Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Guild Wars 2 crafting and auction house

In the real world a pair of shoes costs more than the leather needed to produce it, because the shoemaker needs to make a living. In virtual worlds making a pair of shoes demands very little effort and rewards the crafter with a skill point. Thus very often the crafter is willing to sell the finished product for less than the cost of the raw materials. Yesterday the auction house of Guild Wars 2 was working more or less okay for the first time, and most crafted items could be bought for less th

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WAR done right

The more I play Guild Wars 2, the more I come to think of it as Warhammer Online done right. The list of features of the two games look remarkably similar (e.g. Keep PvP, public events), but the Guild Wars 2 version of everything just works so much better than the WAR equivalent. Even "bears, bears, bears" works in Guild Wars 2, you get the reward for killing mobs before you reached the NPC with the quest (heart). Brilliant!
Tobold's Blog
Tobold's Blog

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Everquest II The Shadow Odyssey w/ Pewter Bear

Everquest II The Shadow Odyssey w/ Pewter Bear

EverQuest II The Shadow Odyssey for PC is the latest expansion pack from Sony Online Entertainment, and follows the award-winning Rise of Kunark expansionThe Shadow Odyssey presents a new realm called the Ether, with 20 new zones including a new overland zone, InnothuleFive new Heritage Quests and more than 18 goal-based dungeons, such as Befallen and Ruins of GukRide new mounts, such as a bear and a unicorn, and encounter the new deities, Rodcet

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Rift: Storm Legion – Features of the Storm Trailer and Release Date

Trion Worlds have released a new gameplay trailer for the upcoming expansion Rift: Storm Legion, and it showcases many of the new features coming to Rift this fall including mounts, raids, dimensions, and more. You can check out the video below, and head over to stormlegion.com to pre-order your copy.
[UPDATE:] We put the trailer up so quick after it was uploaded that Trion had not yet had the opportunity to let us know that Rift: Storm Legion has a release date, and it’s coming November 1

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Tuesday, September 4, 2012

TERA – Servers merging into 3 with no F2P in sight

In a wave where online games are switching to Free to Play mode, there are still 3 defiant games which insist on monthly fees will lead to success eventually. I am of course talking about Final Fantasy XIV, TERA and The Secret World. TERA announced a major server merge into 3 on 18th September, while admitting there is a severe issue of getting enough players for activities in the current setup.
 

While I am not a fan of TERA’s marketing gimmick of “true action combat” si

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Wot I Think: The New Talent Tree

So I’m gonna steal a page from the wonderful RockPaperShotgun‘s book here and tell you, well… what I think about a certain something. Today’s topic? The New Talent Tree which everyone loves to hate!
You are staring into the abyss-like eyes of the worst thing to happen to videogaming since Pac-Man on the Atari 2600.
Okay, okay, let’s cut the theatrics. I’m going to tell you what Blizz was going for with this. What they were going for was as follows: 

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ArcheAge – Closed Beta 5 highlights trailer impresses

If you have been reading up on ArcheAge over the past few months, I am sure you will know the game is offering many features players longed in a MMO, such as player-built towns, crafting ships as a guild effort, farming (even forming fishing villages), castle siege, continent exploration and more. This new trailer showcases the highlights from the recent Closed Beta 5, and I am sure you will be left in awe.
 

The post ArcheAge – Closed Beta 5 highlights trailer impresses appeared fir

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<b>WoW</b> Archivist: A fluffy history of companion pets

WoW Archivist: A fluffy history of companion pets
Believe it or not, some pets have actually made the real world a better place, and some have irrevocably changed WoW as we know it. ... Though initially controversial, this safe alternative to buying gold from hackers has done more good than harm ...
Read more on Joystiq






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The WarZ – Gameplay footage shows tactical zombie shooting

The WarZ (or WarZ), is an upcoming online zombie shooter MMO, scheduled for Closed Beta in the coming weeks. While most zombie shooters involves players emptying hundreds of bullets into zombie hordes, death should be the norm if this case happens in WarZ.
 

You see, the game is a tactical zombie shooter, a real survival game where resources (bullets etc) are severely limited and players may have to dodge zombies and avoid detection rather than face them heads-on all the time. A list of th

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Playing an engineer in Guild Wars 2

Azuriel writes:

You see, I actually enjoyed my Engineer quite a bit, but… well, once I unlock all of the weapon skills, most of these classes just fall apart in terms of interest.

The Engineer in particular gets hit hard because dual-pistols is the only rational weapon choice for leveling; which means pressing 2, 3, 4, backpedal a bit, mob dead. Over and over and over again. For 80 levels. Given the Engineer mechanics, you cannot swap weapons in combat, although you can spice things up by d

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Is it time? It’s time. Pike is back.

Been a while, hasn’t it? The WoW blogosphere has changed a lot in my absence. I had to wipe my entire blogroll clean because 95% of the blogs listed there didn’t exist anymore or hadn’t updated since 2010. I feel rather like an outsider; I don’t know anyone in the blog scene anymore, and when it comes to World of Warcraft, I don’t know anything about the Cataclysm raids or heroics.
But perhaps that’s good. It lets me start from scratch.
I poke my head into

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Warface – Korean publisher revealed for CryEngine 3 online shooter

Today, the Korean server for Warface was officially revealed, with MMO kingpin Nexon as the publisher. Warface has been active in Russia for a few months now, with the China server still in beta phase and the North American server scheduled for launch under the Red Door publishing platform (by Trion Worlds of RIFT fame). A couple of my game footage from the China server can be seen here.
 


The post Warface – Korean publisher revealed for CryEngine 3 online shooter appeared first on

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City of Heroes Saying Goodbye

It’s been a rough year for MMO development teams this year. With closures and layoffs occuring on what feels like a weekly basis, the industry has been in a great deal of turmoil in 2012.
City of Heroes is the latest MMO to close its doors as the super-hero based game announced last week that as a part of a realignment of company focus and publishing support, NCsoft has made the decision to close Paragon Studios, and the City of Heroes MMO.
All development for the game has now ceased, bill

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Halo Trilogy- The Complete Original Soundtracks (OST)

Halo Trilogy- The Complete Original Soundtracks (OST)


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Curse Premium - 12 Months [Download] Reviews

Curse Premium - 12 Months [Download]

Premium Curse Client - Update all your addons with one click, Addon Sync, Addon Settings Backup, Faster addon downloads, Automatic addon updates, No ads.Partner Discounts - Premium members are granted access to the 'My Offers' page, offering exclusive discounts on computer hardware, gaming peripherals, swag and more.Premium Sweepstakes and Beta Keys - Better prizes, better odds, and guaranteed access. Your membership allows you to enter Premium sweepstake

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On the difficulty of difficulty

It is extremely difficult to discuss the difficulty of MMORPGs. Somebody involved in the design of one of the early MMORPGs decided that because it was a persistent multiplayer game, a MMORPG should not have variable difficulty like a single-player game. Instead we got different activities in the same game, each with its own difficulty. Any phrase that starts with "The difficulty of this game ..." is automatically wrong, because there simply isn't *one* difficulty to discuss, but many.

Difficu

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Core Masters – Yet another new MOBA from Korea

After the announcement of Steal Fighter a few days back, the Korean online gaming industry officially introduced yet another arena-based action game to the masses, Core Masters. It is also 1 of the rare Korean debut trailers with English narratives, with the main modes featuring Free-for-All combat and 4 Vs 4 core battles. There are no towers here, which should be a refreshing change for some.
 

The post Core Masters – Yet another new MOBA from Korea appeared first on MMO ☆ Culture

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Monday, September 3, 2012

Party Pike Is In the Blog Tonight

SOON™

Aspect of the Hare

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City of Profitability

I must have seen a hundred blog posts about City of Heroes / Villains / Rogues shutting down today. Of those 100 bloggers there were 95 who expressed regret but hadn't actually contributed a single dollar to the survival of that game in the last 12 months, 4 who expressed regret and had actually played / paid for this game lately, and 1 who wrote a detailed analysis of why CoH/V/R is shutting down.


I do not believe that NCSoft closing down CoH is a sign of financial strain of the company. Yea

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Guild Wars 2 size

I played 32 hours of Guild Wars 2 up to now, and have a lot of thoughts on various features. But I decided to not put them all into one big post, but rather split them into many small posts over the coming weeks to keep the discussion on topic. This first post is about the size of Guild Wars 2. In the 32 hours I played, I completed 12% of the world. That isn't simple map discovery, but it means that on average I did 12% of the hearts, vistas, skill challenges, and points of interest. Unlike oth

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World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Collector's Edition Reviews

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Collector's Edition

Behind-the-Scenes DVD and Blu-Ray: Learn about the creation of Pandaria with this two-disc set featuring over an hour of commentary, insider interviews, and developer roundtables.Collector's Edition Soundtrack CD: Experience 20 orchestral pieces from Mists of Pandaria.The Art of Mists of Pandaria Book: Explore this 208-page hardcover tome featuring never-before-seen pieces from the expansion, from early concepts to final 3D renderings.C

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Swordsman Online – New forum chat reveals slayable NPCs

A few days back, the development team from Perfect World’s long awaited martial arts MMO, Swordsman Online (笑傲江湖 Online) were guests in the forum of gaming website, 17173.com. As expected, some questions were asked and new details were given generously.
 

1. The first beta test will begin this year, with no specific date. I was actually expecting a date to be announced at July’s ChinaJoy though…
 
2. Players will be able to slay prominent NPCs in the game, wh

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Guild Wars 2 PvP and monthly achievements

Very early on in Guild Wars 2 I discovered that if you'd just play normally, you'd easily be able to fulfill the requirements for the daily achievement: Kill at least 60 mobs of at least 15 different types, gather 20 times, and do 5 events. As the rewards are nice, I started wondering about the monthly achievements listed below it. It didn't make sense to start that one for August, but now that we are in September, I decided to try and go for it.

It turned out that two of the 4 requirements ar

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Sunday, September 2, 2012

Final Fantasy XIV – Doubts about the new flashy trailer

While I am holding much positives for Final Fantasy XIV’s rebirth coming in a couple of months, I am not sure what Square Enix is doing now is to the best of the game’s interests. You see, with quite a couple of “big” MMO games out there plus a saturation of Free-to-Play titles, the latest trailer does not show much to convince new players to get hyped for the game. I am talking about non-Final Fantasy gamers, those who have yet to touch the Final Fantasy series.
 

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Successful Opening

Successful Opening
31, 2012) – As the grand opening ceremony was coming to an end, students were already making themselves at home in the University of South Florida Library's new $ .3.3 million SMART Lab and expanded Learning Commons – as if it had been there all along ...
Read more on University of South Florida


Australia frets over economy as resource boom fades
Australia's consumer-focused sector -- the low-gear in the so-called two-speed economy -- also showed signs o

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Brother MFC7460DN Ethernet Monochrome Printer with Scanner, Copier &amp; Fax

Brother MFC7460DN Ethernet Monochrome Printer with Scanner, Copier & Fax

Print and copy up to 27ppmAutomatic duplex for producing two-sided outputBuilt-in Ethernet network interface35-page capacity auto document feederAdjustable, 250-sheet capacity paper tray, plus manual feed slot
With fast print and copy speeds of up to 26 pages per minute and automatic 2-sided printing, the MFC-7460DN will enable you to produce professional documents in no time. You'll get sharp, crisp text and accurate r

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Saturday, September 1, 2012

City of Heroes – NCsoft closes down developer Paragon Studios

[Source] Given NCsoft’s recent less-than-stellar financial report, I am not really surprised Paragon Studios, developer of City of Heroes (and Villans), is the major victim in the ongoing business restructuring program. Well, NCsoft’s titles have basically hit various regions, just think Aion, Lineage series and now Guild Wars 2. City of Heroes never made it to the 2 online gaming capitals of the world, Korea and China. With the heavy lack of revenue, I guess this is the only logical

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Gotham City Imposters – Comical shooter finally goes Free-to-Play

When I first tested Gotham City Imposters‘ beta phase nearly a year ago, I was expecting it to be quite an amazing online shooter. While not playing much, it was definitely on my to-download list given its wacky parody (and legal) of the Batman characters. When I found out the game actually required a full fee at launch, I gave it a “read between the lines” hand gesture and moved on.
 

 
I guessed the game must really be hurting now, since I have read absolutely no n

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