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Rise and Shiny recap: Istaria
Each week Rise and Shiny asks you to download and try a different free-to-play, indie or unusual game, chosen by me, Beau Hindman. Some of the games will be far out of your gaming comfort zone, and some will pleasantly surprise you. We will meet each Tuesday and Friday night at 9 p.m. EDT (8 p.m. CDT), followed by this column the Sunday after. I welcome any suggestions for games, either in the comments or at beau@massively.com. Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted is not a new game, by any means. You probably remember it being called Horizons. I have tried this game probably several times over the last few years. Despite having a decent enough time with each attempt, I never had as much fun as I have during this last week of playing. Let this advice stick: give a game several chances, if you can. Don't let a developer's financial woes dissuade you from giving it a go again. Most of the time you can try it again without spending a dime. I'm glad I returned to Istaria. Everything seemed to click for me, more than it did before. It could be that I never took the time to really get to know the quests or the abilities my character gained, and it could be that I played mostly solo during that time. Over this last week I adventured with an elf and a few dragons, and found a world, game, and community that was pretty darn inviting.
WoW Magazine issue 2 preview now online
The preview for issue 2 of the World of Warcraft Official Magazine is up for browsing. It is 46 pages and highlights four subjects covered in the 148-page publication: Dragons All of the dragonflights are described in detail along with a glossary of all dragon terms. 40-man raids Tackling 40-man raids with level 80s Warsong Gulch Strategies for WSG Community Columns Members of the community contribute columns The WoW Magazine is quarterly, by subscription only and has no ads. It's subscription price starts at $39.95 for a year. I haven't ordered it yet, but dragons are cool. Really cool.
Breakfast Topic: Roto-scoping is not animation
For those who don't know, I'm an animator in my IRL career. I've studied it, I've gone to school for it, I do it myself. I scrutinize it, critique it and think about it every moment I get. It should go without saying that I am fairly picky when it comes to animations. Enter the drakonid. What's a drakonid? See the header image. They're the bipedal draconic warriors that are native to each main Dragonflight. Now, if you aggro them, you'll notice that they run at you, lances swirling away. I. Hate. That. Animation. It drives me crazy. My guild leader affectionately calls it my Kryptonite, as I freak out whenever I see them do it. It's just so terrible! It looks like some horrific motion capture session gone wrong; then a blind chimpanzee with a tablet in its mouth added some keyframes. Yes, I realize that it's supposed to spoof the 'Star Wars Kid' animation, but I don't care. Now, I'm not so critical that I can't like things. I love the animation that was added for ToC, where we saw poor Jarod Sunsworn get choked to death by the Black Knight. The animation for Anzu is great to watch, as they take care of the physics for his feathers. I could think of many others, but those are just a few that stand out. What animations tickle your fancy? What do you love or hate, and why? What could they improve? Discuss amongst yourselves!
MapleStory's Dragon Master Evan blazes to the live servers
These days, it seems like you can barely cross the MMO portion of the internet without hearing about Dragon Master Evan. While you might have assumed that he was some new musical act or another, he's actually the harbinger of the newest class in MapleStory, as well as the focus of the most recent update to the game. There's been quite a bit of teasing about the update in the time leading up to it, but now it's finally available on live servers, giving players everywhere a chance to take control of their very own dragon. Since the dragon has its own options to be customized as it grows stronger, MapleStory players are going to have their hands full for a while. If that weren't enough, however, Nexon has also put together a number of events to celebrate the deployment to the live servers. They've also rounded up all of the prior lore and quest information about Evan. So rather than spending your weekend out being told how a dragon ought to be trained, you might want to simply go train your own. And if you need more motivation, there's a video past the cut displaying just what a properly-trained dragon is capable of doing.
New LotRO Vol. III book 1 screens include awesome dragon
Turbine knows how to please a crowd, as evidenced by these new screens for Volume III: Allies of the King, Book 1 for Lord of the Rings Online. Who doesn't love dragons? Well, okay, probably not the party currently under siege by one in the screenshot above -- but everyone else for the most part. At least, everyone else loves them until they're attacked by one. Anyhow, check out the rest of the screens. We especially recommend this one particular screen, where you'll find some other non-dragon enemies that look more than ready to tear apart your character in-game. Yes, we know, we've got a problem with dragons today. Don't worry, we're done now. Honest.%Gallery-84675%
Dragons abound in the Sentinel's Fate launch day trailer
An epic expansion deserves an epic trailer, and that means adding as many dragons as possible to your video. The new Sentinel's Fate launch day trailer takes a good look at all of the new monsters and encounters available in the game, but it seems to have a particular focus on large dragons and how they destroy people with their acidic breath. Fun if you're a dragon lover, bad if you're on the receiving end of that breath. If you haven't gotten a look at the expansion in motion yet, or want to watch some dragons eat some people, we have the video for you embedded after the break. Just click the continue reading button to see the eye candy if you dare to cross into the dragon's lair!
The Queue: Isthmus-time is here
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Michael Sacco will be your host today. It's officially Winter Veil, and you know what that means! Azerothians donning their yuletide apparel and decking the halls with the blood of their enemies. Is there anything more demoralizing than getting decapitated by someone dressed like a holiday centerfold? And just think, without achievements, this activity would be naught but a holiday novelty. Technology is a wondrous thing. Daniel asked... I have noticed that dark ranger hanging around in Dalaran, and decided to look them up, and noticed that they were neutral hero unit in Warcraft 3:The Frozen Throne. I was wondering, could, it be even remotely possible, that in the future we have that class introduced into the game that will be neutral? Extremely unlikely. There are also some dark rangers wandering around the Undercity post-3.3, and it appears that they're there as a buildup to playable forsaken hunters in Cataclysm. Sylvanas herself is classified as a dark ranger. We'll probably see quests just like the ones introducing night elf mages and tauren priests and paladins for these NPCs.
EverQuest II adds new achievements of challenging nature
What's makes beating raids in Ruins of Kunark and The Shadow Odyssey even better? Achievements, of course. That's why SOE is adding brand new achievements to several heroic zones and raids to those two expansions. Players will be challenged by several new goals, such as Flawless Victory, which requires finishing an encounter without losing a single party member. Other achievements involve winning a raid encounter with three or more people less than the maximum and clearing a raid or heroic zone within a set time limit. Obviously, these challenging new achievements wouldn't be worthwhile without a reward. The form of said reward comes as three new titles: the Dragonslayer, the Urgent and the Flawless. We'd point out which titles go with which rewards, but we're pretty sure you've got it figured out. In our opinion, the Dragonslayer title is probably the coolest sounding, what with the dragon murdering and all that. Being "Urgent" sounds kind of cool but in a confusing way, like when your friends tell you they blew up a car, until they reveal it was, in fact, your car. [via WarCry]
EverQuest's Ancient Heroes game update brings a "classic EQ" experience
There are a lot of players and former players of EverQuest that would love to see a server that is locked down to just the first few expansions, or maybe none at all. While the latest game update, Ancient Heroes (which goes live today) doesn't bring a new server, there will be a new "classic EQ" experience introduced to the game. An NPC in the Plane of Knowledge will transform your character into a level 50 (the level cap once upon a time) decked out in launch-era equipment, and send you off to fight the Kobolds in Nagafen's Lair or the Frogloks of Guk -- or even to raid the old dragons, Lady Vox (pictured above) and Lord Nagafen. There will be new rewards waiting for those that choose to take up arms in old-school fashion.This character morphing is the primary focus of the Ancient Heroes update, but in fact, there is more character morphing to be had with some new Marketplace items. A Potion of Amnesia will allow you to change your character's name, and a Potion of Disgenderment will flip their gender -- both changes are permanent, though you should just be able to buy another potion if need be. The Witness Protection Pack combines the two new potions, for those situations where you've really driven your reputation into the ground and need to start afresh.
The Secret World reveals new game trailer, factions
The Secret World is Funcom's next MMO that they've kept under lock and key for quite a while now. Despite all the secrecy, we know it's a modern day setting with heavy overtones of the occult and mysticism. Past images released for The Secret World have shown shambling, twisted corpses walking through a town. There was also a Cthulu-esque scene of a thing-that-cannot-be-named obliterating city streets, a lone woman wielding a katana facing off against it. They've told us that players will form cabals to uncover mysteries and deal with supernatural threats. Still, there hasn't been much to go on. What Funcom reveals about The Secret World at PAX in the coming days will be "the biggest thing on TSW yet", but apparently secrets just want to be set free. We came across a YouTube video of The Secret World's second trailer (embedded below), with a shotgun toting girl tracking some monstrosity that can scatter its form into a murder of crows. You can also see the trailer in high res that's part of an exclusive on the Norwegian site Dagbladet.no. Plus, they've got eleven new screenshots and bits of concept art up on their site as well.
How to: Five Amber drakes in The Oculus
After yet another Cracked Egg with nothing but a Cobra Hatchling in it, and the bigtime raiding proto-drakes constantly getting dropped out of the game, there's really only one other option: the Red Proto-drake, a reward for the Glory of the Hero meta-achievement. It's not easy: you've got to not only beat all of the heroics in the game, but all of the hard mode achievements for each of them. Guides like our OverAchievers can help, and a really great group to go along with helps more, but some of the achievements are so tough they need extra attention.The Oculus' achievement, however, is one that needs an even closer look. And 4 Haelz kindly provides exactly that, with an in-depth guide to toppling two achievements in one, both the Emerald and Ruby Void, by doing the boss with five Amber drakes. The Amber drakes are usually meant as DPS, which makes this fight extra tough: you can't take much damage at all, because you can't get any damage back without healers. So what it requires, instead, is communication and coordination. Basically, you use the drakes' Time Stop ability to slow the fight down, and then try to do some coordinated kiting while DPSing like mad, all the time hoping that you can bring him down before he takes one of you out.As Bell says, once you get the idea (and have wiped a few times -- you should probably be riding the drakes naked, since not only does your gear not affect their performance, but it'll save you repair costs), the fight's not actually that hard to pull off, but it's the learning that's going to hurt.
Breakfast Topic: Exploring the World of Warcraft
One of the things which kept me in Azeroth -- at least long enough for the addictive side of the game to set in -- was the promise of exploration. I originally rolled a human mage and still remember at level five, being taken all the way from Elwynn Forest to Darnassus. Bear in mind though, this was back before The Burning Crusade when being Alliance meant traveling from the Eastern Kingdoms to Kalimdor took a good forty minutes if you didn't have the flight paths or a mount. You had to get the tram to Ironforge then run the gauntlet of death to Menethil, catch the boat to Theramore, get another to Auberdine and then fly or get another boat to Teldrassil. The whole trip really showed me how big the world was, as well as teaching me all about threat and my ability to aggro everything in a three-zone radius.So when I rolled my druid, the day before the expansion hit, I was determined to see as much as this beautifully crafted world as I could. Yes, I essentially had a death wish. I was exploring Outland with an honour guard of my guildies at level 10 (and hearthed in Shattrath), I ran through the Arathi Highlands at level thirty, swam through Un'Goro Crater in my forties and was pushing the boundaries of Shattrath by my fifties.However along the way I found some amazing places: the crystal filled cave at Marshal's Refuge, the boughs where the Dragons of Nightmare can occasionally be found, the first time you run into Azuregos in Azshara, the Twin Colossals of Feralas -- well the eastern one at any rate. Then when I got my flying mount I really started exploring properly.Nagrand alone is full of nooks and crannies and I adore the beauty of Crystalsong Forest.So come on, readers, I want to know if you've explored all the hidden places of Azeroth and Outland. Do you have any favourites? You do? Great, be sure to tell us about them in the comments box.
WoW Moviewatch: Forrest GumpDK
I didn't originally think I'd feature Forrest GumpDK. Mojorising created the video to help celebrate the four year anniversary of his guild, The Enigma Order. While I like seeing these videos, it's usually not the kind of thing that appeals to an audience-at-large. After watching it through, however, the warm-hearted nostalgia grew on me. I actually found "Forrest GumpDK" to not only be a "happy anniversary!" card, but also a fond retrospective of raiding since Vanilla WoW.The video is based off a certain Robert Zemeckis film from the mid-90s. At the end of GumpDK, the main actor is credited as "Tom Tanks." Hey, it's the little jokes that make things work. Basically, the movie starts off following a feather as it drifts down to a tuxedo-wearing Death Knight, sitting on a bench in Stormwind. The DK then begins telling the tale (in subtitles) of how The Enigma Order has been raiding over the past years.While Forrest GumpDK is talking about his Guild, I think we all remember the days of fighting that big guy who's made of fire, then a dragon, then another dragon. And then, shooting off into "space!" That sense of wonder might have worn thin for some of us veterans, but Mojorising's Forrest gave me a gentle, rosy-glass view of the old times. For that, I thank Forrest GumpDK for a job well done.If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ..
WoW Moviewatch: Warden of Eternity
I'm not sure whether to call Warden of Eternity by Karash "high concept." It certainly fits some of the hallmarks of that idea, but I feel like the pacing might slightly miss the mark. However, in the very least, his epic machinima is firmly rooted in some of the most noble and recognizable lore offered by World of Warcraft. You should recognize Illidan and the dragon Aspects, in the very last. The movie was first created in Karash's native German, and it took him about a year to get subtitles created in English.In my opinion, the "Warden of Eternity" is pretty dang well made. Its panning shots, use of characters, and chosen models are all strong. The voice actors did a good job. I actually really enjoyed the fact that it was in German, because that language really sounds right coming from dragons and epic characters. (Maybe it's the old Rammstein fan in me.)I do, however, wish the pacing were a little faster. It drags on a tad. This gives you plenty of time to soak in the happenings and the scenery, but I don't need quite that much time. Overall, a very solid movie, and I hope Karash continues to make more.[Via Warcraft Movies]If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ..
Avalanche Studios developing 'open-world fantasy' AionGuard
Open-world fantasy news now, with Edge's latest issue taking a first look at "AionGuard," a new Lord of the Rings-inspired project from Avalanche Studios. According to the British mag, AionGuard follows the exploits of an army intent on capturing land that is otherwise "occupied by numerous mythical and magical creatures." As any band of armor-clad warriors will tell you, that's by far the worst kind of land to capture. It inevitably leads to violence, which is probably why narrative director Odd Ahlgren says it's like "God Of War, but it's a lot more open and you have lots more choice in how to tackle these situations." He insists that the game isn't an RPG, however, and allays fears that action will revolve around grinding. The folks at Avalanche, who previously parachuted into the jungle with Just Cause, have yet to announce a publisher for the Xbox 360 and PS3 title.Not that they should have trouble finding one -- it says here you'll also be able to pilot dragons. We'd be lairs liars if we said that didn't excite us.
Perilar brings Ultima-style RPG to the iPhone
Man, for all of the great games on the iPhone already (I've been really enjoying Lexitron lately), what we really need is a good old-fashioned, both complex and charming RPG. Arcade games are fun and all, and they just keep getting better, but what the iPhone really needs is a sink-your-teeth-in fantasy world, complete with dragons to slay, swords and magic to wield, and XP to earn.Perilar might just be that. It's based on the old Ultima-style turn-based RPGs, and the tiled graphics aren't much to look at these days, but it sounds like good (Net)hacking, slashing, and exploring fun. We're still not talking about the peak of the iPhone's potential as an RPG machine, but Perilar looks like a good first step.And the best part is that there's a Java version out right now, so you can try before you smack down the $4.99 price. I'm definitely planning on picking it up. Until we get a great original, and solidly addictive fantasy RPG on the iPhone, Perilar seems like it'll help scratch that itch.[via Touch Arcade]
Omar the Test Dragon
Once upon a time I had a Carrot on a Stick. Then I copied my shaman to the Wrath beta server. To my surprise, when I logged onto the beta realm for the first time, waiting for me at the mailbox was the curious message above. Now, we've covered the riding enchantment ground already (that is, it may not ever go live), but what I want to talk about on this post is my new buddy, Omar the Test Dragon.I think I have a crush on him. I wonder what he looks like. I expect Omar looks like a cross between Mr. T. and Justin Timberlake -- ohhh, dreamy! Is he a Troll, a Goblin, or is he really a member of the Dragonflight? How wonderful that would be! Nighttime flights above Netherstorm or setting fire to ogres in Stonemaul. How romantic! But if Omar really is a dragonIflight, he speaks differently than I expected. His language style is utterly intoxicating. I mean, his use of exclamation marks alone is enough to give a girl the dizzies. Maybe that's why he doesn't reply to my emails -- perhaps there is a language barrier between us? O, my dear Omar, if you can hear the sound of my voice, I have but one message for you. I am no dawg, just a simple bovine from Mulgore. Peace out.
An interview with J. Allen Brack
Here's one more tidbit of WoTLK information for you, courtesy of Gamespy. They sat down for an interview with co-lead design J. Allen Brack. Most of the information is stuff we've heard in the past or have already posted on in this morning's massive flurry, but it's always nice to get a peek into the brain of the folks who bring us this amazing game. Among some of the things discussed by J. Allen Brack and Gamespy:
