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Waging WAR: Finding the sandbox
In this installment of Waging WAR, Greg takes a look at Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning from a few different angles and goes in search of the proverbial "sandbox" in a game that contains neither sand nor boxes. Somewhere along the line during my childhood, I developed a habit for playing games with nearly every game I've ever played. I can even remember a time in my early teens when I sat down with a few friends and collaborated on making our own version of battlechess. Pages of chicken-scratched rules and several dice results-tables later, and we were off and running for a solid week of the most entertaining chess matches I've ever played. Or there was that time with The Sims when I started creating experimental families and then leaving my computer on overnight and not interacting with them, just to see how successful they could be without my help. I could bore you for hours on end with examples of how I twisted the rules and made my own games from the games I've played. I suppose I can blame my penchant for metagaming on my early introduction to pen-and-paper roleplaying (i.e., D&D 1st Ed., to be specific). All I had was a sheet of paper, a handful of dice, a description of the world around me, and my imagination. By its very nature, PnP gaming is sandbox gaming. The reason I'm bringing this up now is that, until WAR, I had pretty much been able to "find the sandbox" in any MMO I was able to get my hands on. Whether it was building hardcore Dungeons & Dragons Online characters, roleplaying in City of Heroes, or achievement-chasing in World of Warcraft, I've never really been troubled with finding something to do when the grind started to wear me down. But now, with WAR, I'm finding most of my old tricks for MMO metagaming just aren't working. To read about what I've tried, and why it didn't work in WAR, follow along after the break.
Unannounced 'Pinnacle Station' Mass Effect DLC now available
click for more photographic proof! As we all know, the first and second rules of Fight Club are that you do not talk about Fight Club. Appropriately, Microsoft and BioWare haven't talked much about their Palahniuk-inspired Mass Effect DLC, Pinnacle Station; despite the fact that it hasn't even been formally announced, it's now available on Xbox Live Marketplace for 400 ($5). According to the DLC's online description, Pinnacle Station will force you to "test the limits of your combat prowess aboard a remote, top-secret Alliance space station," brawling through 13 new "combat scenarios," and adding 2 to 3 hours of play time to the soon-to-be-sequeled space opera. We plan on picking it up ASAP, if only to see if Meat Loaf and spliced-in images of genitalia make an appearance. (We're thinking no.) [Thanks to everyone who sent this curious item in!] %Gallery-70907%
Mass Effect DLC to be announced soon
While speaking to BioWare's leaders slash doctors, Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka, Joystiq managed to confirm that the second batch of DLC for Mass Effect (that's the first game!) would be announced and detailed soon. According to Muzyka, he was even playing it at the BioWare office slash fortress before departing for E3 2009. Previously, it was suggested that the next Mass Effect DLC would include some sort of fight club or arena setup. So, lots of shooting in preparation for some real shooting, then.
Rumorang: Mass Effect DLC mentioned in new ME release documentary
If reports from the recently released Mass Effect Platinum Hits edition are to be believed -- and we're wont to believe the people who made the game -- then more Mass Effect DLC is on its way and it's going to be combat heavy. On the second disc that comes packed in with Mass Effect Platinum Hits is a documentary titled (appropriately enough), "The Future of Mass Effect," in which project director Casey Hudson and principal lead designer Preston Watamaniuk confirm -- at very least -- the existence of more Mass Effect DLC. Roughly one quarter of the way through the documentary (embedded after the break), Preston Watamaniuk says, "Things we're working on right now, for the Mass Effect universe next ... we had something in Mass Effect 1 that again, we weren't able to pull off just because we didn't have the time and we didn't think we'd be able to do it well enough, which was a fight club or an arena. So we're actually working on that for our next downloadable content piece and we're hoping it'll be really special." Casey Hudson expands on that, saying, "So we wanted to be able to give people a much more combat-oriented, lighter-story experience. You're going to go to a kind of casino gaming fight club space station." You heard it here first: a casino gaming fight club space station. Batarians be damned, we're going gamble-fighting in outer space! We've, again, put word into BioWare regarding this and will update accordingly as news comes in.[Thanks, Daniel]
Rumorang: More Mass Effect DLC on the way
You remember, eight freaking months ago, when we reported on BioWare talking about" more DLC for Mass Effect? Well, while you were vicariously experiencing the New York Comic Con through our virtual window into the Jacob Javits Center last weekend, BioWare community manager Jay Watamaniuk was dropping bombs on CinamaBlend.com's Pete Haas regarding that very same DLC, though remaining notably vague. "Watamaniuk mentioned earlier in our chat that a second Mass Effect DLC episode was on the way," reads the piece, noting that Watamaniuk quickly redirected the conversation. We've reached out to BioWare for comment and have yet to hear back, but will update this post accordingly as word comes in.
More Mass Effect DLC a possibility
Speaking to MTV's Multiplayer, BioWare's Greg Zeschuk came tantalizingly close to confirming more DLC for Mass Effect. While Zeschuk didn't go so far as to confirm that more DLC is on the way, he did say that Bioware is "talking about" it and that BioWare wants gamers to "always have something ... to try." We're sure that Mass Effect fans would agree, especially considering they've had nothing new to explore since the "Bring Down the Sky" DLC released in March. Unfortunately, Zeschuk said nothing regarding when we might actually see this potential DLC, so it looks like Mass Effect fans are still left out in the cold darkness of space.[Via Joystiq]
