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Fallen Earth lets players take a stroll through Alpha County
Long-awaited and heavily anticipated, Fallen Earth's Alpha County has long been the game's promised land, an environment that's at once near and far. But the release is just around the corner, and the developers are giving players a chance to peek behind the walls just a little bit early. Starting tomorrow, May 17th, Alpha County is going live on the public test server, giving all of the game's players the chance to wander around in a strange new territory. For players who want to dive into the story on the actual release and no sooner, fear not -- the announcement promises that the test server won't offer any spoilers as to storyline. But players will be able to explore a new environment and get a feel for the lay of the land, even if they can't get a feel for every new piece of content right out of the gate. Fallen Earth players had best prepare for the test server sneak peek, as it's only a day away.
Fallen Earth dev talks progress town layouts and destructible buildings
Progress towns have been on the minds of Fallen Earth fans -- and developers -- for quite a while now. The unique mechanics, which offer a newfangled approach to long-standing player city designs, are currently on the game's public test server, where three separate towns exist for players to capture and rebuild. In a new interview at MMORPG Center, Icarus Studios' lead scripter Doug Goodall talks a bit about the mechanics of Fallen Earth's entry into the dynamic content wars, including interesting blurbs on destructible buildings and pre-defined layouts. "There are no pre-defined positions. The layout of the town is entirely up to the players," Goodall explains. While rebuilt progress town structures cannot be destroyed by enemy players, the buildings and defenses can be razed by NPC enemies bent on attacking the settlement. If this happens, Goodall says that crafters will not be reimbursed for the materials expended in the construction process. What if you mess up during the placement phase? "A refund [...] may be added to let players recover from placement errors," Goodall notes.
Join the Fallen Earth Decontamination Team
Attention all wasteland wanderers! Are you interested in helping Icarus Studios keep Fallen Earth tidy and neat? Well, at least by post-apocalyptic wasteland standards, anyway. Do you think you have what it takes to ruthlessly search for and destroy bugs and exploits without feeling pity, remorse, or fear? Do you know your way around the shattered remains of the Grand Canyon like the back of your hand? Yes? Then boy do we have an opportunity for you! The Fallen Earth Decontamination Team is looking for new recruits. All it takes is a short questionnaire, a bit of personal information, and the desire and ability to "think outside of the box and not only seek out and report on bugs and issues in Fallen Earth but also help to find reproducible steps for other bugs that have been reported." If this sounds like your idea of a good time, then head on over to the Decontamination Team's page, fill out the application, and send it off to the head honchos over at Fallen Earth. In no time, you could be helping to make the Arizona wasteland a happier -- but probably not much healthier, what with the Shiva virus and all -- place.
Fallen Earth state of the game talks combat tweaks, progress towns, and more
It's the beginning of another month in the wasteland, and that means that in addition to scavenging for scrap metal and dodging ginormous prairie chickens, denizens of Fallen Earth are heading to the game's official website to check out the latest state of the game address. Much of producer Marie "Aro Sei" Croall's letter concerns progress towns, Alpha County, and combat tweaks. While we've previewed progress towns before, there is an interesting nugget in this month's letter that details a new form of related currency. Croall calls it "a PvE form of death toll" and explains that it is intended to reward players for capturing and building one of the three progress towns. She also takes the time explain the changes to minimum skill levels, which is an important consideration when it comes to players spending their hard-earned stat points. Finally, there's a bit of discussion about post-Alpha County development plans including an objective system and potential world events. Check out all the details at the Fallen Earth website.
Global Chat: Game design edition
Welcome to this week's Global Chat! We love hearing what you have to say at Massively, and we love it even more when we can share the best comments with all of our readers. Massively staffers will be contributing some of their favorite comments every week, so keep an eye out every Sunday for more Global Chat! This week is all about game design. From housing to combat to races, our readers had some great comments on it all. Follow along after the jump to see some of our best conversation from the week!
Wasteland Diaries: So you want to be a crafter?
Fallen Earth has a complex, robust crafting system. The vast majority of the items in the game can be crafted from things you find lying on the ground. I am not exaggerating when I say "vast majority" because it's well over 90%. You can literally level your way to the cap simply by scavenging and crafting. It used to be much easier, but it is still possible. Tradeskills are different from other skills in Fallen Earth in that you raise them through use rather than spending AP on them. The system itself can be quite daunting when you are first starting out, but once you have a basic grasp of how it works, the rest is pretty intuitive. In this post, I'll touch on the basics of crafting. I'm no expert, but I do have a completely maxed-out social/crafter that has most of the game's recipes in his repertoire. You may know what you are doing, but I think even the most learned of crafters might learn something from this piece. The novice crafter will learn a few simple tricks (tricks that I wished I had known when I was just starting out) that will make his life a little easier out there. It's tough when you just want to make something with your hands and there are legions of bloodthirsty miscreants trying to kill you. So grab your toolkits and click past the cut for more.
A sneak peek at Fallen Earth's Progress Towns
Coming soon to a public test server near Fallen Earth is one of the more exciting pieces of content the game has seen: Progress Towns! Icarus Studios wanted to take the concept of a player-built town and make it something truly special. Progress Towns are the next iteration of Fallen Earth's attempt to include player housing, which started with patch 1.2's camps. With the this new system, players will be able to build up their own towns from the ruins of old ones. Three such towns will be in place for testing: Progress in Sector 2, Stronghold in Sector 3, and Citadel in Deadfall. Before players can move in and start performing stunning makeovers, they'll have to fight enemy mobs who've declared squatter's rights. Once the battle is won, the area becomes player-controlled and can be improved upon by using the construction skillset. Progress Towns can be built up to house many useful features, such as merchants, mailboxes, and defensive structures. Once enough construction takes place, special merchants will appear and offer unique crafting components in exchange for a new form of currency. Don't get too comfortable, however. These towns will always be under the threat of enemy raiders looking to take back what once was theirs! This slice of player-generated content will appear on the test servers next week, but you can get a sneak peek at Progress Towns in the gallery below right now! %Gallery-48606%
Wasteland Diaries: Don't fear the reaper
Dying in Fallen Earth is not much different than it is in most other games. It's usually just a temporary setback or a very minor inconvenience. But for some, it seems to be more than that. In this week's Wasteland Diaries, I would like to ponder what might go through the mind of a gamer when he takes a dirt-nap in-game. In the past few decades I've spent playing PC games, I've seen some pretty over-the-top reactions to dying. I've tried to infer what might be going through some of these extremely emotional people's minds when they buy the farm. Various death penalties evoke wildly different emotions in general, so I'll start there. When you die in Fallen Earth, you lose all of your current non-stance buffs. Most buffs can be easily re-applied, except for your food, drinks and other consumables. It's still not a major loss, especially now that food and drink components are ultra-cheap. If there's nobody around to rez you, you must respawn at the cloner and take a 5% durability hit on your equipped gear. It's still not a big deal. And you'll get cumulative cloning sickness, which can get pretty nasty, but you have to die a lot in a short period of time to warrant tier five. And the sickness only lasts five minutes. After the cut, I'll delve deeper into the plight of the struck-down avatar and try to determine what it all means.
Wasteland Diaries: RP-PvP
In Fallen Earth, I spend most of my time PvPing. Well, actually, I probably spend most of my time waiting or preparing to PvP. I engage in PvE content out of necessity. In order to be effective in PvP, one needs levels and chips and gear. If this stuff could be earned through PvP alone, then that's all I would ever do. The situation has gotten better with the FCP rewards and XP for PvP, but it still isn't really enough. The other prominent playstyle in Fallen Earth, one I usually shy away from, is roleplaying. Some people will never do it, and some people are always in character. Most of us fall somewhere in between. This week I dipped my toe into the RP field. I would normally never decide to attend a roleplaying event, but lately I've been trying to broaden my horizons. Knowing there was a possibility of some PvP action solidified my decision to head down to New Flagstaff for Rowdy's Bunker of Blues. This is an event held every Wednesday night at the bunker bar by the pond in the center of the city. There was a live DJ and free drinks (plus the aforementioned possibility of a fight), so why not? After the cut, I'll describe what happened there and how I did when I threw my hat into the RP arena.
Fallen Earth shows off Alpha County in the newest State of the Game
If you were hoping to find out that Alpha County in Fallen Earth was a last bastion of uncorrupted civilization... well, we have some bad news for you. But in all likelihood you expected nothing of the sort, and thus the previews of the new region included in April's State of the Game letter will come as no surprise. Since the release seems to be just around the corner, this month's update is all about the surreal landscape and wasted environment players will be exploring in this newest region. Accompanied by a surfeit of screenshots, the letter talks once more about the technical challenge involved with bringing this newest region into the game. A new style of terrain means checking extensively to make sure that critters are behaving correctly when engaged by players, and the variety of new weapons and items available means that there's a lot of testing to make sure that nothing breaks the game's structure. Fallen Earth players will want to take a look at the full preview for all the details and several pictures of the latest part of the wasteland.
Wasteland Diaries: Car wars
Lately, I've been doing a lot of crafting in Fallen Earth. I have a lot of materials stockpiled, and it seems they are just taking up space. So I've been putting together some vehicles (Interceptor Speedsters, to be precise). They take about four days each to make; that's in real time, mind you. There isn't much of a demand for them right now. In fact, they sell very inexpensively on the auction house. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with them, but I guess it can't hurt to have a couple on hand. Fallen Earth is unique in the sense that you can't purchase a mount from a vendor NPC. You can get them from the rewards merchant or buy them from the Fallen Earth store, but the usual method of acquiring one is to craft it or buy it from the auction house. Some are even quest rewards. But the majority of the mounts out there are provided by the playerbase. In this post, I'll look at the evolution of vehicular combat in Fallen Earth and what we might hope and expect to see in the future. So put the pedal to the metal and zip past the cut for more.
Fallen Earth takes us to Terminal Woods in a new video
Some folks like to get away from it all, step out of the bustle of the big city and relax in untouched nature. Perhaps you're one of the people who like to do that in your MMORPG. Well, too bad! The forests of Fallen Earth are swarming with feral fauna and grotesque ghouls born out of the apocalypse. Patch 1.8 introduced the survivors to Terminal Woods, an all-new area of the wasteland. Crafters are introduced to a new ecosystem, recipes, and gear. For those who prefer more combat in their MMO, Terminal Woods grants them new bosses, missions, and more action combat. Massively's Edward Marshall wrote about his experiences in the update for the post-apocalyptic MMO in a recent Wasteland Diary, and we snagged a new video displaying some of the changes for the patch. Follow after the break for the full video featuring the music of Kataklysm.
Wasteland Diaries: Glad to be back
It's been a couple of weeks since I was able to visit the Fallen Earth wastelands. My absence wasn't by choice. But now that I'm connected to the internet once again, I can stop wasting my time away playing Minecraft (actually I enjoyed every minute of that!). I also played a little Mount & Blade in between huge construction projects. Still, it's good to be back in my favorite (though not quite so sandboxy) world. And what a glorious time to come back. I came back to Fallen Earth to find a good deal of new content. Unfortunately, the level cap was not raised to ago along with that new content, but it's still new stuff, and that's what matters. To be honest, I had already seen some of it on the PTS, but not everything. One thing I enjoyed about the new stuff is that it's fairly difficult. I died more times than I'm willing to admit. There's enough content to keep a casual player busy for a while, but just like any other PvE content, it will be chewed up and spit out by the PvE crowd and leave everyone asking for more. Hopefully, it will be enough to keep us all interested until the unveiling of Sector 4. After the cut, I'll tell you a little about what I've seen in Terminal Woods.
Patch 1.8 live for Fallen Earth
It's always a nice time for a pleasant stroll through the woods. Admittedly, when the woods in question are the rather ominously named Terminal Woods and you're in the midst of Fallen Earth, that pleasant stroll might involve shooting a few bandits and mutated animals. But with all of the new toys and content added with the latest patch, it's probable you'll find at least one or two things within the forest to keep your attention. The patch has just gone live today, and it features 50 new missions, a PvP area, and a wide variety of new gear and crafting recipes. It's about half the size of a full sector, leading up to the next update that will advance the storyline of the post-apocalyptic setting even further. Fallen Earth players can log in immediately and start enjoying all of the new content -- but all things considered, you may also want to make sure you're full on ammo.
Wasteland Diaries: The Nerfpocalypse
I don't know about you, but when I think about a post-apocalyptic future, I think about bands of merciless raiders, anarchy and danger along every roadway. Does Fallen Earth have all of these things? Yes, but it is hardly the lawless, danger-ridden place (once you get acclimated to it) that you would expect to find when civilization has collapsed and there are mutants running amok. Fallen Earth is hardly the quintessential post-apocalyptic future. Games like Gamma World (a pen-and-paper RPG from days of yore) and Wasteland captured the bleakness of a destroyed world much more convincingly. But who knows. Maybe the folks at Icarus got it right. We'll never know until the earth is destroyed. And games won't be such a matter of import when almost everyone is gone. Anyway, what I am getting at is the setting. The setting looks fantastic; the art department has certainly captured a desolate wasteland. The writing is great, and the towns and encounters are well-designed. Fallen Earth has the ambiance nailed. But the wasteland just doesn't have that sense of danger about it. Not for me, at least. After the cut, I'll discuss what I thought FE was going to be like, what it is, and what I think it should be.
Through the woods to Alpha County: Fallen Earth issues the March state of the game
February is a quick month for everyone, but it seems to have been even busier than normal for the Fallen Earth team. There are some major content updates in the wings for the game, several of which are being discussed in the most recent State of the Game address. Obviously, the biggest issue on the minds of players is the promised Sector Four and Alpha County, both of which are going to be rolled out in a staggered fashion starting with the Terminal Woods (which Edward Marshall toured just last week). That will include a surfeit of new missions, achievements, PvP objectives, and special new Scavenger bosses. Alpha County itself, meanwhile, will be getting rolled out sometime in the following months, an update that will see a level cap increase to 55 and new expansions to crafting among other improvements. The letter also states that the team is moving forward on player-crafted housing, as it's long been on the agenda for the team to handle with detail. Fallen Earth players are encouraged to read the full letter on the future of the game, sure to make any clone happy about the content just around the corner.
Gear up for the apocalypse with a Fallen Earth giveaway
When the world as we know it ends, future generations will most likely discover what we were like and cared about through the junk we left behind. So if you really want to impress your great-great-great-great-great-nephew Zodak, it might be a good idea to get in on Fallen Earth's Epic Gear Giveaway and score some sweet loot. By filling out a multiple-choice questionairre, contestants have a shot at winning one of two packages. The grand prize bundles together an iPad, Alienware headphones, an LTD guitar and a bunch of other goodies. The 20 runners-up will be treated to a set of decals and mousepad as well as an Alienware backpack and drink Koozie. What's a Koozie? I dunno, what's a Koozie with you? And even if all of the real-world gear isn't enough to tempt you into participating, Icarus is promising all winners a special (but unnamed) in-game item as an additional prize. Head on over to the Fallen Earth Epic Gear Giveaway page for more info.
Wasteland Diaries: Terminal Woods
To say that the Fallen Earth 1.8 patch is going to have some massive changes coming along with it might be a bit of an understatement. It's going to come fully equipped with major skills, abilities and mutations re-writes. Much will be changed. So much so, in fact, that I don't think anyone's quite sure what to expect, the devs included. The game will still be recognizable, but the flow of combat will be different. After more than a year of adjusting to the gradual changes that have been made to the game mechanics, I had settled into my comfort zone only to be ousted by significant changes. It still remains to be seen whether Fallen Earth's new changes will be good or bad. Of course, "good" and "bad" are subjective terms, and one person's good might be another's bad. The great thing about major changes like these is this: We get to test them out before they go live. This latest round of testing on the PTS comes complete with new content, including an entirely new area called Terminal Woods, which looks to be about the same size as Deadfall. So it's not quite a sector, but it's pretty big. The devs have put a bit of this area up on the test server for us to "test." Test it I did... if by testing you mean "exploring and shooting at stuff." After the cut, I'll discuss some of the new stuff I found while I was "testing." Consider that a spoiler alert.
Fallen Earth offers a look into the upcoming 1.8 patch
While Sector 4 is shining on the horizon for Fallen Earth players, there are still hurdles to be faced between now and when we reach those storied lands. First up is the enormous patch 1.8, which will contain new content that leads to this area and scavenger bosses. Players already well-enmeshed in life in the post-apocalyptic Grand Canyon will also notice a huge overhaul to some core systems, such as skills and mutations, as outlined in the recent State of the Game posting from Marie "Aro Sei" Croall. We've managed to snag some screenshots showing off these upcoming areas that will pave the way for players to get to Sector 4. Unlike the overwhelmingly brown locales that some immediately associate with a post-apocalyptic setting, lush landscapes dominate these new images -- as do bits of wreckage and NPCs intent on killing any player crazy enough to cross their path. Civilization has collapsed, after all! If you're curious, check out the new eye-candy in the gallery below, then head over to the Fallen Earth forums for all the patch note news. %Gallery-48606%
A peek at Sector 4 of Fallen Earth
Sector 4 isn't available for players of Fallen Earth just yet, but it's impossible not to know that it's out there, the fourth piece of a building world. As it turns out, however, Sector 4 is more than just the next zone -- it's a look into what the game's world was like before everything went to hell. In a new diary from Chris "Devo" Deavellar, the aesthetics of the new zone are discussed, and he mentions that Sector 4 is the first branch away from the fairly realistic environments seen in the game up to this point. Deavellar mentions that just throwing a bunch of plant life around would have felt unsuitable for the game, but considering the newest sector highlights the insane experiments of the Globaltech company, the place needed an alien feel. Using several real-world plants such as kudzu for inspiration, the result is a world that still feels true to life in many ways... but also is filled with alien plants weeping amber fluid. Fallen Earth players should take a look at the full diary to get the smallest hint of what this newest zone will look like, a reminder of what would have been the future... before the end of the world. [Thanks to Scott for the tip!]
