MMO Clerks

Filed under: Fantasy, Final Fantasy XI, Classes, Patches, News items, Consoles

Due out next week, Final Fantasy XI’s September version update is going to increase the level cap once again, giving jobs access to a plethora of new abilities. But the development team isn’t stopping there. Several existing job abilities will also be seeing improvements and refinements, with a number of the upgrades targeting the many pet classes in the game. Even the smallest upgrades are notable improvements to quality of life, such as blue magic remaining set when the job is changed out as a main job, rather than forcing players to re-select their abilities.

Summoners can look forward to more effective Blood Pacts and reduced sustain costs past level 76, while beastmasters gain additional jug pets, as well as changes to pet food to tier the existing types and make them more effective. Dragoons will receive a wyvern that levels up in Abyssea; puppetmasters gain a new way to call their automaton and a faster recharge for the summon; and several other class abilities see their negatives removed and positives enhanced. Nearly every player will want to take a look at the full list of changes, which should help ensure that even with Final Fantasy XIV on approach, Final Fantasy XI will remain engaging.

Further job adjustments en route for Final Fantasy XI originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Fantasy, Screenshots, Video, Events, real-world, Hands-on

I finally found time to check out Guild Wars 2 firsthand this morning, and the experience will easily be counted as the highlight of PAX so far in my book.

The demo booth was my first stop this morning, and I was excited to go through the character creation process and save Shaemoor. I’ve seen a dozen videos of just that, but there’s nothing like playing through it firsthand. As I was playing, several ArenaNet staffers passed by, said hello, and chatted a bit.

I spent much of my demo time exploring all the character options, learning the controls, and looking around Shaemoor, growing a little anxious all the while. The clock was ticking and I hadn’t seen nearly everything I wanted to. With about 10 minutes left, a few ArenaNet devs surprised me by stepping in and offering to show off some more content — particularly legacy sites, something that was at the top of my wish list for the demo.

While there are no earth-shattering new revelations (sorry, no class reveal), it was exciting to check out some features in more detail. Follow along after the jump for screenshots, pictures, descriptions and video recorded in genuine shakycam!

Continue reading PAX 2010: Guild Wars 2 hands-on

PAX 2010: Guild Wars 2 hands-on originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A new gaming studio, Red 5, has revealed the details of its previously unnamed MMO.

Called Firefall, the game will be a team-based action shooter crossed with MMO gameplay. Designed to take place 200 years in Earth’s future, Firefall will pit players in a quest for a new energy source utilizing new scientific technology in a struggle for survival.

The game will be free-to-play, and is expected to launch at the end of next year. However, the studio is already accepting applications to the beta. With a full 3D rendered environment, the game is looking to be pretty spectacular in terms of free-to-play shooters.

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The Original Press Release:

Developer Dream Team Red 5 Studios^® Announces Groundbreaking Shooter “Firefall”

Seattle, WA, (September 3, 2010) – Today, at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX), Red 5 Studios^® announced Firefall^®, the studio’s first title brought to you by the team lead of World of Warcraft and the lead designer of Tribes. Firefall is a team-based action shooter that thrusts hundreds of players together into a lush, dynamic open world combining intense competitive multiplayer and large-scale cooperative gameplay. Firefall is due for release near the end of 2011.

“When I founded Red 5, I knew I wanted to do something different than anything I’d done before.” says CEO and Chief Creative Officer Mark Kern, who led the development for World of Warcraft. “I wanted to take the best of what I learned making online games and bring that to skill-based shooters.” Scott Youngblood, former lead designer behind groundbreaking multiplayer shooter Tribes, couldn’t agree more. “When Mark brought me on to help design Firefall, it was obvious to me that he was dedicated to building something different. With Firefall, I’m finally able to make the game of my dreams.”

Firefall paints a beautifully devastating vision of Earth, 200 years in the future. The promise of a new clean energy source, Crystite, leads to the disastrous arrival of the Melding, a hostile energy storm that engulfs most of our home planet. Earth’s surviving humans must band together in the eye of the Melding storm to save our species. Unfortunately, a new danger emerges as a bloodthirsty race known as The Chosen threatens humanity’s survival.

Players will protect the Earth through the use of high-tech battleframes, which can be customized extensively to unlock the power of Firefall’s class-based combat. Battleframes allow players to specialize in their favorite style of play, while giving them the flexibility to swap and trade their way to new configurations on-the-fly. Whether you enjoy supporting your team, aggressively assaulting an enemy position, or sneaking behind enemy lines, there is a battleframe for you.

Firefall will feature a free-to-play model that allows players to experience every detail of the vibrant world without having to pay a penny. Updates to the game, dynamic world events, and other content will also be offered without a price tag, while a marketplace will allow fans to purchase optional enhancements.

Red 5 Studios is currently accepting applications for the beta program of Firefall. For more information, please visit Firefall’s official web site at rel="nofollow" href="http://www.firefallthegame.com/" target="_new">http://www.firefallthegame.com.

Filed under: Fantasy, Video, Events, real-world, New titles, News items, RIFT: Planes of Telara

Rift: Planes of Telara made its presence felt at Gamescom 2010, and the folks over at RiftNexus.com have captured a couple of the noteworthy reveals on video. Both the shaman and nightblade soul trees were detailed at the event, and, for those new to the world of Telara, souls represent the game’s answer to traditional MMORPG classes, albeit with several unique twists.

Trion showed off the shaman’s skill tree, and the melee cleric is stocked with abilities including the requisite heals and attacks. The shaman soul also appears to have some debuffing capability, as evidenced by the Vengeance of the Frozen ability that reduces both the strength and the dexterity of a given target. RiftNexus also brings us a brief video of the nightblade’s skill tree, and it’s clear this particular soul owes much to the classic rogue archetype. You can view both videos after the cut or on RiftNexus.com

The Rift: Planes of Telara team has also been busy outside of the convention circuit, as a revamped website made its debut this week. Check it out for more information on the classes, world lore, and more.

[Thanks to Brennan for the website tip!]

Continue reading Rift gets new website, videos detail nightblade and shaman soul trees

Rift gets new website, videos detail nightblade and shaman soul trees originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Fantasy, Warhammer Online, Opinion, Waging WAR

In this installment of Waging WAR, Greg takes a look at Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning from a few different angles and goes in search of the proverbial “sandbox” in a game that contains neither sand nor boxes.

Somewhere along the line during my childhood, I developed a habit for playing games with nearly every game I’ve ever played. I can even remember a time in my early teens when I sat down with a few friends and collaborated on making our own version of battlechess. Pages of chicken-scratched rules and several dice results-tables later, and we were off and running for a solid week of the most entertaining chess matches I’ve ever played. Or there was that time with The Sims when I started creating experimental families and then leaving my computer on overnight and not interacting with them, just to see how successful they could be without my help. I could bore you for hours on end with examples of how I twisted the rules and made my own games from the games I’ve played.

I suppose I can blame my penchant for metagaming on my early introduction to pen-and-paper roleplaying (i.e., D&D 1st Ed., to be specific). All I had was a sheet of paper, a handful of dice, a description of the world around me, and my imagination. By its very nature, PnP gaming is sandbox gaming. The reason I’m bringing this up now is that, until WAR, I had pretty much been able to “find the sandbox” in any MMO I was able to get my hands on. Whether it was building hardcore Dungeons & Dragons Online characters, roleplaying in City of Heroes, or achievement-chasing in World of Warcraft, I’ve never really been troubled with finding something to do when the grind started to wear me down. But now, with WAR, I’m finding most of my old tricks for MMO metagaming just aren’t working.

To read about what I’ve tried, and why it didn’t work in WAR, follow along after the break.

Continue reading Waging WAR: Finding the sandbox

Waging WAR: Finding the sandbox originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Game mechanics, Patches, News items

Big news got dropped today during the City of Heroes panel over at the inimitable PAX, the sort of thing that every veteran of the game will be interested in. Fitness — also known as the powerset that is more or less mandatory by level 20, or the Stamina set — is being moved from power pools into the inherent power set. That means that three of the default power choices in the game have just been rolled into every character from level 1, making builds more flexible and players very happy indeed.

It wasn’t mentioned specifically whether this means the powers will simply be under inherent powers or base movement speed, regeneration rates, and so forth will be increased. There has also been more information about the highly anticipated Incarnate System, with Issue 19 rolling out the Alpha Slot to start players down the road of improvement at Level 50. We’ll have more on the panel as a whole and the details of the revelations, including news on the Issue 20 testing, but for now, all City of Heroes players should be happy to learn they have three new power selections to play with when 19 launches.

PAX 2010: City of Heroes moves Fitness over to inherent powers originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 15:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Super-hero, Screenshots, City of Heroes, One Shots

There’s something to be said for being a superhero. You get to have all sorts of cool powers, the ability to fight for good (or evil), and everyday folks talking about your heroic (or villainous) deeds. For those of us who aren’t really superheroes, we have comics, movies, books, tv, and of course, MMOs to enjoy the experience! Today’s high-flying shot comes to us from Sam T., who was spending time in City of Heroes and reported in: “As soon as my character could fly, I immediately went up the great tower in the center of Nova Praetoria. Off in the distance I could see Imperial City. Beyond that I knew was Neutropolis, with the Underground lurking beneath it all. There is certainly no mistaking Going Rogue’s new starter experience for City of Heroes or City of Villains!“

Do you have screenshots of your favorite game that you haven’t sent in to One Shots yet? If so, why are you holding back? You should gather those up and send them to us here at oneshots@massively.com along with your name, the name of the game, and a quick description. We can always use more screenshots to show off!

One Shots: Ascending to the heights originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Betas, Fantasy, Game mechanics, New titles, Opinion, Consoles, Final Fantasy XIV, The Mog Log

If you were one of the many, many people trying desperately to get Square-Enix’s account management page to work on Wednesday evening, you’re probably not one of the people this week’s article is aimed at. It’s pretty clear that even amidst all of the recent controversy surrounding Final Fantasy XIV, there is no shortage of players who couldn’t wait to get into the game at the first opportunity. So if you were also up until way too darn late hitting “Refresh” and getting sick of hearing that the connection was reset, you don’t need to worry.

But there are a lot of things that have prompted players to call the premature death of Final Fantasy XIV. The fatigue system in particular did a wonderful job of making roughly nobody happy, spawning rage-filled comments that are still showing up in my inbox. Guildleve cooldowns are another big complaint, the one that originally prompted me to start planning this article. (Yes, well before Komoto tried to calm people down and accidentally did precisely the opposite.) But the sky isn’t actually falling, and these systems do have their positive points… and there are very good reasons that we shouldn’t be worried.

Continue reading The Mog Log: Final Fantasy XIV did not ruin your birthday party

The Mog Log: Final Fantasy XIV did not ruin your birthday party originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Starting September 10th, Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO) will adopt a free-to-play (FtP) model just like Turbine’s other popular MMO, Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO).

In addition to this re-release of Lord of the Rings Online, Turbine will be adding new content with Volume III, Book 2 which includes the brand new Enedwaith region.

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Players can experience the game’s award-winning story and explore most of the game’s world completely for free.  The amount of content not available to free-to-play accounts however is surprisingly plentiful.  The “Monster Mode” aspect, which is LotRO’s player versus player (PvP) system, is unavailable to non-subscribers.  Also, free accounts only have access to one character creation slot per server and a limit on the amount of gold a character is able to acquire.

Akin to DDO, Turbine will be integrating the previously-seen online store model that allows players to make micro-transaction purchases in realtime while playing the game.  Additional content modules, consumables, armour and weapons will be available for players to buy using Turbine Points, the in-game currency used in the store.

Unfortunately, according to the FAQ released by Turbine for the new F2P Lord of the Rings Online, Turbine Points will not be universal across both games.  Points bought in either game are considered non-transferable from the respective games they are purchased in.