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Wildstar releases beta patch notes after NDA leak
Since the Non-Disclosure Agreement means pretty much nothing these days, when players (or gaming media...) violate that NDA, they usually get a slap on the wrist and a stern look from across the internet. Or in the case of Wildstar's recent beta NDA leak, everyone wins! And by win, I mean everyone gets to see the newest beta patch notes. As community manager Troy "Aether" Hewitt explains, "So with a mind towards fairness to those people who have maintained that trust, we're taking the leak public in an official capacity. No, we won't be doing this every time. Yes, we want to remove the person/s who leaked this information from beta. Yes, we want to avoid future leaks." You can read the complete M30 patch notes (in an official capacity) on Wildstar's site. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in.]
Patch 5.3 PTR: Patch note update for April 11
The patch notes for the patch 5.3 PTR have received a small update today on the official blog. Included are some adjustments to Pet Battles and PvP, as well as some really interesting changes for healing abilities and summoned pets/totems. Faster casting for summoned pets? Yes please. Gargoyles, Forces of Nature, Mirror Images, Water Elementals, Searing Totems, Doomguards, Terrorguards and Wild Imps all will now chain cast their spells with no delay between casts. Creatures that are level 90 and above should now have a chance to drop Lesser Charms of Good Fortune, in case you weren't getting enough of the things elsewhere. Owners of the Teldrassil Sproutling, Ruby Sproutling or Withers will note that the Shell Shield ability for these pets has been replaced with a new ability: Ironbark. It's very successful. You can see the full list of patch notes at the official site, but if you'd just like a list of the new changes, follow after the break for a consolidated list.
MechWarrior Online adds Jagermech, Tourmaline Desert map
MechWarrior Online's March patch has dropped, and with it came a few tons of new hardware and an inhospitable map with which to play around. The new 'Mech is the heavy Jagermech, a stout piece of machinery with impressive statistics. Whether or not you pick up the Jagermech, Piranha Games has added a ton of new options for all pilots, including gas pedals, better joystick controls, a new consumables system, and more cosmetics for the cockpit. The new map is the Tourmaline Desert, an arid map that's mostly rock, giant crystals, and abandoned BattleMechs. Heat management and possible sniper attacks are two of the biggest challenges that this map presents for players.
Vanguard revamps its Lomshir region
Vanguard's post-F2P development continues to truck along. SOE recently released an update that revamped one of its starting zones, Lomshir. Lomshir is a level 10 to 20 region that any player can zip to via the riftway. So what's included in the Lomshir revamp? It's basically a pass to tighten up the flow, bring the area up to date, and provide new quests and bosses for players to tackle. The Lomshir changes are part of the Vanguard team's commitment to fleshing out the world with more content and providing additional leveling paths to new and veteran players. [Thanks to Zjeven for the tip!]
CABAL Online patches Rising Force
There's a new sheriff of Patch Town, and its name is Rising Force. CABAL Online recently added a massive update to the game that includes a new PvP setting, a challenging dungeon, and a skill overhaul. Rising Force introduced a 1v1 ranked PvP system that works cross-servers. If this is your kind of bag, you can choose either a standard or ladder battle. The latter is available only at specific times according to the game's schedule. CABAL Online's latest patch opened the doors to the Tower of the Undead B3F, a time-attack dungeon that can swallow up parties of seven players and spit them out broken and defeated (or rich and triumphant). Rising Force also contains new gear, a spiffy hoverbike, and over a hundred additional achievements.
Aphrodite joins the SMITE fight crew
If any character ever had a good reason to wear the skimpiest armor ever, Aphrodite would have full license to strut. Hi-Rez revealed the revealing goddess of beauty in its newest SMITE update. Aphrodite utilizes her feminine wiles to win over the competition as a support character tied to a "soul mate." Her hugs give mana to a soul mate and her kisses do double duty as buffs and stuns. No, really. That said, if things get too hot and heavy, she can use her Back Off! skill to knock enemies back. She can also call down doves for both healing and damage because apparently doves are the combat medics of the avian world. Check out Aphrodite's trailer after the jump before catching up on SMITE's latest patch notes! [Thanks to Don for the tip!]
LotRO's Update 10 springs into action
Lord of the Rings Online raiders rejoice: Today marks the end of a very long wait for Riders of Rohan raids. Update 10: Against the Shadow, Part II ushers in the second half of the expansion's instance cluster as well as some fairly significant stat changes as the dev team prepares for wide-sweeping class revamps. The new instances include a six-person fight, The Bells of Dale, plus a trio of 12-person raids: Flight to the Lonely Mountain, the Fires of Smaug, and the Battle for Erebor. Update 10 has beefed up fate's effects and made agility the Warden's primary stat. Also included with the patch are several new store options, the ability to turn off forced emoting, the removal of dread upon defeat on the landscape, and new scaling for all of the In Their Absence instances. You can read the patch notes on the official site.
Guild Wars 2's The Gathering Storm update lands today
Hopefully Lis' hands-on overview of Guild Wars 2's latest update this morning whetted your appetite for achievements, group content, and more. Frost and Flame: The Gathering Storm's patch notes are up so that you can mentally prepare for when the update goes live later today. The update advances the living story while adding two specific achievements tied to this continuing saga of refugees and something sinister coming up from underground. Players will also be able to pick and choose achievements for the daily reward, experience better event scaling in a few high-level battles, and check out the new Spirit Watch PvP map. Also coming with The Gathering Storm are the much-vaunted guild missions. These unlockable activities are tied into specific upgrades and personal rewards for participating players.
DDO celebrates a birthday, shares Update 17 notes, and introduces new Augments
Happy seventh birthday to Dungeons and Dragons Online! Like every good game, DDO is celebrating its anniversary-birthday-thing by giving out presents. Update 17 is live, a gift in its own right, and characters that were created before the patch will find that they've got a giftbox in their inventory. But wait, there's more! Update 17 is a substantial patch. A whole slew of updates have been made to different bits of the game. On the DDO Store (and free to VIPs) is a new Monster Manual edition that features new deeds and objectives and two new Creature Companions. In what is arguably the most significant update, Restless Bats -- which don't exist and never have existed ever -- have been removed from the manual. Augments, a new way to customize your equipment, have been added to the game. Items with augment slots can be, well, Augmented. Slotted Augments give their host item an additional effect for as long as they're slotted. People will be able to find named items with augment slots, pick augmentable items up from the DDO Store, or trust their luck to find one of the 5% of randomly generated items to have an augment slot. This system replaces the old Epic and Guild Augments. You can read up about Augments here.
Patch 5.2 PTR notes for February 5th
The patch notes keep on updating. Rygarius just tweeted an update, and while there's not a ton of changes, some of them are pretty interesting. There's now a Blacktalon Quartermaster in the Tavern of the Mists for players who need to get a previous legendary quest reward (such as a gem for a Sha-Touched Weapon) for a new item. Several mage changes - Blazing Speed drops to the level 15 tier (with a whole lot of changes to the tooltip, it seems), and Flameglow, a new talent replaces Blazing Speed at the level 30 tier, and more. Scorch is now baseline, available to all fire mages. There seems to be a significant amount of reverted changes here. Light's Hammer now applies a 50% snare for 2 seconds. Evangelism's stacking buff now applies to Penance as well. For the complete patch notes you can look at the official site, and we'll place a compiled list of the changes below the cut for convenience sake.
En Masse Entertainment unveils TERA: Rising patch notes
On February 5th, En Masse Entertainment will be bringing TERA to the masses with TERA: Rising, which will see the game transition to a free-to-play business model. To help give players a leg-up on the competition, En Masse has released the patch notes for the upcoming update, and the list of changes is rather extensive. Some highlights include the introduction of the three-on-three Champions' Skyring battleground, the new competitive dungeon Crucible of Flame, a number of tweaks to many of the game's classes, and of course the much-needed crafting overhaul. The notes state that the game's crafting system "has been overhauled to streamline the process and simplify the amount of additional materials needed." But because of the game's change to F2P, one of the biggest chunks of the upcoming patch is the addition of various account tiers. Accounts are divided into Elite Status, Standard, and Founder. The Founder account type will be granted to players who purchased TERA prior to the F2P conversion, Standard accounts will be given to new F2P players, and Elite Status is available via a $14.99 US per month subscription. For the full patch notes and all the juicy details on the switch to F2P, head on to TERA's official site to sate your curiosity.
Lichborne: Unholy death knights get some gifts in patch 5.2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. Given that I have been talking the past few weeks about unholy's woes and some things Blizzard will probably never give us, I wanted to spend this week talking about some of the good things Blizzard has given us. Luckily, Blizzard decided to give us the greatest Christmas gift of all: Meaningful balance and mechanics changes to the unholy death knight on the upcoming patch 5.2 PTR. Plague Strike delivers both diseases Applying diseases when Outbreak is on cool down has been one of the most awkward parts of playing unholy ever since Scourge Strike was switched to a single rune model. Applying via the usual Plague Strike/Icy Touch model leaves orphaned runes that cannot easily be spent on a standard strike that fits into the basic unholy priority system, throwing off the rotation in a pretty jarring manner and making fights with multiple target switches a bit of a pain. However, in patch 5.2, Ebon Plaguebringer will allow Plague Strike to apply both Frost Fever and Blood Plague.
Patch 5.1.0a official patch notes
Blizzard Community Manager Nethaera posted on the US forums today documenting a recent update to WoW, bringing the game up to patch 5.1.0a. Blizzard Notes for World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria patch 5.1 can be found here. Patch 5.1 hotfixes can be found here. Bug Fixes Pet Battle Abilities that use a shoot or missile animation will now properly display their visual effect. Disabling Loss of Control in the Interface menu will now also disable the red cooldown swipes on the action bar in addition to the notification in the center of the screen. Loss of Control Alerts can be disabled in the Game Menu by going to Interface > Combat > and un-checking Loss of Control Alerts. When Loss of Control Alerts are enabled, the red cooldown swipes will not be displayed for abilities that were already on cooldown and in situations where that cooldown will last longer than the loss of control. Night will now fall at the proper time on all realms. Objective icons in Scenarios will no longer incorrectly persist until the Scenario is complete. Fixed an issue that could cause crashes during Pet Battles. Mac Fixed an issue that could cause a crash to occur during in-game cinematics in OSX v.10.6 source The most interesting element of these notes to me is the updates to the loss of control notifications. Those red cooldown swipes, which didn't seem to be present in the PTR, were seriously irritating to those of the playerbase who didn't care for them, and couldn't previously be switched off. It will be interesting to see whether these fast patches are a sign of things to come, or simply a renaming of hotfixes! Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
TERA pounds out patch improvements
Patch 18.10.08 may not be the biggest content update in the history of TERA, but its humble offerings are nothing but good news to the playerbase. The newly available patch includes a couple of highly useful drops as well as additional bonuses for inexperienced dungeon runners. Gamers can now fiddle with their gear's bonus options with semi-enigmatic scrolls, which are found as players defeat the big-ass monsters in various parts of the game. Those monsters also have a chance to drop complete crystalbind scrolls, which keep crystals from breaking due to death for a limited time. The team really wants players to invite new people into group runs, which is why a trio of additional rookie buffs have been added. These buffs protect crystals from breaking, allow for a one-time on-the-spot resurrection, and increase attack power by 12% for the entire group.
Patch 5.1 official patch notes
Welcome to the beginning of war and the arrival of patch 5.1, Landfall. While this patch does not contain any new raid content, it is full of changes to pet battles and classes. And don't forget the new content -- an entirely new series of quests await adventurers in the heart of Krasarang Wilds, along with new scenarios to unlock. Included in the official patch notes: Scenarios now include Dungeon Finder queue features, including leaders, backfill, vote to kick, and deserter debuffs. Roles are still not required. Raid groups are no longer required to enter pre-Mists of Pandaria raid dungeons. Get to farming! Speaking of old raid dungeons, a variety of new pets have been added to old raid bosses. For fans of Pet Battles, be sure to check out the new Battle-stones, used to upgrade the quality of pets. Read on for the full list of patch notes for patch 5.1.
Patch 5.1: More new achievements
There are several new achievements coming in, many for the Brawler's Guild, as you'd expect, given that it's a new feature coming in the patch. We posted previously about an earlier batch of achievements, and we were right in thinking that the earlier release was far from a finite list. The same applies to these achievements, so if there's something you're waiting for, don't give up hope. First, there are some changes to pet-related feats of strength. Deathy, Murkablo, Murky, The Marine and Tyrael's Hilt's feats of strength are all now account wide. It makes perfect sense that only one character has to have any of those pets for them all to get the achievement. There are also two new achievements, one pet battle-related which is Pandaren Spirit Tamer, which requires you to defeat all the Pandaren spirits in battle, and awards you one of the Air, Earth, Fire and Water spirit pets. If you want to get the other three, they can be farmed from daily quests, such as Burning Pandaren Spirit. Additionally, a raid achievement called And... It's Good! requires players to fly through the discs above the Engine of Nalak'sha in Mogu'shan Vaults on Normal or Heroic difficulty. Our favorites of these are the Brawler's Guild ones, which include The First Rule of Fight Club. There's also the two Rabble Rabble Rabble achievements, which sound really interesting as it currently appears that players are portaling into the opposite faction's city. Dirty Fighter is also very interesting, it makes us wonder just exactly how one goes about playing dirty in the Brawler's Guild! Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Patch 5.1 PTR patch notes update for Oct 23
An update to the patch 5.1 PTR has just been released, with a bunch of new changes and adjustments. Along with a ton of class tweaks, there are plenty of changes and updates to Pet Battles and more. Most importantly and probably top on everyone's priority list is a change to raids that players have been waiting for for a very long time. Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines -- as of patch 5.1, you will no longer need to be in a raid group to enter a pre-Mists of Pandaria raid. Scenarios are now going to include Dungeon Finder queue features like leaders, backfill, and vote to kick. The Dragon Kite can now be used in Pet Battles! Are balloons far behind? We hope not. Read on for the full list of updates.
Prepare for Riders of Rohan's launch with patch notes, FAQ, and a trailer
Many a Lord of the Rings Online fan is eager to delve into the Riders of Rohan expansion today as soon as the servers come back online. But once prospective warsteed owners set foot in the lands of Rohan, what do they do? Turbine offers a handy launch day FAQ to answer important questions like "How do I get there?" and "Where's my loot sparkle?" The guide offers gems such as: "A server is never late, LOTRO players. Nor is it early. It comes up precisely when Turbine means it to." Players can also bide their time reading through the hefty expansion patch notes, which feature juicy tidbits on all the new goodies and changes. For a quick guide to more information and impressions on the expansion, check out Massively's pre-launch guide. And check out the launch trailer after the break.
Vanguard patch ushers in the Festival of the Grim Harvest
It's that time again -- the time when every game world finds a way to celebrate something like Halloween. Of course, in a world where the dead actually do wander the world on a regular basis, the festivities take on a slightly different tone. Vanguard, for example, has ushered in the Festival of the Grim Harvest, an event celebrating the time of year when the veil between the world of the living and dead grows thin and all manner of hauntings take place. Players looking to take part in the festival can offer their assistance to the mourning widower Jett Helond or investigate the mounting undead presence surrounding New Targonor. There are also returning enemies from previous festivals and new themed items in the Marketplace. Last but not least, the patch ushers in some performance and optimization improvements for the game client. Vanguard players can check the full notes for more details and a few welcome bugfixes.
ArenaNet addresses balance in Guild Wars 2
It's a rule of any skill system that once you put it in the hands of millions of players for a lengthy period of time, they will absolutely break it in ways you never imagined. Even if they don't manage to create terrifyingly imbalanced builds, they'll find things that need patching up and tweaking. So, in keeping with time-honored tradition, ArenaNet has been putting out patches to fix bugs in the game and rectify balance flaws. The most recent game update notes hold not major changes but minor adjustments to functionality. ArenaNet is taking a "wait and see" approach to balancing, which Jon Peters explained a bit in a recent forum post. In the past we made balance updates fairly frequently. While we will continue to be responsive to serious issues, we also want to make sure that we let the basic meta-game stabilize before making too many changes. If you see something that is really strong please try and find counters to it before assuming it is overpowered. We have put a lot of hours into the game already and there are still many things we are learning about the depth of the combat and the balance. There are also finally enough players consistently playing that we can actually gather metrics on skills and make some more informed decisions about what is too weak/strong. Please don't hesitate to point out builds that look like they could use some balance work. We are constantly striving to make Guild Wars 2 the most balanced game it can be and appreciate all of your feedback. Peters proceeded to tell players that the devs are striving for quick turnaround on real issues, but that they would prefer to thoroughly test fixes for the long-term health of the game.
