MMOS X: Is CrossOver a solution?

MMOS X is a bi-weekly column dedicated solely to gaming on the Macintosh natively. "Running Boot Camp or Parallels" is not an option here. This column is for people who want to get the most out of their Mac gaming, as meager as it is.

In the header blurb to this column, I state that "Running Boot Camp or Parallels is not an option here." I stand by that still. I don't think that dual-booting or loading XP within a virtual desktop is the solution any of us want. Dual booting takes up valuable hard drive space that I could use to store large media files of consenting adults. Running Parallels throws another layer of processor overhead when I run XP within Parallels within OS X. Not to mention Parallels' DirectX support is poor. Note: I haven't tried VMWare's Fusion, which is the competitor to Parallels.



A week or so ago, our own Mike Schramm wrote up a little piece on TUAW about CrossOver Games. CrossOver Games lets you run some Windows games within an emulator. It's not a pure virtual environment like Parallels, so you don't have the overhead of running two OSs. When I read Mike's piece, my first thought was, "huh." My second thought was, "Huh, I wonder if there's a middle ground here somewhere." At the risk out sounding like I'm eating my own words, CrossOver might be enough of a compromise that doesn't involve buying a copy of Windows to game on a Mac.

Look, I'm as big a proponent of Macintosh-native code as the next Kool-Aid drinker. When every game developer follows Blizzard's lead and releases retail boxes with both Windows and Macintosh versions, I'll finally be able to take off my sandwich board, get off the streets and trade in my tattered robes for a nice suit. I'll probably also get a haircut. Until that day comes -- which I'm sure will be followed by aviating sows, a cure for hunger, and a resolution to the Middle East peace crisis -- I know I'm going to have to suck up a certain amount of pride and try and find some sort of compromise. While I'm against virtualization and dual booting, I started to wonder if maybe some sort of emulation might be ok.

So, I downloaded CrossOver Games. There's a free seven-day trial; after that it's a $40 purchase. Also, for disclosure purposes, this is in no way to be considered a time-tested review; the best I've done is get some games to load and do a little combat to see how things go. Therefore, this is just my view on how things went, and what I think the future might bring.

Out of the box CrossOver Games supports two MMOs: Guild Wars and EVE (it also runs Half Life, but since this an MMO piece we'll focus on those). EVE has a Mac-native client so we'll ignore that. I installed Guild Wars and about 15 minutes later I was presented with the Guild Wars login screen. At least, I thought it was the login screen. I could see the fields where I needed to enter in my account info and some of the background image, but that was it. "Huh," I thought. "This kinda sucks."

Fortunately, CodeWeavers has a good forum with helpful people. Reading up on the Guild Wars' Tip and Tricks section told me the command-line switches I needed to run the game and where to apply them (mostly related to turning off the shaders). A few minutes later, boom, I was in Guild Wars.

Now, I've got a Macbook, so I wasn't expecting the greatest in performance. To further skew any performance matrixes I was downloading a trial and ripping a CD into iTunes (live Motley Crue, in case you were wondering). However, I found performance to be solidly in the "not bad" category.

One supported MMO does not a $40 purchase make. Fortunately, there's a list of unsupported MMOs I started reading about on the forums. One of them was City of Heroes/Villains. I downloaded the client off NCsoft's site, loaded CrossOver, told it to install unsupported software and pointed it to the CoH installer. About an hour later it was done patching and presented me with what was allegedly the login screen. Yep, same deal as before. Back to the forums, where I learned what switches I needed to apply and tweaks to the CrossOver Control Panel I needed to apply. A few minutes later, boom, I was in City of Villains.

After this, things got a little dicey. People have reported success getting EverQuest and Lord of the Rings Online working, but they require actual components from a Windows install to work. In EverQuest's case, it allegedly just needs d3dx9_30.dll, which shouldn't be all that hard to get. Lord of the Rings Online, however, requires access to a Windows install to patch the game, pretty much negating the point in my book.

You will note getting these two games running required a little bit of research. The Steve Jobs Boom Factor (TM and patent pending) came about only after a bit of forum reading and trial and error. The list of MMOs people have had success getting to work is small. If you add in the list of single-player games people have had success with, however, the balance starts to tip in CrossOver's favor. I've been stymied finding Baldur's Gate II for the Mac since it went out of print, so buying CrossOver to run it might make me reach for my wallet.

While my fantasy world has every developer creating nice little Universal Binaries for every game they make, the reality is that's not going to happen, especially for older games. Working through CrossOver, though, made me think with a little developer cooperation, more games could at least work through this emulator. Clicking on the Guild Wars and CoH icons gave me acceptable load times. I didn't have to wait for a full version of Windows XP to load, and both applications loaded about as fast as I'd expect from a Universal Binary.

Unless I've had my head in the sand, no new big-time MMO has plans to release an OS X version. So, we're years away from seeing this situation improve. Programs like CrossOver, though, might help us cross the divide in the meantime. Just be prepared for some trial and error while waiting for your boom.

Source : Massively.com

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EVE Evolved: Controversy brewing over removal of shuttles

On February 20th 2008, EVE Online's economist Dr Eyjo published his fourth quarter economic newsletter for 2007. The newsletter discussed issues ranging from deflation to what ships players use and methods for estimating the total production of Eve. Among the pages of the economic newsletter was a small section commenting on the purchases of shuttles relative to tritanium prices and the ensuing discussion seemed to focus on this. In his more recent devblog, Dr Eyjo informed pilots that following a recent patch, the infinite NPC supply of shuttles was being removed from the market in order to alleviate what he calls "an artificial price cap of 3.6 ISK per unit".

It's no secret that shuttles and tritanium prices are linked. The effect that the supply of shuttles on the market has had on tritanium prices is a well-known and well-documented phenomenon that was even included in the second economist dev-blog back in September of 2007. If prices of tritanium ever increase above 3.6 per unit due to the laws of supply and demand in action, it becomes profitable to buy shuttles at 9000 ISK per unit and refine them into tritanium for sale or industry. The fact that there are people with perfect refine skills willing to do this for profit means that the price of tritanium can never rise any more than fractionally above 3.6 per unit before the shuttle-refiners push it back down.

Read on for a breakdown of the controversy and to find out how this change has affected the EVE markets.


Effects of the change:
The effect that this artificial price cap on tritanium has had on the market has been difficult to measure. Of the five to ten billion units of tritanium sold daily on the market in trade hub Jita, nobody knows how many unique units of tritanium are being sold and how many are being bought and resold. In his devblog announcing the change, Dr Eyjo ventured to suggest that this change "makes the mining industry more profitable", that "the price cap has been lifted" and "the price of tritanium will increase", bold claims that were put to the harsh scrutiny of the EVE populace.

In the midst of the resulting debate over whether or not an increase in tritanium prices was beneficial for the game, it became known that shuttles were not the only item upholding the artificial price cap of 3.6 ISK per unit. After a few days of initial price rises caused by market speculation, several pilots discovered that the Civilian Afterburner I module sold in starting school stations also refined into tritanium at a rate of 3.6 ISK per unit. Costing just 216 ISK each, this module refines for 60 tritanium. Dr Eyjo was slow to respond to the issue, eventually responding several days later by suggesting that "with lower quantity available in fewer places the price cap has effectively been lifted.".

Despite these words of reassurance that the artificial price cap on tritanium had been raised, market data continues to refute that position. The price of tritanium remains stable at a level just above 3.6 per unit in the main trade hubs, being pushed down as usual when it rises above that level. With sales of civilian afterburners of over 21 million units in the past week and their massive availability on the market, it's looking like the cap of 3.6 ISK per unit is here to stay.

Dr Eyjo's recommendation to remove NPC supply of shuttles has been in the pipelines since late September 2007 and has only now reached implementation almost seven months later. With a turnaround of over six months on the initial change, some pilots are left wondering whether a resolution to this issue will even be implemented by this time next year.

Dr Eyjo left pilots with the promise that "Other price caps will be removed in due time", a promise that offers little consolation to those who invested their ISK into playing the tritanium market following his advice that prices would rise. Although tritanium prices are not set to increase in the long term, the removal of shuttles has held some benefit for the EVE markets. With no NPC supply of shuttles on the market, players can now manufacture them for profit. Newcomers to industry could produce shuttles for a substantial profit margin in outlying systems where there are none on the market yet.

The underlying problem:
The main problem with the handling of this change was the short-sighted approach that was taken with it. The economist was aware of the fact that shuttles were being reprocessed to produce tritanium but never really explored the wider issue. If he had explored the issue further, he would have noticed that other price caps exist through other NPC-sold refinable goods and would have at the very least spotted the issue with civilian afterburners. Rather than examining the underlying cause, CCP were content to patch up the most visible and immediate symptom by removing the NPC supply of shuttles.

The underlying problem is that several of EVE's components and mechanics rely on something called the NPC base mineral price index. This is a set of values for minerals which all NPC-related game mechanics use. Everything from insurance to prices of NPC-sold ships and modules uses these values and according to them, tritanium should be worth 1 ISK per unit. NPC sell orders for refinable goods are always priced at 3.6 times their total mineral value according to the NPC base mineral prices and if the minerals that can be obtained from refining the item is greater than this, the item can be purchased and refined for a profit.

With shuttles and civilian afterburners, their abuse to form the 3.6 ISK per unit tritanium price cap is due to them being made entirely of tritanium. Other items like civilian armour repairers are made of mostly tritanium and a small portion of another mineral such as pyerite which is not currently worth over 3.6 times its NPC base price. These items are not currently profitable to refine but if lower tritanium price caps are removed, that could change. These issues are all part of the bigger underlying problem - EVE is starting to show its age and some old game mechanics still rely on the now-defunct NPC base mineral values.

Whether CCP intend to deal with this underlying cause at all and how they might do so is anyone's guess right now. One thing's for sure, this is one topic I will follow with great interest.

Source : Massively.com

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Stratics : Mythos Preview

Stratics has the latest preview of the free-to-play MMO, Mythos, currently in closed beta. Flagship Studios, developers of Hellgate: London, is also developing Mythos.

Overall, I found playing this MMO to be a great experience. This game is cute and I had a lot of fun. With playable quests, instanced dungeons, a complex skillset, an achievements list and more, Mythos has a surprising amount of content and customization for the free-to-play genre of MMOs. The gameplay will not only appeal to the casual gamer, but also to the cash-conscious one who is looking for a game that offers just as much as those big boy subscription titles without a huge sacrifice of quality or quantity. By : WarCry Network

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Stargate Worlds: Overview

Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment has partnered with MGM Interactive to adapt the popular Stargate television franchise into an online world. Powered by the Unreal 3.0 engine and staffed by MMO veterans from around the industry, Stargate Worlds allows players to experience this rich and varied universe in a new way.

The team set out to translate real world tactical combat into their MMO. While tactics will be closer to reality, the game is by no means a first-person shooter. It employs RPG mechanics. In MMOs, combat has developed a life of its own that only vaguely resembles reality. This is not the case for Stargate. Players must operate as a team, find cover and chose their spots. Their AI enemies will.

"The last thing we want to see in our world is a bunny-hopping Jaffa," Lead Designer Dan Elggren.

The initial release of Stargate Worlds concentrates primarily on the recently cancelled Stargate SG-1 television series. The show ran for a decade, and has become a favorite in sci-fi circles. Stargate: Atlantis, according to Cheyenne Mountain, is likely to be included in an expansion pack.

While tactical combat is the signature of this game, the team also promises to go the extra mile to capture some other elements of the TV series. For example, puzzles will be a large part of the gameplay experience, something not often done in mainstream MMORPGs. The team also hopes to include combat-alternatives, such as diplomacy. The TV series was never just about gun fights, and Stargate Worlds reflects that.

Players advance in SGW through a range of archetypes closely identifiable with characters from the original series. For example, the Archeologist would be similar to Daniel Jackson from SG-1.

Stargate Worlds remains in early development. No projected launch information is available at this time.

By : WarCry Network

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Lineage II: Choose Your Destiny This Summer

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In commemoration of the Hellbound update, eligible players will have the opportunity to swap their main class with one of their subclasses. Change your main class to one of your subclasses and enjoy playing Lineage II with a character that you love even more!

Participation & Duration Information

Those who wish to participate in the event can do so by submitting a request through the homepage. The requests made before each weekly scheduled maintenance will take effect at the following weekly scheduled maintenance.

Eligibility & Requirements

• Each character can swap his or her main class only once; however, the request can be canceled before it goes into effect, and resubmitted again.
• If you first request an account service (character gender change, character name change, or server transfer), you cannot request the main class change. Please resubmit your request on the following week after the account service goes into effect.
• Once you change a character's class, the change is final and cannot be reversed. Please submit your request carefully.

Eligible Character Levels

In order to participate in this event, your desired character's main class must be between levels 75 and 80, and the subclass level must be 75 or above.
Cross-Race Limitations

• Characters whose main class is a Warsmith, Maestro, Overlord, or Dominator are not eligible for this event.
• If you have both Elf and Dark Elf classes as your subclasses, you cannot request one of them to be your main class since both of them can't have the opposing race's class as a subclass.

Kamael Class Limitations

The Kamael race's Inspector and Judicator are subclass-only by design, so they cannot be changed into a main class. The Kamael have unique occupations that are directly tied to the character's gender, so when you change a Kamael character's class, the gender also changes automatically. For example: If your Kamael character is female and you choose to change your main class to a Berserker, your character's gender will change to male.

Hero Status Restrictions

A Hero character can submit the class-change request only after the Hero period has ended.

Inventory Restrictions

At the time of the class change implementation, if your character is carrying more than 80 items in its inventory, the change will fail. Please check your inventory before the regularly scheduled maintenance to ensure that your character is carrying no more than 80 items.

Other Limitations

• A character on the Public Test Server cannot participate in this event.
• You cannot participate in this event if your account or character has been banned.
• After you submit the class-change request, if your account is banned, the change will not take effect.

FAQ

Q: What's the purpose for having a main class/subclass change event?

A: The Hellbound update introduced a subclass level cap of 80, and a main class level cap of 85. This led to great disappointment among those players who had a greater attachment to their subclass and focused their efforts on developing that subclass. That's why we prepared this main class/subclass change event.

Q: What happens to a character's race/face/gender when the main class and the subclass are changed?

A: When the main and subclass are changed, the character's appearance follows the appearance of the main class. The gender remains the same. (All head styles are type A.) For example, for a female Elf character whose main class is Elder and subclass is Hawkeye, if you request the Hawkeye to become your main class, the main class changes into Hawkeye, the subclass changes into Elder, and the character's appearance changes into a human female character. This works a little differently for the Kamael since their classes are gender-specific. For Kamael, at the time of main/subclass change, the gender also changes into that of the main class.

Q: After changing my main class/subclass, can I revert back to my original state?

A: This offer is limited to one time only per character and you will not be able to revert back to your original state. Please remember this and make your decision very carefully. (You can cancel the request before it goes into effect.)

Q: After changing my main class/subclass, what happens to the subclass certified skills and certificates that I acquired?

A: When you change your main class/subclass, all previously acquired subclass certified skills are reset, and previously acquired certificates are removed. In addition, subclass certificates that were acquired during the certificate exchange event are also removed. You must reacquire the subclass certificates again after the main class/subclass change.

Q: Can I change my second and third sub-class into the main class as well?

A: A request is possible if the main class is between levels 75-80 and the subclass is above level 75, be it the first, second, or third subclass. In this case, the main class changes into the requested second or third sub-class.

Q: Can I participate in the event if my main class is a Warsmith, Maestro, Overlord, or Dominator?

A: Warsmith, Maestro, Overlord, and Dominator are, by design, classes that cannot be subclasses. As such, they cannot be changed into a subclass. If your character's main class is any of these classes, the request cannot be made.

Q: Can the Kamael's hidden subclasses Inspector and Judicator be changed into a character's main class?

A: Inspector and Judicator are designed to be subclasses only, so they cannot be changed into a character's main class.

Q: My main class is Human, my first subclass is Elven, and my second subclass is Dark Elven. In this case, is a request permitted?

A: Within the game, an Elf cannot have a Dark Elf subclass, and a Dark Elf cannot have an Elf subclass. If you have two or more subclasses, and if the one you wish to change into the main class is an Elf or a Dark Elf, the request cannot be made when an opposite race exists in the subclass. In the above example, if a third subclass is a Bounty Hunter, you can request it to become the main class. If one of the opposing race subclasses is deleted, it is possible to choose the remaining subclass as your main class.

Q: What happens to my Olympiad points?

A: Since your main class is changed, your Olympiad points are also reset. Please use up your Olympiad points before submitting the request.

Q: I submitted my request properly but the change hasn't occurred. What could be the reason?

A: If the request was submitted properly but the change didn't take place, this means that the requirements were met at the time of the request but not at the time of effect. Please see the following conditions, double check your character's condition, and submit your request again.

• The main class and subclass must be between levels 75-80, and you must not be in hero or hero waiting status.
• The character must have 80 or less items in the inventory. If you can hold more than 80 items, you must make sure that you have no more than 80 items in your inventory at the time of the class-change request.
• The accounts must not be banned.

Q: Before making the request, I made an account service request. Can I still participate in the event?

A: During a regularly scheduled maintenance, the account service and this main class/subclass change event effect occurs at the same time, so if both requests were permitted, the main class/subclass change would not properly take effect. An account that is already scheduled for an account service cannot submit a class-change event request until the corresponding week. Please keep this in mind, and after the account service takes effect, you may participate in event the following week.

Q: I am working on the quest "Repent Your Sins." Can I continue the quest after changing my main class/subclass?

A: The "Repent Your Sins" quest does not apply to both the main class and subclasses. If you change your main class/subclass, all the items related to the "Repent Your Sins" quest are removed, and you must start the quest over.

Event Schedule

The Choose Your Destiny event will be coming in summer 2008. We will announce more details, including exact dates and times, at a later time.

Sounds like a great opportunity!

LOTRO : Book 13 Preview

For players used to the more lush, wooded environments of Lord of the Rings Online, Book 13 may provide a rude awakening. The new zone, Forochel, lies further north than any of the previously accessible regions of Middle Earth, and it's every bit as hostile as you'd expect. Aaron Campbell, Live Producer for LotRO, was kind enough to guide me through the zone and showcase some of the highlights of Book 13 along the way. He explained that the harsh climate there wasn't just a product of its latitude. "[Forochel] is the remnants of the Great Cold that came out of Angmar and settled over the North, so there's a certain edge of corruption to it. It's not only cold, but an unnatural, supernatural cold."

Our tour of the icy wastes of Forochel began along the coast of the frigid Ice Bay. Not the best place for a dip, but the perfect opportunity for Campbell to point out the new environmental damage type that players will contend with as they travel throughout the zone. The cold not only lowers your morale, but places an additional debuff on you that grows more severe over time. This debuff makes it more difficult for you to resist future sources of cold damage, which many of the monsters around Forochel dish out. Fortunately, removing the debuff is as simple as finding a heat source, from a campfire to a nearby steam vent.

We traveled along the coastline until we reached a small fishing outpost controlled by a group of Gauredain. These lanky fellows weren't particularly keen on sharing their real estate with us, but after a few minutes of steel persuasion (aided by our crazy admin powers) we triumphantly reclaimed the hastily constructed hide canopies and bonfires for ourselves. But it was no use: before we could set up our hammocks and crack open a few brews, a group of nomadic Lossoth moved in and put us to work. The Lossoth are a hardy tribe of humans scattered across Forochel that aren't particularly friendly toward you when you first enter the zone. As you liberate their camps from hostile forces and complete quests for them, they gradually begin to realize that you're not there to kill them and entrust you with rare crafting recipes. My character, a Dwarf Guardian, was decked out in crafted Lossoth gear, a stylish Inuit-chic ensemble that grants some extra resistance to the cold.

One Lossoth fisherman politely requested that I do his work for him, and before I knew it I had my first fishing quest. Small problem: my inventory was so bloated with gear that a mere minnow could cause my pack to burst. Solution? Trash some rare and incomparable loot! Likely not a situation that players will encounter, but when you're already invincible, purples and blues lose some of their luster. With some extra space available, I moseyed over to the shoreline and made my first cast. The mechanics of fishing are simple: click the ability once to send out your line, wait for a nibble, then click the ability again to reel in your catch. My first victim was a rare giant goldfish, a modest haul but still rather satisfying for this novice angler.
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Campbell took this fishing quest as an opportunity to point out some improvements to the quest interface. In Book 13, the quest log will feature easy-to-read visuals that indicate the status of your fellowship members on your current quests. Beyond that, it will be possible for players to look for a fellowship for a specific quest through the quest log itself which should make it even easier to find a group while questing.

With my fishing itch sufficiently scratched (it doesn't take much), Campbell took me to the Lossoth capital, a giant hide dome peppered with bonfires and vendors. Outside the front entrance were four banners corresponding to the four Lossoth outposts in Forochel that are constantly assailed by the expansionist Gauredain; each banner shows whether the corresponding camp is occupied by the Gauredain or the Lossoth. Inside, players who have achieved a certain level of standing with the Lossoth will be able to purchase items and recipes to make their stay in Forochel a little more comfortable.

Campbell elaborated a bit on the challenges of building the Lossoth culture essentially from scratch: The LotRO dev team had little more than a paragraph in the appendix of the Lord of the Rings to work from. So how did they arrive at the appearance and attitude that made it into Book 13? Alex Toplansky, one of the content developers, explains: "Tolkien was really first and foremost a linguist, and he was almost a cultural anthropologist; he had a lot of awareness of a lot of the different European cultures and things going on in that part of the world.

"Without going too far into some of the little trips that we put in with them, there was definitely a little bit of influence from the Sami culture, which appears all throughout the northern Scandinavian band. They're a really interesting people with a lot of attempts to hold onto their heritage very much like a lot of Alaskan and Inuit peoples. We really got kind of carried away and swept into how they went about things. And we learned some really cool stuff that I think comes out in a lot of our content."

The Lossoth aren't without their humor, however. Outside the capital, we encountered a clumsy chap who appeared to be attempting to ice skate for the first time. I asked Campbell if players would every get the chance to skate in Middle Earth. "That's one hurdle we have not been able to climb yet. For the moment, ice skates and sleds are purely the domain of the Lossoth." In other words, it could be a while before you get to body check a Hobbit in a game of Middle Earth hockey. Someday...

We continued along a barren ice sheet populated by the local fauna: a domesticated mammoth, sabertooth cats, and even a few moose. The team argued about the last creature, and after a minute or two of fierce debate, determined that moose are actually members of the elk family. "Welcome to our world," one of the developers interjected with an audible eye-roll.

Moments later, I was told to look up and gaze at Forochel's version of aurora borealis. It was a surprisingly striking, soft purple glow that ebbed and flowed across the horizon. It's certainly far more dramatic than the Northern Lights that I've seen back home in Minnesota, but then again I was less drunk this time around so it's hard to make a direct comparison.
image

The ice sheet spilled into a sparse, taiga-like forest. Campbell explained part of their world-building philosophy for the zone: "We really didn't make excessive use of trees in Forochel. Instead a lot more of it is about ice, about vertical division of landscape, rocks, vistas and viewpoints, a lot more about the decorations items such as mammoths skulls that you'll find across the landscape, and then a few ruins out there as well, in keeping with the sort of ancient nature of the area." Before long we were back onto another ice sheet, this time with substantially more aggressive enemies.

A few wandering ice giants greeted us, and if we weren't all invulnerable they would have certainly brought the pain. Campbell demonstrated an effective tactic for less omnipotent characters to employ: pull the giants to a nearby steam vent and they become much more manageable. Why an ice creature vulnerable to any heat source would make its home near a steam vent is anyone's guess, but Campbell speculates, "Well, you know, they like their sauna." A few paces away, a new monster type floated docilely until I got close enough to aggro it: the Grim, a swirling ice spirit.

From there, Campbell teleported the group to a cavernous ice cave that will greet players as they enter the zone for the first time. This biome is sort of a proof of concept for the LotRO dev team going into the upcoming expansion. It was created using a new process that Campbell called "dual-height map technology," basically a streamlined method for creating large underground spaces. We journeyed through the tunnel, inhabited by a few solitary Grim, before reaching a small Lossoth staging area on the other side. It's a typical woodland biome, covered with a light layer of snow. But the rest of Forochel will expand on the idea of "unnatural, bitter cold," as Campbell puts it.

Speaking of the cold, Campbell gave me a brief demonstration of the new blizzard effects that the developers have added in Book 13. At first, the snowfall seemed rather unremarkable. But as the storm intensified, a more disorienting whiteout effect enveloped my character, making it difficult to even discern the outlines of nearby NPCs. This effect isn't unique to Forochel, either; existing zones like the Misty Mountains will also make use of this mechanic after Book 13 goes live.

Campbell and company then led me into a crystalline ice cavern where the epic questline will culminate. I was cautioned not to reveal too much to players, as there are a few big surprises for those who have been captivated by the story so far. Thankfully, I didn't have a clue what was going on! We followed a sinister bloke through a series of scripted encounters that ended in an open-air chamber with a polished-ice floor. Then things got serious. If we weren't all invulnerable, this is where I would have wiped the group numerous times while running around in circles and marveling at the gorgeous starry sky above us. "We like to pull out the extra stops for the epic quests," Campbell boasted.

Thoroughly exhausted from attempting to pretend like I knew what I was doing, Campbell took pity on me and teleported me to his apartment, where he showed me some of the new items available for display in player housing. Campbell's personal favorite? The Frost Antler head. "Because who can go without a good elk head on the wall?" Campbell added, "I would have said 'moose head,' but I've been corrected."
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No system exists in a vacuum in LotRO, and the same is true for fishing. The developers are clearly taking a holistic approach to new game mechanics, making sure to weave them into other aspects of the game as they are introduced. "[We] try to extend out some of these systems, as we add in new content to the game, making sure we give that love back to housing, back to other systems in the game such as crafting and cooking," Campbell noted.

We closed the session by taking a look at the Orc Defiler, the new monster-play class that Book 13 will introduce. The Defiler has a lanky, hobbled appearance that is both sinister and a little pathetic. Their main skills are healing and reviving teammates and casting powerful curses on enemy combatants; they have a couple direct-damage attacks but the class was built from the ground up as a primary healer, a role that monster players have clamored for.

The Defiler sports a fetching skull helm with its own upgrade path: You start out wearing a deer skull, then move up to a bear skull, an auroch skull, and finally a drake skull. It's both a cool incentive for monster players wishing to gear out their characters and an indicator of your level of experience to foes. Every member of our party wore a different helm, and while we weren't likely to take anyone down with a group full of primary healers, at least we were guaranteed to stay topped-off during our brief foray into the Ettenmoors.

Source : WarCry Network

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NASA Wants its MMORPG Created for Free

"It seems that the educational MMORPG NASA's proposing will no longer have a budget of $3 million. Instead, any prospective development partner is being asked to create and maintain the MMORPG for free under a 'non-reimbursable Space Act Agreement'. It won't be a one-sided agreement, though. From NASA's RFP: 'In exchange for a collaborator's investment to create and manage a NASA-based MMO game for fun and to enhance STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics], NASA will consider negotiating brand placement, limited exclusivity and other opportunities.'"

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TCoS : New MMO malaise

I wish I could get really excited about one of the new MMO's coming out.

Warhammer seems to be the biggest hype machine right now, but for all the neat-sounding gameplay offerings, I just don't like the visual feel. It seems kind of lifeless to me, a bit like Everquest 2. Like the buildings are made of cardboard, and the players are painted wooden mannequins. Reminds me a bit of Everquest 2. WO's gameplay may turn out fantastic, but I just don't know that it's a world where I'd actually enjoy spending time.


Conan looks much nicer to me, but I'm kind of iffy about the whole barbaric blood-and-guts vibe. The Conan universe is never something that I've felt drawn to in book or movie form, and my impression of the game isn't feeling that different so far.

Like Conan, The Chronicles of Spellborn has some really beautiful imagery; that looks like a world I think I'd like to spend some time in! Unfortunately I don't have much faith that it's going to be a solid product. For example, their website doesn't clearly explain how TCoS will differentiate itself in a way to make me want to spend dozens or hundreds of hours with it. Instead they spend time explaining to me that resistance rank zero to rank +5 is an exponential curve divided in 64 points, which may be a perfectly good design decision , but is just a tad more detailed than I'm really looking for. And if they can't don't even have a sense for what I, as a consumer, want to see from their website, I'm not too optimistic they're going to have a good sense for what I want to see from their world.

So I'm waiting to see what 38 Studios and BioWare have up their sleeves, and keeping my fingers crossed.

Source : KillTenRats.com

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City of Heroes: “Issue 12″ Briefing Video

CITY OF HEROES: View the new CITY OF HEROES: Issue 12 video which shows and tells all a hero needs to know about Villain Archetypes. Are you listening heroic one? I SAID…"Are you listening?!!"




"Infiltrate the Arachnos organization from within! Upon reaching level 50, Villains unlock two new Epic Archetypes; Wolf Spiders and Blood Widows. They have their own unique storyline and missions, power combinations and costume sets. Branching powersets allow the Wolf Spider to specialize as either a Bane Spider or Crab Spider and the Blood Widow chooses from the Fortunata and Night Widow branches. Each brings with it unique costumes for your Arachnos duties, as well as your newfound role as a Destined One."

Source : GameBunny

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WoW Journal - 21-April-2008

I haven't played all that much World of Warcraft this weekend, I'm feeling a bit burned out for the moment. Having problems finding groups for 5-man dungeons, the only thing I did with my level 70 characters was doing a couple of daily quests for the Shattered Sun Offensive with my mage. I reached honored with them, and bought the two enchanting recipes you get from them at that level, one of which is Void Shatter, which transforms one cheap void crystal into two expensive large prismatic shards. But although I could learn that recipe at my 360 skill, when I tried to use it I couldn't. The recipe requires a runed eternium rod, which can only be made at 375 skill. Why on earth does the game have lower skill recipes requiring something you can only achieve with a higher skill?


Fortunately the other recipe was more useful, as it was orange at my skill level, and required "only" about 40 gold worth of materials. So I used that 15 times at a cost of 600 gold in materials (most of which I had in stock) to get to 375 skill in enchanting. And that on the same day where by making my second shadowweave item I also reached 375 tailoring with my mage. Great! Of course then I spend another fortune to make that runed eternium rod, which uses 4 primal mights among other expensive ingredients. All that financial effort certainly wasn't worth it for the Void Shatter, but that wasn't why I did it. Rather I thought that having your tradeskills maxed will be important for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, as you probably can't get the new recipes without having reached the old skill cap.

I spent more time on my other server playing Alliance, but even there my new gnome rogue only made it to level 16 yet. But an extremely well equipped level 16, having run the Deadmines several times with the help of my wife's level 68 rogue. In return I used my level 60 priest, who I moved to that server, to run her level 18 shaman through the Deadmines too. Can you believe that after over 3 years of WoW that was only the second time she saw a dungeon? But as there are quite some nice pieces of leather armor and weapons for rogue and shamans in that dungeon, it was well worth it, and fun. As the wife and me have radically different play styles, we don't play together all that often.

So I'm still doing quests until level 20 in the Draenei starting area. Only that every two levels I have to hearthstone to Shattrath, and teleport to another Alliance city to train my rogue. Exodar, the Draenei city, doesn't have a rogue trainer. And the rogue class quests (I just learned lockpicking) are also in the old cities. I'm keeping my World of Warcraft playing at low activity for the moment, I just don't feel like playing more. But I don't want to play other "old" MMORPGs either. I signed up for the Fileplanet Age of Conan open beta, and pre-ordered that game, just to give it a chance. I don't really have high hopes that this is the game for me, but at least it is new, and I can't judge a game without having played it. I'm a bit nervous about how their release will be, because Age of Conan is made by Funcom, whose previous MMORPG Anarchy Online still holds the record for the worst MMORPG release ever, and I was right in the middle of that one. Here's hoping they learned from their mistakes.

By : Tobold

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The Wisdom of MMO Banking

Does it seem strange to save up to buy a house in a game? We are in an era where the real world economies of some nations are paralyzed by debts incurred from home purchases. Yet in games where there is player housing there is a surprising lack of player debt. MMOGs offer a simplified financial system seemingly impervious to the ills of modern society. What could we as a gaming society learn about real-world finance and money management from the way we act in game?

I game lending is, at least theoretically, possible between players. Years ago, while playing Ultima Online: Renaissance, I had what might be the closest thing to a mortgage in a MMOG. Due to the restriction of having only one house per account per server (similar to the way Lord of the Rings Online does it), a friend who was trying to be an in-game real estate broker asked me to hold a small villa in Felucia on my account while he found a buyer. I agreed, but also asked how much he wanted for it (200K gp, in case you're curious – and want a good laugh). At the time, I did not have enough money but I offered to put a down-payment of 50K gp on it and let him know when the rest was available. He agreed. It was probably the cheapest way to get a house at the time short of actually buying the building permit from the housing broker and trying to find an empty plot to put it on – which was a losing proposition anyway.

All MMOGs have some sort of cash storage system. In LotRO and Final Fantasy XI, all money is carried on the character allowing for it to be used at any time for purchases throughout the world. In World of Warcraft, gold is primarily stored on the toon, but may also be put into a guild bank deposit for use by multiple players. Think of this as a joint savings account. In games like Ultima Online and Runescape, gold may be stored in the bank, like a savings account, or on the character. Only what is in the character's coin purse may be used, thus making it more difficult to spend large amounts all at once. And though UO offers a check writing function, in order to carry larger denominations of gold without having to use up your storage weight with coins, it is not a checking account system. If games are meant to be fantastic, idealized worlds, does that mean finance has no place in our dreams?

By using a savings-only banking system, MMOGs force players to evaluate their purchases carefully and make choices between otherwise similarly-valued goods. In order to purchase more costly items, the player must plan and save for it. For those games where gold may be stored in the player's bank account, they must then make the run back to a bank, get the funds, and then proceed to wherever the item may be purchased. It takes time: time to grind, loot, craft, farm, or otherwise earn the gold required – time during which they are thinking about whether it is worth all of this to have whatever it is they're after. Some players are even willing to put in this time in order to buy virtual items repeatedly on different characters. How many of your level 70s in WoW have epic flying mounts?

But when it comes to the real world, instant gratification must be obeyed. Instead of saving up for the car of your dreams, it could be financed through the seller or dealership in order to obtain it sooner. Rather than paying cash for a house, most borrowers (at least in the United States) get a mortgage for the majority of the cost. This is a feature strikingly lacking in MMOGs. And when you think of the fact that these are fantasy worlds, it makes you wonder whether the devs are trying to hearken back to a less intricate time financially.

Yet while it's plausible that players could lend one another money, there is precious little of this type of transaction. I also have yet to find a game that offers loans. The games themselves do not offer them and they certainly don't promote that players do so. And yet no one is phased by this.

So why is it that we're willing to save in a game but not in real life? Well, the short answer is self selection bias. We choose to be in the game and do whatever it is we do. It is not a societal requirement in the game that we craft or quest (though it helps if you want to experience content). It is our choice how we spend our time and in-game money. Therefore we are more interested in doing it. The lack of opportunity to buy on credit helps us escape the real world just that little bit more. We enter a place not set up around money itself but rather on the goods and services that money helps us trade.

There's a sense of glee when you save enough to buy your first epic mount or a nice little player house to proudly display the loot you've collected in your exploits. You've worked hard for all that. Scrimped and saved your gold, credits, gil, and so forth. In this way, can games teach financial responsibility by providing elation after accomplishing financial goals?

By : Alexis Kassan

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Champions Online: Breaking the Wall

This is the first of a two-part series about the field of game design. This first article talks about how to break the wall and get into game design. The second part will detail a bit about how design works from the inside.


At one point or another, most people who play games have probably at least entertained the thought of getting into game design professionally. Game design isn't like law or medicine though - there's no bar or exam to pass, so how exactly does one break into the field?

The most important thing to realize about breaking into game design is that it is very much subject to the laws of supply and demand. There are very few game design jobs of any sort available, and there are a whole lot of people who want to be designers. And many of the people applying for the few open game design positions are not strangers to the industry, either. In addition to people in areas like QA or CSR, it is not uncommon to see programmers or artists want to switch fields.

Different developers will have different biases and be looking for different things, but there are ways you can better position yourself to dramatically improve your chances of breaking in to the industry.

First, while it is not impossible to come in off the street and get a game design position, it is very, very unlikely. Internships are available from some places as well, and if you can find one can be a highly effective shortcut.

While "game designer" is not generally an entry-level position, what you can do is get a job that is an entry-level position, but that is a recognized feeder into game design. If you are already a programmer or an artist, both of these are in parallel areas of game development that work very closely with design, and as such are superb ways of cracking the wall.

What if you don't know code and your idea of art is drawing stick figures? You're not out of luck, but the path is a little longer. Publishers will almost always have large QA (Quality Assurance) and CSR (Customer Service) departments, and developers will usually have at least the first, and occasionally the second. QA departments at developers tend to be smaller and have better access to the developer, so they are generally a better route into game design. But because there are generally fewer available positions, competition can also be fiercer.

If you wind up with a job in QA or CSR at a publisher, never fear. Publishers also frequently run their own first-party development studios which occasionally have openings, and it is perfectly possible to move from a publisher position to a similar position at an outside developer.

Secondly, because there are so many applicants for so few positions, it can help to have ways to distinguish yourself. For this, I can tell you a secret:

Creativity is good, but it isn't primarily about the creativity.

What? Heresy! No, truth. Everyone - designer, programmer, artist, QA, CSR, marketing or executive - is convinced their ideas are the best, the most creative, the most interesting and the most innovative. A designer certainly should be creative, and being creative will definitely get you noticed, but it's generally not what will close the sale.

What will close the sale is the ability to demonstrate professionalism, practicality, understanding of the way development works and the relative costs and risks of different paths. Most importantly of all, however, is the clear ability to check your ego at the door and identify the best approach or design regardless of whether or not you were the one to think of it.

Game design is still a job, and it's amazing how frequently people forget this. All of the factors that apply to any other job - professionalism, courtesy, responsibility, confidence and diplomacy - all apply equally well in this field. Although game development is generally more informal than many other fields, it is still a business, and it is important to remember this.

Finally, being a game designer is not the same thing as being a game player. This sounds obvious, but in interview wrap-ups it is one of the points that comes up again and again. Obviously, you need to be able to enjoy playing games and to identify what aspects of gameplay are fun - this goes without saying. What you also have to do, however, is to separate the "game player" hat from the "game designer" hat, and start asking a whole new set of questions.

What is fun? Why is it fun? What alternative approaches could be envisioned? What are the risks and consequences to other systems for each alternative approach? What principles of the game must be adhered to in order to maintain the vision of the game or company? What resource restrictions are there - it might be great to have another year to polish something, but what do you do if you don't have an extra year to polish?

Above all, it can take a lot of persistence and a lot of patience to break the wall and get your foot into the world of game development. But if you do, the rewards are unmatched.

By : champions-online.com

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Vanguard: Sneak Peek at Update 5

Hey all! You should expect to see Game Update 5 on the Test sever after the weekend! Below is an outline of the main features included in the final update - please note though that they are not all fully implemented yet. As you play through the content on the test server, please keep an eye open for any bugs and be sure to submit a "/bug" for any you find - particularly in regards to particles not displaying correctly. Thanks, and enjoy!

Game Update #5

1. Racial Mounts
2. Class Updates
3. Anti-Hitching
4. New Particles

1. RACIAL MOUNTS
We have added a unique racial mount for each race in Vanguard! The mounts can be attained through a series of faction based quests that can be started in each race's home town. If you happen to like another race's mount better than your own though, worry not! With the appropriate faction, players will be able to complete any of the quests.

Can't wait until the weekend's over to get a peek at the new racial mounts? Select fansites have additional exclusive shots of these awesome mounts! Be sure to be on the lookout if you want to catch an early glimpse!
image

Citizen Favor
The citizens of Telon are seeking adventurers to help spread their influence across the land. By seeking out a faction registrar you can don the banner of a city, gaining favor with its citizens while you battle their enemies. Each creature that is slain will offer a chance to receive tokens bearing the symbol of their registered city. These tokens can be returned to the city in exchange for citizen faction. Be warned that while many factions are friendly with each other, all factions have those that oppose them. Raising your faction with one city may reduce your faction with another. While you can switch factions at any time, those who are worried about becoming outlaws in certain cities should heed this warning.

Gaining faction will allow you to purchase factional rewards with the use of platinum tokens. These tokens can only be retrieved from the vilest of beings and only when you are wearing the banner of your chosen city. Those powerful enough to defeat raid NPCs will receive ancient coins which can be converted into a platinum token of any type you desire.

Racial Mounts
With the release of the citizen favor system comes the first factional rewards -- racial land mounts! All races have been granted a unique looking mount with improved speed over other mounts in their tier. These mounts can be attained at levels 30 and 50 after you have gained the required faction and number of platinum coins. Players will be able to get any of these mounts as long as they do the work involved for their attached cities.
image

2. CLASS UPDATES
This update we have given significant attention to three more classes. Blood Mages, Psionicists and Sorcerers have all received a lot of developer attention. Abilities that may have been broken before have been fixed, spells have been tweaked and upgraded or updated and all three classes should be more in line with their intended vision in terms of power and utility. Specific tweaks and updates will be listed in the patch notes.

3. ANTI-HITCHING
As always, increasing performance remains a high priority for our development team. To that end, with this update we will be introducing new anti-hitching code that should have an immediate and noticeable effect.

4. NEW PARTICLES
Sometimes, things just need to look cooler. That was the case for many adventuring class spells and/or abilities. Blood Mages, Disciples, Dread Knights, Druids, Necromancers and Sorcerers all received new an improved particle effects.

Source : WarCry Network

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Clan of Conan 15 looks at pre-ordering

The next Clan of Conan newsletter is finally here, and as promised by Jørgen Tharaldsen in a recent forum post, it goes a long way towards clearing up some Age of Conan pre-order confusion.

First things first, the 3-day early access: the newsletter confirms that this is exclusively for pre-orders, and that your retailer should provide you with an early-access key. However, to actually get that head start, you'll need to take that key to the Funcom website, and pay $5 / €5 (depending on region) to activate it on your account. This was already known by some, but it's important to really get it out there in a fashion like this so that people aren't disappointed later.

As well as this, the dates for access vary around the world. North Americans will be able to download the client early on May 13th, and start playing early from the 17th. For Europeans the early download will be May 16th, and the early access itself starts on the 20th. This is because the North American release date is also 3 days earlier, with the rest of the Europeans joining the head-starters on the 23rd of May.

The other half of the newsletter looks at pre-order bonus items, and the Collector's Edition contents (which we covered a few months ago). Pre-order bonuses will differ depending on which retailer you go with, so do your research to end up with the items you want. Possibilities for in-game items include a War Mammoth with extra inventory bag, a Killer Rhino with the same bag, and an Amazon Curved Bow. Some retailers may offer other extras that are not in-game, like full-color guide booklets. To get a list of pre-order retailer choices, hit the official AoC website, go through to your region's version, and click the pre-order link to see an updated list tailored for your area.

by William Dobson

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Blizzard introduces micro-transaction servers

After their great success in selling people a completely equipped level 70 character on an arena server for $20, Blizzard nevertheless received countless complaints that the freshly bought characters were only useable for arena PvP. Battlegrounds and all forms of PvE are disabled on the arena servers. Sensing a business opportunity, Blizzard reacted and will introduce micro-transaction servers: These work exactly like a normal server, only that you can buy various achievements for dollars. There are scrolls that let you earn a level, getting more expensive the higher you already are. Going from level 1 to 60 will cost you about $20, from there to level 70 is another $20. You can buy gold at a very advantageous rate of $20 for 1,000 gold, making an epic flying mount cost $100. And you can buy various PvE and PvP epic, although they are pricey, and a complete set of the best available epic gear will set you back $200. NOT! Blizzard isn't that stupid, they know very well that this business model would destroy World of Warcraft.

I'm only raising the spectre of micro-transactions to show up how the rewards of World of Warcraft lose value if they aren't actually achieved the regular way. You were probably disgusted by the thought that somebody could pay dollars to reach a certain level or get a set of epic gear without playing the game. But the sad truth is that some people do exactly that. There are powerleveling services, honor point grinding services, arena point services, and anything else you can think of. If you wanted, you could create a fresh account, make a level 1 character on it, then give the userID and password plus a bundle of dollars to a powerleveling company, and receive the account back some weeks later with your character now level 70, having an epic flying mount, two tradeskills at 375, and a complete set of PvP epics. Only it costs more than I wrote in the first paragraph, and there is a risk you'd get banned or "hacked" a while later. Alternatively you could spend money on a bot program, and achieve all this by botting yourself, although again you'll most likely get banned.

But the existence of powerleveling services, bot programs, and battleground afkers shows that for some people reaching the reward has become more important than actually playing the game. And that leads to the question whether WoW is too reward driven. As some commenters yesterday remarked, you have to grind boring stuff to get to the fun stuff. Want to do arena combat and actually win occasionally? Well, you better grind battlegrounds for resilience gear first. Want to travel faster? Grind gold for a mount. Want to see new dungeons? Grind the old dungeons for gear first.

Imagine that once you leveled up to level 70, you could get a set of blue gear with useful stats for your class relatively easily by various means, and that this was the best gear available in the game. No raid epics, no PvP epics, nothing. It would mean that if you entered an arena, you'd be sure that your opponent had exactly the same gear as you do, and suddenly the whole system becomes skill-based instead of gear-based. It would mean that all raid dungeons from Karazhan to Sunwell Plateau would necessarily be much closer to each other in difficulty level, and your guild could go raiding whereever they wanted, just based on your skills in beating the various boss encounters, not on your gear. The only rewards would be things like titles and trophies.

The reason why neither micro-transactions nor a skill-based, gear-free World of Warcraft will ever happen is that Blizzard is earning more by having this reward driven system, where every reward takes even longer to achieve than the previous one. You ARE paying Blizzard X dollars for your epic mount, only you do it in the form of monthly fees and the weeks it takes you to gather all that gold. By making the final rewards insanely hard to achieve, Blizzard guarantees that 99%+ of the population never gets there, and keeps spinning the treadmill, always creating revenue for Blizzard. The system isn't designed for maximum fun, but for maximum profit. Players "outsourcing" the grind is a sad consequence of that sort of game design. Maybe selling us those epics outright would be the better solution after all.

By: Tobold

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Pirate MMO Servers Walk Plank

Seven of 11 servers for Flying Lab Software's MMO Pirates of the Burning Sea have been shut down, about three months after opening.

The official Burning Sea website said that on Tuesday, Flying Lab shut down the seven servers in order to condense the MMO's population onto the remaining four.

"Through feedback from our players and evaluation of our server populations, it has become clear that key game features require populations of higher density in order to function at optimum levels," read an article on the website.

Low populations affected users' experiences, combined with differing time zones and the delayed launch of the game in other countries.

Flying Lab said that it has also improved its server technology, allowing the remaining four servers to handle the transferred populations.

The game launched on January 22 on the original 11 servers.

Next-Gen has pinged Flying Lab for further comment.

By : www.next-gen.biz

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Age of Conan gets ready for launch !

- Pre-order programs now available in all Western territories - Get three day head-start in Hyboria -

Durham, USA – April 16, 2008 – Funcom and Eidos announce that Age of Conan pre-order programs are now fully available in all major territories, including USA, Germany, France, Spain, UK, Oceania and the Nordic countries. Conan fans and MMO gamers are already raving about the incredible pre-order items, including the War Mammoth and Killer Rhino, and today Funcom ups the ante and confirms that everyone who pre-orders may access Hyboria several days prior to the retail launch.*

Ever since Funcom and Eidos started the first pre-orders in early 2008, the program has received great feedback. The exceptional Age of Conan Collector's Edition has topped the charts in numerous online retail chains for weeks, including being #1 on several all-format lists. The most eager fans are therefore urged to order their copy of the Collector's Edition immediately as it only comes in one print-run.

Funcom now also confirms an early access program which will give customers a chance of a head-start in Age of Conan. Funcom reveals that American, European and Oceanic players may enter Age of Conan as early as the 17th of May. Mere weeks away, early adopters can now live, fight and explore in Hyboria, as well as getting an essential head-start before the hordes invade.

"We are very pleased with the reception Age of Conan has had in retail and we naturally hope that the early interest and our early access programs will materialize in an eventual success," said Morten Larssen, VP Sales and Marketing of Funcom. "The positive indications are naturally an honor, but they also bring a great responsibility. As we prepare the roll-out, we know our servers will be put to the test. We therefore hope potential players will aid us by signaling their interest as soon as possible so we can scale our servers and services accordingly."

Age of Conan launches on the 20th of May and is consistently mentioned as one of the most anticipated PC games in development. It has received more than twenty-five magazine covers and more than fifteen major awards, including numerous "Best MMO of E3" awards and the "Best Online Game of Show" award at GC 2007. Age of Conan is a key title in Microsoft's Games for Windows line-up, as well as a showcase title for nVidia.

Visit www.ageofconan.com to join the thriving community or to sign up for the Beta

For a list of participating retailers or to get more information about the game, please visit www.ageofconan.com

Source : MMOGInfo.Com

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Expanded pet system of Lineage 2's Hellbound

The newest Lineage 2 expansion, Hellbound, is currently in test, and with its improvements and new content come changes to the pet system that fans will love. For example, people who have wolves as pets will be able to evolve it to a mountable form called a Fenrir. This change isn't merely cosmetic -- it will get special attacks and more powerful skills, and also confers its power to its owner while mounted. Clan members have further customization available to them, able to upgrade their wolves to Great Snow Wolves, Red Striders, and Snow Fenrirs.



For the other pets, the level caps have been raised to 85, concomitant with players' level caps. Once the Baby Buffalo, Baby Kookaburra, and Baby Cougar pets have exceeded level 55, they, too, can evolve into more powerful forms. Each one is geared toward a particular class, and grants buffs accordingly.

Visit the Lineage 2 site for more information, and check out these evolved pet screenshots!

Gallery Lineage 2: Hellbound evolved pets

Source : massively.com

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Struggling MMO Horizons renamed "Istaria"

Virtrium LLC, the new stewards of the MMO Horizons: Empire of Istaria, announced that Horizons will now be known by the name Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted.

Virtrium President Rick Simmons explained in a press release blurb and also in an interview with RPG Vault's Jonric that the name was changed because the game is about the world of Istaria and its people, and because it has lived at the domain istaria.com since the beginning. "You have no idea how stupid I've felt explaining that the game was called Horizons, but you had to go to www.istaria.com," he told RPG Vault.

Horizons -- err, Istaria -- has had a rough time of it. After some truly savage corporate politics in the original development studio, the game launched incomplete, buggy, and honestly ... well, lame. It does, however, feature a great crafting system, and it lets you play as a dragon. Simmons was eager to point out both of those things in the RPG Vault interview. It looks like Virtrium is doing as much as a small team can to make the game attractive. Simmons explained: "our niche is very much the crafter, non-competitive gamer, and we're very happy being in it."

He also said that the game has seen a lot of fine tuning in recent months, and that its due for a big content expansion called "the Blighted Labyrinth."

Source : massively.com

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World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King FAQ

Details have slowly been trickling out about the next expansion for World of Warcraft through the official site, game conventions, interviews, and staff comments on the always busy WoW forums. Here's a quick summary of what we know about Wrath of the Lich King so far.

Are there going to be new classes added to the game?

Yes, the Death Knight is going to be the game's first "Hero Class." It will only be available to people that have a character of another class over level 55. Rather than starting at level 1, Death Knights will most likely start between level 55 and 70. Death Knights will not replace existing characters and will be available to both factions. Once unlocked you will be able to create a Death Knight using any open character slots you have on any server.

Death Knights will wear plate and are intended to be a tanking class.

Will the level cap be raised?

Yes, the new level cap will be 80, up from 70 in The Burning Crusade. Talent trees for all classes will be extended, and professions will go up to 450.

What new areas will there be in Wrath of the Lich King?

The new land mass that will be featured in the expansion is Northrend, as Outland was the area added with The Burning Crusade. Like Outland, Northrend is divided into different zones with a variety of terrain. The neutral capital city of Northrend is Dalaran, which will be floating in the sky. The continent will be reachable by either boat or zeppelin.

Northrend will have more than one entry point. The Horde start in the Borean Tundra, where Garrosh Hellscream has established the orc fortress of Warsong Hold. The Alliance begin in the Howling Fjord, which is under threat from the Vrykul, a race of half-giant warriors that once inhabited the area.

It looks like Northrend will be divided into about 10 zones. Some will be lush and green, while others are glacial.

One zone, Lake Wintergrasp, is going to be dedicated to PvP combat, and will be contested even on normal (non-PvP) servers. Blizzard plans to make it a persistent zone with siege weapons and destructible buildings. The siege weapons probably won't belong to individual players, but they will be operated and aimed by players.

What will Northrend have for dungeons and raids?

There will be numerous new 5-player dungeons in the expansion, including a Furbolg encounter called Grizzlemaw, a new Caverns of Time instance, and Utgarde Keep. Utgarde Keep, like Blackrock Spire, will have two wings: the Keep, for characters around level 70, and the Pinnacle, for level 80s. No doubt there are additional 25-player raids, but we haven't heard much about them yet.

There is talk about bringing back some of the older level 60 raids that no longer get much attention in a revamped form. Naxxramas is one instance that could be reinvented for the new level cap as a 25-player raid instead of the 40-player raid it is currently.

Does the expansion have new Battlegrounds?

There is at least one new Battleground in the expansion, but we don't have much information on it at this point. It will likely involve the new player-controlled siege engines, and could be another 15 on 15 contest.

What new professions are planned for Wrath of the Lich King?

The only new profession revealed so far is inscribing. This will be similar to enchanting except that it will apply to spells and abilities rather than items.

What else can we expect from the expansion?

It looks like the interface will get a few more improvements, possibly similar to the Outfitter and Item Rack add-ons. Also in the works are barber shops which will allow players to change the hairstyles and facial hair on their characters at any time.

By : internetgames.about.com

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Age of Conan: Character Select Screen Video

Age of Conan developers took a video while working on the in-game character select screen. Figuring that it was pretty cool to look at, they have released the video for viewing pleasure.

Here's what they have to say about it:

Every now and then, we rummage around and find some cool stuff on the way, and we just can't resist sharing it.

For example, we were digging around the various arcane folders in our virtual haunted library and stumbled upon a video from some of the developers, obviously captured while they were working on something.

It was a hot new character select screen, one that's never been seen before. Heck, half the development team probably hasn't seen it. We watched it and we thought, well, that's pretty cool. We should give that to people. Then we should leave, before Gaute comes stomping up to demand an explanation for releasing definite Work In Progress-type stuff.

So, here it is, the very latest, cutting-edge, ganked from the developer's desktop, version of the character selection screen. What's interesting is that has a life of its own, like a day-night cycle (it's night in the clip you're seeing), plus wind and all sorts of things. Some of this is still not even ready for beta, much less public viewing, but we're bringing it to you anyway!

We hope you enjoy!

by:Suzie Ford, WarCry Network

Cryptic beaming up Star Trek Online?

What we heard: Following months of instability, a beleaguered Perpetual Studios officially closed it doors in January, laying off employees and selling off its coveted license to develop a massively multiplayer online game based on sci-fi canon Star Trek. Initial rumblings that came as a precursor to Perpetual's official shuttering indicated that "another Bay Area development studio" would pick up the license to develop an MMOG set in the far-future universe. Although the Bay Area is replete with development houses, eyes quickly turned to Los Gatos-based Cryptic Studios, best known as the developer behind NCsoft's City of Heroes. Evidence continues to mount today that Cryptic will indeed be taking the reins on the Star Trek Online MMOG. Saying it has "independently confirmed with sources," Trekkie hub TrekMovie.com is reporting that the shop is "definitely" the new license holder to develop Star Trek Online. As for why the developer is keeping the project cloaked, TrekMovie states, "Since acquiring the game, Cryptic has been assessing the current state of the game and assets, and deciding what to keep and what to change. Cryptic is holding off on making an announcement because they want to make their announcement more than just words and actually have something to show." Cryptic is certainly positioned to be a likely candidate for salvaging Star Trek Online. After the development house said it would be selling off its interests in City of Heroes/Villains to NCsoft, Cryptic expressly stated that "the decision to sell the franchise allows us to focus resources on our soon to be announced first-party projects." [Emphasis added.] With Microsoft officially pulling the plug on Marvel Universe Online in February, Cryptic's only other announced project is Champions Online. The developer purchased the IP to Champions from pen-and-paper RPG maker Hero Games last month. However, though the developer has expressed interest in developing multiple IPs, much of its resources will be tied up by the task of self-publishing Champions Online. Creating MMOGs in today's market requires an investment of tens of millions of dollars--or $500 million, if Blizzard's World of Warcraft is the target. It seems unlikely that Cryptic, which is a relatively small independent studio, would be able to bankroll more than one MMOG at a time. The official story: Cryptic Studios had not returned requests for comment as of press time. Bogus or not bogus?: Cryptic certainly has the pedigree and experience to handle Star Trek Online, although self-publishing two major MMOGs is a task that even Captain Jean-Luc Picard would find challenging. Either way, with Cryptic keeping mum and no other studios stepping up, Star Trek Online officially remains dead in the water. by gamespot news,( TomM GsCom )

Taunt abilities are problematic in P

[edit] Themes The majority of MMORPGs are based on traditional fantasy. Now compare that to the alternative of doing battleground PvP. But actually the badges added to 25-man raids in patch 2. And as we all had very little or no practice either, we only managed to kill Attumen, and just wiped over and over again on Moroes. Here is what she had to say: "Rockstar Games is proud to announce that Grand Theft Auto World will be available in North America during the spring of 2009. Our commitment to continue growing the Grand Theft Auto franchise is stronger than ever.4 Guilds * 3 Technical features o 3. - posted by Tobold @ 8:11 AM Permanent Link (25) comments Links to this post Thursday, February 21, 2008 Nationalism in MMORPGs A while ago I made a negative remark about Pirates of the Burning Sea, saying that I didn t see why my freetrader should finance the PvP combat of another player I don t know. Game companies profit from that by hiring people that are extremely motivated as game masters, and then paying them relatively little money. I think this is a plot to build more fan-based enthusiasm. pbem But between servers that are sometimes down, lag, and monthly fees, players must ask themselves why they are playing a game online when there is so little interaction with other players. At first you can only use a link that increases population, but then a link that increases industry becomes available, then transport, security, environment, and business. is on this forum thread. WoW has over 5 million Chinese subscribers paying with game time cards at an hourly rate of about 6 US cents per hour. But if I could get a phone which displays my GPS position on a Google map, and allows me to surf the net, and doesn t cost me an arm and a leg, I d certainly be interested. The 5 extra people before weren t strictly necessary, but helpful. Races by Starting City (Alignment) Qeynos (Good) Kelethin2 (Good) Freeport (Evil) Neriak3 (Evil) Timorous Deep4 (Evil) Barbarian Dwarf Erudite Froglok1 Gnome Half Elf Halfling High Elf Human Kerra Wood Elf Dwarf Fae2 Gnome Half Elf High Elf Wood Elf Barbarian Dark Elf Erudite Gnome Half Elf Human Iksar Kerra Ogre Ratonga Troll Arasai3 Dark Elf Iksar Ogre Ratonga Troll Barbarian Erudite Gnome Half Elf Human Kerra Sarnak4 1 Introduced on May 27th, 2005 with a questline that was initially required to unlock the race. "Blizzard adds more of the same" doesn t make much of a headline. Players explore the game-world, kill monsters, perform quests, and complete missions to earn rewards and advance the story. And if you look for other occupations for a tank, things are looking more grim.[24] However, in the case of Entropia Universe, the virtual economy and the real-world economy are directly linked.



EA announced a sequel to Ultima Online twice, and cancelled it twice before release, in 2001 and 2004. Search Websites Better yet, organize a real life get-together for all clannies and make sure the douchebags are invited. So Coprolit thinks that this principle could be applied to MMORPGs, with better gameplay instead of more content leading to longevity. And your ability to harm other players is very limited. Taunt abilities are problematic in PvP, because you can t force other players to target the tank without them feeling robbed of their fundamental freedom to play as they want.

[edit] Progression A highly progres

Throughout these Books (this is the fourth free update, for those keeping score at home), the developers have done a great job of not only adding quest content and fixing bugs, but also of adding features that make Middle Earth a little bit more real and immersive. We look forward to offering a more invigorating experience for our current fans and welcoming new players into the world this holiday season through our open beta test. In nearly all MMORPG s, the development of the player s character is a primary goal. The only thing you get out of that is a ranking, you can try to have the biggest city of your country. Joining a cross-server dungeon queue and doing a dungeon with a bunch of strangers should on average bring more xp per hour than soloing. [edit] Progression A highly progressed character from EverQuest 2, with mount.