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Mortal Online overhauls characters and armor visuals
Mortal Online has been hard at work performing comprehensive overhauls to character and armor, making them look better than ever. The character improvements for the game include visual passes, more natural animations, a new character creation system, and high-definition upgrades to armor. The visual improvements to crafted armor make up 90% of the game's wearable gear. The recent update also added in three new craftable armor sets and improved large-group performance for mass battles. Due to the character overhaul, Star Vault is giving a free recustomization option to all players. [Thanks to Dengar for the tip!]
Matt Miller reflects on eight years of City of Heroes, hands out free respecs
Eight years is an eternity for an MMO, and Lead Designer Matt Miller is exceedingly proud that City of Heroes has flown the distance. "I love the community that City of Heroes has built, and watching it over eight years ebb and flow with new voices being added to replace departed ones, and those voices being welcomed with open arms instead of open hostility that they might find elsewhere," he writes in an anniversary address. Miller reflects on a few of the highlights of the journey for him, from his getting hired on to the team in 2003 to the insanity of the head start to the beginning of a bug hunting tradition among the playerbase. He also uses this address to promote the near future of the game, including Issues 23 and 24. As part of the anniversary celebration, Paragon Studios has handed out a free respec token to each character in the game (the tokens do not stack with other respec tokens, however). Don't miss out on our own Massively celebration of the milestone, as our own Eliot Lefebvre has shared his thoughts on what this anniversary means for the game.
Issue 19 goes live in City of Heroes
While World of Warcraft goes through its own world-shattering events, City of Heroes is getting hit hard as well. Issue 19 has just gone live, allowing players to experience the first step of the Praetorian invasion. Luckily, the patch also brings with it the Alpha Slot, empowering players with the first tier of the Incarnate system and allowing characters to stand against the invasion at a heretofore unseen level of power. There's also a surfeit of assorted quality-of-life improvements, not the least of which is the movement of Fitness to a baseline set of powers. Issue 19's features have been getting talked up for some time, so players will likely find many familiar entries among the official patch notes. Most noteworthy is the free respec token that's being given out to all characters, with a second free token being awarded on December 8th for characters who have used the first free token. It's the perfect time for City of Heroes players to log in, get playing, and start fighting back against the Praetorian invaders with all the might they can muster -- and with the new systems, that's quite a lot of might indeed.
Come back to Fallen Earth for $4.99, get a free respec
Former subscribers to Icarus Studios' Fallen Earth received a welcome surprise in their inboxes this past week, as the North Carolina-based developer sent out a special subscription offer to help celebrate the title's upcoming anniversary. Former denizens of the wasteland can return to a full month of gameplay for $4.99, with the regular subscription fee of $14.99 recurring after 30 days. Returnees can also look forward to a free character respec courtesy of the Pristine Recombinant Injector that will appear in their in-game mailboxes upon account re-activation. If you've been away from the game for awhile, Icarus says there's no better time to check things out, as it has several anniversary events planned for residents of the Grand Canyon province.
Time for City of Heroes players to get ready for Issue 18
Are you ready for Issue 18 of City of Heroes? There are only a few days left to get oneself ready for all of the updates coming just to the basic game, even without counting the fact that it coincides with the launch of Going Rogue. But just in case you're not quite ready, the team at Paragon Studios is going to help get you ready by allowing players to pre-download the patch before next Tuesday. Even beyond that, players are being given the option to move characters, redo their costumes, or even change that most sacred identifier -- the global chat handle. All players with an active account at the beginning of next week will receive a free costume change token and respec token for all characters on the account. Players will also have the option to change their global chat handles, which are normally locked after the first change. On top of all that, the no-charge server transfers from earlier in the year will be back for the first week of Going Rogue's release, allowing City of Heroes players a chance to put everything in order to optimize their play experience. So if you're not ready now... it's time to get ready.
Champions Online gives away a free retcon
Retcons are valuable things in Champions Online, and they are used only with care, as their effects can be far-reaching and are assured to be constant for quite some time. (This marks a major point of divergence between Champions Online and most current comic books, but we'll leave that to one side for the time being.) So it's a bit significant when Cryptic announces that everyone will be getting a free retcon on October 27th, just in time for the Blood Moon event to kick off in full swing. Cryptic's official explanation is that the free retcon comes as a result of server troubles over the weekend, and is their little way of extending an olive branch to the community. It does come with a bit of a caveat, however -- if you've been banking up your previous free retcon in anticipation of needing it later, they won't stack. You just get the one free. But that's not such a big issue, when you get right down to it -- you can use the retcon if you need it, and start enjoying the zombie-smashing fun. And if you aren't already playing, perhaps now is a fine time to mention that there's a free weekend starting on Friday?
Get that free respec you've been dying for in Champions Online
One of the things the Champions Online community has been requesting feverishly is the use of a free respec to change their powers. Many recent changes to the monsters and power abilities in the game have left some characters unable to cope with combat. Today's patch was supposed to add in that free respec option, however something has gone wrong with the patch and the free power retcon was left out....Or was it?Cryptic Daeke has just revealed via twitter that it's not impossible to get your character a free respec today! Visit the powerhouse, open up your retcon screen and type in "/character_usefreerespec" into the chat window, without quotes. A system message should appear and your retcon list will be wiped clean, allowing you to completely revitalize your character from the ground up. Enjoy your new power selection!
Bug fix patch with talent reset coming soon
Talent bugs have plagued players since patch 3.1 hit, with its dual spec system, last Tuesday. Blizzard knows this better than anyone; unfortunately, it's going to take a content patch to fix a lot of the weirdness that has been transpiring. Fortunately, they're working to get that patch out the door as soon as possible. The way they've been talking, my money's on patch 3.1.1 coming probably tomorrow, or failing that, next week. Eyonix just posted that "in the next upcoming minor content patch," all talents are going to be wiped, but not glyphs. So (as he reminds us) make sure you put the right talents with the right glyphs, or you'll have to respec/reglyph to fix it. I would recommend waiting until tomorrow morning on any respec plans you might have (unless they're for tonight's raid), because there's a good chance you'll get it done for free in the morning.
All characters to receive free respecs in patch 3.1
This may seem obvious considering how many changes are coming with patch 3.1, but we've been asked the question enough that I'm glad to finally see a confirmation on it: Yes, characters of every class will have their talent points refunded when patch 3.1 hits, Ghostcrawler says.Reading further into his comments, however, it looks like the amount of changes happening to the talent trees may not be the reason for the free respecs, but rather the result of it. The free respec actually seems to be something that was necessary when implementing Dual Specs, and they went ahead and did some extra fixing and cleaning because of that.That sort of makes sense, in the past it seems like they've mostly tried to target a few classes at a time rather than making heavy changes to all of them all at once. Patch 3.1 has hefty changes for every single class, and I don't remember very many content patches that had such widespread class changes. One way or another we would all need to respec after dual specs went in, so they saw an opportunity to make some additional changes and they took it. I'm okay with that.
Official: talents reset with 3.0.2
I've got a special report in hand from the department of obvious news: we will all get a talent refund when patch 3.0.2 hits, still expected to be next week (four days). Just like the big pre-BC patch, 3.0.2 ("Echoes of Doom") will give us access to the new talents that we will be enjoying in Wrath of the Lich King, as well as (for many classes) new skills. And since the talent trees are so drastically changed, they probably couldn't let us keep our current specs in many cases even if they wanted to. Obviously we won't be able to access the level 75 and 80 skills until we jet off to Northrend and get some leveling in, but a lot of skills have been retconned in, so to speak. Here are a few examples of new tricks you'll learn from your class trainers, listed with what class they're for and at what level you can learn them. Dismantle (Rogue, level 20). This one quite honestly looks overpowered to me (speaking as someone who plays a Rogue), but we'll see. Revive (Druid, level 12). Thank the maker; this has been a long time coming. New icon for Sentry Totem (Shaman) (not really). There are more where those came from. And that's quite aside from the new talent trees. In preparation for the patch, WoW Insider will be running down all 27 trees in the days to come (when we're not busy reporting from BlizzCon, that is), so keep an eye out.
CoX costume token, free respec delay
As astute players may remember, the City of Heroes team had promised to offer a free respec and free costume token to coincide with the release of Issue 11, which hit servers yesterday morning. Those expecting the free goodies were probably a bit distraught, and are probably curious just what happened. Counting ourselves among this group, we headed over to the official City of Heroes forums and found the answer from the esteemed community manager, Lighthouse.Turns out that they couldn't quite fit everything into the patch that they had hoped, and among the things that ended up slipping through the rungs were the aforementioned respec and costume token. But fear not, because they were only delayed, not canceled. The free costume token will be assessed to all active character accounts during the usual morning maintenance period tomorrow, Friday the 30th. As for the free respec, you'll have to wait a bit longer, as that won't be going active until December 7th. The timing seems a little strange, since the respec is supposed to compensate for all the balance challenges put in Issue 11, and letting people respec a full week and a half later is just... curious.
