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Age of Wushu's Ultimate Scrolls expansion launches November 13
Grab your parkas (or sunblock, if you live in the southwest) because winter is right around the corner! Age of Wushu's Ultimate Scrolls winter expansion is coming in less than two weeks. On November 13th, players will be able to enter Ancient China's forbidden grounds and test themselves in new school-specific instances. Other incoming features include secret scripts (in the form of teachings of the treasured Helianthus Codex and Star Vortex), a new tier of martial art skills with ultimate scrolls, and the new marriage system. You can read more about the expansion in Massively's behind-the-scenes interview. And to help tide you over (or just tease you some more), Snail Games also offers the following expansion trailer.
The Art of Wushu: Lifting the veil on the winter expansion
Some of you may have heard about new content coming to Age of Wushu in the winter in the form of the Ultimate Scrolls expansion. Although it contains some new content including the much-anticipated marriage system, Snail Games has released scant few details about new features. We went behind the scenes and asked the studio what we can expect in the winter expansion and what we can look forward to in the future. The developers were pretty open about what was coming soon, which -- like Mt. Hua -- is chock-full of new features.
Black Gold could possibly start beta in early 2014
Dying to get your hands on the scrumptious-looking Black Gold? If you've already registered for a beta key and need a little hope, here it is: Snail Games said the game could possibly start its closed beta in the first quarter of 2014. "The first closed beta is planned to launch at the earliest Q1 2014," the studio posted in a recent Ask the Devs segment. "We are ensuring quality when it's ready to meet the public eye. All players who have registered prior will have a high chance of receiving first round of beta codes via their email." Black Gold's beta and release is initially aimed at North America, although Snail Games said it is "not ruling out" the possibility of future releases elsewhere. There will also be no region block for the title. [Thanks to Dengar for the tip!]
The Daily Grind: Which MMO has the best skill names?
I haven't played Age of Wushu since beta, but I love reading about the title. For one thing, it's a martial arts sandbox and how badass is that? For another, it's got the best skill names I've ever seen. How can you not love a game with a skill called Devil Slay Lovers or a style called Demon Heart Chain Hand? It sure beats Fire I or Fire II, no? Anyway, which MMO do you feel has the best or most creative skill and ability names? 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!
Age of Wushu promises latency improvements and matrix authenticator
In a new set of questions and answers from the Age of Wushu community, Snail Games promised that North American players experiencing lag will soon see relief. "We are taking serious measures to solve the latency problems after escalation," the devs promised. "Server fixes are already on their way. Players in North America will see considerable improvement starting from this week!" The devs said that a mobile matrix authenticator is coming later this month to provide better account security. "Think of it as a private Bingo card that works as a key to your account," Snail PR explained. A separate mobile authenticator is being worked on for iOS and Android, but no release date has been set. The Q&A article covered other topics such as the cash shop skill, bug fixes, cross-server interactions, and unnecessary chat spam. For those interested in Age of Wushu's upcoming Steam release, the devs said that this is still in the works but currently there is no release date set. In a separate post, the studio announced that the Phantom Twin Dagger skill set will be coming to the game next week. [We erroneously reported the matrix as a mobile authenticator and have corrected the article accordingly.]
The Art of Wushu: Harnessing demons to slay lovers
Demon Heart Chain Hand is one of the most likely choices for a player's first new martial art. Although many other styles in Age of Wushu are expensive or difficult to obtain, DHCH is relatively easy to farm. It also adds tons of extremely useful utility in the form of a ranged knock-towards, a PBAoE flight disable aura, and a silly self-exploding super move. It works very well in group combat, and proper use of the set can turn the tides of battle even if your internal skills are much weaker than those of your enemies. Even after you're a powerful master, you'll rely a lot on this set in many cases. It does many things (especially its ranged knock) that have very practical uses. As a dueling set, it's a bit on the weak side, but people tend to underestimate it for that reason too.
Snail teases four additional Age of Wushu school instances
Snail Games has published a brief look at four new School Instances in its Age of Wushu fantasy sandbox. "In order to obtain your school's apex of strength and power," Snail says, "you must face its Forbidden Instance." Today's update covers four of the game's schools: the Tangmen and their Great Poison Palace, the Scholars' Villa of the Departed, the Royal Guards' Purgatory and Wanderer's Valley's Cavern of Lost Souls. If you missed the first entry in the School Instance series, it's here along with info on the Beggar's Sect, Wudang, Emei, and Shaolin instances.
Choose My Adventure: Learning and seeking revenge in Age of Wushu
Age of Wushu continues to impress and confuse me at the same time, but I can see much of the appeal behind many of the systems. As a reader noticed last week, many sandbox MMOs have the same in-depth systems and mechanics that Age of Wushu does, but as I have said many times before it is not only the specific systems that make a great game, but how the game has taken those systems and combined them in a package. Age of Wushu takes much of the appeal of many of my favorite games and wraps it in a beautiful package that can run on lower-end systems. I crank it all the way up, turn up the music, and enjoy exploring and trying to slowly figure out some of the harder-to-understand mechanics. This week I wanted to try out the two options that were put up for polls, and once again Age of Wushu Community Manager Earthquake and Massively columnist Patrick Mackey joined me to explain, hand out tips, and to help me remember how much of a newb I still am.
The Art of Wushu: The facts about autoguard
The automatic blocking feature in Age of Wushu is treated as anathema by players. You guys have no idea how many people I have talked to about it who tell me, "I would never use something like that!" It seems that in general, people don't like the idea of something that takes decision-making out of their hands. However, autoguard isn't as bad as people think. In fact, it is an exceptional answer to poor latency and is completely controllable. The truth is, not many people understand it at all, and even fewer realize the benefits of the system.
Black Gold unveils the Kosh race
The races of Black Gold are getting plenty of attention from Snail Games recently, with three of the races already unveiled. Today marks the fourth race reveal with a video and an article dedicated to the felinoid Kosh, direct descendents of the Sun God (according to their own propaganda, anyway). These former conquerors have joined the Erlandir Union to help defend the eponymous Black Gold, which they consider holy and unsuitable for use in technology. Kosh characters can be Demon Hunters, Elementalists, or Alchemists, all aligned with the race's rather mystical and contemplative nature. As a whole they're known to be serious and aloof, filling the game's need for something of an elven race without ever actually hitting the "elf" stereotype. But you don't have to take our word for it; you can take a look at the reveal trailer past the break, or read the full lore article for a bit more history.
Battle your inner demons in Age of Wushu's Possessed Encounters
Age of Wushu will soon be introducing a new game mechanic that pits you against... yourself. The Possessed Encounter is a triggered event that will teleport you to an instance where you'll fight against a random Manifestation of Evil, complete with mirror counterparts of your character and any players with you. These encounters can be triggered by normal NPC battles, through collecting life skills, or even by an act of Jianghu (suicide). Each character can only activate a Possessed Encounter once per day, but you can join your friends in their trials twice. The Possessed Encounters -- as well as more promised winter content -- are coming soon.
Age of Wushu previews its winter content
Winter is coming. Literally. We're almost halfway through September. Age of Wushu is using the oncoming winter not as an ominous portent of doom but as a chance to introduce a bunch of new content to the game, starting with school instances. No matter how benevolent your school may be on the surface, there's always more going on underneath. Within the depths of these instances lie not only money and glory but perhaps ever more powerful techniques that have been lost to time. Both secret scripts and new ultimate scrolls will be added to the game, with the latter offering true mastery over a school. The secret scripts once threw the realm into chaos, but deciphering these arts will be the mark of a true master. And if you've had your fill of all that, you can always take advantage of the upcoming marriage system and settle down for in-game domestic bliss. It's a lot of new content for the game, and all players need to do is wait for the winter.
Choose My Adventure: Age of Wushu charms and confuses
So here we are in the second week of the Age of Wushu Choose My Adventure coverage. There's no way that even a dozen weeks would cover everything there is to know about this awesome MMO, but luckily the point of this column is to show what it's like to jump into game not only while I'm blind but also when a crowd is directing my every major decision. That means that I get to act like myself and enjoy getting lost in a game that is truly a living world. Age of Wushu is fantastic for certain newbies just as it seems it is for vets. Of course, it's not all that rosy. In almost every article I have read about the game, and even in the chat room while I streamed the game live (it's embedded after the cut), I saw players who expressed their disappointment in how confusing the game is. Massively's own Patrick Mackey has been helping me along the way, and he said on the stream that the best thing to do to alleviate confusion is to "join a guild." I agree, so that's going to be one of the questions I put up for a vote. Having access to Patrick, the readers and players, and the developers themselves does put me at an advantage over typical newbies. Click past the cut and lets get to what I thought about the choices that were made last time, and be sure to vote on this week's poll questions!
The Art of Wushu: The limits of human reaction time
We're finally back on track with the kung-fu lessons, and today we're going to talk about something very important: how being human limits what you can do in an Age of Wushu duel. Like a lot of skills relating to dueling and strategy, this is a fairly broad skill that can be applied to a lot of games. Reaction speed is one of the most difficult things to train in Age of Wushu, especially for old-timers like me. Reacting to things in a timely matter is a massive advantage; it lets you punish feints, interrupt sluggish normal attacks, and stun people out of dance-like moves. The trouble is, we're human, and humans are slow. This time, we're going to look at exactly what that means in hard technical terms.
Black Gold's Dwarves create steamtech for all
In a game that fuses fantasy with steampunk, it may be the Dwarves that are the most important race at all. Black Gold is giving the center stage to its Dwarven race this week, claiming that these short and stout people are responsible for the creation of steam technology. Along with dispensing with some backstory on the Dwarves, the article emphasizes that the race is extremely durable and a huge fan of melee combat. Their main downside is that they have no access to magic, limiting them to the Arbiter and Tech Adept classes. Check out the Black Gold Dwarf spotlight video after the jump!
Choose My Adventure: And the winner is...
Choose My Adventure is a funny column to write. At some point, you as the author know which game will likely win, but you also know that at some point everything can go wonky. I've seen games that seemed to be the sure thing get knocked off by a lone wolf or underdog. I like to poke the developers who are running the games that are in the polls in the hopes that they let their community know about the column and get the polls heating up. There's nothing like a good vote to get people excited about MMO games, and that's the way things should be. Even though I watched the poll go a few different ways, it was relatively obvious what title was going to pull it off. I started to prepare by updating the top titles and reading up on some of their systems. Choose My Adventure is not a light undertaking; it's a real adventure -- hopefully -- through an unfamiliar world. I knew I would need the community's help in deciphering the winner. And what a winner!
Black Gold Online introduces the Yuton race
Snail Games has unveiled the second race in its new steampunk MMO Black Gold Online. The Yutons, considered more of a primitive (yet not barbaric) race of humans, were the first to settle in Erlandir. They saw the introduction of steam technology as their salvation and ticket to freedom from Kosh rule. This eventually led to a split between those who followed Hoca and steam, and those who rejected this new power. You can learn more about the Yutonian humans on the lore page and a short video just after the jump.
The Art of Wushu: Talking Mount Hua with Age of Wushu's Peter Kang
A day or two after writing about the Mount Hua expansion last time, I had the chance to sit down with community manager Peter Kang -- better known to the Age of Wushu playerbase as Earthquake -- and talk about the various changes in the expansion. We had a fairly long talk. Like true wuxia fanboys, we derailed quite a bit to talk about Legend of Condor Heroes, but we discussed where Wushu is, where Snail would like it to go, and the relationship between Snail USA and the dev team in China. It was pretty enlightening because he clearly plays the game and is acutely aware of the impact the company's decisions has on players.
Jukebox Heroes: Age of Wushu's soundtrack
You're probably not going to catch me in Age of Wushu any time soon. I mean, don't get me wrong, kidnapping and castration are definitely the innovative features we as an MMO community have been begging for, but "PvP sandbox" is like spraying a game with anti-Justin repellent. But I will gladly listen to Age of Wushu's soundtrack because it is simply wonderful. I was really just expecting very generic Chinese music -- you know, the kind you might hear as muzak in your local take-out restaurant. Instead, this is a score worthy of a movie adjacent to Jet Li's presence. Perhaps that's why he's shilling for this game. I couldn't track down the composer for this, so if any of you know, drop me a line and I'll make sure to give you credit. What I do know is that it was a great pleasure to listen through this entire score, and picking out just six tracks to highlight proved a challenging task.
Black Gold: Introducing the Buvont
Snail Games today released a video and blog post centered on the Buvont, marking the first in-depth exploration of any of Black Gold Online's races. A group of science-loving humans, the Buvont live peacefully with Black Gold's dwarves and are responsible for the militarization of steam technology. Accordingly, Isenhorst (one of the two competing Black Gold kingdoms) is considered to be under the thumb of the Buvont dynasty. Buvont can take on the role of Inquisitor, Mystic, or Tech Adept and dress in the neo-Victorian style. You can learn more about this race by checking out the reveal video after the break.
