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The Daily Grind: When should character progression carry over?
Age of Wushu is still in testing right now, but that doesn't mean that your play right now doesn't count. Character progression is carrying over, and what you do from this point onward will matter. The game isn't alone, either; Final Fantasy XIV will be carrying over character data from open beta, and other free-to-play titles have kept characters around for the launch environment. If the beta is just a launch without any pricing, that's fine. (If it's persistent and you're being charged, that's not a beta; that's launch.) But Age of Wushu still has a fair bit more testing to go through, some of which could result in some rebalancing or changes. It's all normal stuff for testing, but knowing that what you do during this test will carry over means that you have to base long-term decisions on systems and elements that might change in the near future. Of course, "betas" are increasingly less concernned with development and more concerned with early play. So what do you think? When should character progression carry over to the launch version? Mid-beta? Early beta? Open beta? At launch and not a day before? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Dark Age of Camelot calls for the guards with a new patch
So you've captured a Relic in Dark Age of Camelot. The challenge is finding a spot to keep it, since it's obviously a big draw for enemy players. But the latest patch makes it a little bit easier to defend your captured Relics in non-Relic Keeps by adding in special Relic Guards. These defenders spawn in the same keep as a captured Relic to aid its defense, but they also spawn at lower levels as the number of total Relics controlled by a given realm grows. The patch also brings along major changes for Maulers and Realm abilities, both of which should change existing player strategies significantly. Last but not least, the patch adds several new resist tokens to existing realm vendors and tinkers with values for the existing resistance spells. All in all, these changes should help shake up the existing balance of power in the game and force new strategies to come to light.
Age of Conan's plans to borrow tech from The Secret World
Funcom's focus of late has obviously been on The Secret World, but that doesn't mean the company has forgotten about Age of Conan. Quite the opposite, in fact; the success of The Secret World's single server technology means that Age of Conan can start moving to an equivalent server architecture. According to the newest monthly update, the process will probably not be finished until early next year, but it will allow people to freely switch shards to play with friends and enjoy cross-server events. One of the other updates -- and one that will have far-reaching implications for the game -- regards the current pace of content development and deployment. The development team is considering moving away from large content updates and toward smaller updates at a faster pace. Feedback is being requested from the community on this and other topics, so if you're an Age of Conan stalwart, you should examine the full letter and give the company your opinion.
Dark Age of Camelot updates Relic mechanics and classes
Some people no doubt see the venerable Dark Age of Camelot as a relic. But you know what's even more of a relic? The game's Relics. These powerful items have received an overhaul in the latest patch; the items have been moved to central locations in each Realm that cannot be captured or claimed. Players carrying Relics have also become more visible and slightly less mobile, and special Envoys have been added to help defend Relics from capture. The patch also updates several class abilities. Bonedancers get a new spell to target a region on the ground, while Friars and Valewalkers both gain a rear snare. On the flip side, toxic direct damage poisons have all seen a slight downgrade in effectiveness for balance reasons. Dark Age of Camelot players can see the full list of changes in the patch notes, and while it's not a major content patch, the changes should spice up the game's ongoing realm warfare.
Square-Enix announces end of Final Fantasy XIV's free play and roadmap for next year
The latest patch for Final Fantasy XIV brought some major changes with it, but there are more coming. In a new series of announcements, Square-Enix announced that the unbilled period of the game will be coming to a close between late November and early December in recognition of the large-scale work done by Naoki Yoshida and the game's team. But the announcement was more far-reaching than that -- no, the entire game is going to undergo a major process of changes well through next year, including a graphical engine and UI overhaul as well as major changes to the game's maps. Several design documents have been posted along with this update, making it clear that the changes will be observed and influenced by players taking part in content during this time period. And these changes will be massive -- the new UI will not only look much cleaner but also be able to support player add-ons. With a promised redesign of maps, changes to the landscape, the upcoming PlayStation 3 version, and major updates to the battle system and armoury system, it's going to be very busy over the next few months as Final Fantasy XIV moves toward version 2.0.
The Daily Grind: What have you taken for granted to your detriment?
For better or worse, human beings have a tendency to assume that things will stay more or less the same from day to day. We figure that all else being equal, the electricity will stay on, there will be food in the fridge, and the people we play games with will play fair. But these things aren't natural states -- the electricity goes off if you don't pay for it, the fridge will run out of food as you eat it, and the only way to find out a player is a cheater is to be cheated. MMOs are no different, and with the nature of each game being so mutable, it's very possible that we take something for granted that is easy to lose. You assume that your game's mechanics will stay largely the same until a patch comes along and changes many of them, a la Star Wars Galaxies. You assume that your endgame tank friend will still be in World of Warcraft no matter what, only to find out he doesn't like the latest expansion and is quitting. When have you taken something for granted in a game only to find out you were wrong to do so? Did you think a player wouldn't leave when he eventually did after all? Were you expecting mechanics or classes to remain unchanged when they weren't quite so permanent? Had you counted on having all the time in the world to achieve something only to have the criteria changed or outright removed? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Daily Grind: What changes were you worried about that turned out fine?
Whenever a new feature is put into a game, there's a portion of the playerbase crying foul before it even hits the test server, and not without cause. Nearly every fan crying out that this change will cause huge problems has evidence, both anecdotal and otherwise, that will be pointed to as an obvious reason why the change is a bad idea. The developers listen, nod quietly, and push it live anyway. And as it turns out, the sky remains where it is, cats and dogs do not begin living together, and the hysteria is remarkably contained. To claim that we don't all have our pet causes is ridiculous -- we all have certain things that we know will break the game beyond a shadow of a doubt. But sometimes these game-breaking changes go live after all, and as it turns out they aren't actually such a big deal. So when have you been frightened of a major game change that turned out to not be all that important? Was it a class redesign, a major mechanical change, or an apparent simplification that wound up making the game more fun to play in the end? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of our readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's The Daily Grind!
