Star Wars: The Old Republic senior producer Bruce Maclean has posted a summer development roadmap on BioWare's official game forums. The update outlines the 2.2 and 2.3 patches, with the former tentatively scheduled for June 11th and the latter penciled in for August 6th.
The first patch will feature additional guild XP bonuses based on membership numbers (up to a maximum 10% boost), the ability for crafters to make underworld gear, and Nightmare Mode for Terror From Beyond (along with new gear drops).
The second patch will feature "significant graphical upgrades," a new daily area, a new recurring event, and new flashpoints.
The scrappy little Kickstarter sandbox, Face of Mankind, sees its journey from conception to completion as an odyssey worth sharing. That's why the team has put together a talking head documentary video that chronicles the game's development since 2001.
The video itself is long on developer and player anecdotes, although it is short on actual in-game footage (this is probably not surprising considering that the team is rebuilding the engine from scratch). If you have 15 minutes and want to see how an indie MMO is made, check out the documentary after the jump!
On this episode of The Instance, 5.3 is here and there is all sorts of stuff you could be doing, how did those Heroic Scenerios work out, the battle in the barrens, on the subject of losing subscriptions, DOTA 2 takes a shot at WoW on Raptr, Chris Warcraft no longer with the Vikings, don't forget loot spec, PVP sadness in 5.3, what to do with dragon soul, Hearthstone additions galore, and loads more!
Were you hanging on the edge of your seat after watching the first episode of Marvel Heroes' Chronicles of Doom last week? Hope you haven't fallen to your doo...mise because the second installment is now available.
The episode tracks the sinister Victor von Doom as he makes a devil's deal with Dorammu to gain power and YouTube likes. The Chronicles of Doom is a four-part motion comic series written by Marvel's Brian Michael Bendis, and it can be seen as the prequel to the game itself.
Dangerous Travel Posted by The Ancient Gaming Noob on 24 May 2013, 3:39 pm
Travel is always a hot button issue. Long have been the debates between convenience and seeing, or making people see, the world. What is a waste of time and what builds character and all that. And opinion has changed on it over time. For example, in WoW, you used to have to go and find […]
If you have heard the news about RuneScape 3, you fall into one of two camps. You're either really excited and cannot wait for this new version of one of your favorite games or you really don't see what the fuss is all about. It's possible there is a third category for those who are interested but have played the game only once or twice. I easily fall into the first category, and I think the announcement of RuneScape 3 isn't important because it represents a new version of a long-running and very successful browser-based title; it's important because it will represent a massive shift in mobile technology and in how people perceive MMO gaming on a mobile device.
So many people seem to think that tablet or smartphone gaming is different from gaming on any other device. It is different in the way we interact with the game, in the way that we actually hold the tablet or touch the screen, but the device itself is just a smaller version of the ever-familiar PC, the personal computer. RuneScape 3 could prove that a tablet or smartphone is just as good as any other delivery system -- and in many ways, it might be superior.
Trion Worlds Lead Game Designer Bill Fisher has announced that RIFT won't be allowing raiders to use item store tokens to boost ultra-rare currency gains.
In a forum thread titled RIFT is officially pay-to-win, Fisher addressed the concern over the upcoming item shop's impact in the raiding game. The specific beef was with item store tokens that offered a substantial boost to all currency gained in the game over a period of time. Trion has since nerfed the token's potency (from 100% currency bonus to 80%) as well as removed the ability to gain extra Frozen Eclipse Stones from it.
Fisher explained that he decided to remove the token effect because he felt it was crossing the line of what is and is not acceptable from a cash shop. "I don't want you to have the perception that to take part in that section of the game you are going to be forced into buying something," Fisher wrote. "RIFT doesn't win the race by trying to be exploitative of any given group -- yes, it has to make money to continue getting updates, and I know everyone out there understands that."
Despite all the recent talk about the end of the preowned games market as we know it, GameStop President Tony Bartel says Microsoft "realizes the value of the buy-sell-trade model" at retail.
Empathologic Posted by Articles on 24 May 2013, 12:17 pm
I have a confession to make: I never finished Shadow of the Colossus.
[Take a few moments to catch your breath, bring your blood pressure back down to normal, and snag some smelling salts to revive any of those nearby with delicate constitutions.]
In fact, I never made it past the fifth Colossus. It wasn't because the game was bad or horribly broken in some way. I had my issues with it, but if I'm honest with myself the reason I chucked it to the back of the game drawer was because I saw what was coming, and I didn't want to have any part in it. It was clear from the beginning that Wander was planning Bad Things, and that the voice instructing him was a Bad Person, and the thought of pushing through two more handfuls of giant hairy beasts only to accomplish something with which I didn't agree simply wasn't going to happen.
So why is it, then, that I so gleefully danced through Xseed's Pandora's Tower?
It is a (very) minor spoiler to mention this, but since 95% of you will likely never play Pandora's Tower, I don't feel too bad. As the game progresses, you feel a similar sense of foreboding that your actions in the game are leading to some very disturbing if not outright terrible outcomes. In many ways the game presents the same sense of stride-halting dread that Shadow of the Colossus does once you piece together a few facts. With both games you (as always) have the choice to continue playing or foist the disk off on some unsuspecting passer-by. Although there are some interesting mechanical tricks that Pandora's Tower employed to string me along, if I had to pinpoint one reason it had me so engrossed while Shadow of the Colossus had me so repulsed, it would be this: empathy.
ESO Roundup Posted by Bethesda Blog on 24 May 2013, 11:50 am
On Wednesday we introduced the Wamasu, but that’s not the only ESO news this week! William Murphy over at MMORPG.com takes a closer look at the PvP that will be happening in the online world of Tamriel. Learn about Gathering, Exploration and Crafting with the most recent Ask Us Anything. A new Developer Question of [...]
Much ado has certainly been made lately about doing something "new and different" in games. Just take a look at all the options coming through Kickstarter lately; even more contenders have thrown their hats into the ring since our roundup last February. But in a large number of these cases, the new ideas are coming from developers within the gaming industry. So what would happen if a game were developed from outside the industry?
Enter TUG. Formally known as The Untitled Game, the game is the brainchild of Nerd Kingdom, a group hailing from the world of academia that happens to have intersected with gaming. Self-described as "a collaboration of video game developers, academic scientists, modders, and gamers," this group wants to move beyond just improving the way games are made "to show[ing] that such games can make us better as individuals and as a society."
I was able to catch up with one of the founders of Nerd Kingdom, Scientist and Researcher of Stuffs Peter Salinas, to talk about the game. We touched on everything from player design input to features (like player books and companions) to making an engine available for others to use. Oh, and of course, Soylent Green.
I don't know if you noticed this, but in the fully rendered trailer for The Elder Scrolls Online, the Aldmeri Dominion elves looked nice. In traditional fantasy lore like Lord of the Rings, elves are some of the most beautiful creatures in the universe. However, I've always seen the Elder Scrolls elves as somewhat alien -- like the grey-men kind of aliens. In fact, the dark elves with their ashy skin really looked like grey men, especially if they were bald. Yet that particular MMO trailer presented a different kind of elf.
Of course, that's just a CGI trailer, and CGI trailers rarely represent what we will see in the game. I can accept that. But more and more screenshots have popped up and more in-game videos have appeared on different websites, and in each of them, it appears to me that the elves -- the "mer" -- have received a makeover. And it's not just the elves; even the Argonians and Khajiit look different. I suspect there's a reason for this.
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Lots of new content coming to SWTOR this summer originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 24 May 2013 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
