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Landmark reduces teleport costs and brags about player creativity
Getting around quickly in Landmark is now a lot cheaper, as Director of Development Dave Georgeson tweeted that teleport casts have been reduced. Returning to home or the hub costs only one shard and triggers a 10-minute cooldown, while jumping from the gallery to a particular claim is free with no cooldown. SOE also posted a video today showing off some of the most creative efforts from the playerbase and encouraging fans to try their hands at the "Landmarks of Landmark" contest. You can check out the video after the jump!
EverQuest Next Landmark going into closed beta next week [Updated]
SOE announced today that EverQuest Next Landmark will be transitioning out of alpha next week and into closed beta on Wednesday, March 26th. During the transition, all progress on the alpha servers will be wiped except for saved templates, character names, and Founder's Pack purchases. Landmark also got an important update today, the biggest part of which is the addition of a party system. While there is no specific UI for it yet, players can invite friends to a group through slash commands, via a friends list, or by right-clicking on them in the world. Groups earn a 20% bonus to harvested loot. The update also added in-game email, social media integration, and the ability to teleport to the continent hub or to your friends. [Update: The Landmark team has also posted to explain the differences between time-limited beta keys and founder packs.]
Arcane Brilliance: Fun and frivolity for mages
Every other week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. Stacey Landry is the resident mage here, bender of space and time, conjurer of delicious confectioneries and expert at dressing well while setting things on fire. I know that some of you who read this column may not be full-time mages. Some of you may have mage alts. Some of you are warlocks - actually an alarming number of you are warlocks, I think that you secretly like us. That's okay, you could always make a mage and be eight billion times more awesome. We'll wait. That's not what I'm here to talk about today, though. I know that sometimes as a DPS player it can become easy to get caught up in numbers. Best in slot gear, logs, damage done - all of that. I'm not saying that doing damage isn't fun. It is ridiculous, enemy annihilating fun. But there's more to life as a mage than that. In the spirit of the holidays, I'd like to discuss some of those more lighthearted things. They should apply to long time mages and dabblers alike, unless otherwise noted.
LotRO introduces travel to quest feature
Sometimes it's the little things in life, such as a McFlurry in the middle of a business day or an MMO giving you an express ride to where you need to go. Among the bushel of features coming with Lord of the Rings Online's Update 9 is a cool tool to let you do just that (and no, we're not talking about McFlurries). In a new dev diary, the LotRO team explains that it's adding a new icon by most quests to allow for an easy return to the quest-giver. If the icon is clicked, players have the option to immediately travel to the NPC in exchange for a Traveller's Writ. If you feel the whisper of money behind that last sentence, then you probably suspected that these items will be in the game's cash shop. This shall be the case. "For long-standing players with several level-capped characters," the dev writes, "I expect this will make it easier to try out a new class or race." The feature won't be available for some quests. It also won't function while you're in combat, in an instance, riding a stable mount, or in the PvMP zone.
Blood Pact: How to use your warlock's party toys
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill steps back to cover some group functions of warlocks she feels she must explain every week to her raidmates anyway. It's in our fel nature to want to work alone, but warlocks actually have some great party utility. We lost some of that utility in Cataclysm with the advent of a specific guild perk, but now in Mists of Pandaria we've resurfaced in lore and game mechanics. It's time to relearn our old tricks and introduce a new party toy to group content play.
Challenge modes provide new teleportation options
The fine folks at Wowhead have discovered a tasty tidbit in the latest beta patch for those upset about the upcoming loss of the Have Group, Will Travel guild perk. It appears that completing a dungeon challenge mode on Gold will unlock an ability called Challenger's Path, enabling you to instantly teleport to that dungeon's entrance whenever you choose. Personally, I love this. I still use my Dimensional Ripper and Wormhole Generator to go hopping around the lands of the old expansions whenever I'm messing around with things, and being able to flit around Pandaria will be amazing as well. (Yes, there's a new Wormhole Generator for Pandaria, but it apparently only takes you to a random spot in the continent, which isn't as helpful.) For more details, port over to Wowhead News. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Potions, Portals, and Scrolls of Recall: How to get around Azeroth as quickly as possible
Azeroth is big. This is readily apparent to any new player who's confined to running around on foot or anyone too cheap to shell out for a mount. Even mounted, you're going to spend a lot of time getting from point A to point B unless you can somehow shorten the journey -- and you can usually shorten it in a number of interesting ways. We all know about the zeppelins and the boats, the workhorse transportation system of Azeroth, but due to the eccentricity of the many transport options in the game, the shortest distance between two points is not necessarily a straight line. For example, an inventive Horde player without a Hearthstone up who wants to travel from Silithus to Orgrimmar can settle in for a long flight -- or she can simply chug a Potion of Deepholm and take the Orgrimmar portal from the Temple of Earth. No potion, but you've quested through Sholazar Basin? Take the Titan Waygate from northern Un'Goro Crater to Sholazar, then fly south to the Horde's zeppelin at Warsong Hold. You'll still beat a wyvern flying from Cenarion Hold. With even a few of the following options, a max-level player with some imagination should be able to scrape together a few methods of considerably shortening a journey.
Lineage II's 7th anniversary kicks off with three weeks of events
It's sometimes hard to believe that the MMO genre is already over a decade old. Lineage II celebrates its 7th Anniversary this month, demonstrating an impressive longevity that not all MMOs can hope to match. To celebrate, NCSoft has three weeks full of events planned for current and ex-players of the game. Starting today and lasting until May 4th, all expired Lineage II accounts have been temporarily reactivated for free. During this time, any subscription purchases will be rewarded with special in-game anniversary rewards such as a chest full of gear or a pitch black version of the 7th anniversary cloak. During the first week of the celebrations, players will benefit from free teleports at gatekeepers and double experience and skill points from monster kills. Extending the celebrations for a third week, an anniversary letters event will run from April 27th until May 11th. Players will sometimes find letter blocks when hunting monsters. Special rewards will be available for players who collect enough letters to spell out the words "NCSoft" or "Lineage II." On April 27th and May 4th, the highest level characters on each account will be gifted with anniversary gift packs full of goodies. All characters above level 80 will also get an impressive-looking blood red endgame cloak on April 27th. For more details head over to the official announcement on the Lineage II website.
First light wave quantum teleportation achieved, opens door to ultra fast data transmission
Mark this day, folks, because the brainiacs have finally made a breakthrough in quantum teleportation: a team of scientists from Australia and Japan have successfully transferred a complex set of quantum data in light form. You see, previously researchers had struggled with slow performance or loss of information, but with full transmission integrity achieved -- as in blocks of qubits being destroyed in one place but instantaneously resurrected in another, without affecting their superpositions -- we're now one huge step closer to secure, high-speed quantum communication. Needless to say, this will also be a big boost for the development of powerful quantum computing, and combine that with a more bedroom friendly version of the above teleporter, we'll eventually have ourselves the best LAN party ever.
Behind the Mask: The perfect ten
I neglected to mention a few weeks ago (two weeks ago, actually) a very important event: Behind the Mask had its one year anniversary in the end of March, and I intended to do something special. Although we could do something boring like recap the journey of my first year of Champions Online or something, that doesn't really sound like much fun to me. I've had some good times playing CO since I started writing for Massively, but CO is a themepark, so my summary would be something like, "I roleplayed a lot." Sure, I have a few high-level characters, but I probably wouldn't have had as much fun playing CO if not for roleplaying and the social landscape of the game. If you're a long-time reader of this column, you know I complain a lot about Champions. In some respects, that shows I'm invested in the game, and I really care about whether it succeeds. On the other hand, it also means that sometimes my column carries some bias. In true Behind the Mask-fashion, here is the real summary of my last year of playing CO. If you read my rants about roleplayers, this should be familiar ground.
Epic new Rift video precedes tomorrow's beta test opening
If there's one MMO on the horizon that has everyone excited, it's Rift. Created by Trion Worlds, Rift promises to be the next big AAA launch title and has been drawing its share of attention from players. The game's closed beta begins tomorrow, and Trion has been giving out beta keys in preparation. Some Rift fans were able to grab limited beta keys that give access to several beta events, while others were lucky enough to secure an access-all-areas VIP beta key. Here at Massively, our 500 VIP keys disappeared in record time. For those of you who missed the chance to get in on the Rift beta, you can still sign up at the Rift website for a chance to get in. Rift is being marketed as a fully complete, next-gen MMO. But those are just marketing buzzwords, right? Guess again! In this new video (after the cut below), the Trion team has taken the bold step of defining what exactly those terms mean in a very practical context. Rift is promised to be a highly polished MMO right from launch, with none of those rough edges we've come to expect from new titles. Rather than follow the standard MMO formula wherein monsters are forever bound to respawn and walk around within a small area, Rift aims to create a truly dynamic game world. The demonic rifts that open randomly in the world will radically alter not just the look of the land but also the gameplay of nearby areas. Leave a rift unchecked for too long and you'll soon find they've set up camp and organised an invasion of the local area. If this new video doesn't make you excited for Rift and the future potential of the MMO genre, I don't know what will. Skip past the cut to watch the new Rift beta video in full HD.
November brings updates to Final Fantasy XIV's travel and questing
The Final Fantasy series as a whole has been marked by a surfeit of crystals, and Final Fantasy XIV's Aetheryte is heir to the tradition. Floating just above the ground, these crystals serve as both a nexus of quests and a point of transportation. Both of these functions are getting a distinct boost with the pending November version update set for the 24th. Teleportation costs are being reduced for both the major cities and three player-selected "favorite" camps, allowing players to zap from place to place faster. Return costs are also being reduced to 1 anima, allowing players who are either lost or in a dangerous region a quick option to get to safety. Meanwhile, levequest functionality at crystals is being improved, with players able to scale the difficulty of a given levequest downward once the quest has been started. This goes hand-in-hand with adjustments to the strength of enemies found in guildleves and improvements to the rewards of leve-linking, giving players more incentive to try to push themselves to the limits of what they can accomplish. The changes should be welcome boons to Final Fantasy XIV players, allowing easier movement and questing under all circumstances.
Behind the Mask: High speed, low drag
It's not like Champions Online is the first MMORPG with travel powers. Back in the ancient days of Ultima Online, we had things like boats and teleporting spells. Getting a mobility boost to get from point A to point B is nothing unique or special. CO has something a little different, though. Travel powers are as much a thing of individual expression as they are a transportation method. Sure, there's something to be said for riding a semi-transparent sparkling blue horse, but when you can wrap yourself in a shroud of blue fire and streak through the skies, it says a little more about your character. There's a reason I think people who still go AFK to ride griffons from zone to zone are chumps. Hopping over buildings to get to your next quest objective or sprinting at ludicrous speed into a group of foes and using the momentum to start up your attacks is the epitome of personal expression. It's all about what you drive, and my ride is Teleportation.
Arcane Brilliance: These are a few of my favorite things
It's time again for Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column from the author of Don't Break My Sheep: Diary of an Angry Mage and 101 Ways to Cook Warlock. This is going to be slightly shorter and even more rushed than usual, guys, because new baby. I'd post pictures, but this is the internet. I'll wait till he's a bit older and can ruin his own life. The kid's our third, our first boy, and I'll only say one thing about that: After two girls, I simply wasn't prepared for the peeing. Seriously, the kid fires that thing straight up, without warning, and with laser precision. I've taken to placing a washcloth over his loins during changings, a tip suggested by my genius wife. Now that I've grossed you out, let's move on to today's topic: awesomeness. Paternity leave from work has given me some extra time between hilarious eye-peeing episodes to fiddle in earnest with my mage on the beta. And though I have some complaints, I'll save them for another week, one in which I'm not still basking in the afterglow of seeing my wife push a baby out from her nether regions. I'm too happy to complain this week, so if you've come here looking for constructive criticism, you're in the wrong place. Join me after the jump for a few of my favorite things about each of the three mage specs in the beta.
Lost Pages of Taborea: Grouping basics
This week, I've been thinking a lot about Runes of Magic's ability to cater to players with different MMO backgrounds. Many players may never have played a subscription game from the West, while others may never have experienced the different mechanics found in Eastern F2P MMOs. What you get is a banquet of food and all the guests aren't sure of the proper etiquette or rules or when it's time to eat. If we stick with a food analogy, the group feature would be a main dish. Lots of F2P MMOs have been imported from the East, and they don't handle grouping in quite the same way as Western subscription-based games. In fact, the ideas of raiding, pick-up-groups, and instances that can be found in almost any Western MMO, don't exist in most F2P games. This article takes a look at some specifics of grouping in RoM, including the recruitment board, experience debt, looking for a group, and etiquette.
Arcane Brilliance: The services we provide
It's time again for Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that come rain or shine, snow, sleet, hail, netherstorm or cataclysmic event is always delivered to your electronic doorstep by a mysterious robed man with a strange affinity for sheep. Perhaps you have wondered why Blink is distanced at exactly 20 yards? Because that's the exact number of digital yards between your internet yard and your neighbor's internet yard. This strange wizardly paperboy blinks onto your e-porch, unfurls this week's Arcane Brilliance, magicks it under your internet door, turns your internet yard gnome into an internet yard sheep, then poofs his way next door and repeats the process. He does this whether you've actually subscribed to Arcane Brilliance or not. It's all a bit creepy, but at least it's free. Let's take a moment and talk about utility, shall we? This week, I'm going to present the case for mages as the single best utility class in the game. Sure, druids bring their gifts of the wild, death knights bring their horns of winter, shaman bring their bloodlust/heroism, warlocks bring their evil little cookies and their obscene body odor, and rogues bring ... a tendency to stab things in the back ... but mages -- I think you'll agree after I pound it into your heads for the next thousand words or so -- are the kings of utility. You may think of us (and many of us may think of ourselves) as simple purveyors of arcane destruction. We trade in damage, humble merchants of death, standing behind someone wearing more substantial attire, churning out our fireballbolts and frostmadoodads and whatnot until the boss keels over, like any good ranged DPS class should. While this is our essential function, I'd like to spend this week's column shining a spotlight of sorts on the other things we bring to the proverbial table. Protip: one of the things we bring is a literal table.
Breakfast Topic: If you could have any ability in WoW
What would it be? I used to know this guy who did a podcast for his web series. One day while answering listener questions, he read off a really fantastic question related to World of Warcraft. "If you could have any ability in WoW, what would it be?" At the time he picked Teleport: Shattrath, rationalizing that with that spell he could teleport to Azeroth and learn the rest of his mage's spellbook. A very "wish for more wishes" kind of answer, right? Eventually his co-host foiled him though, reminding my friend that a Rune of Teleportation regeant is required to cast the spell so he'd never be able to cast it on Earth. I thought long and hard on this question myself though, and being prone to illness I was immediately drawn to a paladin's Cleanse spell. Never being sick for the rest of your life would be amazing, right? Not to mention, you could cure everyone else. I don't know how Cleanse would respond to viral infections versus bacterial infections, but I'd really love to knock out HIV. I don't know what mana cost would do to a person in real life, but I bet Gatorade is just like mage water. I wonder what level I am? Anyway, in the end, my boyfriend at the time brought my attention to an even better idea: Concentration Aura. As a creative sort, I imagine that the aura would be useful for getting mundane things done. Like starting that back burner novel, or studying for a test with your outline group. If you were performing something on stage, all your fellow performers would receive the benefits of the aura as well. Imagine working at DARPA with Concentration Aura up: we'd destroy the world in a matter of years. I mean... what? So what ability in WoW would you pick for yourself?
Sixth-year Veteran Rewards announced for EQII
If you've faithfully stayed with EverQuest II since launch, then you've got a handful of new Veteran Rewards to look forward to just around the corner. The sixth-year rewards have been announced on EQ2Players, and one of the bonus items in particular has the community cheering. Beginning with that most celebrated item, the rewards are: Call of the Veteran: A charm-slot item that can be used to teleport to a group-member, or summon them to your own location. This functionality was confirmed by EverQuest II lead programmer Rothgar on the forums; the EQ2Players page only mentions teleporting to someone else but leaves out the summoning part. It has a reuse time of 60 minutes. Hammer of Adept Hands: A charm-slot item that can be clicked to completely refill your tradeskill vitality. Its reuse time is 7 days. Destiny Accessory Bag, containing the Hood of Fate and Shroud of Fate: A hood and cloak to let those around you know that you're part of the six-year club. Rothgar also stated in another thread that up until some time this year, eligibility for veteran rewards was not being tallied correctly, with credit being given even while accounts were inactive. Going forward, an account must be actively subscribed to keep adding time towards veteran rewards. The rewards will be available when the Will of a Tyrant patch goes live on December 9th.
Zu Online adds PvP arenas to the mix
Free-to-play MMO Zu Online is finally jumping onboard with PvP arenas, releasing information on "Soulfight Altar" and how the new area will affect PvP.Overall, Soulfight Altar will be removing many of the items that has made Zu Online's PvP experience into an unbalanced mess. Some epic level equipment will be getting a resistance decrease while teleportation tablets will have absolutely no effect in Soulfight Altar, denying losing players the ability to quickly flee.Scattered throughout the zone will be limited time power boosts as well, such as invisbility and regeneration pickups, allowing the tide of battle to be turned by the appearance of a single boost.Fighting in Soulfight Altar will award new soulfight points, letting successful players grab a variety of equipment, including epic level armor sets.
Fast travel, and why it's hard to find in MMO games
Rock Paper Shotgun has an interesting piece up looking at travel in massively multiplayer games, and while the analysis is really about travel in all MMOs, of course World of Warcraft gets placed front and center -- with the notable exceptions of Mages and Warlock summons, it's a game that squarely places you in its vast world, and asks you to make some solid decisions about where you want to be. While travel has certainly gotten easier (and will continue to do so), it's still an important part of the world -- sometimes, when you're in a backwater zone and your hearthstone is down and there's no summons available to you, you've just got to get on a griffon and put the time in to fly around.Why is that? Why can't we just teleport around at will to places we've been before (a la Fallout 3 or Fable 2, if you've ever played those games)? Why does Blizzard make us traverse the wide world? RPS lands on two solutions: either they just want you to play the game more (certainly possible, especially since big worlds with long travel times and subscription fees are a trademark of the MMO genre), or they're just being jerks about it. But their panelists, and Blizzard, have offered one more suggestion: they want this world to feel vast, and one way to do that is to make you move around it rather than warp anywhere you want at a moment's notice.Then again, that's some deep psychology, and sometimes you just want to get in an instance with your friends and fight (hence the recent changes to summoning anywhere, queueing from anywhere, and so on). Travel definitely serves a purpose in MMOs, but the genre has shown in the past few years that while instant travel all the time might shrink the world a little too much, sometimes you just need to get to where you want to be.[via Slashdot]
