with what's there? Should it be all about the content when it's done, or should it be a fast cadence even if things need to be tweaked later? 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 Soapbox: There's nothing wrong with easy
The word "easy" gets a really bad reputation in gaming, an unfair reputation, at that, because there's absolutely nothing wrong with something's being easy. A while back, we hosted a great column about how we tend to call things easy when they really aren't. (Seriously, go read that.) That's all well and good, but that's also not what I'm talking about here. Gaming as a community seems to have decided that easy is just plain bad, that it's a horrible insult, and a game being easy is like saying that a game is worthless. But easy isn't bad. Playing a single-player game on easy difficulties isn't a mark of weakness, and having an MMO that's easy on a whole doesn't mean it's a bad game. Having easy content isn't just an acceptable thing; it's an outright good thing for a lot of player. There is absolutely nothing wrong with easy.
Dungeons & Dragons Online looks back at 2013 and forward to 2014
December isn't just a month for frenzied consumerism; it's almost the end of the year and time to start reflecting on what went well, what went badly, and what needs to change. So it's appropriate that the latest producer's letter for Dungeons & Dragons Online focuses on precisely that, looking back at 2013 and counting up the game's big hits and misses. The team feels that Epic Reincarnation and the Storm Horn Mountains were big wins, while the bug-plagued Mabar Festival was definitely a nadir. But there's no point in looking back if you don't look forward, and the letter does that as well. Four major content updates are planned for next year, featuring a boost of the level cap to 30, two new raids in the dwarven ruins of Thunderholme, a new set of guild airship models, and more beyond that. Take a look at the letter for an exact schedule and more discussion about the year's highs and lows.
The Daily Grind: Should old content be made easier or relevant?
There's probably no one in the world who really wants go back through the Cataclysm raids in World of Warcraft. It's something you do because you like the looks of items and want to walk around looking pretty, not because you just can't get enough of that content. Since this content generally can't be just powered through alone, you have to get several like-minded people willing to revisit old content in the hopes that you might get some vanity items... which is easier said than done, and it's not all that easily said. Pretty much any game has a backlog of old content that's no longer relevant. An obvious solution is to just make this something that players can explore alone and easily; if no one's going back here as a challenge, wouldn't it make sense to just let everyone cruise on through as a tourist? But there's also the option of making it relevant in some fashion again, some way to make you feel you're not just pounding your head against content that provides a non-trivial but irrelevant challenge. So what do you think? Should old content be made easier for newer players or characters? Should it be made more relevant in some way? Or is it just fine to let it lie and let the people who missed out just keep on missing out? 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!
Massively exclusive: Take a desert trip in Elsword
Do you want to take a vacation in the middle of the desert? Probably not in the real world, since the desert is generally known for being a place people try to avoid rather than a vacation destination. But Elsword isn't expecting you to go just for the screaming heat and lack of water. No, it's offering a whole pile of desert-based fun that revolves around smashing enemies, exploring new fields, and taking on dungeons. The region shown off in the new trailer gives a sneak peek at two new dungeons, Barren Sander and the Garpai Rocky Zone. There's also a level cap increase up to 64, giving you a variety of new tools for smashing the crap out of your foes in side-scrolling action. If that sounds like your sort of party, then by all means, check out the trailer just past the break and get ready to enjoy a desert vacation far more than you'd expect otherwise. [Source: KOG Games press release]
