If you are an MMORTS fan, Nice Technology has a new one for you to check out: Picaroon.
Picaroon is a free-to-play, futuristic pirate-themed game, and the team’s quirky sense of humor — as evidenced in the developer blog — should carry over nicely into gameplay. Picaroon is set to launch this winter, but if you’d like to check it out now and help shake the bugs out, you can visit the blog for beta keys.
The developers will be releasing more groups of beta keys all week, so if you miss out on one batch, keep your eyes open. Once you get one, follow the instructions on the blog to get into the game, and have fun!
Another great Red Dead Redemption trailer was released today. For those of you who haven’t heard, the Undead Nightmare Add-on will be released on October 26th. There will be a new single-player storyline, as well as new multiplayer content. The new multiplayer mode called, Undead Overrun, is a “survival mode where waves of infected enemies attack and players must work together to stay alive against increasingly difficult odds.”
The Undead Nightmare Pack will be available for download from the PlayStation Network for $9.99 and requires a copy of Red Dead Redemption to play. Rock Star will also be releasing a “single, stand-alone disc that bundles together for the first time ever, the Undead Nightmare Pack, the Outlaws to the End Co-Op Mission Pack, the Legends and Killers Pack, the Liars and Cheats Pack and all the Multiplayer Free Roam modes released to date. Undead Nightmare will be available at retail stores everywhere for $29.99/£24.99/€29.99 and does not require a copy of Red Dead Redemption to play.”
Even if you’re in a galaxy far, far away, that’s no reason to get away from the festivities that Halloween brings. It’s time for Star Wars Galaxies to host the Galactic Moon Festival once again, an event wherein mystical Jedi warriors and proud Wookiee soldiers can pretend to be fantastical, made-up creatures like ghouls and vampires. And while there’s a touch of thematic disconnect there, if there’s one thing we MMO players seem to love, it’s a good holiday event.
Starting on the 21st of October, the Galactic Moon Festival features everything you could want in a holiday celebration — cosmetic costumes, minigames, and plenty of little treats for players to acquire over the course of the event. Aside from a variety of rewards to be earned via a particularly terrifying costume, there are new pieces of cosmetic clothing to be purchased, from the elegant Z’zopheratu’s jacket to the adorable Rotta the Huttlet backpack. Take a look at the full preview to see what’s coming for Star Wars Galaxies with the festival.
The US servers will come down on October 19, 2010, at 7am PDT for a hotfix. The expected downtime is 1 hour. UK worlds will be updated at 5:00 AM London Time on October 20, 2010, with a 2 hour estimated downtime.
Here’s our convenient Time Zone Conversion Tool to help you plan! See the complete update notes after the jump.
GENERAL
Fixed a crash issue with the /loadhotkeys command.
Fixed an issue causing occasional zone crashes.
Fixed a bug that would cause copied characters to revert to 50% AA conversion every time they zoned.
Fixed an exploit where players could get multiple grandmaster training choices. If you had done this to get multiple grandmaster choices you will have your grandmaster choices and traits respeced and will have to rechoose them.
USER INTERFACE
Fixed a typo in the Chat Channel Color options.
Houseitem verbs have been returned to their previous order.
Players will now be informed whenever a currency or mount item is placed in the appropriate window.
You can now unequip mounts by dragging the icons out of the equipment slots.
Forum Feedback: /useabilityonplayer and /cureplayer now use g1, g2, g3… g6 instead of 0-5 to be consistent with raid member numbering r1, r2, r3… r24.
Forum Feedback: You can use g0 or g1 to cast on yourself using /useabilityonplayer and /cureplayer even if not grouped.
Forum Feedback: The “g” and “r” are no longer case sensitive in /useabilityonplayer and /cureplayer.
Forum Feedback: Using click to cure on yourself no longer forces you to target yourself.
QUESTS
Greater Faydark – Wood weevils can no longer be damaged by AoE spells.
LIVE EVENTS
Nights of the Dead
Terrah Sinew has been returned to her station at the Nektulos docks.
All the new loot for headless horseman should be set to the proper level now.
ITEMS
Belt of Skulls should be properly named now and equippable in the waist slot.
Kaborite Enriched Bandolier should now have Bloodfrenzy instead of combat expertise.
Kaborite Enriched Bandolier’s damage rating has been improved.
Increased the damage rating of the Bone Hilted Smasher and Bonebreaker’s Edge.
Fixed problem with the plaguemist buckler and the cracked skull totem having spell reuse when they should not have.
Removed the red adornment slot from Reinforced Kaborite Plated Gauntlets and Reinforced Kaborite Plated Barbute and replaced it with a yellow one.
Fixed the double crit chance issue with the Reinforced Kaborite Plated Barbute.
Cloak of Evisceration should now equip in the cloak slot.
Fixed the appearance of the staff of terrors.
MERCHANTS
Krin’Jilna should now ask Druids for the Bestial armor set instead of the cleric armor set.
ZRAXTH’S UNSEEN ARCANUM
Increased the drop rate of red adornments from Krasick.
As posted on all SOE forums, there will be a three-hour maintenance on SOE Session and Store servers early Tuesday morning.
Beginning at 6 AM PDT on Tuesday, October 19, 2010, Session, SOE Account and Commerce flow and the Station Store will be unavailable due to maintenance. We expect this maintenance to take approximately 3 hours.
During this time, our Session server may be interrupted, which could prevent character log-ins for a brief period of up to one hour during the three-hour maintenance. Players may also be prevented from making purchases through the Station Store and their in-game stores, if applicable.
In addition, this might cause some forum accounts to temporarily lose forum permissions, due to the inability to verify account status while the maintenance is taking place. This is only temporary and normal permissions will return automatically once the maintenance is complete.
By the time Microsoft’s Kinect hits retail Sony’s PlayStation Move will have been available for a little over a month in NA and EU ( it’s releasing this week in Japan ). Including retail and PSN games patched to support the peripheral, Move launched with a total of 15 Move compatible games. Today Microsoft has announced it’s lineup of 17 games for Kinect’s release. How does it stack up against what’s currently available on Move?
Despite being criticized for a lack of games at launch, Sony’s PlayStation Move featured titles for everyone. From Eyepet Move to Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition ( via patch ), Move has games for both hardcore and casual gamers. Where as a majority of Kinect’s current lineup of titles range from sports games, fitness games and Harry Potter.
Even Though Kinect has an impressive number of titles for it’s launch lineup, many of them are too similar. With a more diverse lineup of games available for the PlayStation Move I’d give Sony the early edge software wise against Microsoft’s Kinect.
Of all the small issues players want to see fixed in EVE Online, few have gained as much community support as the campaign to boost rockets. Rockets are intended to be short-range but high-damage anti-frigate missiles for tech 1 and 2 frigates with missile hardpoints. Unfortunately, their damage output and effectiveness against other frigates has been extremely poor since missiles and ship signature radii were rebalanced years ago. The issue has gained so much support in the community because it’s seen as one of the few problems in EVE that could possibly be fixed in a matter of minutes. Players assert that all it would take is changing a few numbers in the EVE database, and yet the problem has remained unsolved for so long.
Missile-slinging frigate pilots across New Eden will breathe a sigh of relief today as a new devblog has finally answered their prayers. In the upcoming Incursion expansion, rockets will have their explosion velocity and base damage increased to make them effective against frigate-sized ships. In addition, several neglected and underused types of tech 2 ammunition are being boosted to make them desirable to use instead of faction ammo. Further changes covered in the devblog include some performance optimisations with the Supercarrier Fighter Bombers and the inclusion of faction ships in the standard market browser. With easier access to faction ships and boosts to underused ammo, players taking part in the expansion’s new group PvE feature will be pleased with the changes.
One survey question regarding seven-hero parties sparked a lot of discussion in the community, and ArenaNet heard the answer loud and clear: an upcoming content update will bring the ability to fill your party with all heroes.
For those of you who love grouping, the other half of this update is for you: “we’re going to be adding Embark Beach-a new Zaishen outpost that will allow players to travel to all Mission outposts (that they are eligible for!) from a single location. So if you’re looking to find something to do or someone to help you out, you just have to check one convenient location. Embark Beach will be included in an upcoming feature build containing some improvements for the game.”
In a move that should surprise no one, Sony Online Entertainment has announced it will be officially merging EQII Live servers beginning this fall. Sixteen shards will be affected, though notably populated servers such as Antonia Bayle, Lucan D’Lere, Nagafen, and Crushbone are not among them (nor are the Live Gamer shards Vox and The Bazaar).
EQII producer Dave “Smokejumper” Georgeson cautions that the merges won’t happen quickly, as there is a lot of work to be done. The trade-off is that “bigger population density on a server is just simply more fun for everyone involved, so it’s time to get it done,” he writes.
For the complete listing, check out the announcement on the official website, and also hit up this thread for more discussion and details.
Readers, look at your wall. Now look at City of Heroes. Now back at your wall. Now back at the game. Your wall is not the video game. But if you purchase one of the new wall prints being offered by NCsoft, your wall could look like the game. Or at least the box art for the games, which is almost as good. And if you don’t feel like purchasing one sight unseen, you can take a shot at getting one as part of a giveaway.
During the previously announced meet and greet for City of Heroes players, the team at Paragon Studios will be giving away a select few prints as raffle prizes. While the superhero MMO is the first game to get the wall print treatment, other NCsoft games such as Aion and Guild Wars will be receiving their own prints within the near future — keep an eye on the Facebook pages for the other games to see when the wall prints will be available.
