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ArenaNet declassifies Guild Wars 2's Human military files
The Humans in Guild Wars 2 may be down on their luck (and population) but they're certainly not out. As ArenaNet continues Human Week, a new blog entry titled The Line of Duty introduces us to the three main military forces representing our spunky cousins -- and why they don't necessarily get along. First and foremost are the Seraph, who act as both the backbone of the military and the police force for the Human settlements. While the Seraph are widespread in Kryta, the Ministry Guard -- the protectors of the Human government and nobility -- mainly focus their efforts in the capital of Divinity's Reach. However, watching over the Royal Family is the responsibility of the Shining Blade, an elite force of warriors and spies. The Shining Blade should be familiar to those who fought in Guild Wars' War in Kryta campaign. Each of these military branches vies for influence and authority over the others, although the Shining Blade tends to be at the top of the pecking order while the Seraph take up position as the whipping boys (and girls). As ArenaNet writes, this causes "a tug-of-war for influence and control" amongst the beleaguered armed forces. You can read about the clash of politics, position and power between these forces on the ArenaNet blog -- and stay tuned for this coming Monday, when Flameseeker Chronicles will give a colorful commentary on the whole of Human Week.
Newest Guild Wars 2 reveal includes human history and video
Guild Wars 2 fans were treated to an early-morning release of the newest dose of human information today. Today's reveal gave a brief summary of human history, a tale well-known to Guild Wars players, along with some interesting new details on familiar foes such as the Modniir. The human gods have withdrawn from their followers, and this information tells us more about their motivation and the human response. The cherry on top is the new video entitled "Kryta: The Last Human Homeland." It's a sweeping tour of Divinity's Reach and an introduction to the Krytan area of Valley Hill, accompanied by a new musical score, as well as the ambient sound and voicework that is fast becoming a hallmark of Guild Wars 2. Visit the Guild Wars 2 site for further information on the human race, and keep your eyes open for next Monday's Flameseeker Chronicles for our analysis of Human Week!
Newest ArenaNet blog post introduces Guild Wars 2 audio
Today's ArenaNet blog post continues Human Week for Guild Wars 2 -- a week-long look at the human race of Tyria. Guild Wars 2 writer John Ryan penned "Against the Wall" focusing on the race's history. What made this entry special, however, were the six audio clips scattered throughout the post. Each facet of human history was supplemented with voice work to illustrate what we'll hear in Guild Wars 2, giving us over five minutes of audio as a little taste of what's to come during gameplay. Check out the history and audio of the Guild Wars 2 human race, and watch for next Monday's Flameseeker Chronicles as we do a full analysis of Human Week.
A week of humanity for Guild Wars 2
Even though they've been the only playable race for all of Guild Wars, humans have never had an easy run of things. Beset by enemies that destroyed the nations of Ascalon and Orr, manipulated by otherworldly beings, and thrown into conflict again and again, human beings have always triumphed in the end. And while the 250 years between the original game and Guild Wars 2 have only served to heap more indignities on the race, the nation of Kryta has withstood the onslaughts and endured. That's why humans are the first race to be featured with a full week of discussion. Human Week is kicking off today for Guild Wars 2 with three pieces of concept art and plans for the next several days. Tuesday will see a reveal on the human story and crafting the proper tone, Wednesday will be reserved for discussing human style and clothing, and Thursday will see more background detail and a homeland video tour. Then Friday will unveil the balance between Kryta's three armed factions, no doubt one of the main flashpoints for conflict in the game's story. GW2 might be starting with the most familiar race of all, but as always, the lore and design reveals promise to be anything but pedestrian.
En Masse unveils third TERA race and class series entry
It's been a while since we've been treated to an update of En Masse Entertainment's TERA Race and Class series. Happily, today marks the third installment, and it's all about Humans, Mystics, and Sorcerers. If you're in the mood for early Christmas presents, we've got them in the form of a new TERA screenshot gallery, a gameplay video of Sorcerers blowing stuff up, and a few blurbs about races, classes, and quests. TERA is currently gearing up for its Korean open beta, with a European and North American launch expected in 2011. Join us for all the juicy details after the cut. %Gallery-105090%
WoW Insider's Weekly Webcomic: Safe Passage
Welcome to another edition of the WoW Insider's Weekly Comic, Safe Passage. This comic takes place post-Cataclysm, so there will be minor spoilers. Our groups' unwanted -- and so far unseen -- visitor has made herself known. The tension in the air is palpable. On a more technical note, I'm trying something new with textures. It's not very noticeable, but I think it gives the page a little something. What do you guys think? Keep or toss? Check out the full comic right here, and tune in next Tuesday morning for a new page. You can also see all the previous pages in the gallery below. %Gallery-102091%
Forsaken World's assassin slices and dices
"By the time you see one," Perfect World Entertainment promises, "it's already too late." Of course when you do see one of Forsaken World's assassins, your last thought may be, "Where are all your clothes, girl?" The assassin is the focus of Forsaken World's latest class spotlight, and if you're thinking "rogue" right now, you're not too far off the mark. This class, playable only by Human and Kindred characters, certainly seems to embody many of the typical qualities of a MMO rogue, from dual-wielding to stealth attacks to working off a combo points system. However, they do get a few interesting abilities, such as being able to run down fleeing opponents with as much mercy as you might expect from an assassin. The class spotlight also lists a few of the assassin's skills-in-progress, which include a brief increase to run speed, the ability to enter and remain in stealth even while in combat, and transferring a slow effect from yourself to your enemy. You can read the full rundown over at Forsaken World.
Cataclysm Beta: Racial changes in build 12984
A new build for the Cataclysm beta is pending and should be hitting servers fairly soon. In build 12984, we're going to see several races getting a few updates. Racial changes Human Perception is gone. Undead Cannibalize now also regenerates mana. (7% of total health and mana every 2 sec for 10 sec) Tauren Cultivation still increases your Herbalism skill by 15, but also lets you gather herbs faster than normal herbalists. Gnomes Shortblade Specialization Expertise with Daggers and One-Handed Swords increased by 3. Human Perception is gone? My poor dwarf will have extra reason to be Cannibalized? Gnomes becoming experts with daggers and one-handed swords? And the change no one could have seen coming, taurens can pick flowers faster? Anyway, enough with the amazement. What do you guys think of these changes to racials so far? [via MMO-Champion] World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.
Featureless avatars help scientists dominate the dancefloor
Scientists. If we didn't know better, we'd think they were messing with us all the time. But we know they're usually there to help, which is the only reason we've watched this video (after the break) 27 times this afternoon. Apparently Northumbria University researchers motion-captured a bunch of dudes dancing really hard, then mapped their movements to these fun models -- devoid of any popped collars, Ed Hardy vests, or Gucci bling to keep things scientifically pure -- then asked 35 women to rate the dancing on attractiveness. Turns out the left wrist, right knee, head, and trunk are most important parts to shake if you're a dude trying to catch the most feminine eyes in da club. Seems like those parts communicate a man's "reproductive quality" the most effectively. Now excuse us -- we've got a lot of work to do before Happy Hour rolls around.
Hyperspace Beacon: Loyal to their cause
As some of you may know, I love roleplaying in MMOs. Most of the MMOs I've played have had RPG tagged at the end. Even though it's not required to roleplay to enjoy an MMORPG, immersion is compounded when you do, therefore fun is compounded, too. In the Star Wars universe, I could not help but wrap myself in lore when I played a soldier or agent of the Galactic Empire. From line and formation to order and procedure -- all of this was in service to His Majesty, the Emperor. Of all the characters I made over my seven years of Star Wars Galaxies, my Imperial characters were the most purpose-driven. When Bioware announced the trooper class for Star Wars: The Old Republic, many players asked who would want to play a clone. There's no personality there, no motivation or character development, right? I disagree very strongly. In fact, I will go so far as to say I believe there is only one binding factor between soldier types: loyalty. Even then there are different types of loyalties and different motivations behind an individual character's loyalties. Step past the break and watch as I contrast the loyalty of famous factions of existing Star Wars soldiers and compare them to the trooper and agent classes of SWTOR.
Know Your Lore: Current Alliance politics -- the humans, part two
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. So far, we've talked about human politics and the first Alliance -- the Alliance of Lordaeron, formed by King Terenas and Anduin Lothar after the fall of Stormwind and King Llane. When we left off, King Varian Wrynn had blissfully taken both the throne and a new wife who had given him a fine, healthy son. He was a staunch supporter of the Alliance of Lordaeron, having had King Terenas to look up to as a father figure and a mentor after the death of King Llane. Stormwind had been rebuilt through the efforts of the people of the kingdom, notably the Stonemasons, led by Edwin VanCleef. Varian was in love, the kingdom was happy, and prosperity blessed the land. Of course this means that all hell was about to break loose. This is Warcraft, after all. Varian wasn't the only one that held power within Stormwind's walls -- there was also the House of Nobles, the governing body of Stormwind under the King. It was the House of Nobles that originally contracted the Stonemasons and agreed upon a sum of gold to be paid after their work had been completed. Ordinarily this arrangement would've gone well, but there was a wrench that had been thrown in the works back when Varian was crowned king. Her name was Katrana Prestor.
Suspended animation shocker: lack of oxygen could be the key to surviving a deep freeze
Researchers in Seattle are coming closer to discovering the secrets of suspended animation. Experimenting with yeast and worms, Dr. Mark Roth has been able to determine that a significant decrease in oxygen before the deep freeze of an organism makes surviving the thaw much, much easier, and may account for several cases where people have appeared to be frozen to death but were later revived. Dr. Roth's aim, he says, is not to be able to freeze people for long periods (such as is the case in the classic film Encino Man), but to help medical professionals "buy time" and advance their understanding of the effects of freezing on the human body. Sure, but if it means we might get to meet up with Pauly Shore in like, a thousand years, why don't we just shoot for the stars on this one? Video is below.
Know Your Lore: Current Alliance politics -- the humans, part one
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. Over the past several weeks we've looked at the political situation of the Alliance races: night elves, gnomes, dwarves and draenei. This leaves just one race to take a look at, and while it's been around and active for the shortest amount of time in history, it's easily got the largest amount of conflict of any of the Alliance races in game. Without it, the Alliance wouldn't exist in the first place. That's right, this week we're covering the backbone of the Alliance, the human race -- and there is a lot of ground to cover. Wrath of the Lich King contained several reveals in regard to the history of the Alliance races, but perhaps the most surprising was a neat and tidy explanation for the existence of the humans of Azeroth. While other races have either been around since the dawn of Azeroth or were constructed by the titans, the humans have a unique explanation for their presence that was briefly explained in a quest line in Howling Fjord.
Apple ten years on
This is a pretty wandering post over at the NZ Herald (it starts out with a screening of Avatar, and drops a few local actor names before getting down to business), but it eventually gets to an interesting premise: what will Apple's hardware look like not in 2010, when we're all breathlessly awaiting the tablet, but in 2020, ten years from now? Of course we're talking about complete speculation here -- not even Apple knows what they'll be doing in ten years. But it's not like we haven't done it before: Apple's devices are smaller, faster, and more powerful than ever. What will they be like ten years down the line? More gesturing and intuitive human interfaces seem like a good guess -- with the iPhone, the accelerometer has been used in all sorts of interesting ways, and it's probably not far until Apple figures out a way to track movement in 3D space, either by moving an iPhone or a controller around, or as the piece suggests, by tracking our body in some way. Slimmer display screens and extra battery life will be in the future as well. And the article mentions solid state storage, but if our predictions for this year are any indication, Apple will try to move off the hard drive as much as possible, and start placing data for multimedia and other files in a cloud server, accessible via Internet whenever they're needed. Like I said, interesting thought experiment. What do you think Apple will be like ten years from now?
In-game models I would change if I could
In the transition to Cataclysm, an increasing amount of the game looks pretty dated, and we've already see Blizzard take a wrench to a number of models like druid forms and major lore figures. I've been hoping for a while that they'll do the same with the game's earliest and most dated models -- the ones that haven't changed a whit since the classic game hit beta -- and particularly the following. All of them are a jarring difference from the graphical quality of Northrend creations, and only stand to get more so in Cataclysm: 1. The wyvern The wyvern is the model from which Blizzard cribbed the horrifying older version of Tauren cat form, but it was already awful in its own right. Compared to gryphons, wyverns look...well...terrible. They have a host of much less impressive and realistic animations and just seem like they're a lower-resolution model overall. The run animation on the player mount version makes it obvious that the thing was never meant to run, and the top of its head looks like somebody took an experimental swing at it with a frying pan. I have yet to see a Horde player fly one of these monstrosities longer than they absolutely have to. Dear God, someone please put this affront to nature out of its misery.
Analyzing the newest Guild Wars 2 trailer
ArenaNet has a very early, very wonderful holiday gift for Guild Wars fans this morning: a brand new Guild Wars 2 trailer. (Take a moment to cheer, then we'll move on.) The trailer is amazingly beautiful, something we've come to expect from ArenaNet and particularly Guild Wars 2. But if you don't let yourself get distracted by the eye candy -- something that is admittedly hard to do -- there is a lot of new information here, including more details on people and places we've already heard of, and some fascinating possibilities to explore. Take a look at the video here, then follow along with us as we explore this new information from ArenaNet. If you're unfamiliar with Guild Wars 2, this will help you get acquainted, but we also have some deep lore speculation for current Guild Wars fans. (The video can also be found at the official Guild Wars 2 site.)
The art direction of Black Prophecy's humans
Some of the best art has a purposeful visual direction and that seems to be the case with Black Prophecy's Human faction. It also helps when your game has an incredibly beautiful rendering engine and a cockpit view to show every glorious detail off up close and personal.For those of us into the art design of a game, this recent developer diary on the Human art direction will most certainly interest you -- especially since it gets pretty in-depth on the reasoning behind every line and curve. The three page write-up goes into detail on the faction logo's origins, ship and station structural design. A lot of time is spent describing the real world parallels of the Humans in Black Prophecy to, well, us.
Chinese Warcraft casemod is awesome
A few things about this Warcraft-flavored PC casemod, seen over on this Chinese website. First: it's awesome. Warcraft art is faithfully recreated, and as you can see, there's a nice Horde montage on one side, Alliance on the other, and the Dark Portal sitting right there in front. Second: it's probably pretty old -- most of that art is from the game's original release four years ago.So it's probably not exactly the latest and greatest in Warcraft PC designs (though it might be a little later than the ghost train pirate art). But still, it looks great. And I definitely wouldn't mind wandering around Azeroth on that rather than my current gigantic black tower of a PC.Update: Turns out the case is for sale. That is, if you want to spend $299 on a case.[via Technabob]%Gallery-69709%
The Queue: Dragon Slave!
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. Allison Robert, erroneously described by Alex Ziebart as "universally adored" on this site (whisper the phrase "I hate Tauren cat form" in Turtlehead's direction and run) is your hostess today.Mmmm...my favorite kind of Queue, the kind with a tank question. Actually, there were two good tank questions from the previous Queue, but the one asked by Gatorforest is something I'd like to address in a separate article. Additionally, two of the questions you'll see here wound up requiring fairly involved answers, so there are a few more questions I'd like to take a crack at sometime later this weekend if I get the time.And because it's Friday:Charlie asks...How many Queue columns does it take for one to finally reach the front of the line?The readers or the writers? I don't know about the former, but for us, it depends on the outcome of the previous day's in-staff gladiatorial match. Much like Mary Sues in the now-classic Pirate Monkey comic, THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE. Actually, I'm just using this as an excuse to quote the following:Professor Flitwick: Wait, she said she's both Dumbledore's and Snape's daughter. How is that possible?Dumbledore: Ehh, remember that Christmas party where we all got really drunk?
WoW Moviewatch: The Rumpus Machine
One of the mainstays at BlizzCon is the machinima contest – talented artists submit their movie ahead of the convention in hopes of winning fame and prizes. This year's BlizzCon is no different, and we're sure to see some great videos during the largest gathering of WoW players outside of Azeroth. Over the next few days let's take a look back at some of the winners and runner ups of last year's movie competition. We'll begin with the winner in last year's comedy category, The Rumpus Machine by Oblivious Films. The short film is about a Gnomish box that can do whatever it wants, thanks to some handy quantum manipulation. (Note: This movie and its acknowledgement by Blizzard proves WoW has a Heisenberg compensator built into the game. Be afraid. Be very afraid.) The box can summon dancing Blood Elves, teleport the group to Old Ironforge, and even make some Braaaains.The movie runs a little long for my tastes, but I'm sure some of you are okay with that. It has a certain Adult Swim feel to it; not terribly "lol" funny, but more humor that makes you chuckle and has a few moments of intelligent absurdity.The voice acting is good for the most part. The main Gnome character is done wonderfully, and the Dwarf fills his role. I wasn't very fond of the Human, however. He seemed bland and lacked inflection compared to the others. Regular people don't talk in a flat voice most of the time. Of course the real positive with the voice acting comes in a special appearance by Deckard Cain of Diablo fame, voiced by the original actor. That adds a lot to the film, and the dialog and plot involving him works wonders for the movie. I can see why it was selected as the winner in the comedy category for this reasons alone.
