Guardians
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The US Space Force's new anthem proves it's just another boring government entity
Three years after becoming the newest branch of the US Armed Forces, the Space Force has an official song.
The first flight unit comprised of Space Force Guardians has completed basic training
The first flight comprised entirely of US Space Force Guardians recently graduated from Air Force Basic Military Training.
Space Force announces its personnel will be called 'Guardians'
While Donald Trump said that at first he was “not really serious” when considering a Space Force branch of the military, it has become real, and has continued to progress despite the ongoing pandemic.
How Microsoft keeps 'Halo 5' multiplayer games glitch-free
Glitches and bugs can ruin even the greatest of multiplayer games (looking at you MW3 Javelin Suicide Bomb). But thanks to a pair of cutting-edge analytics tools, Halo's dev team can find and fix these coding hiccups before they become memes. Senior researcher Rob DeLine recently explained how they work. Trill is a temporal processing and in-memory analytics engine. "It's pretty much the world's fastest," DeLine said in the video below. "It's two to four magnitudes faster than the competition in terms of processing temporal data." When combined with the Tempe exploratory data-analysis web service, which allows devs to watch replays of real-time play, devs can quickly spot and solve issues based only on what (and how) the community is actively gaming.
'Halo 5: Guardians' and live-action Halo TV show set for fall 2015 launch
We've known for a while that there's new Halo game coming to Xbox One and that it could possibly make its debut this year. Today, Microsoft and 343 Industries provided some additional details on the project, most notably that the next instalment in the franchise will be called Halo 5: Guardians and that it will be pushed back to a fall 2015 launch. So what can we expect? Game specifics are scarce but we know that, like Titanfall, Guardians will run on dedicated servers. However, unlike its mech-smashing counterpart, it looks set to run 1080p at 60 frames-per-second.
Destiny gets a spiffy new website
Bungie has updated its Destiny website with lots of full-motion backgrounds and a visual palette befitting its burgeoning sci-fantasy universe. There's plenty of info regarding the Titan, Warlock, and Hunter classes, too, as well as a collection of Destiny trailers that you may have missed.
This 42-minute video contains all you need to know about Destiny
If you're not sure what to make of Destiny, a new 42-minute video from Destiny Updates is worth watching. The clip touches on the game's MMO, RPG, and shooter aspects, as well as its social building blocks, its economy, and its gear and progression systems. The video is filled with timestamp links, so if you want to skip ahead to the section on, say, cooperative multiplayer, you can. Click past the cut for the full clip.
Guardians of Middle-earth adds new Survival mode, one-lane map
Warner Bros. and Monolith have announced a new update for their console MOBA game, Guardians of Middle-earth, that will add both a Survival mode and a new map for the one-lane versus mode.The new Survival mode takes place in the Glittering Caves of the White Mountains, and pits one to five players against a series of incoming enemy and boss waves, trying to keep towers up and stay alive as long as possible.The "Goblin-town" map for the one-lane mode sets the battle in the Misty Mountains near the Witch-king's dwelling, as seen in The Hobbit last year. We've got videos of both the new mode and the new map down below.To celebrate the release, Monolith devs are jumping in on the PlayStation Network and hosting a special "Play with Devs" session on Friday, March 1 from 5-8pm PT. The game is free this week for PS Plus members, so if that's you download away.Monolith says the new content is coming "soon" to both PSN and XBLA, so no date yet. The company tells Joystiq that the new one-lane map will be free. Survival Mode will also be free for anyone with a season pass (included in the boxed retail copies of the game), but cost extra otherwise.
How Guardians of Middle-earth innovates on the MOBA gametype
We first saw Guardians of Middle-earth in action back at E3 this year, and it was quite impressive even then. Monolith has taken the PC-centric gameplay of the emerging MOBA (or DotA, or LoL, or even action RTS, whatever you like to call it) genre, and translated it over to a console and a controller. But since that first play at E3, I've gotten a few more chances to play the game at Comic-Con and PAX. GOME (acronyms!) is more than just a console clone of the popular League of Legends and the upcoming Dota 2.Monolith has iterated on this complex strategy/action genre in a few different ways. Here's a list of five different things, whether you're a level 30 summoner or a Venomancer newbie, that you'll find new and interesting about Guardians of Middle-earth when it arrives for consoles later this year.
RIFT is breaking down faction walls and normalizing PvP in 1.10
"In 1.10, change is happening in a big way," RIFT CM James Nichols proclaimed on the forums. He then went on to announce that RIFT's two competing factions, the Guardians and the Defiant, will start to make steps toward unification in the final pre-expansion update. According to Nichols, while the two factions will remain philosophically opposed, they recognize the greater threat to the world and are coming together. For players, this means that there will be a lot more inter-faction communication and interaction. To start with, both factions will be able to join together for public groups, trading, the dungeon finder, raids, instant adventure, and weddings. The team also has plans to open up chat channels, quest sharing, guilds, friends list, and more between the two sides. There will be exceptions to some of these features on PvP servers, however. RIFT is also preparing to implement PvP normalization, which means that all players competing in PvP will do so with the same stats and no benefits from gear. Trion Worlds promises that there will still be "meaningful PvP progression" but that this should put the emphasis on skill rather than gear. [Thanks to Warbs and Marc for the tip!]
Lord of the Rings Online previews Guardian changes for Riders of Rohan
Guardians in Lord of the Rings Online are tanks. That's pretty much their entire purpose in life. But with the upcoming Riders of Rohan expansion, the class is seeing a substantial revision that will allow it to also take on a DPS role. The latest development blog on the class explains the new skills that Guardian players can look forward to as well as the changes implemented to allow Guardians a different role in groups. The biggest change is the removal of Parry Stance and the addition of Overpower Stance, which grants all of the benefits of the old stance as well as increased damage and lowered damage mitigation. Several skills also have new or enhanced effects in Overpower Stance. Furthermore, Guardians will receive a new Legendary Trait to improve bleed effects and a few improvements to threat generation. Players anxious to see what new tricks are granted to the familiar tank-heavy class should look at the full blog for the details on the alterations.
RIFT Conquest video boasts 'this is where realities collide'
Curious how the makers of RIFT are going to turn a two-faction game into a three-faction PvP brawl? Us too! But Trion Worlds has a few clever ideas to capitalize on the best elements of PvP innovation and evolution with its upcoming Conquest system. "With Conquest we're really trying to capture the essence of open-world PvP gameplay," shares Lead Designer William Fisher in a new developer video. "This is where realities collide." He goes on to say that this new system isn't Defiants against Guardians, but instead three brand-new factions from across the planes duking it out with player assistance. Check out the new video after the jump, and when you're done with that, catch up with our very own Karen Bryan's hands-on experience with the Conquest system!
Enter at Your Own Rift: Of apps and patches
On the surface, things have been relatively quiet in RIFT. The Fae Yule Event moved along merrily, but there hasn't been much revealed about update 1.7 yet. Fans are so used to the rapid pace of updates that they've made a minigame out of guessing what's coming and when it will arrive. But if you're wondering whether the team took the holidays off and left behind its work, fear not! Just a few days ago, Trion Worlds revealed a new iPhone app called RIFT Mobile and held its first developer Q&A with the community, during which it provided lots of new tidbits of information for RIFT fans to look forward to. In this week's Enter at Your Own Rift, we'll look at the highlights.
Grudge match: RIFT faction rivalry heating up for one-year anniversary
Worried that RIFT's Guardians and Defiants are less age-old enemies and more goofy odd couple roommates bumbling around to a laugh track? If faction chumminess concerns you, you'll be glad to hear that Trion Worlds is planning to escalate tensions between the two sides that will forever change the feel of the game. Trion said that it's already deep into the planning stages of heating up the conflict between the game's two sides, which is planned for next spring. The current Fae Yule festival is meant to be a quiet moment before everything explodes; a peace that is soon to be shattered. Design Director Hal Hanlin puts a date on the upcoming Factionopalypse: "We're planning to drive a wedge between the factions for the game's one-year anniversary." This puts the date of the event in early March 2012. Currently, while the two factions don't necessarily get along, they both are working toward the same goal of repelling the invading planar forces. It's just that they use different approaches and philosophies as they truck along.
Enter at Your Own Rift: Tackling the question of which is better
From the first day that RIFT launched, an endless debate has erupted around one central issue. Players have chosen their sides and dug in deep defending them. It's led to countless arguments and a six-month battle that gets worse with each passing day. For this week's Enter at Your Own Rift, I've decided to tackle this debate head on and really look at what divides the two sides. That's right -- the time has come to finally decide which is better: Guardian or Defiant.
Enter at Your Own Rift: One month in, how's the game?
Snakes -- they're the one thing in RIFT that I absolutely detest, not because they're dangerous or scary, but because they refuse to drop the last snake tear that I need for my critter tears collection. I've killed dozens, perhaps even hundreds, but every time, I walk away empty-handed. Oh sure, every now and then, one will give off that sparkle effect when it has loot, but it's always just the morale-crushing snake skin. I have killed so many snakes that I could probably string them together and encircle the world of Telara three times. Instead, I'll step away from my snake-slaughter to report on the news from Telara. It's been a month since the head-start launch, and already we've seen several major changes. Read on for a my mini-progress-report on public grouping, security, training dummies, and my incredible shrinking armor.
Age of Conan 2.1.2 patch goes live
Hold on to your bloodied, battle-scarred, and barbarian-themed helmets, kids, it's patch day in Hyboria. Yes, the 2.1.2 update has come to Age of Conan and brought with it a few tweaks to the game's classes. The Guardian, in particular, is the recipient of quite a lot of developer attention, and reaction on the official forums seems to indicate that the rich just got richer. Also of note is Funcom's apparent addressing of long-standing issues relating to silences and other crowd-control abilities that have heretofore been immune to damage breaks. According to the patch notes, the unintended immunity should no longer occur. Another welcome change sees increased XP rewards from the new Call of Jhebbal Sag PvP minigame, as well as increased tick rates. You can view the full patch notes, and the resulting discussion, on the official boards.
Enter at Your Own Rift: A tour guide to beta four
It was once again a busy weekend in RIFT, and I eagerly rolled up my sleeves to get to work exploring. This beta event contained a lot of great game changes and new content. First, the level cap was increased to 27, and two new hunting areas were made available: Gloamwood for the Guardians and Stonefield for the Defiants. In addition, two new dungeons were open for play: Darkening Deeps and Deepstrike Mines. But one of the most exciting additions was PvP instancing, as players finally got to try out two new Warfronts -- The Black Garden and The Codex. In this week's column, I'll give a wrap-up of my beta experience. Read on to hear more about Gloamwood, Warfronts, Darkening Deeps, and a lightbulb moment that I'll never forget.
Enter the Rift on December 28th with RIFT's third beta event
If you haven't heard of RIFT yet, there's a good chance you qualify as medically dead. Trion Worlds has been releasing an absolute ton of information lately on the upcoming fantasy MMO, from epic trailers and gameplay previews to lore posts. So far, Trion has organised two major closed beta events to get feedback on the game. Both events were a big success, with Trion taking a very positive stance on even the more critical feedback the team's been getting. The third round of RIFT's closed beta events is set to go live at 10 a.m. PST on December 28th and will run until 10 a.m. PST on December 31st. Anyone lucky enough to get into this third event will get to play as a member of the Guardian of the Vigil or Defiant factions. The first 20 levels of play will be available, making feedback from this event of critical importance to the new user experience. Players will be able to explore the Silverwood and Freemarch zones as well as take part in the first ever group dungeon tests in the previously revealed Realm of the Fae and Iron Tomb instances. For a chance to get into this third round or future beta events, head over to the official beta signup page. Stay tuned to Massively as we continue rolling out our post-NDA-drop RIFT coverage today!
Embark on the age of adventure: Win a copy of Final Fantasy XIV!
Final Fantasy XIV. OK, now that the first sentence has stoked the inevitable flame war, let's get to the meat of this post. The nice people over at Square-Enix have sent us a copy of Final Fantasy XIV, and we're excited to give it away to you lovely readers! We know that the game might not be everybody's cup of tea, but this is a contest you should jump into if you have been considering the title. Our winnable copy is a standard editon of the game, and it comes with the standard 30 days of play before charging you a subscription fee. (I feel like I'm detailing the features on a new car, or something.) And, as an added bonus, the game comes wrapped in cellophane! Oooooh! Shiny! Interested in how you can win this game? Hit the continue reading button, and you'll soon find out!
