MMO News |
- PlanetSide 2 Dev Interview with Senior Art Director Tramell Isaac – Hossin
- EverQuest Next
- Dragon’s Prophet Dev Interview with Senior Producer Todd Carson
- Neverwinter Fury of the Feywild Interview
- Digimon Masters Goes A-Hunting!
- The Circus is Coming to Town in The West
- Serenia Fantasy The Retro RPG That Keeps Things Fresh
- Guild Wars 2 Queen’s Jubilee Launches Today
- Season 1 of MapleStory New Leaf Saga Available on Crunchyroll
- Cross Horizon
| PlanetSide 2 Dev Interview with Senior Art Director Tramell Isaac – Hossin Posted: 06 Aug 2013 03:48 PM PDT PlanetSide 2 Dev Interview with Senior Art Director Tramell Isaac – Hossin JamesBl0nde talks to Tramell Isaac, Senior Art Director for PlanetSide 2 about the next big content update featuring the swampy continent of Hossin! This fourth continent of Auraxis features terrain full of dynamic features that limit aircraft effectiveness and challenge soldiers to fight below a dense canopy of massive trees! |
| Posted: 06 Aug 2013 02:53 PM PDT Join Sony Online Entertainment as it reimagines EverQuest with content being controlled by the players, and built from scratch with a new generation of MMOs in mind.  Publisher: Sony Online Entertainment Pros: +Multi-classing. +Destructible environments. +Sandbox-style world. Cons: -Limited information available. Overview EverQuest Next OverviewEverQuest Next is a complete reimagining of the EverQuest universe – from lore to the very technical bones of gameplay. Featuring a sandbox world where player stories evolve uniquely, an enemy AI that reacts in new emergent ways, and completely destructible environments that let players choose where to explore. In addition, over 40 distinct professions (classes) will be available at launch, with a non-linear progression system and the ability to mix and match class abilities. Features: Multi-Classing - EQN will offer players the ability to explore and interact with the world according to their individual style of play. There are no levels in EQN, but there will be more than 40 distinct classes (or professions) at launch, with multi-tiered abilities and specialized weapon skills to collect and master. Players will even mix and match abilities from each class, creating truly custom characters that feel distinct and powerful. Destructible Environments - No modern MMO has successfully implemented destructible environments that stretch across an entire seamless game world — this changes forever with EQN. Every piece of the world is fully destructible and players will have the ability to manipulate almost all of it. They will interact with and explore the world in amazing ways; venturing down into the deep bedrock beneath the surface and using powerful combat abilities to blow gaping holes into the ground. The EQN world will extend far into the heavens and deep into the procedurally-generated earth through 10,000 years of known lore and history. Permanent Change - Players will also have the ability to cause the world to change around them, permanently, in dramatic ways. Through the concerted effort of the world’s inhabitants, including players, creatures, and non-player characters (NPCs), city walls will be built and destroyed, large-scale wars will be fought and won, and epic stories will unfold over months and years. Emergent AI - In EQN, NPCs will have specific motivations and preferences that direct behavior in nuanced and unpredictable ways. Players will find themselves in a world where NPC decisions are based on core values, not dictated by static spawn points. For example, Orcs may attack opportunistically because they want an adventurer’s gold, not simply because a careless hero wanders into an attack radius. A Life of Consequence - Finally, each character in EQN will have a unique story; they will not follow a predetermined path. Instead, they will seek out adventure, fame and fortune in a constantly changing sandbox world. The game will remember every choice and action that players make and will organically deliver increasing opportunities to do more of the things players like to do … from crafting armor and exploring the wilderness to purging goblins from the forests. EverQuest Next Screenshots         EverQuest Next Featured Video Full Review EverQuest Next ReviewEverQuest Next & The Holy Grails By JamesBl0nde Today marks the day the EverQuest developers and the entire team at SOE can stop burying their excitement about the highly anticipated EverQuest Next, a game they say will reset the way MMORPGs work… again! Dave Georgeson, Director of Development for EQ, EQII, and now EQNext explained how EverQuest Next has been in development since 2009. The game had been scrapped two times, the first scrap was because they felt like, "Once again we are remaking our same game, using our own original template." They decided they need a fresh start but still incorporate all of the passion, lore, and feeling of Norath, into something similar to what J.J. Abrams did with Star Trek that will provide players with EQ nostalgia but with new stories, player driven stories. "EverQuest Next is not the continuation of a familiar story. It represents the fundamental reimagining of the characters, lore and environments of the EverQuest universe," said Georgeson Yeah sure, every MMORPG wants to be the grand master so you're probably wondering, "What makes them think they can be any different than anyone else?" Well that's where Georgeson's Holy Grails come into play and put a better understanding on why it's called EverQuest Next instead of EQIII. Holy GrailsThe first Holy Grail will offer players complete freedom of play style through Multi – Classing where players start with a distinct class (over 40 at launch) and change that class into a more individualized version through specialized weapon skills and multi-tiered abilities. Each of the characters abilities change based around the weapon of choice and even tweaks to those weapons via crafting. This first Grail ties into the next Grail, A Life of Consequence. This grail has a lot to do with the sand box aspect, (reminds me of ArcheAge). Players will not follow a pre-determined path as their characters but instead seek adventure as they wish. (Players might approach an NPC out of curiosity for quests) This system tracks the choices and actions made by the players and naturally continues to reintroduce opportunities back onto the player. For example if you like building walls and the game can see that, well you might expect you needing to repair walls in an epic battle a few months down the road. This next one is a big one, something we haven't seen in an MMORPG before and that's 100% Destructible Environments. Using a deeply modified version of the Forgelight Engine (same as PlanetSide 2) they've made the world entirely out of tiny blocks called Voxels that not only make the world really unique from a creative aspect (we'll talk more about that later) but lets everything be destroyed. The best part about this is players have the abilities to literally tear the place to bits, creating huge holes, (imagine TNT in MineCraft) break down walls, and even use several abilities to create structures (physical ice walls as example, ones that enemies have to use abilities to break through). On top of the destructible environments you have another element in the game that moves away from the single surface areas and allows for a truly layered game world, and what I mean by that is you may be fighting an enemy and come across and area with a thin layer of ground and fall through that layer only to land in a subterranean environment or you might have the urge to explore and pick up a pickax and start exploring only to find several huge caverns to explore. (Again think exploring in minecraft, even the randomly generated worlds part). This next Grail is my absolute favorite aspect of the game so far (It's the epic within the awesome) this is a completely new approach on PVE AI, called Emergent AI. This completely eliminates the need for spawn camps and players knowing exactly where NPCs (enemies included) will be in the world. The do this by constantly polling the world and tagging everything in the world for what it is (Sorta like putting tags in a YouTube video). Then all of the creatures and NPCs have special interests, likes, dislikes, etc. that coincide with the tags in the environment. Example: Orcs may have specific likes and dislikes, they may like to camp alongside roads were they know that only a few adventurers travel and are looking for their gold. They don't like cities due to the guards, and they don't like highly populated areas where they get their faces smashed in constantly. Well what this means is, these creatures get introduced into the world and they go out and find areas that they like and fit their needs. Their likes and needs maybe right next door to your village or it might be somewhere you're not. If these various creatures are becoming a threat or problem it's up to player to find means of pushing them away by changing the area so that these intruders no longer like the area they're in. Hence they pick up camp and find a new area they like. This creates an AI environment where players have a much harder time predicting what they may face next. The final Holy Grail is, from what I can assume, developmentally scary. This one is none other than Permanent Change. This gives players a world where they can influence, literally, permanent change in the world around them and in very dramatic and dynamic ways. Screw just having dynamic events, based on this concept they want the dynamic events to forever make an impact on the world and players experience forever. To do this the setup rallying calls that may have players setup a camp, as an example (similar to public quests, just to start things off, but the rally call may take months to complete) hundreds to thousands of quest opportunities present themselves during these rally call because on event might trigger another or one event may start another. This is a little hard to explain without direct examples but it's designed to create numerous dynamic quest opportunities that have permanent change on the world. (Hopefully I'll be able to explain this better as I learn more). So that's the fundamental elements that make up EverQuest next but there is more… a lot more. After the development team worked with the very elaborate, yet intuitive tools to make the environments in EverQuest Next, they decided why not give these tools to the players so that they could truly help make the game they want to play. Well they did just that with EverQuest Next Landmark, a new title we can expect to see by the end of this year that lets player build on plots with specific biomes, collecting resources similar to Minecraft and make amazing structures that plan to be incorporated into the launch of EQNext and going forward. Not only will players be able to create their original content for the game but the developers will direct players into building what they need help building. Just like CEO John Smedley said last year with Player Studio, "You guys can design some assets even better than we can!" Just like Player Studio, if creations by players get submitted they receive a cut of the revenue made off that item but in this case, for example, if someone makes a tower and someone else comes along and makes a castle out of 8 of those towers, that tower creator gets loyalties based on a percentage that the tower was used in the castle. And yeah, this may be a way of having the players do all the work for them, but I suppose the healthy way of looking at it is, these guys are dedicated and that only tells me that it will allow them to focus on all the new features that truly make the game unique. I know I only touched on this overwhelming title briefly, there is so much more to know and ask, all in all the game has some very interesting elements that spark a warm feeling inside for modern MMORPGs so we defiantly have something worth the wait so far and a huge new contender for the Next generation of MMORPGs. Screenshots EverQuest Next ScreenshotsComing Soon … Videos EverQuest Next VideosEverQuest Next World Debut – SOE Live Highlights System Requirements EverQuest Next System RequirementsComing Soon… |
| Dragon’s Prophet Dev Interview with Senior Producer Todd Carson Posted: 06 Aug 2013 01:27 PM PDT Dragon’s Prophet Dev Interview with Senior Producer Todd Carson Senior Producer for Dragon’s Prophet, Todd Carson gets extremely excited and passionate when talking about all of the new features coming to the game even prior to its launch on September 19th. At launch, the game will be updated with a ton of new content creating a deeper experience for all players – from n00b to high-level players. In addition to new content, as promised, we will NOT be wiping characters. You will keep your current characters, stats and Dragons. There will be some very exciting changes and additions to Dragon's Prophet however and here are a few highlights: Frontier PvP System
New Adventuring Zone with a level cap increase to level 80
Improvements to dungeon bosses for levels 1 to 60
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| Neverwinter Fury of the Feywild Interview Posted: 06 Aug 2013 10:54 AM PDT
With Fury of the Feywild on the horizon for Neverwinter, we had an opportunity to ask some questions of Perfect World Entertainment and Cryptic Studios about their design for the expansion. Andy Velasquez, Lead Producer for the team, took some time out of his busy schedule in order to give us some very well-thought out answers, which you can view below:
The inclusion of Sun and Moon Elves brings the total amount of elf races up to five, dwarfing (no pun intended) all other races. What prompted this decision? We were really excited about having a comprehensive theme for the release of our Modules. Journeying into the Feywild gave us a lot of really cool critters, environments, weapon and armor sets, companions to mess around with and Races were no exception. The Sun and Moon elves thematically are a fantastic fit with the Fey and so we were happy to offer them up as playable races. Never fear for you Non-Elf fans out there. Many more player races will be coming!
This expansion seems a perfect opportunity to introduce a ranged, physical DPS, which is something the community has been clamoring for. Are there any plans to offer players a new class choice in the near future? Oh a ranged physical DPS class eh? I feel like you are hunting for something specific with this line of questioning… There are absolutely plans to offer players another class; and soon! In fact I have a playtest this week to check out some of the newest powers for the class that we'll be releasing next.
Currently, each class only has one “specialization.” Is there any word on when more will be implemented? We will be adding in some new paragon paths for all existing classes soon! We have many of them already through the initial stages of development and will be playtesting them internally and releasing to the test server in the coming months. Our combat is very important to us and we really want to make sure that when we release these class additions that they come out GREAT! So please bear with us while we take the time we need too in order to make them awesome! There are some new updates to the companion system in this expansion; what further plans do you have to help improve companions? We have a ton of things that we want to continue to do in order to expand the companion system. Recently we tweaked DPS companions attacks. We have plans to improve AI, targeting, power usage, collection book, costume options, new types of companions, and more! In addition to what WE want to do we have been listening to player feedback and fixing up specific requested issues as well. So hit up our forums and let us know what you'd like to see!
Are Weaponsmithing and Artificing only available for crafting new items, or will players also be able to enhance existing equipment? Similar to Armorsmithing these professions will be mostly for creating new items. An existing equipment enhancing profession is interesting though.
It’s always the hope with user-generated content that players produce high-quality mods. Is this the philosophy behind the Drag-and-Drop 3D editor? Absolutely! Our goal with our updates to the Foundry are aimed at making the tool more accessible to new users as well giving more flexibility for existing authors to continue to make awesome content! The Drag and drop editor is a real game changer in both those respects and we are really pumped to see what people can do with it.
Forgotten Realms is a realm rich in lore. After the introduction to the Feywild and Feydark, what future areas does the team want to tackle the most? ALL OF IT!!!!!!!! Thay! Waterdeep! Spine of the world! Menzoberranzan! LUSKAN! Cormyr! No really ALLL OFF ITTTT!!!!
Neverwinter: Fury of the Feywild is set to release on August 22, 2013. For more details, check out the Fury of the Feywild Trailer.
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| Digimon Masters Goes A-Hunting! Posted: 06 Aug 2013 08:26 AM PDT Joymax, leading online game developer and publisher, today unleashes a hot new hunt for exciting treasure in their leading MMORPG, Digimon Masters Online. For every half hour, full hour, two hours and three hour periods per day that the Tamer stays within the game, they'll be rewarded with items! These include Miracle Fruit, which temporarily increases their Digimon's size; Amplification Booster +200, providing a 200% boosted EXP rate for a limited time; a Diablomon Boss Card, allowing players to summon this challenging boss monster; and a Summer Coin, a new type of currency.
Each day players who stay logged in for at least two hours consecutively will receive a Summer Coin. Head over to the JumboGaemon, located in the Data Center, who will exchange these coins for fun prizes including: - Item Effects Number of Coins - 1 Evoluter Expand Champion and Ultimate evolution slots 5 - 10 Plant DATA Plant Class DigiEgg hatching ingredient 6 - 10 Aquatic DATA Auatic Class Digi egg hatching ingredient 6 - Warehouse Expansion Extra Warehouse slot 7 - ModeSelector Extends the evolution of riding mode 9 - 1 Backup Disk Corrects Adverse Effects in Digimon Evolution 10 - 1 Hatching BackupDisk Prevents penalties in failed hatching attempt 12
The most coveted prize that JumboGaemon will offer is the Mystery reinforced mercenary digi egg, which randomly awards players one of many reinforced mercenary digi eggs. This item costs a whopping 25 Summer Coins to acquire, out of a total possible 29 coins. Players will need to consider which prizes fit their Coin budget best! |
| The Circus is Coming to Town in The West Posted: 06 Aug 2013 08:14 AM PDT Online game The West has just included a traveling circus to the ruff-and-tumble wild frontier. The multiplayer structure houses several colorful tents where games can be played for the chance to win valuable in-game items and parts of a special equipment set exclusive to the circus. Players will be challenged to help with construction of it by donating a wide variety of products from daily jobs. The circus will show up in all worlds randomly every five to 20 days, and lasts for up to two weeks at a time, depending on player involvement.
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| Serenia Fantasy The Retro RPG That Keeps Things Fresh Posted: 06 Aug 2013 08:09 AM PDT It’s been just over a year since Serenia Fantasy was released and for many it has helped satisfy the need for classic RPG gaming. Serenia Fantasy broke away from many of the browser based RPGs on the market, offering something refreshingly different. Thanks in part to its retro style and colorful backdrop; Serenia Fantasy is a role player game that offers simple, exciting and entertaining game play. Taking inspiration from the classic adventure role player games of the 1990′s, Serenia Fantasy was designed to give players a fun nostalgic gaming experience and transport you back to gaming’s golden age and since last summer Serenia Fantasy has been doing just that. In an effort to keep things fresh on the Serenia Continent, Koramgame have been releasing numerous updates and improvements to this classic styled JRPG over the past few months. The most recent expansion pack “Awakening of Artifacts” brought brand new quests to high level players, an increase in level cap to 140, new talents for each class and a new high level boss that added a tough new challenge for all those who dared to face him.
This year also saw the addition of the Seventh Continent of Serenia to the game “Isles of Mysteries” which brought with it new adventures. And with a new “Sailor Pack” code giveaway this month, there’s plenty to keep you interested in Serenia Fantasy. |
| Guild Wars 2 Queen’s Jubilee Launches Today Posted: 06 Aug 2013 07:59 AM PDT
Continuing its commitment to delivering players new Guild Wars 2 content every two weeks, NCSOFT® and ArenaNet ™ are delighted to announce the Queen's Jubilee going live today, 6th August. The update is the third since ArenaNet officially adopted a two-week update schedule for Guild Wars 2, setting a pace unmatched by any Western studio and enhancing the game's Living World through new and exciting content for players of all abilities. In Queen's Jubilee, players will celebrate 10 years of Queen Jennah's rule by opting to take a hot air balloon to Divinity's Reach, the capital of the human nation of Kryta, and home to the opening ceremony. Once there, players can join the festivities and compete in ceremonial combat in the Crown Pavilion, a new gladiatorial arena Queen Jennah has commissioned for the occasion.
Among the many other new events, rewards and features included in Queen's Jubilee are the following: New Events
New Rewards
New Features
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| Season 1 of MapleStory New Leaf Saga Available on Crunchyroll Posted: 06 Aug 2013 07:58 AM PDT Based on Nexon's popular free-to-play game MapleStory, the first season of animator Brain Schmoyer's short series New Leaf Saga is now available in its entirety on Crunchyroll. In addition, the second season is currently in production and will be available on Crunchyroll later this summer. Chronicling the cyber gaming adventures of four friends, New Leaf Saga utilizes fun and snarky humor to help players understand the gameplay mechanics of MapleStory. Whether it's choosing the perfect class from the plethora available in-game, or dealing with an absentee gaming buddy, New Leaf Saga covers all bases.
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| Posted: 05 Aug 2013 08:54 PM PDT Charge forth to defeat the Bandit King! Fight against endless hordes of monsters, and collect a hoard of loot to be sold on the market. Are you ready for your new journey?  Publisher: MarvelousAQL Pros: +Touch-control action combat. +Story-driven questing. +Add friends’ characters to your party. Cons: -Mobile only. -Low currency rates. -Ads during gameplay. Overview Cross Horizon OverviewCross Horizon is a touch-based, free-to-play action RPG for mobile devices. Embark on a story-driven journey with your character, and add friends to your party to assist you as you battle. Gear up from loot against the enemy, or craft your own set of armor before heading out to conquer. Cross Horizon Screenshots         Cross Horizon Featured Video Full Review Cross Horizon ReviewComing Soon … Screenshots Cross Horizon ScreenshotsComing Soon … Videos Cross Horizon VideosCross Horizon Trailer System Requirements Cross Horizon System RequirementsComing Soon… |
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