level-cap
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Chronicles of Spellborn raises the free to play level cap
Worst part of freemium games is really getting into the game and then running head long into the free area's level cap. You just got started, just got into getting a nice pace, and you suddenly can't go any further until you buy a new zone or pay for a subscription.Chronicles of Spellborn seems to understand that problem and have taken a step to delay the inevitable. With the last patch, "Paragraph of Timed Strike," they've raised the free to play level cap from 7.6 to 9.9. This is going to allow new players or former free to play users the ability to level further and access more quests in the starting areas of Hawksmouth and Aldenvault.Of course at level 9.9 you're still going to need a subscription if you want to continue on with Spellborn, but hey, now you have 2.3 more levels to enjoy before you need to grab some Acclaim coins.
Vanguard's "Halls of the Pantheon" update goes live
Vanguard has been patched with its "Halls of the Pantheon" game update, which marks the first level cap increase for the game. The new level cap is 55, and we're already hearing from the community that getting through the five extra levels is going to take a bit of work. The titular Halls of the Pantheon will have players proving themselves to the gods of Telon in return for great rewards. The feature list for the patch is fairly long, but here are some of the highlights:Feature Details: 200 new quests 1000+ new items 2 new flying mounts Choose your alignment and reap the rewards Find out the truth behind the schemes of Kamelott Become a god warrior and unlock the way to the Halls of Shattered Souls Craft enhancements making them more powerful Craft god armor Craft a unique epic weapon for each class New item mods New resistances Level Increase: New level cap is 55 95 new abilities Spell crafting added Item levels increased New crafting related quest series The full feature list can be found at the Vanguard community site.
Runes of Magic announces a new dungeon, "Cyclops Stronghold"
Frogster Interactive's free-to-play title Runes of Magic has announced the brand new level 50 dungeon "Cyclops Stronghold," and a brand new addition of a new instanced cave system that leads into the new dungeon.Runes of Magic is still in open beta, but certainly coming along nicely with its updates. The new dungeon centers around the cyclops King Uguda and his generals and assistants. One of the boss battles includes cyclops soldier trainer Instructor Boddosch, right as he's training some of the new cyclops recruits in the art of combat. Later battles include disrupting officers, fighting the generals, and challenging the extremely quick and strong cyclops king to an intense battle.The usual rewards apply here, as the developers have promised that Uguda will be dropping some pretty impressive loot, as well as offering a strategic challenge to any level 50s interesting in engaging in the new content. Ten Ton Hammer has the press release, check it out.
One Shots: Celebrating 50 with the Carnival
Hitting 50 - the level cap in City of Heroes - for the first time is an imporant moment for any hero, just as hitting the level cap is in any MMO, really. Of course, unlike say, World of Warcraft, City of Heroes really doesn't change significantly at endgame - you just get to spend all that Influence on the max-level IO Enhancements. Today's One Shots shows off one of our readers, Tony P., hitting 50. He writes in: The shot was taken in a Carnival of Shadows radio mission. I was waiting for the level animation so I could take a screenie of reaching 50 on my first character. I must have been casting one of the archery AOEs at the time as I got this interesting shot of arrows and and the levelup animation combined. My character was in stealth which is why you can't see them much. Grats on 50, Tony!Do you have a particularly cool shot of a casting animation, a Ding-shot, or just one of combat? We dig on those cranked-up spell effects. Just send it to us here at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name, the game and location. Descriptions are, as always, welcome but not required. We'll post it out here for the world to see!%Gallery-9798%
Stargate Worlds level cap to increase every three months
Stargate Worlds France conducted a very substantial interview with Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment/Firesky Studio Head Dan Elggren at the Games Convention in Leipzig. We say it's substantial because it includes a few new revelations about the game.The most notable of those revelations: CME/Firesky will be raising the game's level cap (50 at launch) by two levels every three months to coincide with new content updates and episodes. The second most interesting tidbit is about teams. Teams are a social unit smaller than commands (guilds); think of them as persistently existing and organized groups/parties. Anyway, the big news about teams is that players will be able to name their regular groups. Cool! Other topics included various Stargate inside jokes, Elggren plugging the gas-guzzling Hummer promotion, and some stuff about the Asgard, Archaeologist, Jaffa, and Go'auld classes that has already been floating around for a while. Watch the video for all that. Note that most of the video is in French with English subtitles, while the interview itself is in English with French subtitles.
Level 80 and other major new highlights from the Beta [Updated]
Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan posted several new changes that are appearing in the Wrath of the Lich King Beta tonight. The highlights include: Level cap raised to 80. Less XP required for 70 to 80* Storm Peaks zone available, Icecrown unavailable. Follow dungeons available: Halls of Lightning Halls of Stone Caverns of Time: Stratholme The Occulus Utgarde Pinnacle Heroic Nexus Tigole also notes that premade characters will be made available at a later date on a different server. It looks like they'll actually be doing this now. More changes and analysis of the latest Beta patch to come throughout the evening. Stay tuned.*We did some rough calculations. Daniel's Hunter was approximately 50% of the way through level 70. His hunter is now 60% of the way through level 70. Thus, the XP required to level was reduced by approximately 20%. These are just rough estimates, and no official word on the percentage has came out yet.Update 11:49 p.m. EDT: Zarhym has said that patch notes are still being compiled. We'll have them up as soon as Blizzard releases them.
The Daily Grind: How long should it take to reach the level cap?
Yesterday Blizzard revealed that World of Warcraft's recruit-a-friend program will undergo some big changes. One of those changes: if you group with a friend whose account was signed up because you invited him or her to play, you'll both receive experience at 300% the normal rate.Blizzard has already decreased the amount of XP needed to reach level 60. When Wrath of the Lich King launches, word has it that an even bigger slash will occur in the 60 - 70 range. How long will it take to 60, 70, or 80 now, we wonder? That probably depends on your personal playstyle. But the question of how long it ought to take to reach the endgame in an EverQuest/World of Warcraft-style MMO has been on our minds ever since Funcom made a statement about how many hours it wants people to invest to reach level 80 in Age of Conan.What's the sweet spot for you? Do you want to get there as fast as possible, or is the journey to the top the real attraction?
Average Conanite will reach level 80 in 250 hours
Age of Conan game director Gaute Godager said at the launch event in Norway that reaching level 80 will take "on average 250 hours of gameplay," according to videogamer.com.The first few levels will come lightning fast, but the bulk of them up to 60 will be comprised of between two and three hours of gameplay. After that, it will get a bit slower, thanks to some input from beta testers. By our math, that leaves five hours per level including and after 60, but who knows how that will be distributed.Whether this ends up being faster than competing games like World of Warcraft and The Lord of the Rings Online by the end probably depends on your play-style. He said "on average," so does that mean the hardcore achievers will reach the top in 90 hours and the casuals will mosey on up there within 500 hours? There's been a lot of chit chat and speculation in the Massively office about this news. We suppose we'll get a good sense of it by midway through the summer.
Player vs. Everything: Maxed out and bored
Congratulations! You've hit level 70 (or whatever max level is in your favorite game), and you're officially a badass. For many players, this is a goal they've been striving towards for months -- even years in some cases. The feeling of having that first max level character is immensely invigorating. It's like putting the finishing touches on a long-term project or getting to the last page of a monstrous novel. What an accomplishment! However, after basking in the glow of your newly maxed out character for a few days, you quickly realize you have a small problem: What do you do with yourself now? The answer to that question is going to depend heavily on what game you play. For most people, it's going to be PvP, raiding, or a nice mix of both. You'll probably continue collecting gear for your character or working on your skills. Depending on the game, you might be able to work on some sort of alternate advancement or achievement system for your character -- maybe even hunt down some unique titles. All of this is pretty standard fare for endgame content. Sooner or later, you'll probably get a little bored of it. Don't fret, though! There's a whole host of other interesting things you can do to keep yourself entertained at maximum level that go beyond the planned content. Read on for a few suggestions.
Age of Conan hits exclusively open beta on May 1st
This is it! Funcom, in partnership with Eidos and IGN have announced the Age of Conan open beta, available at FilePlanet.com and other IGN partner sites. Now, being available on FilePlanet means it's more of an 'exclusively open beta' -- you will have to be a member to receive the download.Additionally, from the press release: 'Funcom would like to point out that the primary function of the Open Beta is to stress test Age of Conan prior to launch. This means that Funcom will not make the entire game available to the Open Beta testers, and a level 13 cap will be applied.' So no matter how quickly you progress through the content, you're not going to be able to see any of the higher-level stuff; this might mean no siege warfare, or city building, or ridable mounts. But you've waited this long for decapitation-related joy, and here it is!
Lineage II expansion announced: "Hellbound"
Our friends at NCsoft have informed us that the next Lineage II expansion, titled Hellbound, is on the way. This will be the final chapter of the First Throne, and will continue on from the last expansion The Kamael which was released a few months ago. Headlining the features for Hellbound is a raise of the level cap to 85, as well as new high-end content culminating in a raid boss, Beleth (pictured).%Gallery-19265%
PotBS end of beta events to kick off today
It's almost time for the Pirates of the Burning Sea beta to come to a close, with the game's scheduled release date not too far ahead. Flying Lab Software has updated the official PotBS page to announce the timing of some end of beta events that they previously hinted at.Depending on the server you play on, the events will commence at different times of day. Black Bart server's event will begin at 12:00pm PST, Rackham at 2:00pm PST, and Blackbeard at 4:00pm PST. Each of these times are preceded by the word "about" on the official site, so there's no need to sit around tapping your pocket watch impatiently if the festivities haven't started precisely on the hour.As of the latest build of the game, the level cap has been removed, allowing the maximum of 50 to be attained, and the auction houses have been packed with useful items like XP books (that speed the rate of experience gain) and ship deeds. To help buy these goodies, every player will receive 1 million doubloons upon logging in. It has been said that if all the items on the auction house get bought, FLS will be able to restock them. It looks like they really want to end this thing in style.
The Daily Grind: What's the rush?
Somebody always does it. Shortly after any expansion launches you can expect someone to plow through all those levels and reach the maximum cap in less than a few days. This recently happened again in Rise of Kunark, 36 hours after the EverQuest 2 expansion hit desktops, Monk Taucher from the guild Second Dawn leveled from 70-80 netting a 100 dollar prize and their claim to short-lived leveling fame. I can understand the achievement aspect of wanting to level as fast as possible, reach the end and be done with it, but even so in an expansion hardcore players who raid won't be able to raid until their guild catches up. Doesn't this defeat the whole purpose of relishing content instead of whining about how there is nothing to do on the forums? Or the all-to-common argument amongst the core hardcores that their guild is slow because they slack and can't play 12 hours a day? I know we all enjoy different things about a MMOG, but leveling up and waiting for your guild to catch-up isn't very enjoyable -- I've been there myself. At least it took more than a few people to achieve this goal when World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade launched. Gullerbone, a mage leveled from 60 to 70 in a matter of 28 hours with the help of some friends using area effect spells to grind out the levels faster. I'm a firm believer that everyone should enjoy the game how they see fit as long as they aren't breaking the rules (dupes, gold-farming, etc.) but I still think leveling this fast is a bit over the top. I think at some point we all power-level and wish we would reach a certain level already. That's understandable, but as soon as an expansion launches? If you could, would you skip to the end after an expansion launched or do you prefer to take it in small chunks and get there when you get there?
And the first EQ2 player to reach level 80 is...
Stratics reports that the first player to reach level 80 on EverQuest II's live servers is the Monk Taucher of the guild Second Dawn on the Najena server. The word is that Taucher reached level 80 at 7:37 AM EST on Thursday the 15th of November; that's approximately 36 hours after Rise of Kunark -- the expansion that raised the level cap from 70 to 80 -- went live.Taucher won a $100 reward from the community for being the first to level 80. He wrote a couple of brief posts in the contest's stickied thread at the EQ2Flames forum. He said in his post announcing his accomplishment, "I'm sure I'll have a lot to say when I wake up at some point, but right now I've been playing for pretty much 39 hours straight and I just want to go to bed."This is not the first time a power gamer has blown everyone away with a marathon play session to reach a new level cap. Back when The Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft came out, a 24-year-old Frenchman progressed from level 60 to level 70 in just 28 hours with the help of his guild mates.
DDO Module 6 includes raised level cap and more
Module 6 for Dungeons & Dragons Online is currently in testing, and the developers have posted a list of changes they're working on. The most notable of these is a raise of the level cap to 16, but there are many other interesting updates as well, such as whole slew of new spells. Want to charm whole masses of enemies, or trap their souls in a gem? Well, soon you'll be able to!Though it's not exactly Turbine's flagship product anymore, DDO provides a unique online gaming experience to a passionate niche that includes fans of the table-top RPG. If you're part of that niche, get ready to move on up to the next level and take on new quests sometime soon-ish.[Via Razorwire]
WoW Future-Vision: Express train to the level cap
The year is 2012. WoW fans are excitedly awaiting the game's 5th expansion, Revenge of the Gnomes, which brings two new races to the game (Sporeggar and Goblins, at last!), as well as a new class (the Tinker), and a slew of other features. As everyone knows, this is the expansion where the gnomes finally take back Gnomeregan from the troggs, pushing them back all the way into the "Undergloom," a vast and ancient network of caverns beneath Azeroth. Of course, the gnomes also accidentally stumble upon the long-buried prison of the Old Gods and unleash unbridled havoc on the World of Warcraft, but that's where the fun is, right?I could go on and on about the new features included in Revenge of the Gnomes, but I'm sure you've heard about most of them already (like the subterranean hovercraft group-mounts and blue-pill, red-pill potions for alchemy). Suffice it to say that the feature everyone is most excited about is that the level cap is once again being raised another 10 levels, to a grand total of 110. Like everyone else, you're probably wondering how in the world (of Warcraft) are you going to level your new Goblin Tinker character all the way through those tedious levels of 1 to 100? Everyone wants to try out the new content, but no one wants to slave away through Stranglethorn Vale for the 48th time. To complicate things further, Blizzard still doesn't want to add any more 1-60 quests in the lower-level zones (not to mention any of the Outland, Northrend, Emerald Dream, or Great Sea Expansion zones)! Fortunately, though, Blizzard's got what you need! Are you prepared for the "/level" command?
