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EverQuest II reveals new Freeblood race lore
There's a brand new race coming to EverQuest II this winter, and SOE has all the juicy lore details in a post on the game's official website. Freeblood vampires will be available to EQII Live subscribers and EQ2X gold and platinum members beginning in February as part of the Velious Winter Rewards program. A quick read-through of the fine print reveals that players must qualify for both the December and January rewards to be eligible for the Freeblood race (and ice wolf mount) that make up the February rewards. Both prerequisites require an active subscription and an account in good standing. If you're having trouble waiting until February, the Freebloods will be available for purchase via the Station Store later this month. In the meantime, SOE has provided some fairly meaty lore for you to sink your teeth into, and it's available at the official website.
'Dying for Daylight' features story by True Blood author
Author Charlaine Harris writes the "Southern Vampire Mysteries" novels that provide the source material for HBO's True Blood. Oberon Media's casual game label I-play announced today that Harris is writing the story for its upcoming vampire-centric PC release, Dying for Daylight. The first episode will be out in January. The game will star Dahlia, a vampire who has appeared in some of Harris's novels. Neither the plot nor the gameplay mechanics were revealed, so we're just going to guess it's a hidden object game, except instead of "objects," you're searching for places to get it on with a vampire or other supernatural monster.
TERA creeps us out with a monster movie
En Masse Entertainment has presented beautiful render after beautiful render of its highly anticipated action MMO TERA. We've seen revealing armor sets, robust cities, thunderous monsters, and creepy villains. The vampires of Popolion were pretty freaky when we showed them off a couple of weeks ago, but when coupled with the silent-film motif, the evil chills cause your body to shudder. Who doesn't like the classic monster movies? Bela Lugosi's Dracula is still the best. To say Happy Halloween to the fans of TERA, the developers have put together their own version of a spine-tingling monster movie. Don't miss the baby-dolls with cleavers, clowns with sinister sneers, and, of course, the vampires with top hats. Follow after the break for the full video, and prepare to be TERA-ized.
Vindictus open beta off to an early start
Looking to get a head start on some F2P dungeon-crawling, vampire staking, and goblin smashing? It's your lucky night, as Nexon America has let us know that the Vindictus open beta has left the terminal a bit ahead of schedule. The festivities include the game's newly accessible third episode, the aforementioned new mobs, and a new dungeon (Ainle), which you can enter from boat dock three. Inside, you'll encounter a town overrun with fireball-flinging undead and assorted underworld minions, many of which can be picked up and used as thrown weapons thanks to the game's Source Engine physics. In addition to the new content, early access beta players will be able to retain their characters, rank, and loot when Vindictus officially launches later this month. Check out more of our Vindictus coverage, including video of the game's grappling moves, or head over to the official web site for more info.
TERA shows off scary vampires
While it can be said that TERA's female avatars are occasionally guilty of vamping it up, particularly when strutting around the high-fantasy world in their stiletto heels and supervixen armor, actual bloodsucking immortals weren't something we initially pictured in Bluehole Studio's upcoming title. That said, fantasy MMOs have featured them before, notably in EverQuest II's Bloodline Chronicles adventure pack, and TERA looks to continue the tradition of undead MMO mobs as evidenced by the latest Screenshot of the Week featurette. The folks at Bluehole and En Masse Entertainment are putting a unique spin on the usual creature-of-the-night motif, as the official website says the vampirs were "once peaceful residents of Popolion and [its] environs, [but have since] gone insane and resumed their former blood-sucking ways." Check out the news blurb on the TERA website and the new images in our gallery below. %Gallery-96720%
Vindictus is moving into (fully) open beta in North America
Are you part of the masses eager to get your hands on a Vindictus beta key? Well, we have good news for you! Nexon has let us know today that its highly anticipated free-to-play hack-and-slash action-adventure how-many-hyphens-can-we-get-in-a-sentence game, Vindictus, will be heading to a true open beta status in North America on October 13th. So, sure, you could continue spending time trying to track down a key, or you could simply relax and get ready for the doors to open on the game in a couple of weeks. As part of the opening, Nexon is going to be adding in the dungeon of Ainle, which will offer players new challenges in the form of fireball-throwing vampires and goblins intent on destruction. Nexon has also said that players will have to do everything they can to stop these new invaders, including "hurling the corpses of their defeated enemies at the attacking mobs." Also, players will have a chance to check out the fishing system as a way to enjoy some downtime and potentially land some nifty loot. You know, if you can pry yourself away from hacking everything to bits. If you aren't in the beta, we have a handful of new screenshots for your eyes below. %Gallery-97587%
IGG planning great things for combat in Moonlight Online
Moonlight Online is expected to launch at the end of the year, and we're slowly getting more information on the game. The latest information from IGG gives a few hints about what we can expect from combat. While it's light on specifics, we do know that Moonlight Online "utilizes DOTA-like tactical elements in combat, so gamers can have their characters cast spells and use abilities in while in motion (limited by a cooldown time)." Transformation will be a big part of Moonlight Online, with characters gaining some impressive stat boosts in their alternate forms. Werewolves will receive buffs to attack power and HP, and vampires in bat form will be faster, more agile, and have a spell power boost. You can find more details about IGG's take on the vampire vs. werewolf conflict on the Moonlight Online forums.
The Daily Grind: Who's your MMO mistress?
Many in MMO circles look down on what they consider to be the second-class citizens of online gaming: browser-based MMOs. In fact, just about every time that we post a news article about a browser MMO here on Massively, it's inevitable that someone will pish-posh the game on the general principle that "all browser MMOs suck." Yet that attitude overlooks one of the key demographics of browser MMO players: us. It's not uncommon for many of us to be stuck with a non-gaming computer for a good chunk of time, i.e. at "school" and "work" and "in the Batcave." While we may not talk about it in mixed company out of fear of being ostracized, I believe many of us have an on-the-side MMO that feeds our addiction when we're away from our main gaming rig. Whether it be on Facebook, a browser or even on a mobile device, what MMO do you visit on the sly when you can't access the real thing? Have you spent time doodling around in City of Eternals, RuneScape or even Pocket Legends when your boss isn't looking? Who's your MMO mistress?
Energy Star 4.0 goes into effect for HDTVs, puts 'em on a diet
Your next Energy Star-approved HDTV? Chances are it'll be a little greener than your last one, thanks to the new 4.0 ratings going into effect. These drastically reduce allowable consumption for displays, offering on average a 40 percent improvement in efficiency compared to 3.0 models, meaning a 50-inch set can consume, at most, 153 watts (compared to 318 in the 3.0 world). Beyond that, a display that has been turned "off" can consume no more than one solitary watt whilst waiting for your next command. All sets produced as of May 1 must meet these new regulations to earn that prestigious blue badge, and then in 2012 the 5.0 rules come into effect, dropping maximum consumption by roughly another 40 percent -- good news for those who love the planet as much as they love watching Nature on peripheral vision-filling display.
IGG introduces vampire MMO Moonlight Online
Have you been dying to recreate your favorite scenes from the Twilight series? Well me neither, but I would like to fly around kicking butt and avoiding the sunlight. This is good, being that IGG announced Moonlight: Online today. Players will soon be able to control Vampire characters as they jump, fly and climb through supernatural environments that will be rendered using a cutting edge game engine. Players have also been promised that the game will feature plenty of outlets for their creativity. Could this mean the game will feature a lot of customization for characters? The game will also feature the ability to create and destroy entire empires with superpower abilities, all while declaring war on the Werewolves! Sounds to us like a pretty nice combination of pale, powerful and destructive -- just like we like it. Details are promised over the next weeks and months, so keep en eye out here. The game is slated for release at the end of 2010.
Phat Loot Phriday: Stakethrower
It's time to face the facts. The vampires are out there. They lurk in the shadows of Silvermoon with their bare, glittering chests entrancing casual bystanders. Theirs is the skin of monsters. Their cunning angst and perfectly tousled hair threatens a new generation of Azerothian teenagers. They are vile and unrepentant. It doesn't matter if you claim that you can't be a vampire; the Blood Prince Council beckons like a tempting cupcake. "Eat me," they say with voices like chocolate frosting. "Forbidden fruit!" But how can we possibly fight these vile fiends? What can we do to stave off our pale, cold future? Ladies and gentlemen of the readership jury, I present to you: Stakethrower. Stakethrower is crafted from the very finest engineering know-how. Its barrel packs enough Light-blessed silver to burn scars on thousands of vampires. The bayonette is crafted from metal retrieved from the Cathedral in Stormwind. The trigger is more sensitive than a teenager worried about their pants. Capable of hurling stakes and bullets, the Stakethrower is the very finest sidearm available to modern-day vampire hunters. Pick yours up today in your local Icecrown Citadel! The vital statistics for your last line of defense are just below. Name: Stakethrower Type: Ranged Gun (that throws stakes) Damage: 500 - 836 Damage, 222.7 damage per second (with stakes that are thrown) Speed: 3.00 (takes a little while to get a new stake in the barrel) Attritbutes: 45 Agility 32 Stamina Improves haste rating by 28 (0.85% @ L80) Increases attack power by 70. Increases your armor penetration rating by 31 (2.21% @ L80) Decreases the number of vampires in your area How to get it: You only need 9 friends to kill Blood Queen Lana'thel. Nine, for what it's worth, is the number of vampires in the Cullen family, if you count Bella. Coincidence? Unlikely. I suspect there's secretly a Twi-heart on the Blizzard staff. How to get rid of it: It sells for 17 gold, or can become an Abyss Crystal. However, if you lose this protection, you could also lose your life, and become one of the gruesome vampires. Is that really worth 17 gold? %Gallery-33600%
The Forsaken World to offer non-sparkly vampires
Fantasy -- check. Elves -- check. Vampires? Yes, indeed! Perfect World Entertainment's new MMO, Forsaken World, is not only full of the normal fantasy trappings you'd expect such as elves, dwarves, and men made of stone, but they've also got a race of vampires known as the Kindred. As one scrolls through the classes available on the MMO teaser site, there's also a vampire class in the mix. (We wonder if that's actually a class choice, or more a designation to explain the Kindred's powers.) While Forsaken World has only just been announced, the beta sign-ups are already open. Their shiny new site is also chock full of interesting information from the lore of the world, through to races, classes, and even a pretty cool looking trailer that we snagged a copy of and embedded behind the break for you to check out. We'll certainly be keeping our eye on it as more news come out because let's face it -- vampires (especially the non-sparkly ones) don't suck. Err. Well, not that way. You know what we mean.
Verizon 'vampire' ad rips off Twilight, sticks it to AT&T
Hey, remember how all the lawsuits got dropped over the holiday period and we thought AT&T and Verizon would finally start to coexist like mature entities engaged in a civilized industry? Yeah, that didn't last very long. Verizon is back with a biting ad campaign that continues poking fun at AT&T's 3G coverage. The consumer is appropriately a vampire, whereas the young maiden keen on being consumed turns out to be... well, it's more fun if we just let you watch it without any more spoilers. Needless to say, it's some of Verizon's funniest work yet. Head on past the break to see it. [Thanks, Jay]
All the World's a Stage: How you can be a vampire
Last week's All the World's a Stage was focused on the idea that not every character concept is appropriate to every group. The fundamental notion I was trying to convey is that each group has their own normative behaviors, themes, and characters. There's not necessarily anything fundamentally substandard about playing a vampire. Rather, many roleplay groups won't have space or stories available for someone who is playing one of the blood-sucking undead. That being said, there was enough discussion about being a vampire that I wanted to take some time and review how you can go about exploring that character concept in the World of Warcraft. Azeroth isn't necessarily home to huge vampire organizations or angsty teens exploring puberty, but there are still plenty of opportunities to try out the ideas without breaking WoW genre.
All the World's a Stage: You can't be a vampire
It's not my goal to discuss whether or not there are actually vampires in WoW. The Crimson Halls certainly seems to support the idea that the Cullen-crowd can get their bite on in Azeroth, maybe even cuddled up against the vampire LARPers. But even with the Sanlayn rocking the vampire thing in Northrend, there still aren't any playable vampires in WoW. (Blood death knights are arguably similar, but they still don't sprout fangs and lay the nom down on unsuspecting victims.) Yet, people still yearn to play vampires. It happens. And I don't actually mind people playing these type of characters in the free-form style roleplay you see in Goldshire and Silvermoon, because that tends to be the sort of place where anything goes. And I'll admit. In a former life I've LARPed a vampire. But in troupe-style roleplay, there are usually particular character conventions. A roleplay guild focused on defending Ashenvale from the encroaching Horde, for example, would have some trouble accepting a Draenei Shaman who is actually roleplaying an apologetic ex-Eredar making amends for his crimes. It falls on the leaders of these troupes and guilds, therefore, to talk to the person playing an outside-the-box character. You don't want to just leave your junior vampire going down a bad track, leaving him without folks with whom to roleplay. Even worse, it can lead to backbiting, disruption in the troupe, and other negative things. Roleplay groups are fragile enough -- don't leave a wingman hanging, when you can help them with the trouble. Take a look behind the jump, and let's see how you can help bring an Edward Cullen back into Azeroth, while still making everyone as happy as possible.
Want to sink your teeth into a vampire MMO? Massively can help!
With the recent popularity of movies like Twilight, it seems that the folks at Ohai have timed the announcement of their new vampire MMO just right. City of Eternals is a browser-based MMO set in the world of modern vampires. It is completely free-to-play and is currently in its private alpha testing stage. According to the developer, "You can choose your Vampire look and fighting style, explore a massive city with dozens of story quests, combat instances, and standalone missions. You will learn to harvest valuables and craft useful items, customize your own home, and choose your path to becoming the ultimate Vampire." If that genre appeals to you, and you'd be interested in alpha testing the game, head on over to their invite page where they have 100 invites reserved for the Massively readers. Each person who gets into this alpha will receive 100 "ohais", which are their own form of virtual currency in the game that will cost real money once the game launches.
Game-related startups raise $600 million in 2009, down 36%
Game-related startup companies raised $600 million throughout 2009, according to GamesBeat's analysis. And while $600 million is a lot of money if you're, say, trying to sell a shooter based on the art of modern warfare, it's not quite that much when you're an up-and-coming game developer. Total investments in the field were actually down by 36% since last year. That's not a bubble bursting, but it does mean that startup investors might be a little more careful with their money in the year to come. The biggest winners in the scene include Zynga, makers of Mafia Wars and a few other popular Facebook titles, who nabbed a big $180 million investment from a Russian technology company, and Playdom. You may not have played Sorority Life, the company's MySpace hit, but Lightspeed Venture Partners must have, because it invested $43 million in the company. If there's a theme here, it's social networking and online games: PopCap is probably the highest traditional game developer on the list, but even its $22.5 million investment was marked for putting its games on the web, mobile platforms, and social networks. Of course, that pull doesn't include the buck we gave them for Peggle.
Second season of Xbox Live's 1 vs. 100 starts Nov. 19
If you've been missing your trivia fix on Xbox Live, you should be happy to learn that Microsoft has dated the second season of its Xbox Live quiz-'em-up, 1 vs. 100. Expect the game to return on November 19 at 5:00 PDT, where it'll dish out another 14 weeks' worth of questions -- and this time around, your chance to be The One or a part of The Mob will be determined by one thing: score. Multiple-choice maniacs will be able to play the new season of 1 vs. 100 on a daily basis through themed Extended Play sessions every night, including "Finish the Lyrics," "80's" night and -- yes, we're totally serious -- "Vampires." Finally, a theme night your 12-year-old sister can get behind!
'Scene It? Twilight' dazzles Wii this autumn, DS in 2010
Oh my gawd, oh my gawd, the twinkly blood-suckers of Twilight are coming to Wii in a Scene It? game this fall! Yes, the vampire franchise -- with only one released movie under its coffin -- will be the subject of an entire multimedia-based trivia game for Wii, featuring some 500 multiple-choice questions based on clips, music and audio from the film. There are no details about the DS version of the game, which will release sometime next year. (There's also no mention of an Xbox 360 or PS3 version.) We'd call this the "shovelware cash-in of trivia games," but we'd be afraid that in doing so, pale, starving actors covered in glitter would come and suck our blood -- accompanied by throngs of enraged tweens and housewives that would rip our lifeless bodies to shreds. So ... we'll just call it not the game for us.
New Castlevania: Lords of Shadow screens are bloody, awesome
Holy crap! We've been connoisseurs of vampire-centric media for quite some time now (thankfully, we've managed to avoid those dreadful books), but we never knew that vampires were made entirely out of blood. At least, that's the conclusion we've drawn from the Castlevania: Lords of Shadow screenshot you see above -- one of a handful of pieces of media we just got our hands on. You can see the whole batch in the gallery below.None of the others feature this bizarre phenomenon -- however, we suppose it's equally amazing that the vestments of Gabriel (the game's protagonist) remain so hemoglobin-free while he's running around, popping dudes like bloated mosquitoes.%Gallery-70457%
