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PAX South 2015: The Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns experience
As MMO players surely know by now, Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is the first expansion ever for the ArenaNet MMORPG. In fact, most everyone suspected the announcement thanks to the leaked trademark information. But that didn't stop fans from being excited about it, nor did that bit of information satisfy their hunger. The emcee for the reveal event was none other than voice actor Jennifer Hale, whose voice players might recognize as Queen Jennah's. President and CEO of ArenaNet Mike O'Brien and game director Colin Johanson teased the PAX South crowd of over 1,500 fans waiting in the main theater. But the anticipation for the new expansion started well before anyone even came to the stage.
WoW Moviewatch: Yellow Flicker Beat
Death knights are inherently kind of creepy. And even with the revamp in Cataclysm, the Eastern Plaguelands are still pretty creepy as well, along with the death knight starting area on the eastern coast. Put that together with a little bit of Lorde and you've got Yellow Flicker Beat, a machinima music video from Time-Lost Productions. Time-Lost Productions has been doing these kinds of music videos for years, and it shows -- the production quality is good, the cuts are sharp, and the only minor critique I can make is that really I think the video would have stood on its own without the text that was added for emphasis. It totally didn't need it! If you liked the video, be sure to check out Time-Lost Productions' Youtube channel for more. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.
Norrathian Notebook: Five reasons to support EQ Next and Landmark
I like Landmark and am looking forward to EverQuest Next. There, I said it. It should be no surprise. And as such, I certainly have a vested interest in how these games fare throughout their development and launch. I want to see them succeed. But the thing is, so should you -- whether or not you actually want to play them. Unfortunately, it seems all too fashionable lately for folks to tear something down instead of build it up. So often when I'm following the discussions about EQ Next and Landmark, I hear plenty of reasons why folks don't like the games, and the reasons frequently have nothing to do with the games themselves. Detractors are going on about longstanding gripes and grudges instead of judging the games on their own merits (a practice that the whole world could certainly do without). Amid all the scathing comments I've heard directed at SOE for slights real and imagined, one recently gave me pause and made me reflect on the reasons that supporting these two MMO endeavors is worthwhile.
PAX South 2015: The Untitled Game is whatever you want it to be
The Untitled Game, better known as TUG, is one of the many recent titles that have earned a small crowdfunding fortune by shouting the word "sandbox" as loud as the internet will allow. The game's initial Kickstarter campaign raised $293,000; launching on Steam's Early Access marketplace helped Nerd Kingdom rake in an unspecified amount of additional dollars. The studio had a bold plan for an open-world, innovative crafting MMORPG, and it appeared as though players were ready to pay for it. Things haven't gone so swimmingly since then. Funding issues in late 2014 forced the studio to lay off around half of its staff. Many MMO industry followers have been wondering whether the project will ever be released or it's just another crowdfunded pipe dream. I took a look at TUG on the show floor at PAX South 2015 and talked to COO Brennan Priest about crowdfunding, layoffs, and killing things with axes. The one thing I can say for sure is that there is definitely a game here, and it seems as if it could be a good one.
PAX South 2015: SWTOR reveals its plans for this year
When Eric Musco, the Star Wars: The Old Republic community manager, took the stage at the Community cantina last night at PAX South, he revealed that in 2015 the team wants to do something a bit different with this and future cantina crawl events. In the past, it has been policy not to reveal anything at the cantinas; they were intended to be social events where players could get some face-time with the developers of the game that they both enjoyed. However, going forward, the community and development teams have decided that each cantina will reveal that had not been mentioned before. The reveal at this weekend's cantina came in the form of the yet-to-be-published producer's letter by Bruce Maclean. The completely made-up story is that it was stolen from his computer while he wasn't looking and printed out to share with us at the cantina. After the break, you'll find a copy of that letter as it was dictated to cantina goers. The caveat, of course, is that this is not the final version of the letter that will appear on the official site in two weeks, so everything is subject to change.
The Queue: I still miss Karazhan
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) is answering all kinds of questions today! I'm glad so many people liked the fill in job I did with Wednesday's Queue. Fun fact: I've actually given way more thought to the whole tie-in idea than absolutely necessary over the past couple of months. For those that thought the answer was interesting, it's what happens next in Karazhan that is really interesting. Or would be. If it were, you know, real and not made up in my head. I miss Karazhan. adidast05 asked: Did I read that follower upgrades will no longer drop from salvage ? Follower armor set pieces will no longer drop from salvage crates -- the items that equip your follower with an ilvl 615/630 weapon or armor. Weapon Enhancements (the items that simply upgrade your weapon or armor ilvl by a certain number), are still dropping from Big Crates of Salvage as it stands on the PTR.
PAX South 2015: Notes from a Star Citizen town hall
Star Citizen is such a big fancy deal that instead of having a panel or booth at PAX South 2015, Cloud Imperium booked a theater down the street and hosted 10 straight hours of forums and chit-chats with backers. That's right: There wasn't enough room in the PAX convention hall to accommodate all the Star Citizening Star Citizens needed to Star Citizen, so they had their own one-day mini-convention dedicated just to their game of choice. One has to respect a development team willing to spend the entire day with its community (for a nominal fee, of course). I'm sure Star Citizens were absolutely amped to pay the same amount of money as a PAX day pass to hang out with CI all day. Unfortunately, I attended only the evening town hall with Chris Roberts, which I would describe as impenetrable to anyone without a license to pilot one of Star Citizen's $350 ships. I did take some notes. I will try to parse them here.
PAX South 2015: Garriott and Long talk Shroud of the Avatar
In 2013, Ultima Online creator Richard Garriott took to Kickstarter in the hopes of funding an old-school, sandbox-y MMO. Titled Shroud of the Avatar, the new project would be built in Unity and aimed squarely at those MMO fans who longed for the days of player-driven economies, crafting as a focus instead of a side activity, and the ability to impact the game world in a real way. The plan worked. Shroud of the Avatar pulled $1.9 million on Kickstarter alone, almost doubling its $1 million funding goal. Since then, the team has been hard at work bringing Garriott's vision to life (and keeping backers happy). I spoke with Garriott on the PAX South 2015 show floor about crowdfunding, loot, and the mistakes of the modern RPG. I also got to play a bit of SOTA with the help of executive producer Starr Long, who kindly did not make fun of me when I was killed by the second mob in the demo.
Breakfast Topic: Have you caught 'em all?
I've been on a recent pet-hunting binge in World of Warcraft. Though I've always been a fan of collecting games, I'd avoided getting into this one because it seemed like once I got started started, I would feel compelled to catch everything... and that seemed like a tall order. Now that I'm actively working on WoW's safari achievements, I can tell I was right. In between rare spawn pets, pets that only spawn during certain weather conditions or certain times of day, and my horrible habit of accidentally killing pets I mean to catch (my Terrible Turnip isn't very high level yet), I'm pretty sure this is going to take approximately forever to finish. So I ask you, readers: are you, too, compelled to try to catch 'em all? And if so, how is your personal safari quest going? A note to anyone who hasn't started this crazy quest to catch every pet: don't start! Your sanity will thank you.
PAX South 2015: Hangin' with Frontier, playin' Elite on the Oculus Rift
Readers of the Choose My Adventure column may remember that I spent the month of September smuggling beer, shooting NPCs, and dodging space rocks in Frontier Developments' Elite: Dangerous. Though the game was in early beta, I found lots to do and lots to love about the space simulator that isn't that other space simulator. Realistic physics, challenging flight controls, and beautiful design work made the game stand out to me as unique and promising (other Massively staffers seem to agree), and I've revisited it since and enjoyed it every time. Thus, I jumped at the chance to check Elite out again at PAX South 2015, this time with the experience enhanced by a rad HOTAS setup and the ever-so-popular Oculus Rift. Guided by producer Eddie Symons, I bluffed my way through a combat demo and discovered that when it comes to shooting things in space, being able to look and fly separately is a great thing indeed.
WoW Moviewatch: How to Rig a Pet Battle
Pet battling isn't easy. Sometimes you come up against the perfect team, all of your attacks seem to miss, and you're left floundering. And sometimes, like in the video above, you try to rig things in your favor. (Though the active word is definitely try.) Yes, Mooclucking clearly understands all of our battle pet frustrations. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem like a good solution for them. We'll just have to do our best to keep forging through even the toughest pet battles... and maybe steer clear of the pug while we're at it. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.
Around Azeroth: Laid your bones by a shallow stream
"So while wandering around Shadowmoon Valley and getting in fights to test out my wide-range of dwarves taunts and insults in SpeakinSpell (and probably traumatizing a whole generation of players to boot) I stumbled across an odd gathering of draenei on the shore," writes submitter Arugadh of The Brotherhood of Iron on Wyrmrest Accord (US-A). "Three small girls and their fathers were gathered around a skeleton that they'd unearthed on the beach. At least, I think they unearthed it. Judging from the expression on that one child's face as she turned and looked at me ... well, I'm not ashamed to say that I scrambled back onto my golden charger and hightailed it out of there before they decided to unearth my skeleton right out of my flesh." Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Include "Azeroth" in the subject line to ensure your submission dodges email spam filters; if you'd like to be credited, also include your name, guild and realm.
The Queue: Awesome Werewolf Superpowers
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Matthew Rossi will be your host today. Guys, I love you all as if you were my children. My children who leave a lot of comments in the comment section. So many comments. 737 comments as of this moment. That is a lot of questions, statements, pictures, videos, non sequitur, all sorts of things. I have to admit, on nights when I can't sleep (that's all of them) going through the Queue is like a portal into another dimension. Luckily, they still play WoW over there. Chrth asks: Q4TQ: If you were one of the humans on Fenris Isle, would you have chosen to become a Worgen or to be raised as one of the Forsaken? Consider this from a real life perspective, not game-wise (e.g. "Worgen because I love the Alliance" is not what I'm looking for). Would I rather be trapped in a rotting corpse that's slowly deteriorating, forced to consume the flesh of the living and unable to feel, or would I rather have awesome werewolf superpowers? Yeah, that's a toughie. I guess I'd have to go with awesome werewolf superpowers.
Working As Intended: The MMOs we lost in 2014
Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about how Vanguard's early stumbles foreshadowed the changing MMORPG industry. In January 2007, when Vanguard lurched its way to launch, the genre was barely a decade old; it was booming, and it had never suffered hardship on a massive scale. In the west, we'd seen only three "major" MMOs sunset (Motor City Online, Earth and Beyond, and Asheron's Call 2), and only one MMO, Anarchy Online, had "gone F2P," though we hadn't yet thought to call it yet because it was such a rare and new thing. In fact, it wasn't until 2008's first big wave of AAA, post-World of Warcraft MMOs launched and mostly flopped that MMORPG players gave much thought to the future of the genre and how WoW had reshaped (and possibly broken) it. Maybe not even then. Here in 2015, sunsets are commonplace, and the vast majority of modern MMOs have adopted some sort of subscriptionless model. Last year, we lost more than a dozen MMOs, including Vanguard itself, all of them wiped from the face of the earth (at least until someone decides to resurrect them), and several more under development were canceled, leading to concern among industry watchers like those of us who pen for Massively. Let's try to get some perspective and revisit the MMOs we lost in 2014.
Breakfast Topic: Why not heirloom followers?
We have epic followers, we have a legendary follower, so why not heirloom followers? Well, as is often the case when I have one of these ideas at three am, there are potentially a lot of reasons why to not have heirloom followers. For one thing, we level our followers and get them better gear and so on - a follower you could somehow send to your alts would mess up this whole process. Would they scale to your level? What level would they top out at? Could you gear them up? Could you make them epic? All good questions. But man, it's daunting to have to try and get all the same followers over and over again, especially ones that are on rare vendors. Sometimes I wish I could mail my little minions to my alts, just so I wouldn't have to deal with flying out to the Spires of Arak yet again.
WoW Moviewatch: Garrosh and the Chopper
Did anyone see the Matthew McConaughey Lincoln commercial and not think about Warlords of Draenor's crazy time travel plot? McConaughey's unfocused rambling could refer to a lot of things, but any sci-fi fan has to stop and wonder "Wait, are we talking about time travel? Is Matthew McConaughey a time-traveller now?" You know who else is a time traveller? Garrosh Hellscream. And when Ian Beckman combines McConaughey's (slightly altered) monologue with machinima, it works perfectly to tell the character's story. And maybe sell choppers. We're not really sure how that part works. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.
Perfect Ten: My mobile MMO experiment, part 2
Last week on Perfect Ten I began an experiment to "taste test" a batch of mobile MMOs to see if there's anything out there that's worth playing in this day and age (apart from the often-recommended Order & Chaos Online and Spacetime Studio's lineup). For the record, I would absolutely love a great mobile online RPG, but it would need to be a game that's tailored to such devices and offers a compelling experience beyond trying to clone a generic MMO. Let me sum up my adventures so far: While I did discover a couple of interesting titles, there was nothing in the first five games that made me want to keep them on my smartphone. Let's hope that this week's group brings out the big guns because I will be despondent if this experiment is in vain!
Around Azeroth: Lara Croft would be disappointed
Submitter Angmazensos of The Chaos League on Dreadmaul (US-H) was in the midst of a Temple of Kotmogu run when a sudden and severe lag attack gave him some free time to take screenshots. This close-up of a human hunter's utterly impractical bow. How does the arrow not get caught on any of those spikes? If Hawkeye or Katniss Everdeen saw a bow with that much ridiculous ornamentation, they would laugh their butts off. Except Katniss, who I'm not sure knows how to laugh. Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Include "Azeroth" in the subject line to ensure your submission dodges email spam filters; if you'd like to be credited, also include your name, guild and realm.
Breakfast Topic: When do you play?
World of Warcraft has some pretty standard "prime time" hours. After people are out of work or school -- or after the kids are put to bed -- they return home and pile into the game. This makes these "prime" hours a great time to run LFR or find a group doing the Apexis daily, but crowds and make it a lousy time to go out trapping for savage blood or to farm rare (and camped) materials. So with that in mind -- and following up on yesterday's topic -- just when do you jump into the game to play? I have a tendency to jump online in the middle of the day for some quiet time farming or doing other daily tasks when I'm not likely to be interrupted -- though, of course, if I'm getting in on any particular group activities I have to shoot for those prime time hours. But what about you, readers? Do you keep to late nights or do you prefer to play during the day? Just when is your prime playtime schedule?
WoW Moviewatch: You want to be a hunter
Have you been thinking about rolling a hunter? If so, you might want to start by checking out this machinima by Mooclucking which walks you through the hunter basics. Unfortunately, this hunter trainer has seen a few too many night elf hunters named Legolas (or some equally identifiable variant) in his time and doesn't have much patience for newbies... but it all works out in the end. After all, the spirit healer can fix that right up, so happy hunting! Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.
