Now that all those boring game facts are out of the way, we can discuss Eorzea Prelive — the event!  Part 2 of our Eorzea Prelive coverage explores the journey, the set up and a behind-the-scenes look at the extravaganza itself.

Eorzea PreLive was held in Yebisu Garden Place, located in Yebisu, which is itself located in the Shibuya ward of Tokyo.  To cite Wikipedia:

Ebisu was founded around 1928 as a community developed around the Japan Beer Brewery Company facilities where Yebisu Garden Place now stands. Yebisu Beer, named for Ebisu, one of the Japanese Seven Gods of Fortune, was introduced in 1890 by Japan Beer and has long been a local favorite. The area adopted its name from the train station built in 1901 by the company to facilitate distribution of its beer. Japan Beer has since reorganized and was renamed Sapporo Breweries Ltd. After the breweries were moved to Chiba in 1988, the area was redeveloped as the Yebisu Garden Place, which opened to the public in 1994.

**Quick note: For the town and its locations, I’m going to use the traditional spelling, “Yebisu” as it was the spelling used on all the signs, buildings, etc.

As mentioned above, Ebisu is one of the Seven Gods of Fortune.  Ebisu brings fortune to fishers and merchants, which makes this town an appropriate location for launching a new game, especially one in which Square Enix is so invested.  On a coincidental note, the timing works well too.  In Japan, days are given one of six rankings based on how lucky they are — sort of like a daily horoscope that applies to everyone.  Nowadays, it is somewhat of an archaic notion, mostly referenced when planning weddings or funerals. Still, this ranking is listed on some calendars or daily planners you can purchase.  One of my more superstitious clients actually ran white out through the entirety of his planner just so he did not have to always be worrying how unlucky a day might be.

The day on which this event was held (the 14th) was a day of trials.  It’s a day where friends come together to get through hardships, with the evening being an especially fortuitous time.  This seems to have worked out well, as the developers really pulled off a great initial event for their new MMO, and already forums are reflecting a renewed excitement about the game.  Then again, the Collector’s Edition releases on the 22nd, which this month is butsu-metsu, the unluckiest day of them all.  So what do I know…

Yebisu Garden Place feels almost like a theme park.  Everything looks very clean and new, and there are many different places to shop and eat.  It is also very close to the station and is connected via 5-minute stroll down the Ebisu Sky Walk, which is an overpass with moving sidewalks.  The atmosphere was very relaxed, though the weather was somewhat finicky.  I was able to get some good shots in when I first arrived, but it began to rain soon after and I had to take cover inside Yebisu Garden Place Tower at location K. The Garden Hall where the event took place is at location J.

Yebisu Garden Place Tower went up about 40 floors and had viewing windows set up for tourists.  It is well known how tight and cramped Japan can be, especially in urban areas.  One of Japan’s most interesting traits, however, is how stark the contrast can be between these densely packed cities and the little recreational areas tucked away inside them.  A walk through any major town or city can reveal peaceful little playgrounds or shrines that feel like a whole other world compared with the hectic areas that surround them.  Located in the heart of Tokyo, Yebisu looks as any urban environment would, but as the pictures up at the top of the article and immediately below show…

…the Garden Place fits neatly inside while still maintaining a unique feel all its own.  By the way, the picture on the right is facing the Garden Hall where Eorzea Prelive was held.

Outside, there was a statue of some guy giving an “Adventure, ho!” pose. Well, let’s follow him inside…

A placard at the doors identified this as an event to announce the completion of FFXIV.  A giant FFXIV logo spread behind the check-in counter.  Things were a little quiet since the event was not set to begin for another 5 hours…

…but some people had been here already.  Two massive flower bouquets had been delivered by Square Enix BFFs Enterbrain and Hakuhoudou.  Enterbrain (left) is a company that publishes gaming magazines, such as Weekly Famitsu and Connect!On.  They also publish Vana’diel Tsuushin, dedicated to FFXI content; and soon, Eorzea Tsuushin, which will be dedicated to FFXIV content.  Hakuhoudou (right) is a large advertising agency in Japan.

Around 5 o’clock, the staff began allowing press in the doors and up to the auditorium.  The elevator had the third floor marked with a FFXIV sticker which was cute, but there were staff on-hand to press the right button for us anyway.  In true geek fashion, I asked the operator if I could snap a quick picture of the elevator button; he chuckled and said it was OK.

As you can see above, the elevator opened up into a room filled with PCs.  They were all running FFXIV and were open for press and fans alike to tinker with.  By this point, most press had seen several versions of the game already, and the 350 fans in attendance were all participating in the beta.  As a result, most people just milled around the area, and the demos did not draw all that much attention.  At least not compared to what else was on display…

All around the PC room, Square Enix set up displays for top-of-the-line merchandise provided by various sponsors. It was like that scene out of Spaceballs:  Merchandising — where the real money is made.  Final Fantasy XIV: The Keyboard, Final Fantasy XIV: The Mouse, Final Fantasy XIV: The USB Controller, Final Fantasy XIV: The PC Speakers, Final Fantasy XIV: The Graphics Card, Final Fantasy XIV: The Wireless Router… oh, and don’t forget the thumb drives they gave out in the press kit.  Imagine someone using all of these at once; I’d like to see a picture of that.  I guess it’s no mystery why the PlayStation 3 version is delayed until March, though.  With the console version, you just pop in the disc and go.  Want the true FFXIV experience on the PC?  Step right up and empty your bank account.  Oh well, enough conspiracy theories, let’s drool over more geek crap.

And what computer powerful enough to destroy mankind would be complete without the perfect case to house all this destructive power?

The above Final Fanta-gasm is a Cooler Master ATCS840 equipped with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 SLI card.  The design on the side is by FFXIV illustrator Akihiko Yoshida.  According to the sign, the case is still in development and may change before release.  If all this was not cool enough, there are still two more displays to check out!

The FFXIV Collector’s Edition, in all its glory. Some of the special goodies it comes packaged with that we can see here are the behind-the-scenes DVD, FFXIV–branded Security Token, travel journal “filled with pages of never-before-seen concept art,” the beautifully illustrated Yoshitaka Amano box cover, and the leather Adventurer’s Tumbler.

Neighboring the Collector’s Edition display was another case with the upcoming Battle Tracks and Field Tracks CDs.  These come with about nine tracks each and are bundled with maps and booklets.  Here’s a previous article with more information and a statement from the composer, Nobuo Uematsu.  Some tracks can even be previewed on their official site as well.

OK, I think it is just about time to head in for the Prelive event — easy to forget such a trivial thing with all these exciting products ripe for the gawking.  We already covered most of the information earlier today, courtesy of Square Enix.  I want to give them another hat tip for getting together such a thorough summary for overseas players quickly.  The Twitter account was not very detailed, and the reception (not to mention picture-taking) kept me from helping out during the Live Feed — sorry about that.

Before settling in for the show, I was contacted by Global Online Producer Sage Sundi through Twitter, of all places.  He wanted to catch up and say hello.  Until then, I had only read or listened to interviews of him online and translated the contents.  It was a pleasant bonus getting to meet him, and right off the bat he was very friendly.  Not to mention, living in Japan all this time, I was impressed by how well he handled the English language.

During the fatigue debacle, Sage Sundi had opened up a little on Twitter and posted that he had always hoped to serve as an example of cultures working together effectively.  However, with the controversy about fatigue raging, he felt that our goals and ways of thinking just might be too different sometimes.  He comes across as someone serious about crossing the cultural boundaries we, as players, smack into day after day.  Funnily enough, he has become somewhat of an icon in NA player culture, being featured in many game-related memes and photoshops.  Hopefully, cross-cultural communication is something we can help tackle as the game evolves.

Anyway, let’s head into the auditorium.

From the completion of all worlds maintenance which is scheduled to end on Sep. 15, 2010 at approximately 1:00 to Sep. 16, 2010 1:00 (PDT), an event will be held in which users can try out the in-game bonus items that will be implemented in the official release of the game.
The event will be held in the Karnak world, which can be accessed once the event begins. If you create a new character in the Karnak world, you will start out with an “Onion Helm” and “Asuran Armguards.” Feel free to create a new character and test out these items.
We may add other worlds and hold similar events depending on circumstances.
However, please be aware that character names from the Karnak world and other worlds added for events will not be carried over to the official release of the game and the worlds will be closed down once the event is over.
*Event completion time may be subject to change.
* Please be advised that the bonus in-game items that you receive during this event will have no impact on the actual bonus in-game items that you may receive for the official release.

Apparently not everything about Final Fantasy XIV is serious business.
Upon reviewing the Guildleves in our database, we couldn’t help but notice the number of pop-culture references embedded in the quest names. Some of the references are obvious – others, not so much. Also interesting is that nearly half of these references refer to songs, movies and games from the 1980s. That’s probably an indication of Square Enix’s target demographic as well as the ages of the company’s writers.
Here are just a few Guildleves named after pop-culture references – do you know where they’re from?
• Get to the Copper
• When Bats Cry
• Light for the Rites

Producer, Hiromichi Tanaka

Director, Nobuaki Komoto

Battle Director, Atsushi Okada

Main Scenario Writer, Yaeko Sato

World Concept Planner, Kenichi Iwao

Level Designer, Yusuke Kigoshi

The following topics were addressed:

Battle System, World Concept, Economy, Guildleves

(Announced features are still under development, and may change before and after release)

The World of FINAL FANTASY XIV

FINAL FANTASY XIV takes place on the world of Hydaelyn, a planet much like another you all may be familiar with. Many of the people on Hydaelyn do not actually use the word ‘Hydaelyn,’ for to understand the concept of a planet, one must first know of other worlds, and most on Hydaelyn do not.

FINAL FANTASY XIV takes place in a realm known as Eorzea.

* Eorzea is one of three continents that make up a giant land mass.

* Eorzea consists of Aldenard and its surrounding islands.

* Aldenard is connected to the land mass containing the other two continents via a land bridge,

* Eorzea contains several independently governed city-states, like those found in ancient Greece.

* And just like those in Greece, the ones in Eorzea have a long history of war and alliances.

* The few that have lasted longest are the thalassocracy of Limsa Lominsa, the commercial sultanate of Ul’dah, and the forest city-state of Gridania, which some users have commented reminds them of an ancient Japanese polis.

* However, the powerful and aggressive Garlean Empire has begun their slow advance on the city-states, making the current situation in Eorzea similar to the months before the Persian Empire marched on Greece.

City-state Scenarios

[ Limsa Lominsa ]

Limsa Lominsa is a sprawling port city ruled by pirates and brigands. After the appearance of the legendary island “Swallowtail Roam,” a battle begins brewing over a treasure found there, and the player gets caught up in the action. Into whose hands will the treasure fall?

Main NPCs

Y’shtola

* Appears in the opening cutscene.

* Her origins are unknown.

Carvallain & Rhoswen

* Carvallain is cunning and cool-headed.

* Rhoswen is hot-blooded and ruthless.

* Both are captains of powerful pirate crews, and both hate the other.

Wawalago

* Guildmaster of Wawalago’s Pullers─the Fishermen’s Guild.

* An eccentric and lewd old man who uses the player to his advantage.

[ Gridania ]

The player angers the forest and travels to Gridania to remove his woodsin. There the player gets caught up in the story of a boy named Khrimm who insists elementals─beings thought to rule the wood─and sets out to find the truth. Will his findings overturn the beliefs of all Gridanians?

Main NPCs

Yda & Papalymo

* Appear in the opening cutscene.

* For some reason, Yda hides her face behind a mask.

* Both Yda and Papalymo’s origins are unknown.

E-Sumi-Yan

* Appears in the opening cutscene

* Is one of the most powerful conjurers in Gridania

* Is of a strange race known as the Padjal

Moogles

* A race rare in Hydaelyn.

* Assist the five races in their communication with the elementals

Lewein

* Leader of the Gods’ Quiver (the Archers’ Guild)

* Through events in this guild, the player learns of the beast tribe known as the Ixal.

[ Ul’dah ]

The player is caught up in a terrible accident during a city-wide parade. One of the people who perish in this accident was carrying a terrible warning to Ul’dah. To learn of this warning, there are those who would seek forbidden magicks to allow them to speak with the dead…

Main NPCs

Thancred.

* Appears in the opening cutscene

* Is a talented bard of unknown origin

Niellefresne

* Appears in the opening cutscene.

* Is a goldsmith from Esthaime’s Aesthetics (Goldsmiths’ Guild)

Titinin

* Helps run the Platinum Mirage casino

* Is polite, yet stern.

* Appears in the Pugilist class quests

Nenekko

* Lovable daughter of the owner of Amajina & Sons Minreal Concern

* Is smothered in affection by her family

[ Ishgard ]

The Knights of Ishgard are fighting a holy war with an ancient race of dragons, and are currently refusing contact with those they call ‘unbelievers.’ These defenders of the mountain realm appear in several different quest lines.

[ Guilds ]

* Not all guilds are found in each city-state.

* Class Quests can be performed by joining guilds and fulfilling certain prerequisites.

* Class quests will not only earn players rewards, but through their stories, players can also learn more about each individual city-state.

* In addition to regular rewards, completing these quests will earn players guild marks which can be used to purchase special items from that guild.

* More items will be made available for exchange in the near future.

[ Other ]

* Unlike the starting rings in FINAL FANTASY XI, there will not be any equipment that is received by choosing a certain race in a certain city-state.

* The scenarios have been designed so that most can be completed by solo players or, at the most, by small groups.

Battle

Enmity in Party Battles

For Open Beta we adjusted the amount of enmity received when using magic and abilities. However, we are not yet done, and will continue making adjustments up through and after the game’s release. We realize adding new quests, equipment, abilities, monsters, etc will directly affect the current balance, and therefore will continue making adjustments throughout the course of the game’s lifespan.

Recovering MP

Our original plan was to make MP management an important factor in the game, and we designed the game so players would have to carefully consider when and where to use MP. Rather than having weak spells that can be used over and over for minimal damage, we wanted to make magic powerful─something that delivers a single strike of massive damage and can instantly change the tide of a battle.

While maintaining this concept we will not only be conducting adjustments on existing methods to refresh MP (such as Aetheryte, abilities, and magic spells), but also plan on adding new methods.

Battle Regimens

Battle regimens work to broaden battle strategies for parties, as well as make it easier to form parties. Unlike the skillchains of FINAL FANTASY XIV, battle regimens are not only for dealing damage, but also can be used to produce the following effects:

* Lowers a target’s physical defense (normal attack -> normal attack)

* Lowers a target’s magic defense (normal attack -> magic attack)

* Increases a target’s casting time/raises MP costs (normal attack -> magic spell)

* Lowers a target’s TP progression/raises TP costs (normal attack -> weaponskill)

* Maintains the effectiveness of class abilities when used by different classes

(magic spell -> magic spell (both from same class))

(weaponskill -> weaponskill (both from same class))

* Increases player damage

(weaponskill -> weaponskill -> magic spell (weaponskills from different classes, finishing spell is optional))

(magic spell -> magic spell -> weaponskill (spells from different classes, finishing weaponskill is optional))

For example, when fighting a monster that has high physical defense, a regimen which will lower that defense is effective. On the other hand, when fighting a monster that uses magic attacks, a regimen that slows casting time and increases MP cost is recommended.

Part Damage

On some monsters, players will be able to damage individual parts such as arms and legs. For example, vines can be cut from morbols, and horns and tails can be struck from monsters that have them Parts can be damaged by using certain weaponskills while standing in certain positions.

The effect will not only be visual, but will accomplish the following:

* Weaken the monster

* Prevent the monster from using its special attacks

* Allow the player to obtain the damaged part

Notorious Monsters

* Soon Notorious Monsters will make their appearance in FFXIV.

* Most will appear different from regular monsters.

* Some are so large they will make regular morbols seem small.

Post-Release

In addition to what was announced here today, we are also planning massively multiplayer battles.

There currently exist several class abilities which may have players scratching their heads as to how they are to be used. Many of these were designed with PVP in mind. While we cannot reveal much regarding PvP now, we have some exciting announcements planned for the near future.

Crafting and the World Economy

Concept

In MMOs, we realize that crafting and the world economy are both extremely important gameplay aspects. This is why we went out of our way to make independent crafting classes rather than simply have crafting skills attached to other classes. We have designed a system that will allow players to feel like their actions (crafting, gathering, buying & selling through bazaars) are directly affecting the economy.

The Effect of Player Status on Crafting & Gathering

A player’s physical and elemental statuses greatly affect crafting and gathering. There are many hints within the game that reveal which statuses affect which aspects.

[ Crafting ]

Attributes: Works in conjunction with the type of tool used to affect synthesis quality

Elemental: Affects the occurrence rate of “god sends,” as well as synthesis stability

[ Gathering ]

Physical: Affects the number of items harvested, as well as the drop rate

Elemental: Affects the type of crystals that can be obtained during gathering

Parley

Parley is a method other than battle in which players can obtain items. Players choose ‘topics’ and then play a game using painted tiles. If you defeat your NPC opponent, you earn the right to exchange the items you have for those you need. If you do especially well, you can obtain even greater rewards.

Market Wards

We do not want the extent of a Disciple of the Hand/Land’s stay in Eorzea to be about simply putting the items he creates/gathers up for auction, which is why we have envisioned a bazaar-driven economy in which players can be creative in the methods they use to sell their wares. To better achieve this, we are currently working on ways to increase a players’ ease of using the markets by adding additional features, as well as tweaking existing ones.

Retainers

We are aware of the amount of time it took to buy items from retainers, and so we have been working diligently to make this system quicker and smoother by the time of release. Also, we are looking into ways to make it easier for players to buy and sell items through retainers.

Inventory Response Time

We are fully aware that inventory interface response speed needs to be improved.

At the time of release, we hope to have made significant improvement, and plan to continue our work after release as well.

Guildleves

Open Beta GLs

First, we would like to apologize to all of the Open Beta testers for the frequent client side errors that occurred during levequests. We are working hard to make sure all the problems are solved by the time the game is officially released.

Retrying Levequests

Levequest targets give players many times more EXP and skill points than normal monsters (even if not using guardian aspect). To prevent some players from taking advantage of this system by completing most of a levequest, failing on purpose, and then trying the quest again immediately, we have made it impossible to retry a levequest immediately after failing it. However, this does not mean players are not allowed to retry levequests. By returning and talking to the NPC who issued the quest, players can gain the opportunity to retry the quest objectives.

Guildleve Issuing

Currently, players must wait 2 earth days before being reissued a leve. However, we planning a significant reduction in this wait.

In conjunction with this change, we will also be shortening the amount of time anima takes to recharge.

Guildleves have been designed with several different features that allow for players to cooperate with others to complete the corresponding quests. For example, ‘leve linking’ allows two players with the same leve to join their guildleves to receive a reward bonus. ‘Leve sharing’ allows people without a leve to participate in a party with a person who does.

The level recommendations on guildleves are a loose guideline for solo players. We encourage players looking for a challenge to join up with other adventurers and try their hands at more difficult leves.

The Future of Guildleves

We are planning the implementation of many different types of guildleves in the near future.

First, several high-level leves will be introduced. Among those will be leves with not only new rules, but new monsters and new operation locations. Also, to answer the demand from our players, we will be introducing guildleve-based NM battles shortly.

We also ask that our players try out the Faction Leves that were introduced in Open Beta and are only accessible by special means. These leves are different from regular ones, and often involve exciting battles and interactions with NPCs. The rewards are also much better.

In addition, we are currently working on several new ideas such as leves in which Disciples of the Land and Hand must cooperate with Disciples of War and Magic to complete certain tasks.

The following is a list of some of the things we have planned for the upcoming release:

* Implementation of a hardware mouse feature

* Introduction of discounted monthly fee payment plans (3-month plan in Japan/ 3 and 6 month plans in North America and Europe)

* Raising of the level cap to 50

* Adjustment of the Armoury System UI so player abilities will not reset when changing classes.

Straight from today’s Prelive show in Japan, Square Enix unveils it’s new, full lengh, fully voiced cinematic trailer!

Servers
Available in all Galaxy Online servers!

Content
Consume certain in-game paid services during the event and get Mall Points back.

Event Rules
1.  Use “Super Recruit” to recruit a commander and get 10*[Adv Resource Case] back each time! You can only receive a maximum of 1000 [Adv Resource Case]through useing “Super Recruit” to recruit a commander .

2. Use the ships repair accelerating service in the spacedock and get 10*[Adv Resource Case]! You can only receive a maximum of 3000 [Adv Resource Case] through ships repair accelerating service.

Notes: The rewards for the event will be sent in 3 working days after it ends.

Blizzard poster Bashiok has just posted an in-depth explanation of the PvE/PvP currency system changes that are coming in Cataclysm, and it’s an informative read. The lengthy post can be found in its entirety after the jump, but I’ll attempt to summarize the important parts.

The upcoming 4.0 patch will convert Emblems of Triumph and Frost into Justice Points (PvE), and Arena Points, Honor Points, Battleground Marks of Honor, Stone Keeper’s Shards, Venture Coins, and Spirit Shards into Honor Points (PvP). Simple, right? All PvE badges below Frost and Triumph will be converted into gold.

There will be a limit to the amount of new currencies you can hold, but Blizzard’s providing a grace period in the form of a soft cap. This means your conversion can go over the hard cap, but you can’t earn more until you go below the hard cap. Here’s an example: the conversion gives you 4,200 Justice Points, but the hard cap is 4,000. You’ll have to spend some points to dip under 4,000 before you can earn more. Another patch before Cataclysm will actually enforce the hard cap, and your excess points will be turned into gold.

Keep reading below for more details. Bashiok said that all conversion math should be posted tomorrow afternoon if you’re curious how many Justice and Honor Points you’re going to earn in patch 4.0.

As we discussed in our previous announcement (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=24401796793), we’re refining the currency systems used for purchasing PvE and PvP items in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and the transition to this new system will take place in two stages. Today, we’re going into more detail on how these changes will be rolled out, so if you haven’t yet, make sure to check out the prior article to get up to speed on the currency names.
One change of note since that original announcement is that we’ve changed the name of the low-tier PvE currency from Hero Points to Justice Points. The original announcement post has been updated to reflect this.
Out With the Old
In the upcoming 4.0 patch we’ll begin the first stage of the conversion to the new currencies. Emblems of Triumph and Emblems of Frost will be converted into Justice Points. For this initial conversion there will be a soft cap of points you can have, with a hard cap enforced later as detailed below. All PvE emblems and badges below Frost and Triumph will be converted into gold. This even includes legacy badges, like Badges of Justice. If any of these older currencies are converted into gold, the player will receive it through an in-game letter.
At this time any bosses a player defeats that are level-appropriate to them (and previously awarded badges or emblems upon defeat) will award them with the new Justice Points. Similarly, any items that previously cost emblems or badges of any type will now cost Justice Points instead.
On the PvP side, Season 8 will end with the release of patch 4.0, and all Arena Points, Honor Points, any leftover Battleground Marks of Honor, Stone Keeper’s Shards, Venture Coins, and Spirit Shards will be converted into the new Honor Points. The new Honor Point pool will also have a soft cap for these conversions, but a hard cap will be enforced later. At the time of conversion, items that previously cost Honor or Arena Points will be sold in exchange for the new Honor Points. Rated Arenas and Rated Battlegrounds won’t be available again until Season 9 (shortly after the release of Cataclysm), when they can be entered to win the higher-tier PvP Conquest Points.
In addition, purchasing any item with these secondary currencies (Honor Points and Justice Points) will now require that the purchaser meet the item’s minimum level requirement.
It’s important to note that these conversions are not 1:1, but are indicative of the level and relative worth of each before the conversion to the new point systems. For example, Stone Keeper’s Shards will convert into more Honor Points than Spirit Shards.
Tip of the Cap
While we previously announced that there’s a limit to the amount of these new currencies you can stockpile, we’re providing a grace period in the form of a soft cap. This soft cap will allow the initial conversion to push the amount owned over the cap, but will not allow any further points to be earned (or returned through item refunds) until enough points are spent to put you below the hard cap.
For instance, a player has 3000 Emblems of Triumph, and 1200 Emblems of Frost; at the time of conversion they’ll be given 4200 Justice Points. The hard cap for Justice Points is 4000, so that player won’t be able to earn any more Justice Points until he or she spends enough points to reduce the total to under 4000. This also applies to the new PvP Honor Points, which also have a cap of 4000.
Shortly before Cataclysm is released, another patch will enforce the hard cap, marking the second stage of the currency conversion. Any Justice or Honor Points above the hard cap will be converted to gold, and just like in the first stage of the conversion, the player will receive an in-game letter explaining that some of their currencies were converted into gold as well as delivering the gold itself.

Let us know what you think and if you have any questions. We’re planning to post all of the conversion math tomorrow afternoon for those that want to know how many of each they’ll be getting.

ZAM user CrimsonNeko has pointed us toward a short, but sweet, blue post on the official Cataclysm beta forum: “Tradeskill nodes are intended to give you experience when you loot them.” Pick an herb, earn some exp. Mine a node, earn some exp. Seems like a nice little bonus for characters with these tradeskills.

According to Blizzard poster Daeleht, the exp values that are currently being seen on the PTR may not be final. Regardless, don’t expect to level your character solely through gathering materials (although I’m sure a roleplaying pacifist will give it a shot). Players who skin and collect cloth earn experience for killing enemies, so this will seemingly just give a boost to those who chose mining and herbalism.

What are your thoughts on the upcoming change? Let us know in the comments below or in CrimsonNeko’s thread in our general forum.

Autumn has come and not only has it brought the first colorful leaves but also marvelously shining diamonds in a special-bundle!
Between 14/09/10, 17:00h CEST (4pm BST) and 16/09/10, 22:00h CEST (9pm BST) you have the possibility to benefit from buying Diamonds via Paysafe-Card!
Secure the special 750 Diamonds Paysafe-Card-Bundle on our „Recharge Diamonds“ Site now and get the best out of your character!

The Final Fantasy XIV Open Beta has been well under way since the 1st of September, but it’s not too late to sign up!

Experience a sampling of the world of Eorzea for free for six more days!  The Open Beta is still going in full force, and there is lots to do and even more to see of the Beta FFXIV.  Open Beta keys are still available through Square Enix, and signing up is a quick and easy process.  To sign up and get your key:

2. Go to http://entry.ffxiv.com/
3. Select your region.
4. Select “Apply for the Open Beta Test” at the bottom of the screen.
5. Follow the instructions from this point on.

Note: In order to play Final Fantasy XIV, you need to have a Square Enix account. Click here to learn more about registering a Square Enix account.

We hope to see you in Eorzea soon!

Navigating the Terrain

There are quite a few pitfalls in the world of Eorzea. Oftentimes you can look at a point on your map, head in it’s direction and be completely blocked by something the map seemingly didn’t even show. It’s become a running joke that Final Fantasy gamers can’t jump and although it can be amusing to those that don’t play the game, it can be a very frustrating experience for those that do.

This section of the guide will help you get used to reading the maps to help minimize any frustration.

Cliffs

In FFXIV, cliffs come in all shapes and sizes. For the sake of the guide here, cliffs are defined as any drop in the map which you are not able to hop down from. A lot of times you will come to a point with only the slightest drop, but you wont be able to drop down from it.

Click the thumbnail picture for an example of a point that characters are unable to jump down. Moving a few inches to the left will let you drop down. You will find this sort of thing fairly often depending on which zone you’re in. La Noscea and Thanalan are pretty notorious for them, but they are everywhere.

At first, it can seem a little irksome, but you do get used to which spots you should be able to jump down from in time.

Ramps and Caves

Part of what’s going to help you on your adventures through Eorzea is learning where the ramps and caves are on your map. For all you FFXI vets out there, think back to your Yuhtunga Jungle navigation skills and this will be much easier.

Ramps and/or tunnels give you access to parts of the map that may be otherwise blocked off. Locating them can mean the difference between being on path and being lost. Or, finding your Levequest targets or running out of time.

A bit further along the guide here, We’ll go over spotting these on your World Map.

Caves such as this are mostly found in the La Noscea region. Usually they’re just a dead end, but have monsters in them that can be leveled up on, based on your level. Spotting caves is also fairly easy by looking at your map.

Winding Ascents and Descents

As if the terrain weren’t confusing enough, The Black Shroud is pegged with these! They’re extremely handy in navigating, but also pretty easy to miss. Most often these function as a means to have bi-directional paths on different heights. Imagine walking down a path going North to South, and you come across a land bridge running East to West overhead. How the heck do you get up there you wonder? Here’s a quick example how. See the tunnel on the right? You’ll want to travel through that.

Traveling through the tunnel, turn immediately around and voila! We have our Winding Ramp to take us up to that land bridge on the right, while the cave we just exited is on the left. If you’re having a hard time seeing it, just click on the thumbnail for a bigger picture.

Decoding the Map

The technical, have-to-know details. If you’ve played XI for any serious amount of time, this will seem a little familiar. For those of you new to a Square MMO, it can be a downright headache. The following images are map areas for the ramps, caves, and winding ascents/descents we’ve just gone over. Here’s what you want to look for.

The ramp in the left image is the space between the two lines going up and down. My map marker arrow is pointing to the spot where you’re going to need to go sometimes get to different areas. Also worth pointing out is the different terrain colors in the left image. See the light brown spots on the map? They actually indicate areas which are on a whole other level beneath where I’m standing in that image. You can’t just pull up your map and hope to cursor-navigate to any area you need.

The center image shows how to spot a cave. Almost always, short curving lines like this one indicate some type of cave.

The image in the right shows what you’ll need to look for on your map when you wish to get up or down a level mostly in The Black Shroud. Using the pictures previously listed for the winding ramps, along with the map picture here, you should now be able to get yourself through these with ease.

Zoning and Regions in FFXIV

Regions are much larger in FFXIV than they were in XI. Square has implemented Seamless Zoning for XIV. This means that even though you’ll pass through parts of the maps which are handled by different physical servers, there are no more “Now Loading” screens to deal with. Well, almost no more.

Current Region Listing

    * La Noscea — Limsa Lominsa is located here
    * Coerthas
    * The Black Shroud — Gridania is located here
    * Mor Dhona
    * Thanalan — Ul’dah is located here

Zoning

As I mentioned before, there is almost no zoning in FFXIV. When you exit Ul’dah into Thanalan, you’re actually zoning into a new server. I like to call this a soft zone, as there is no load screen.

When you zone from Thanalan into The Black Shroud however, you will get a “Now Loading” screen. This is the type of zoning we’re used to in other MMOs. I call it a hard zone. It’s an entirely different region, with different terrain and atmosphere.

From Town to Town

Getting from town to town in Eorzea is actually a bit easier than it was in XI. You can walk between Gridania and Ul’dah, but as Limsa Lominsa is on an island, you’ll need to take a ferry.

Between Gridania and Ul’dah

This is actually fairly straightforward From Gridania, exit into The Black Shroud. Follow the path past Camp Bentbranch southeast towards Camp Tranquil. From there, continue southeast towards the marker on the map for Thanalan.

Once you zone into Thanalan, head Southwest towards camp Drybone. Continue southwest towards Ul’dah, and you’re there.

Between Ul’dah and Limsa Lominsa

The only way to first arrive in Limsa Lominsa if you didn’t create your character there is to take a ferry. Getting to the ferry from Ul’dah means running through some relatively high level areas but don’t worry, almost nothing will aggro you. The Ferry Docks can be located at 26-4 in Western Thanalan.

There are two ships that run back and forth between Limsa Lominsa and Ul’dah. Each takes 10 minutes to arrive, and the ferry ride itself is 10 minutes.

Currently, there are no monsters that pop during the ride. However, you can fish from the upper deck.

Teleporting

In FFXIV, each player is given the ability to teleport to certain points in the world. The only requirement to teleport to a location is that you must visit it and use the aetherial crystal to “arrive”. Teleporting is not without cost, however.

Anima

Teleporting requires you to spend a sort of energy force known as Anima. Each character is given 100 anima to start out with. Teleporting to different areas will cost varying amounts.

    * Teleporting within your current region will cost 4 anima.
    * Teleporting anywhere outside your current region costs 6.
    * Teleporting from an Aetherial Node to a Camp and vice verse costs 1. Even though it doesn’t say so from camp > node.
    * Using the Return function while not dead to return to your last bound Aetheryte costs 2 points.
    * Releasing from KO status to your last bind point is a freebie.

Conserve anima!

The only currently known way to regenerate your points is to let time pass by. For each 4 RL hours, you regenerate one anima point. Use them cautiously. You don’t want to let yourself run completely out, only to find yourself needing to quickly travel from La Noscea to The Black Shroud.

Hitching a Ride

There is a way to teleport without always having to spend your precious anima points. If you are in a party, you can hitch a ride with one of the members who initiates a teleport. To do this, you must be very close to the member using the teleport. Once he or she ports out, you’ll notice a ! (menu) icon on top of your screen. Use your menu and you’ll have the option to “Accept Teleport”. Voila! Free ride.

Campsites

The most common areas for doing Guildleves, campsites also fucntion as bind points in FFXIV. When you come upon a new camp, interact with it’s crystal and you will “arrive” at the location. You’re now bound there. When you die, this is where you’ll release to and the camp will now show in your teleport list.

Aetherial Nodes

Much like the Outposts of FFXI, Aetherial Nodes are pegged throughout the world in FFXIV. They can serve as EXP camps, and you can even do Guildleves from them in certain situations. Once you “arrive” at the node, you can then use it as a teleport point, but only between it’s closest adjacent camp and vice-versa. Nodes will not show up in your Teleport List. I suggest going out of your way to visit as many of these as you can throughout your travels. Not only will you get to explore more of the world, but you’ll be creating very handy shortcuts for yourself.

Thank you for taking the time to read my guide. I hope it helps you on your travels throughout the world. See you all in Eorzea!

When Cataclysm changes the face of Azeroth as we know it, Ashenvale will become a warzone. A volcano will erupt in the center of the map, disrupting the Night Elves and giving the Horde the opportunity to take control of several Alliance strongholds. Intrigued? Then you should definitely check out the Q&A that Blizzard recently posted with quest designers Eric Maloof and Steve Burke that focuses on how the zone will change in the exapansion. We’ve posted the entire interview after the jump for your reading pleasure.

Ashenvale will be a major questing hub for both Horde and Alliance players from levels 20-25. According to the Q&A, “Horde players will have much more to do” in the zone, including a variety of new quests. There are no significant changes planned for Blackfathom Deeps at this time, but the changes to the storyline and terrain should be more than enough to keep players occupied. More details can be found in the Q&A below.

A. The concept for Ashenvale was to show the effects of the Cataclysm while taking the opportunity to streamline the zone’s level design. There were areas of Ashenvale that were pretty unfriendly in terms of accessibility and quest flow. The level designers and quest designers worked together to alleviate the problem areas and highlight the big changes.

Q. Who will be using this zone (what levels/factions)?

A.Both Horde and Alliance players, roughly from levels 20–25. We anticipate that this will be a well-traveled zone in terms of general player flow.

Q. Without giving up any spoilers, what’s the general storyline for this zone? How has it changed from the original design?

A. Among other catastrophes, an enormous volcano has erupted in central Ashenvale. As the night elves struggle to deal with the chaos caused by the Cataclysm, the Horde is seizing what it perceives to be a golden opportunity. Garrosh Hellscream’s forces are now bearing down upon the night elves and have overtaken several key positions that once served as Alliance strongholds. There is a definite feeling that the balance of power in this region now teeters on a goblin tripwire….
These changes also mean that Horde players will have much more to do in Ashenvale.

Q. What do you think is the most exciting new feature of the zone?

A.Visually, it has to be the volcano. It’s stunning, and it provides a great landmark in a place otherwise known for its dense forest. Thematically, the tension present in the zone gives it a whole new feel. The Horde is barricaded inside the walls of Splintertree Post under a massive assault by the night elves and their allies. Meanwhile, Astranaar is desperately fighting off waves of Hellscream’s forces. Practically everywhere you go in Ashenvale, it’s impossible to escape the fact that it has become a warzone.

Q.What goes into redesigning a zone like this?

A.A bit more than meets the eye, we think. Ashenvale is deceptively large, and previously there were many issues in terms of quest flow and Horde/Alliance content balance. Soon after we rolled up our sleeves and broke ground, we realized that our work was cut out for us. There were numerous quests we wanted to keep, but there were also a great many that no longer fit or didn’t play out efficiently. We also needed to create a variety of new quests, especially ones “For the Horde”™.

Q. What was the most challenging aspect about implementing these changes?

A. It can actually be a bit tougher to come in and “do surgery” to an existing zone than it is to completely gut it and start from scratch. Given our ambitious time constraints, trying to determine what stays, what goes, and what other changes to make is certainly a challenge.

Q. What should players do or go see first?

A.Horde players should visit the Mor’shan Rampart first. There’s a new Horde contingent there who is fighting hard to make sure that no night elves escape Hellscream’s onslaught — not that they’d make it far into the Northern Barrens! Alliance players who come down from Darkshore will want to help defend Maestra’s Post and Astranaar as both settlements struggle to keep from falling under Hellscream’s control.

Q. Who seems to have the upper hand in the zone: the Horde, the Alliance, or the elementals?

A.The Horde and the Alliance are throwing themselves at each other on many fronts; neither has a clear upper hand here. The elementals in Ashenvale are a minor nuisance in comparison to the faction struggle.

Q. Should we expect any changes within Blackfathom Deeps?

A.There are no significant changes planned for Blackfathom Deeps at this time.

Q.What has happened to Silverwind Refuge?

A.The Horde has happened!

Q. What has changed the most: the storyline or the terrain?

A.The amount of change has been pretty equal between storyline and terrain. The terrain is much less frustrating than before, and the visual results of the Cataclysm tell the story as much as the quests do. Story-wise, the theme hasn’t changed so much as its intensity has.

Blizzard recently posted a sneak peak of the new cat and bear forms that will be available for troll and worgen Druids in the upcoming Cataclym expansion, and you can check out the screenshots after the jump. The infamous troll tusks and hair play a prominent role in that race’s animal forms, while the worgen forms are distinguished by their teeth and claws.

What do you think of the new designs? Which race are you more likely to pick if you plan on rolling a new druid in the expansion? Let us know in the comments section, or head over to our WoW general forum for more discussion surrounding Cataclysm.

Worgen Cat Form

Worgen Bear Form

Troll Cat Form

Troll Bear Form

We will perform a hardware server maintenance on server „Cogadh” to exchange a faulty RAM module on Tuesday, 14th September 2010. Due to this the server will not be available between 08:30h CEST / 7:30am UK and 10:00h CEST / 9am UK.

In the unlikely event of a change in our schedule we will inform you here.
The remaining Runes of Magic servers are scheduled to receive their maintenance at a later date this week and will be announced in separate News.

Your Runes of Magic Team

Our Taborean armory has prepared some special packages for you once again!

Here you’ll find a lot of items worth a hero’s attention, from experience potions and magical jewels to enhance your equipment, to such exquisite items as God’s Redemption Tickets or the famous Bind Lifter!
While single prices have been reduced by 30%, certain stacks are being offered for half price – saving you 50%!

From Monday, 13 September 2010, 17:00h CEST / 4pm BST (GMT+1) until Friday, 17 September 2010, 23:59h CEST / 10:59pm BST (GMT+1) all these packages are available under “Special Offers” in the Runes of Magic Item Shop.

You didn’t have the time to play Runes of Magic this weekend and missed the Double Diamond promotion?

Fear not, as we decided to extend it by 24 hours, meaning that you will obtain 100% more diamonds when buying some until Monday 13 September at 23:59 CEST (10:59pm BST)!

Hurry to our “Recharge Diamonds”-page before it’s too late!

Due to server issues which happened on Tuesday 31 August, diamonds that were purchased during the affected period of time were not correctly credited to the accounts of the players who had bought them.

We are now glad to announce that this problem has been fixed and all those diamonds have been delivered to the respective accounts.

The issue of redeemable codes and related item-loss because of the rollback will be addressed as soon as possible.

We sincerely apologise for the time it took to give those diamonds back and thank you once again for your patience.

Regards,
Your Runes of Magic Team

This is the ultimate opportunity for all our players to get the most out of their armour.
This weekend’s offer includes:

• Advanced Bind Lifters
• Attribute-Purifying Stones
• Purified Fusion Stones
• Big Deal – Packages with 15 free items
• Potion packages with 2 free Gashas

Heroes of all creeds and ages have brought down monster after monster to fill their armour cabinets, but the loot wasn’t always exactly what they had hoped for. But fear not, the Advanced Bind Lifter, the Attribute-Purifying Stone, the Purified Fusion Stone, and the Big Deal Package are bound to come in handy when improving armour you don’t think is quite up to scratch yet. Three powerful items and a package filled to brim – everything you need for an ultimate armour set. You’ll be the stuff of legends!
You’ll be able to find these offers under ‘Special Offers’ in the Item Shop between Friday, 10th of September 2010, 13:00 CEST (12am UK) until Monday, 13th of September 2010, 23:59 CEST (10:59pm UK).

The diamond fever continues unabated!
For every diamond you buy this weekend you’ll receive a second one for free! That means you can save double if you want to take advantage of any of our shop promotions!
Just how many diamonds you can get exactly during the promotion (10/09/2010, 12:00 CEST (11am UK) until 12/09/2010, 23:59 CEST (10:59pm UK)) can be found out on our ‘Top-Up Diamonds’ site

From Friday, 10.09.2010 at 17:00h CEST (4pm BST) until Sunday, 12.09.2010 at 22:00h CEST (9pm BST) you will receive double EXP from every slain monster and finished quest, as well as receiving double TP from defeated monster!

The time has come to be creative once more. Grab that virtual diary of yours, travel through the world of Runes of Magic, visit vast and dangerous places or the most beautiful sceneries and take screenshots of you and your pet. Tell us a story by use of screenshots and text on our forums as if you’d write a diary by participating in our newest contest.

With a bit of luck you can win one of our precious gamescom pets: the “Stiefelchen“. 20 codes are waiting to be sent you way!

Example: “Dear diary, today my pet Silberfuchs and I encountered a huge minotaur on the hills of the Ystra Highlands. We quickly hid in a cave, searching for a way to elude this beast…too bad that cave was already occupied by one of them giant yetis!…”

The contest starts today on Friday 10th of September 2010, 17:00h CEST and ends Friday 24th of September 2010, 17:00h CEST. To participate, visit our “Picture Diary – My pet & I” forum thread.

Once the winners have been chosen they will be contacted by forum PM, including the code for their new pet.

We’ve just published the new content page about the new Pet System. This page will bring you understanding of the cute fellows and of that what you can do with them. We hope it will answer all your questions. You will be able to learn many details like e.g.: What is a pet, how you can get it, which kinds of egg there are, which skills have the pets, which attribute bonuses you get and how you can merge different pets. If you want to get a small companion visit the new Pet System page.

The next update of Runes of Magic will bring you a new instance named “The Raksha Temple”. This new dungeon, located in the recently introduced Northern Janost Forest, offers you the possibility for your expedition inside the temple to choose between three levels of difficulty for the first time.

Legend speak of the Angren people, half-beast and half-human, who were bestowed the Northern Janost Forest by King Kalume for their efforts in the war against the demons threatening Zandorya. However, upon settling in their new territory, the Angren were forced to fight against the deity of the forest, Raksha, who believed the Angren would destroy the forest to settle down. The conflict ended in an agreement that the half-beast, half-men would not harm the forest and assist the deity in protecting the forest against outsiders. In return, the protective god would accept them as part of the forest and place them under his protection whilst hiding in a sacred temple.

After centuries of peace, something has upset the balance of this agreement, and Lashana, the current leader of the Angren, calls out for help. It is up to you adventurers, sent by the young King Callaway, to answer this call.

The Raksha Temple dungeon invites 6 of you heroes to explore the sanctuary to calm the anger of the awoken gods and to discover what lies behind their fury. When entering the temple, you will be offered the possibility to choose between three levels of difficulty: easy, normal and hard. Evidently, the harder the level; the better the rewards acquired to calm the wrath of the gods.

The TP / EP weekend…will continue for another day!

We wish to reach out to our community and grant all of you another day to get double EXP and TP* while making your way through the fabulous world of Runes of Magic.

Therefore the event has been extended to Tuesday, 7th September 2010 until 21:00h CEST / 8pm BST.

This weekend our alchemist did it again: with a special potion they were able to boost monsters to increase their value to adventurers. To support our brave warriors on their steady way to level 60 those monsters will yield double talent points! Additionally the effect shows to yield double experience by defeating monsters as well as finishing quests!

From Friday, 03.09.2010 at 17:00h CEST (4pm BST) until Monday, 06.09.2010 at 17:00h CEST (4pm BST) you will receive double EXP from every slain monster and finished quest, as well as receiving double TP from defeated monster!

New international survey projects have just been added to the Peanut Labs offer wall. Share your unique opinion and get FREE IGG points (and no spam)!

Your dedicatied  IGG Team

-The GO Team,IGG-

We will be releasing Commander Badges, which are used to receive a powerful commander! To get this badge for free, all you need to do is exchange IGG points for GO Mall Points!

Pleasant Reminder: Please be sure you have room for receiving another commander of the related type before you use a Commander Badge, besides, Salla, Bart, Sipoleen and Jason can’t be gotten from Commander Badge.If you’ve owned all of the uncommon commanders, please do not use any Commander Badge.

Event Duration
Sep 9th until 11:59Pm Sep 12th EDT (GMT-4)

Servers
Available to all GO servers

Details
1.Each account that exchanges 1,000 to 2499 GO Mall Points during the event on a particular server will be rewarded with 1 Spell Commander badge.

2.Each account that exchanges 2,500 to 4,999 GO Mall Points during the event on a particular server will be rewarded with 1 Special Commander Badge.

3.Each account that exchanges 5,000 or more GO Mall Points during the event on a particular server will be rewarded with the highly coveted Super Commander Badge!

Rewarded badges will be given out on Sep 14th.

The Galaxy Online team reserves all rights to interpreting the results of this event.

-The GO Team,IGG-

-The GO Team,IGG-

Event Duration

22:00pm – 22:30pm Aug 30th EDT (GMT-4)

This event will be held on both servers at the same time.

Event Flow

1. The GM will announce the start of the event in game.

2. The GM will release a question.

3. Players can then submit their answers in world channel.

4. The GM will announce the correct answer and the winner.

Event Rules

1. Any players that spam or disturb the event in any way will be silenced and disqualified.

2. The first player to give a correct answer to a question will be the winner.

3. Only answers submitted in the world channel are valid.

4. There are 10 questions and the GM will ask a new question every 3 minutes. Before asking the next question, the GM will announce the correct answer and the winner of the previous question.

Rewards

Each correct answer will be rewarded with 10 GO Mall Points and there is no limit to the number of times a player can win as long as they are the first to answer.

-The GO Team,IGG-

Graphics

One of the unfortunate caveats that we often have to mention when reviewing a free-to-play game is that you often compare their graphics to those of their subscription-based counterparts. Coming from a major publisher and sporting the major budget that goes with an AAA title, you don’t have to worry about getting such a warning here. You will find all the spell effects, textures, shadows and lighting that you would expect, but without the system crippling requirements that leave some budget minded gamers feeling left out. In fact the scalability of Eberron Unlimited may be its best asset, especially when dealing with gamers that may choose to play a subscriptionless game due to financial considerations. Having a game that can morph from stunning on a bleeding edge system to smooth and playable on the Radio Shack machine that you got for Christmas in 2002, and do both remarkably well, is a huge upside.

The UI is clean and well laid out with a style that has its own unique flavor without feeling foreign to gamers. Some mental retraining will be needed to remap hotkeys and their function, but the game’s starting area and its myriad quests will help accomplish this pretty easily. My best recommendation, however, is to not disable the help tooltips that pop up, and to do the tutorial quests– they are less of an annoyance and more beneficial here than they are in most other games.

Gameplay

MMO gaming has become somewhat of a paradox in the last few years. What started out as something that was, by its very nature, a group and social experience has given way to becoming a solo affair with some grouping thrown in. Dungeons and Dragons Online was built to be as close to the tabletop game as possible which means it was designed for more than one player, but the developers have added a couple of features to allow solo players to be successful without compromising that feeling of interaction.
The first, and most prominent, mechanism that achieves this is The Dungeon Master (I visualize the little balding guy in the robe from the 80s cartoon series, but that could just be a me thing). The Dungeon Master is a persistent companion who sets the stage of your adventures via a voice over. In addition to the unseen guide there are mercenaries that are purchasable from an in-game vendor who will fight along side you in the game’s many instances.

Leveling and combat are both handled a bit differently in DDOU than they are in the typical MMOG offering. For each of the game’s 20 levels there are 5 “sub levels” that help to stretch out the time needed to level, keeping the pace on par with that of the tabletop game. While that may sound like a grindy mess to they typical player, this isn’t the typical game and you are introduced to rather epic feeling battles from the get go. The combat system of DDOU also gives it a more intense feel than auto attacking to kill your 10 rats. Combat is handled primarily by left clicking on the mob (or mobs) you are fighting in a fashion reminiscent of a first person action game, with spells and abilities triggered off of action bar hotkeys.
Before I get into one of the more interesting aspects of gameplay, the puzzles, let me first give you a warning about controls in DDOU. As I stated earlier, left clicking a mob in combat will cause you to swing your weapon in the direction the mouse is aimed. It will also create the same effect if you are out of combat or trying to interact with any world object and aren’t close enough. This can be a major source of frustration until you become familiar with it.
Puzzle solving was a major part of the tabletop version of D&D and this iteration stays with that theme in a major way, adding a very nice element of gameplay that is typically missing in MMOGs. Puzzles come in all shapes and sizes and are an integral part of gameplay from the intro quest line on.

Value

Radically changing the way a MMOG is monetized could easily be the final nail in the game’s coffin, but Turbine has pulled off nothing short of a miracle with this resurrection. With strong graphics, amazing gameplay and tons of content available, the free portion of DDOU is the strongest in the industry, and the item shop pricing is superbly handled as well. If you chose to pay for DDOU, there is still a subscription model available that unlocks all the game’s features and rewards you with an allotment of item shop currency each month. Players who make any purchase in the item shop will be upgraded to Premium membership, which could be the best overall value in all of free-to-play gaming.

Score

Overall DDOU receives 5 out of 5 hammers, with its amazing value easily making up for the slight downsides of the leveling system and learning curve. Blessed with the advantage of starting life as a big budget game, Dungeons and Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited has made the most of its second chance and is a model for how to properly make a free-to-play game. 

Freeze your blood with excitement with the return of the Risia Ice Games. The Ice Games will help you escape the sweltering heat, and get some cool prizes while you’re at it.  Available to players of all levels, test your skills on our series of slippery slopes, or just relax with friends as you glide across the ice. To get in on the action…
The Harbor
An ice skating rink is available at the base of the Lighthouse!
The ice jump begins at the top of the Harbor cliff behind the Harbormaster’s House!
House Phiarlan
An icy half-pipe is available at the back of the Bogwater Tavern!
Collect the floating white, blue, and purple ice coins and trade them with the powerful wizard, Jack Frostbite, for wondrous icy gifts, crafting recipe cards, and frosty ingredients for the Risian Eldritch Device at the Lighthouse! Jack can be found at the Bogwater half-pipe or by the Lighthouse ice rink helping to keep the ice cold!
If you find your winter sporting skills lacking, you can still earn ice coins by doing some good old fashion clobbering! Hunt down fire creatures in quests, adventure areas, and raids, who can also drop the ice coins!
Need more speed to reach the extra valuable ice coins? Tired of falling down and being laughed at by your friends in the rink? Ice skates are available for rent in exchange for ice tokens. The skates will prevent you from falling on the ice, and also give you some extra speed. Look for the rental NPC at the ice rink! Also be sure to check the DDO Store for fun wintery items!

The Risia Ice Games are available Monday, July 19th through Sunday, August 1st, 2010!

Blizzard said:

World of Warcraft PTR Patch 4.0.1

The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/
The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

General

• Copied Test Realm characters are not copied with their achievement history in order to better facilitate the character copy process.

Classes: General

• Many class talents, spells, and abilities have been overhauled, added, or removed.
• All spell and ability tooltips will now display damage averages rather than minimum and maximum damage potential. This feature is on by default but can be changed via the Display settings under User Interface options.
• Ammo has been removed from the game.
• The character levels at which classes gain new spells and abilities have changed.
• Many item and class stats have been changed or removed.
• Rage has been normalized.
• Spells and abilities no longer have multiple ranks and now scale with character level.
• Talent trees have been altered. All player talent specializations have been reset, allowing for free re-specialization.
  • Each specialization has been reduced to a 31-point talent tree.
  • Players will now get a total of 41 talent points to spend.
  • Players will be asked to choose a specialization at level 10. Doing so will result in the unlocking of a spell or ability unique to that specialization, as well as one or more passive bonuses.
  • Once a talent specialization has been chosen, players may only place points in the primary tree until at least 31 points have been spent there.
  • The initial announcement regarding these talent tree changes can be found on our Cataclysm forum: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25626290449&sid=1

Death Knights

• A dedicated tanking tree (Blood) has been implemented.
• The effects of Blood Presence and Frost Presence have been exchanged.
• The way in which runes recharge has changed.

Druids

• A new Eclipse mechanic has been added for druids.

Hunters

• Five pets can now be stored with the hunter at all times. Any one of these five pets can be summoned via the Call Pet ability.
• Focus has replaced mana as a new resource.
• Hunters now start with a pet at level 1.
• The Stable will now store 20 pets. If a pet is moved into the Stable, its talents are wiped.

Mages

• There is now a new spell fly-out UI feature for mage portals. Clicking on the Teleport or Portal buttons will expand the list of choices available.

Paladins

• Paladins now have a new resource bar.

Warlocks

• There is now a new spell fly-out UI feature for warlock pets. Clicking on this single button will open up the list of available pets to summon.
• Soul Shards have been removed from the game as items. Instead, they now exist as a resource system necessary for using, or altering the mechanics of certain spells.

Items

• Resilience no longer reduces the chance a player will be critically hit by an opponent.
• Durability: cloth, leather, and mail now have as many points of durability as plate, making the repair cost on death much closer to equal for all classes.

Professions

• The glyph system has been updated to now feature three different types of glyphs. Many class glyphs have been added, altered, or moved to different glyph types.

User Interface

• Spell Alerts have been added to notify players when procs on select spells and abilities occur. A visual notification will display around the character and the activated ability will be highlighted on the action bar.
• The Arena Teams pane has been improved.
• The Character pane has been redesigned. Character stats can now be shown or hidden via the Show All Details/Hide All Details button on the bottom left. When shown, all character stats will be visible in a window to the right of the pane. Stat sections can be reorganized by clicking and dragging them up or down the pane.
• The Professions panes now have more filtering and search functionality, as well as buttons to easily link recipes in the chat frame.
• A Professions screen has been added to the Spellbook to better display the details of a character’s primary and secondary professions.
• Many of the yellow System Messages that would display in the chat frame when leveling up have been removed.
• New text animations now alert players as they level up, also providing information on when new talents, spells and abilities are available.
• Professions and Class Trainers windows have been altered to more clearly display available and upcoming purchases.
• New Raid frames are now. They can also be used in place of the standard 5-player party interface via the User Interface options.
• The Spellbook interface has been improved for greater ease-of-use and visual appeal.

For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros Forum: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=11114&sid=1

For those who may not know Gevlon, creator of the Greedy Goblin blog, has taken on the challenge of trying to clear as much WotLK raid content in possible while only wearing blue (rare) armor, with minor exceptions. His guild “Undergeared” of EU-Arathor spent much of the spring and summer clearing content despite the self-imposed handicap.

However as the summer has dragged on the group has fizzled somewhat, as many guilds do. They are planning one last attempt to clear some additional content this coming week, but other than that it appears this great experiment is coming to a close.

So what is the end result? The guild ended up clearing a large portion of the game’s 10-man content. Barring some additional success in the coming week; the group ended up clearing 8 out of the 12 bosses in Icecrown Citadel, including the first wing, plus Rotface, Festergut, Valithria Dreamwalker and Blood Princes. All of Trial of the Crusader and Naxxramas encounters were cleared, and all but two bosses in Ulduar (Yogg-Saron and Assembly of Iron). In addition they also cleared all of the 5-man heroic content.

Interestingly enough the group found the Trial of the Crusader (ToC) raid to be easier than Ulduar wearing the same gear, despite the fact that ToC was released later in the expansion. Whether or not they clear any additional content, the guild went a long way toward showing what a sufficiently skilled group can accomplish; kudos to them.

Ok, Blizzard fans, now we’re getting somewhere. If you attend BlizzCon or buy a BlizzCon virtual ticket you will unlock a couple murloc themed prizes to use in World of Warcraft and StarCraft II. World of Warcraft players will unlock Deathy, a debatably cute murloc companion dressed up like the dragon Deathwing.

StarCraft II players will unlock a Murloc marine portrait as well as a pair of “deep sea decals” to put on your units, each with a different design from the 3 playable races: terran, protoss and zerg.

So what do you think about all this Murloc madness? Go here to see a picture of Deathy.

Recently Blizzard gave us more information on changes in the upcoming Cataclysm expansion; Game designers Craig Amai and Dave Kosak give us some inside views on the overall design and  revamping  of Azshara.
It’s great to see that no zone is safe. In other interviews we saw that quests and pieces of a zone change, a typhoon or vortex here, new quests sprinkled about, or new story lines.  But here, we see Blizzard isn’t afraid to completely wipe the zone and start fresh. They’ve choosen to keep a few things familiar so it still feels like the old zone, using the same color palette and a few choice landmarks. The familiarity is comforting amidst the massive amount of new content.

Changing the zone’s level is a huge difference, both for the zone, and the continent. It gives us, the players,  many more options with our leveling experience. Azshara is now 10-20, and being connected to Orgrimmar, competes with Northern Barrens. After Cataclysm launches, everyone that creates a new character, young or veteran players players alike, will have many more choices to make their play experience much more enjoyable. This was fantastic for leveling in Northrend and I’m  realy happy they carried it over.
The inclusion of instanced parts of the zone, where we get to feel that each one of us makes a difference. The fact that a goal can be visibly and permanently achieved through our trials and tribulations in questing is very exciting. I foresee many new players, and  80s, coming here to check out the new quests, story line, and the freshly reimagined zone.

Also stop in and drop by our forums, to discuss, or read about, any of the great upcoming changes in the World of Warcraft, or see if any of our great posters, that are in the Beta, could shed a few more snippets of info on the zone.

During the latest maintenance blizzard has introduced the beginning of the pre-Cataclysm events with Operation Gnomeregan and Zalazane’s Fall for the alliance and the horde respectively.
Rather then try to explain the events to you I will simply let you experience them yourself.  The first part of the quest is available to low level characters, but to finish the quest series you need to be level 75 or above.  These adventures give us an opportunity to finally take the fight to the enemy, and crush them.  So go, brave adventurers and take part in this epic quest.
User Criminy has made a thread about the event on the forums so after you lay down the hurt, drop by and share your experiences.  Feel free to share screenshots as well.
Blizzard links and user screenshots after the jump

Blizzard links

Zalazane’s Fall
Operation Gnomeregan

Shapes and shadows dance around me, spirits of the dead taunting me, mocking my own clumsy movements. Behind them, the sea crashes and foams, dark against a pale sky, and smoke rises as bat riders circle. I smell blood on the wind that lashes at my face, tangling coarse hair about my tusks. He’s out there.

“ZALAZANE!”

I bellow like a raging elekk, tossing my head to clear my eyes. I draw my sword, grip firm and familiar in my hand after so many years of use. I’m ready, I’m coming for him, I–

The spirits swarm around me, grabbing me, snatching at my hands, tugging at my armor. Eyeless sockets leer at me, whispers fill my ears, voices too low for me to make them out. Just one makes it through, and at that one I grip my sword tighter, swinging down to cut at the ghost in front of me. It laughs and darts away, replaced by another as I shout my denial. I’m no weak woman to sit by the fire and wait for a mate that never returns, not anymore. I’m a fighter! A troll! But the spirits don’t seem to care. They close in, pulling at my arms, wrapping bony fingers around my legs. I have to get away, have to pull free. There’s a battle coming, and I have to be there.

The more I struggle, though, the stronger they become. A pit opens under me and they drag me down, deep under the ground. My mouth and nose fill with earth, and I look around desperately as my lungs cry out under the crushing weight. I can somehow see, as if the dirt pressing down around me was murky water, and I wish I couldn’t. I’m drowning in a mass grave, surrounded by the bodies of hundreds, maybe a thousand other trolls. Broken tusks, exposed bone, and ravaged, eyeless faces, tongueless mouths open in silent shrieks of terror. Most look familiar, though I can’t quite place them, and some of them are still fighting. There’s a young warrior next to me, bony fingers clawing at the shadows wrapped around his throat, and another further below tangled in combat with yet another ghoulish figure.

I can feel something prying my jaws open further, slithering inside. I can’t breathe, and it’s got me by the tongue, pulling at it, ripping it loose. I only realize I’ve been screaming when I’m no longer able to. My vision darkens, and my ears are filled with a warbling hum that trickles through the earth, becoming louder and louder as I sink further into my grave.

. . . . .

I open my eyes, blinking at the face in front of me. Jagged teeth, bulging eyes, a ragged green crest of hair… The rest of my armor lies behind it, propped up against a pile of the ethereals’ storage devices. The buzzing in my head wavers, settling into the steady hisses and pops from a gate behind me, and I look down at my hands. No muddied earth, no sign of the nightmare there. Just strips of bloodied bandage wrapped around where my gauntlets ought to be. I remember now. I must have pounded at the earth for hours, ripping at the blood-soaked grass with my bare hands as the hexer, the traitor, sank beneath it. No body for me to burn, to spit on. The loa took it as an offering. I should be glad, even not knowing myself what sort of tortures wait for him on the other side of things. I’m not.

That one’s gone now, but it still won’t bring him back. The face I saw inside the circle of dancers is gone now, too, as is the half-glimpsed child beside him. My family, my enemy… and here I am, alone. I ran out of things to live for a while ago, but I never expected to run out of things to die for, too.

I stare at the helmet a moment more, vaguely aware of wispy shapes moving behind it, fuzzy and indistinct. The bandage ghosts can’t have helped my dreams any. Some idea, a new goal, tickles at the back of my mind, but I push it away as I shove my hands against the ground and rise to my feet. Less thinking, Zaa. The kid has a stash of drink somewhere around here, and I’m sure he won’t mind if I track it down. It’s an easy solution to the problem of what the hell to do next.

After that, well, there are always ogres to kill.

———————–
This was Isyris’s character’s response to the latest horde quest to take out Zalazane.  How did your characters deal with the aftermath of these events?  Does it haunt their dreams?  Let us know!  If you’re interested in writing RP style stories, drop by the story thread in the WoW General Forum.  Also feel free to send me a PM (Xsarus) if you’d like a story of yours put on the front page.

Have you always wanted to go to BlizzCon, but never managed to snag your tickets in time? Or perhaps you’ve got some kind of crazy story to tell as to why you desperately want to go to BlizzCon, but have been thwarted, year after year? If so, then this is the contest for you! From now until September 30th, 2010, the World of Warcraft Official Magazine will be running a contest, open to the public, for your chance to win a trip for two (that’s roundtrip airfare, two nights at a hotel, and passes to the event!) to this year’s BlizzCon. All you need to do is submit an essay of one hundred (100) or fewer (no books here, people) words describing why you would like to attend BlizzCon 2010. You can enter at the official World of Warcraft Magazine website here, and if you want to enter without subscribing to the magazine (it won’t help your chances!), then just fill out the entry form here.

Entries will be judged by the editorial staff at the World of Warcraft Official Magazine, and the criteria used to judge the entries will be based on equal parts originality, creativity and consistency with theme. The judging will be completed by October 4th, 2010, and there is a limit of one entry per household. Good luck, everyone!

But I do tend to ramble – let me show you a few things about it!

First, let’s start with a blue post from He-Who-Crawls-with-the-Ghosts
Ghostcrawler said:
Archaeology just went in this build for the first time and we don’t yet have any of the support around it to teach players what to do. It has been informative to watch players learn to swim by drowning, but we thought it was time to offer a little more direction.

Digsites

Once you train archaeology, you can see digsites on your map (not your minimap – your map). There are always 4 digsites per continent. These will not change until you dig one out. Most of the time, you’re probably only going to be concerned with the 4 sites on your current continent, but at higher character and archaeology skill levels, there will be 16 sites active at one time (4 each in Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, Outland and Northrend.)

You will only find sites in zones of your level or lower. A level 25 player will have all 4 sites per continent in level 25 zones. (This means Outland and Northrend will have no sites at this time.) A level 80 player will have all 4 sites in any zone. A low level Kalimdor player might have sites in Ashenvale and Stonetalon, while a level 82 might have Uldum, Ashenvale, Stonetalon and Silithus.

Sites are race specific. You can usually guess the race by the location. Kalimdor tends to have a lot of night elf ruins. Eastern Kingdoms tends to have a lot of dwarf ruins.

Some races are only available on some continents (such as orc and draenei on Outland). You need to have a minimum character level and a minimum archaeology level to use these. Currently you can see them if you are a certain character level but can’t gather from them until your archaeology skill is higher. For Outland, the skill is 300. While somewhat consistent with other gathering skills, we think this is confusing and we will change it so that you don’t even see the digsites until your archaeology skill is sufficiently high. Tol’vir artifacts are the most rewarding, but also require near max archaeology skill to recover.

Some players are reporting some issues with digsites not showing up correctly. We’ll look into these bugs.

Unlike other gathering skills, digsites are player-specific. Other players will be searching in different locations. There is no competition for digsites.

Fragments

Each digsite can be searched 3 times before it despawns and a new site spawns. If there is a digsite somewhere too far away from you or otherwise inconvenient, just ignore it and hit the closer ones. You won’t run out.

To search a digsite, use the Survey ability. The survey tool will spawn and point in the approximate direction of the artifact. Red means you’re far away. Yellow means you’re close. Green means you may be within 40 yards or so. When you discover your find, you’ll get fragments specific to a particular race.

There are two main strategies to surveying. You can attempt to triangulate by moving around the outer edge of a digsite. (Like quest blobs, the digsites are not necessarily circular.) Other players just keep surveying, heading in the direction the tool points until they strike paydirt.

Remember, the thing you uncover is yours. There is no competition with other players and nobody can gank your node.

Artifacts

Whenever you get a new fragment for a race, you’ll start a research project. You can only work on one artifact per race at a time. When you have enough fragments, click Solve to complete that artifact. You won’t waste excess fragments — they will just start the next project. You can be working on one project for each race at a time.

Most artifacts are common. These give you a little bit of lore or flavor text and an item you can sell for a small profit (presumably to a museum!) The profit increases as the value of the artifact increases. You can estimate this by the number of fragments needed to finish the artifact. You will only find cheaper artifacts at low level, but you can find cheap and valuable artifacts at higher level (the reason for this is we want players to be able to find all the artifacts if they want to). You won’t find a second copy of a common object until you have found all the artifacts of that race. If you get stuck at a certain skill level of archaeology or character level, you may find an artifact more than once until you reach the next tier.

Some artifacts are rare. These always make a blue or purple item. Many of these have no in-game power and are toys or for flavor. Some of them are actual weapons and armor. The latter items are all bound to account. They aren’t heirlooms in that they don’t scale, but you can pass them around. So if you are level 80 and you find a level 60 axe, you can always have another character use it when they are level 60. You will never get a rare artifact more than once.

The future

We designed archaeology to be easily expandable, so we plan to add much more content in future patches, including new races to research (though to be fair, there’s a sizable amount of content already). We also have a feature that is not available on beta yet, that allows you to use your archaeology skill for a slight (think Fish Feast-level) bonus in the Cataclysm dungeons.
And now my own words on all this, accompanied by screenshots.

When you first train Archaeology, you may be a little lost about what to do. I sure was. The trainer doesn’t brief you, and there is nowhere in the UI that you can find guidelines. I suspect this will be changed later on, but as of today, it took me quite some time to figure the stuff out. And here is what the stuff is all about.

You are given a spell you are going to be using a lot – Survey. You will need to look at your world map and search for the archaeology-specific digging shovel icon. Those indicate digging sites. Once you get to the digging site, you will want to start using that Survey spell you just got. Every time you cast it, you will place a surveying equipment on the ground. It consists of a telescope-like looking part, that indicates the direction of the closest set of fragments; and a light that is either red, yellow, or green – this indicates how close you are to the fragments, green being very close. You keep using those Surveys, and eventually you will be able to pinpoint the location of the fragments set. When you perform the final Survey, the one that is within only a few yards of the fragments, an object will spawn (different for each one of the races), and you will be able to loot 2-4 Fragments of that specific race. The first fragments you loot will determine which artifact you will be searching for. Once you’ve collected enough fragments to assemble an artifact, you can click the “Solve” button in your archaeology window and get your reward. “Solving” a common artifact awards the artifact itself as a gray item in your bags, that you can vendor – but it will also give you quite a few skillpoints towards your profession. You can find all of the artifacts we know of presently here

Different digsites award different fragments. Surveying around ancient bones usually gives Fossil Archaeology Fragments, night elven ruins yield Night Elven Archaeology Fragments, and so on. There are total of 10 “races” – I put that in quotation marks, because Fossils are not exactly a race. I am still discovering all this, but I suspect the Forsaken and maybe the Worgen won’t have their own fragments. Possibly neither will the gnomes and the goblins, but I am only speculating here.

Zarhym said: We’ve added a new flying skill called Flight Master’s License. When World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is released, players who purchase the expansion will see this skill available from flight trainers for 250 gold once they reach level 60. This new skill is required for flying around all Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms zones, including the new level 80-85 zones.

From the Beta site:

We would like to thank everyone who has participated in the FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test.
The open beta test currently being conducted is scheduled to end at 5:00 p.m. on September 19, 2010 (PDT). Following the end of the open beta test, the beta test site will close at 12:00 a.m. on September 20, 2010 (PDT).

• Client downloads will cease simultaneously with the end of the open beta test.
• The bug report form will be closed simultaneously with the beta test site.

There isn’t much time left in the open beta test, but we would like to thank everyone for their cooperation and support.

It’s been a good two years since Guild Wars developer ArenaNet initially announced a proper sequel to its free-to-play (well, once you buy it), multi-campaign, sort-of massively multiplayer online role-playing game. In that time we’ve received assurances that Guild Wars 2 would move the series’ storyline forward over 200 years, affording us a peek at the dark fantasy world’s future. Moreover, Guild Wars’ highly instanced nature (where 20-plus copies of every major city exist, wilderness areas are totally private to the player or party exploring them, and towns feel more like lobbies than fleshed-out locations) gives way to true large-scale persistency, with shared world objectives allowing players to influence the flow of events en masse.

What’s New for Penny Arcade Expo

And we still don’t have a lot of hard details. ArenaNet’s PAX presentation revolved around lore-related information, with fantasy-author-turned-ArenaNet-writer Jeff Grubb leading the charge. It’s no surprise given Guild Wars’ longstanding emphasis on story (it’s one of the few MMOs to spin an engaging narrative that amounts to more than quest-NPC flavor text).

The quick version of what’s going down on the continent of Tyria as Guild Wars 2 opens: Elder dragons — massive and ancient beings who exist to corrupt and devour everything they lay eyes (or teeth) on — have awakened, and boy, do they need dealin’ with. Fortunately, heroes from each of Tyria’s trademark racial groups (humans, minotaur-like Charr, hulking battle-thirsty Norn, alien-lookin’ Asura, and tree-hugging Sylvari) are up to the task.

Why You Should (or Shouldn’t) Care

Again, we know zero in terms of detailed gameplay information. Guild Wars 2′s 2007 announcement was posed as something of a reassurance to fans who might have otherwise felt slighted due to the relative radio silence after the last Guild Wars campaign’s retail release. Most developers tend to announce games only once they have a bit of rough gameplay to show off, so in a way, Guild Wars 2′s existence was revealed pretty prematurely. It’s great to see that ArenaNet values its fans above all else… but man, it doesn’t make the wait any less agonizing.

The trailer details some of the game’s amazing graphics and new locations, and while we’ll have to wait longer to see more of the actual gameplay, NCsoft released the following words:
Guild Wars 2 is a visually stunning MMO that will offer players the epic grandeur of a massive role playing environment combined with the challenge of world-class player vs. player competition. Building on the success and lessons of Guild Wars, ArenaNet is creating an MMO that lets gamers play the way they want, while at the same time retaining the no-subscription-fee business model that has made the original Guild Wars so popular.

Blizzard is apparently dropping support for older Macs stating that Apple itself has been focusing on Intel Macs since 2005. As per Blizzard Forum Staff S4d1k, “So since 5 years, PPC systems has received very few bug fixes. It is now too hard to deal with all the bugs and the lack of features to support the few PPC users that we have left.”

Of course here, the staff is pointing out important updates related to graphics, key system extensions and framework of the PowerPC Mac systems. At this moment, Apple releases only security updates for old PowerPC based Mac Systems and even the new Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard won’t run on PowerPC based Macs.

World of Warcraft is one of the heavily played MMORPG games that gets a major expansion packs every year. To cope with new technologies, game developers have to drop support for old and extinct hardware. We’re sure that number of users who’re addicted and true followers of the game would upgrade their machines. The patch, in the near future would be automatically applied for any user on PowerPC Mac running Burning Crusade or Wrath or Lich King.

Blizzard stated that they have been progressively downgrading the game’s hardware compatibility in relation to Macs ever since “the death of Leopard a year ago”, and this is just another move in this regard. The game started off as a pretty flexible and portable title, but ended up more and more demanding with each expansion pack which added new content to the game.

And in case you’re wondering – yes, the same goes for StarCraft 2 and the upcoming Diablo 3 – PowerPCs are a no-go for those titles as well. Oh well, we guess if it helps improve the game for the majority of players, we can’t really blame them.

He did acknowledge that a MMO on a console will be widely successful but its very very difficult to achieve the task. One of the major problems with reference to the WOW is its keyboard-centric nature and the whole notion of transferring all related keyboard controls onto a gamepad is a challenging ask.

Even if Blizzard thinks about particular consoles, there are related technical issues where the PS3 does have an integrated hard drive but then, the Xbox 360 lacks the same which makes it all the more complicated.

If Blizzard is somehow convinced to develop the game for consoles, the time consumed for developing such a vast MMO will be a problem and the involved risk is the life-cycle of the consoles itself.

Shortly before the release of Cataclysm a patch will be released in which PowerPC processor based Macs will no longer be supported. This update indicates the removal of PowerPC support from World of Warcraft. Attempting to run the game after the update will bring up a message stating the hardware is no longer supported, and the game will not run.

Players in World of Warcraft control a character, also known as an “avatar,” who is one of many entities in the fantasy world called Azeroth.  This character can talk, trade, or fight with any of the computer controlled characters (NPC’s) or other player controlled characters (PC’s). The player is given quests from NPC’s, designated by an exclamation point over their head. The completion of these tasks yields rewards like in game money or items like armor and other useful consumable items (loot) or experience points (XP). Experience points are key to the game, once enough have been collected, the player’s character advances a level. Increasing one’s level increases statistics governing how well one completes quests and unlocks new abilities, such as being able to sneak around unseen.

Each level is progressively more difficult to achieve, but the player is more capable of achieving it. This process of completing quests, gaining XP, and leveling up is the fundamental gameplay of WoW.

Many games beyond MMORPGs use this basic gameplay structure, but the key to WoW’s popularity is the “Massively Multiplayer” element. The world that players inhabit can hold thousands players simultaneously. Even when any one individual player is not in game, the world persists without him. The sun rises and sets every day and the year even has a holiday calendar. “Noblegarden” falls around Easter, “Hallow’s End” around Halloween, and “Feast of Winter’s Vale” around Christmas.

The world changes as new content is added and events mark the advancement of the history of the world. Any one player has a friend’s list where they can chat and trade with people they meet in either the real world or in the game world. The most interesting quests and the best rewards come from group quests that everyone performs together. Each individual character has a “class” that determines what they will specialize in while in group situations. Players can take hits from enemies (tanks), hit enemies back (DPS), or even heal (healers) making coordination and strategy key to completing the most difficult quests.

Group quests can take as few as five people or as many as 40. In-game organizations founded and managed by guilds are used to organize people and provide a support network of resources and knowledge. It is this social, collaborative nature of World of Warcraft that people find so appealing. The same thing that makes Facebook so appealing. It is providing of a social space for people to fill themselves that makes WoW so successful, keeping people in things to do together while attracting those who want to participate in a new and different way with friends.

After its release date in 2004, WoW has constantly added content and refined what already existed. Six years of doing so has built a large amount of complexity into the game. This depth is daunting to the newcomer, and the difference in quality between earlier and later content is profound. However, in late 2010 or early 2011, Blizzard plans to release its third major expansion, Cataclysm. Cataclysm will be a remake of the original content of the game, making it much more friendly to newcomers and enjoyable for veterans. If you have wanted to pick the game up, or were discouraged by older versions of the game, Cataclysm will be an opportunity for new and old alike to experience WoW again.

Firefall is a team based massive-multiplayer shooter game, that seemingly combines all the best features of all the best recent games into one. What is more impressive, is that the game will be free. No monthly subscriptions or software purchases required by gamers. The game will not be released until the end of 2011, so we have quite a bit of anticipation to do, however, gamers who would like to test Firefall out are able to do so by registering at their website for the beta testing.

As someone who plays both Horde and Alliance characters, I actually logged into my extremely neglected World of Warcraft account to experience the events.  Zalazane’s Fall ran smoothly when I experienced it on Wednesday evening, but many players on various servers have been reporting that Jun’do the traitor stays immune to all attacks, causing the event to glitch.  Every now and then the timer for the event stays at zero, which also glitches the event.

Alliance players are also seeing some difficulty with their respective event.  High Tinker Mekkatorque often times will freeze in place, preventing the event from continuing.  As of Wednesday the 8th at 5:20 PDT, Blizzard announced in a thread on the official forums that High Tinker Mekkatorque should no longer freeze in place, though some players may still be having some difficulty with him and are encouraged to submit an in-game ticket.  There is a possible “work-around” for the event until they have a permanent fix in place, but Blizzard is unsure of when such a fix will be available.

I tried completing Operation: Gnomeregan last night, and High Tinker Mekkatorque is still freezing before entering the city.  There are apparently a few tricks you can use on your server if he is still freezing.  Some players are stating that if you don’t travel down into the tunnel before High Tinker Mekkatorque, this can prevent him from freezing.  Hopefully Blizzard rolls out a fix to the events soon so everyone can experience  them way they were meant to be.

Keep your eyes peeled to that thread for future updates!

The core of Firefall seems to be around Battleframes.  These suits allow players to customize their powers and unlock unique abilities for the class based combat of the game.  What stands out for me is the look of the game – which reminds me a bit of Borderlands in terms of style, though there’s still a realistic edge to the terrain.  There’s a 10 minute gameplay trailer on the official site (and posted below) which I recommend watching, and if you head over to the site you can sign up for the beta too.

According to the press release all updates and content for the game will be free as well, instead battleframe enhancements and other customizations will cost players money. 

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

There’s no word on when the beta will begin, but it looks like the game is well on its way into development.

I recieved a note from a troll yesterday, signalling the start of a series of events that’ll bring about a Cataclysm in the world’s biggest MMO, World of Warcraft.

The note invited me over to the Echo Isles off the coast of Durotar in Azeroth. It’s one of the ancestral homes of the Darkspear tribe of trolls, but the tribe was ousted from the islands by a traitorous witch doctor named Zalazane, who began enslaving the population. However, the Darkspears, led by their leader Vol’jin, are fighting back, and preparing to take back control of their land.

Over the other side of the world, the gnomes of the Alliance are preparing a similar push back into their irradiated hometown, Gnomeregan. High Tinker Mekkatorque is pushing back into the city, with the aim of recapturing the surface to provide a home for the gnomes exiled by the treachery of Mekkatorque’s chief advisor, Thermaplugg.

Both in-game events involve players of all levels, but only those between 75 and 80 will be able to take part in the final push to reclaim territory before World of Warcraft’s next expansion pack, Cataclysm, is released before the end of the year.

Cataclysm will tell the story of the return of Deathwing the Destroyer, a massive evil dragon who’s been hiding in a cave under the world since the events of Warcraft II. His return tears through dimensional barriers, ripping apart areas that have remained static since the game’s original release, releasing rivers of magma through some zones, and unleashing floods in others.

The expansion will also make significant changes to the game’s mechanics, introducing two new playable races — the Worgen (who are essentially werewolves) and Goblins. It’ll also simplify many aspects of the game’s mechanics, removing little-understood statistics like attack value, armour penetration and block value, raise the level cap to 85 and introduce around 3000 new quests.

While there’s no set release date for Cataclysm yet, it’s expected to arrive just before the Christmas holidays. World of Warcraft’s last expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, remains the the fastest selling videogame of all time, shifting 2.8 million copies in 24 hours. With 11.5 million players of the game across the world (more than the population of Greece), there’s no reason to believe that Cataclysm won’t perform similarly.

Speaking to Eurogamer, Michael Rowland explained the delay in the following terms: “Given the complexities and challenges faced in the preparation and implementation of the new store to work within our infrastructure, we feel more time is needed to deliver the high level of service our players have quite rightly come to expect.”

Damn that pesky infrastructure, it’s always up to no good.

The update “Book 2: Ride of the Grey Company” and the free to play store are already up and running for North American users, but it seems people in Europe should prepare for a wait. Codemasters has given no firm date for the European relaunch, suggesting only that it will be coming “later than expected.”

Yesterday, Turbine unveiled a free version of its Lord of the Rings Online game, based on the popular novels of J.R.R. Tolkien. It’s the latest online game to adopt an increasingly popular business model called “free-to-play.’’ Users can play the entire game without spending a dime, but their progress through the fantasy world will be slow. Gamers who want a more competitive experience can visit the online store and spend real-world money on virtual tools and weapons that will make the game easier. And dedicated players can still sign up for the traditional monthly subscription.

Turbine spokesman Adam Mersky said the model will attract thousands of new players, many of whom will buy game accessories or opt for a standard subscription, which costs between $9.99 and $14.99 a month. “Our view is, this is sort of the future of online games,’’ said Mersky. “You have to provide players with a choice.’’

The company adopted the model last year with its Dungeons & Dragons Online game. According to the market research firm NPD Group, the change helped make it the third-most popular multiplayer online game in the United States last year, up from 11th place in 2008. Mersky said that 20 percent of the “free’’ Dungeons & Dragons players have purchased game accessories. “I think in the first 35, 40 days of that game, we saw a 500 percent increase in revenue,’’ he said.

Turbine plans a major promotional effort for the free version of Lord of the Rings Online, including a television commercial that will debut on Sunday during “Family Guy,’’ the Fox network show. “This is clear ly our biggest launch ever,’’ said Mersky. “We’re putting a lot behind this.’’

The most popular multiplayer online game is Activision Blizzard Inc.’s World of Warcraft, which has attracted more than 11 million subscribers worldwide. It costs around $15 per month to play the game, which does not offer a free option. Edward Woo, a game industry analyst at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles, said that World of Warcraft’s immense popularity has forced other companies to attract players with free games. “World of Warcraft is so entrenched and it’s sucking up so many subscription dollars,’’ said Woo. “That’s why you have to offer free-to-play, to try to get them hooked.’’

Turbine won’t reveal how many people subscribe to its games. But industry analyst David Cole of DFC Intelligence in San Diego, believes that the subscription version of Lord of the Rings Online has been reasonably successful, although “it wasn’t anywhere near the level of World of Warcraft,’’ said Cole. “The subscription base was in the hundreds of thousands. Not in the millions.’’

Cole said the free-to-play option could help Turbine maximize revenues by attracting cost-conscious gamers. “There’s a lot of users out there who are willing to pay $5 a month, but not $15 a month,’’ Cole said.

38 Studios LLC, the video game company founded by former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, plans to release an online fantasy game code-named Copernicus. But yesterday the company refused to say whether it would adopt a subscription model, free-to-play, or a combination of the two.

With all of the expansions being free to play, the storyline that correlates with the game has been expanded with the recent release of “volume III, Book 2: The Ride of the Grey Company.” This is a perfect opportunity for fans of the books who don’t usually play games to check the game out and see if they are interested in the tales that are divulged regarding Middle Earth.

The Lord Of The Rings Franchisee is considered as one of the most successful film franchisees in the world. The game modeled after the cinema has turned out to be equally successful. The latest update on the online game is that one can now play it for free which was not possible even a few days back! The game earlier the users to churn out a monthly fee. The payers now get free access to the epic and middle earth storyline which offers hours of engaging game play experience. The can also get access to the Lord Of The Rings online store where they can find various new maps for the game levels.

While there are lots of freebies for those who want to play the popular game for free, the subscribed users also get their share of goodies. The existing paid users are given more character slots for every server. They also get more storage space compared to those who are playing the game free. They also do not face any limitation in finding and becoming members of on line communities.

The news has made the lovers of the game excited and they are eager to try out the offer. The LOTR games have not lost their appeal among the gamers despite the fact that it is in the market for more than 3 years now. This MMORPG is somewhat akin to the franchises like World of Warcraft but it stands out amidst the crowd of similar games owing to its immersible nature. Its cinematic effects and lush scenery are simply incomparable even today.

Q. What was the original concept for the zone?

A. The concept for Ashenvale was to show the effects of the Cataclysm while taking the opportunity to streamline the zone’s level design. There were areas of Ashenvale that were pretty unfriendly in terms of accessibility and quest flow. The level designers and quest designers worked together to alleviate the problem areas and highlight the big changes.

Q. Who will be using this zone (what levels/factions)?

A.Both Horde and Alliance players, roughly from levels 20–25. We anticipate that this will be a well-traveled zone in terms of general player flow.

Q. Without giving up any spoilers, what’s the general storyline for this zone? How has it changed from the original design?

A. Among other catastrophes, an enormous volcano has erupted in central Ashenvale. As the night elves struggle to deal with the chaos caused by the Cataclysm, the Horde is seizing what it perceives to be a golden opportunity. Garrosh Hellscream’s forces are now bearing down upon the night elves and have overtaken several key positions that once served as Alliance strongholds. There is a definite feeling that the balance of power in this region now teeters on a goblin tripwire….
These changes also mean that Horde players will have much more to do in Ashenvale.

Q. What do you think is the most exciting new feature of the zone?

A.Visually, it has to be the volcano. It’s stunning, and it provides a great landmark in a place otherwise known for its dense forest. Thematically, the tension present in the zone gives it a whole new feel. The Horde is barricaded inside the walls of Splintertree Post under a massive assault by the night elves and their allies. Meanwhile, Astranaar is desperately fighting off waves of Hellscream’s forces. Practically everywhere you go in Ashenvale, it’s impossible to escape the fact that it has become a warzone.

Q.What goes into redesigning a zone like this?

A.A bit more than meets the eye, we think. Ashenvale is deceptively large, and previously there were many issues in terms of quest flow and Horde/Alliance content balance. Soon after we rolled up our sleeves and broke ground, we realized that our work was cut out for us. There were numerous quests we wanted to keep, but there were also a great many that no longer fit or didn’t play out efficiently. We also needed to create a variety of new quests, especially ones “For the Horde”™.

Q. What was the most challenging aspect about implementing these changes?

A. It can actually be a bit tougher to come in and “do surgery” to an existing zone than it is to completely gut it and start from scratch. Given our ambitious time constraints, trying to determine what stays, what goes, and what other changes to make is certainly a challenge.

Q. What should players do or go see first?

A.Horde players should visit the Mor’shan Rampart first. There’s a new Horde contingent there who is fighting hard to make sure that no night elves escape Hellscream’s onslaught — not that they’d make it far into the Northern Barrens! Alliance players who come down from Darkshore will want to help defend Maestra’s Post and Astranaar as both settlements struggle to keep from falling under Hellscream’s control.

Q. Who seems to have the upper hand in the zone: the Horde, the Alliance, or the elementals?

A.The Horde and the Alliance are throwing themselves at each other on many fronts; neither has a clear upper hand here. The elementals in Ashenvale are a minor nuisance in comparison to the faction struggle.

Q. Should we expect any changes within Blackfathom Deeps?

A.There are no significant changes planned for Blackfathom Deeps at this time.

Q.What has happened to Silverwind Refuge?

A.The Horde has happened!

Q. What has changed the most: the storyline or the terrain?

A.The amount of change has been pretty equal between storyline and terrain. The terrain is much less frustrating than before, and the visual results of the Cataclysm tell the story as much as the quests do. Story-wise, the theme hasn’t changed so much as its intensity has.

We’re right in the middle of a busy, exciting gamescom, but I thought I’d take a moment on day three of the show to share some great news: Guild Wars 2 has just been awarded Best Online Game for gamescom 2010!

We’ve been eager to show off Guild Wars 2 for the first time at gamescom, and the response from fans to the hands-on demo has been overwhelmingly positive. This is our opportunity to demonstrate that all of the features we’ve been talking about for the past few months are real, not just hype, and we’re gratified that fans have really enjoyed playing the demo. Awards are fantastic, but let’s face it: connecting with players and earning their enthusiasm is the real prize at gamescom.

Those ArenaNet staffers who aren’t in Cologne are still playing a vital role at gamescom; our entire studio here in the Seattle area has been playing the game remotely with show attendees all week. We’ve been having a blast meeting and playing alongside our European fans in-game – it’s been like one big international LAN party!

We’re bringing the hands-on Guild Wars 2 demo to the States in two weeks at PAX in Seattle (Sept 3-5), and we’d love to see you there. Even if you can’t play the demo, keep an eye on this blog for more Guild Wars 2 news and information.

Signups for the next round of character transfers will begin on Thursday, September 9 at 1:00 p.m. PDT/22:00 CEST. Characters who have signed up for this round will be transferred on Wednesday, September 15 during the server downtime.

If you miss this round, don’t worry. You’ll have another opportunity next week.

—The Aion Community Team

Troll Bear

Troll Cat

Worgen Bear

Worgen Cat

In the beta, there isn’t much available by way of rods. The Weathered Fishing Rod is good enough for now. Trade “weapons” include a rank in their description and I can only assume that higher ranked rods help you hook your fish while also helping keep the fish on longer while you try to tire it out.

A wide variety of bait is available with each being either consumable (worms, etc) and reusable (lures and jigs). In the beta, I had my best luck with plain old Lugworms. I also had decent luck with a Floating Minnow. I did NOT have good luck with a Chocobo Fly, no matter what depth I chose. To me, a fly is for river fishing, so I don’t know if that was my problem (I spent all my time fishing in the sea off of Camp Bearded Rock).

Bait is relatively cheap, and you only lose your consumable bait if you hook the fish, so feel free to experiment.

The Fishing Game

Fishing in FFXIV is essentially a hot and cold game, as are all of the Disciple of Land classes. There are three parts to the mini game:

               Begin Fishing                                      Initial Hook                                       The Fight

I think where most people have trouble is the actual hooking of the fish. You may or may not get a bite every cast, and the trick is figuring out how to hook the fish you have nibbling at your bait. I have some ideas on how this works and I will explain what my theory is, but I would like to point out that this is pure speculation on my part. I started to keep a log of my hook rate, but I don’t have enough data to conclusively prove anything yet. That being said, I think it is a good theory, and hopefully if other people try it and report their results, we can come up with a conclusive method that works for most.

There are effectively two actions you can perform once you start fishing: Wait or Jig.

• Waiting after you get an initial bite will cause you to wait for another bite. I never do this, as I think I only ever got one hooked when waiting after the first bite. Your results may vary.
• Jig causes your character to move their rod in such a way as to try to either hook the fish (if you don’t have one on the line) or to try to weaken the fish in order to reel it in.

My normal pattern of fishing is:

Set Depth >> Wait for bite >> Jig to Hook >> Jig to Weaken Until Caught.

There are various messages you get while jigging once you have the fish hooked that I will go into detail about later on.

Jigging to Hook: A Theory

My observations while fishing have lead me to believe that there are two sweet spots that you should jig on in order to maximize your chances. In order to explain the sweet spots, I need to first explain how jigging works. When you select Jig, a meter is displayed with a colored dot that moves back and forth.

     The Fishing Meter        Meter while moving      Meter with jig selected        Selecting next jig

It is your job to stop the dot in order to determine if you hook the fish (or weaken it if you have one hooked). I believe there are Zones to the meter, probably 5 but possibly 3.

           3 Zones                          5 Zones

The goal of jigging changes when you are trying to hook a fish versus when you are trying to weaken it. I will explain both next.

Hooked versus Weakening

Hooking the fish involves stopping the meter in what I think of as the “Sweet Spot”.

Red indicates the sweet spots.

Here is where we delve into speculation. I believe that in order to hook a fish, you need to stop the dot near to some predetermined point on the meter. Think of a cone that is where you need to stop the dot (what I refer to as the “Hook Point” below). If you do it correctly, the fish is hooked. Otherwise, you miss the fish. Furthermore, if you try on one of the sweet spots and it doesn’t hook a fish, immediately try the sweet spot on the other side. A great majority of the time you will hook the fish on the second time around.

It is my theory that the cone where you should set your hook point for the fish is actually quite wide, say maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the meter. So the two sweet spots are really the best way of ensuring you get the fish on either the first or second nibble. Of all of the casts where I missed my first attempt at hooking the fish, if I were to try the sweet spot on the other side it seems that almost always I would then hook the fish. Again, without hard data it’s just a gut feeling, but I still think this is a good theory.

Reeling It In

Now that you have it hooked, what do you do? Well now the game starts the hot and cold part. Your job now is to pick a point on one side or the other of the point where you selected to hook the fish and see if you weaken it or if it runs with your line. The messages you get as you battle your fish are a clue as to how you’re doing. I’ll run down them and try to add my thoughts to each. One thing to note: you don’t have an unlimited amount of time to reel the fish in. There is a gauge that appears under the meter that represents the amount of stamina you have left to reel the fish in. Each jig will cost you some stamina. You need to land the fish before you run out of stamina.

Nothing bites

You get this when there are no bites. This really has nothing to do with what you’ve done, although there is speculation that changing depth can help if you see it several times in a row.

You’ve hooked something but cannot reel it in.

This is the default message, and is what you will most often see once you hook a fish. There really isn’t a lot you can do with this, other than to try one way or the other.

The fish is taking line.

This you will get after the initial hooking, when you are trying to figure out which way to go from your hook point to get the fish. This message means you picked the wrong way.

The fish is taking a great deal of line.

You guessed really, really wrong [1] This might happen if your initial guess is on the edge of the cone that you had to hit to hook the fish (I think anyway). At any rate, you need to move back to the other side of your hook point.

You take in some line.

You’re getting warmer. You picked the right direction, now try to go further. I try to increment by the width of the dot each time unless I pick the wrong way to begin with. It usually isn’t terribly far from the hook point, but that isn’t always the case. You need to judge how much based upon how much stamina you have left on the guage.

You take in a great deal of line.

You’re getting closer. Much better, but still a ways off, and I would recommend decreasing the distance between the next jig if you have the stamina for it.

The fish has tired, but you still cannot reel it in.

You’re there. For some reason, you need one more jig to get the fish in. Hit the exact same spot you did the last time, otherwise you’ll give up line to the fish and will probably lose it if you are out of stamina.

You lost what felt like a Tiger Cod.

You got really close but ran out of stamina at the end. Since you got this close, they let you know what you almost caught. This message makes me think certain fish have a pattern to catch them, or at least there is something in how you catch them that can give away what the fish is.

The fish got away

This is when you don’t get close enough to tell what kind of fish it is, and you lose your catch. You still get experience points for it though.

Battle Actions

• Dowse
• Dowse II
• Gulleye
• Gulleye II

Check out the wiki entries for more details, but, to summarize, these abilities allow you to detect schools of fish within 200 yalms (about 2 squares on the map) from your current position. In the case of Dowse and Dowse II, you are given a boost of speed if the school found is a great distance away.

Battle Action Messages

Grade x school of fish: x yalms to the north / x yalms to the east / x yalms to the south / x yalms to the west.

This is usually the standard message you get. The grade corresponds to the level of Dowse or Gulleye that you use.

You sense a grade x school of fish x yalms to the southwest at a higher elevation.

This message you get if you are lower or higher than the fish detected.

Your instinct tells you there is a school of fish here.

This message you get if you are pretty much on top of the school of fish and all you should have to do here is cast your line.

You prepare to cast into the fishable waters. (Grade x)

You get this message when trying to fish into a school of fish you have detected. Schools of fish are limited in resource. You don’t have to fish at them, but usually you have good results when fishing there.

This location can be gathered from x more times.

This is the message you get when you are fishing in a school of fish. After each fish caught (or lost) it tells you how many times you can fish before the school disperses. You lose a chance even if you miss the fish.

Synthesis & Gathering Actions

• Veteran Trade

Check out the wiki entry for more details, but, to summarize, this is a randomly activated ability that increases your chances of hooking the fish. The ability appears to last about 3-4 minutes.

Synthesis & Gathering Action Messages

Veteran Trade takes effect.

What Can I Get?

You are probably wondering why this is all worth it. Well you can get things! Fish! Shards! TONS of experience points! The shards you pull up can be any element. I had amassed a large number of shards by the time the beta had ended. Fish come in normal varieties as well as +1, +2, and +3 editions. You can pull up both fish and shards at the same time. In fact, you will always catch fish; sometimes you get shards as well.

Guildleves for Fishers

More to come

Unknowns

• The amount of stamina removed from the gauge when jigging a hooked fish may or may not indicate if your jig was close to the fish. I speculate that the messages are one form of indication, but that the “jig result” might also be an indicator, especially at higher levels.

Check out all the cartographical coolness after the break!

Table of Contents

• New Classic Zone Map
  • Hillsbrad Foothills
• New Classic Dungeon & Raid Maps
  • Gnomeregan
  • Scarlet Monastery
  • Sunken Temple
  • The Deadmines
  • Maraudon
  • Ragefire Chasm
  • Dire Maul
  • Temple of Ahn’Qiraj
• New Cataclysm Zone Maps
  • Twilight Highlands
  • Stranglethorn Vale
• New Cataclysm Dungeons & Raids Maps
  • Throne of the Tides
  • The Vortex Pinnacle
  • The Stonecore
  • The Bastion of Twilight
  • Lost City of the Tol’vir

New Classic Zone Map                                                                                                                                               

Hillsbrad Foothills

New Classic Dungeon & Raid Maps                                                                                                                             

Gnomeregan

Scarlet Monastery

Sunken Temple

The Deadmines

Maraudon

Ragefire Chasm

Dire Maul

Temple of Ahn’Qiraj

New Cataclysm Zone Maps                                                                                                                                         

Twilight Highlands

Stranglethorn Vale

New Cataclysm Dungeons & Raids Maps                                                                                                                       

Throne of the Tide

The Vortex Pinnacle

The Stonecore

The Bastion of Twilight

Lost City of the Tol’vir

We have just released a fully updated version 2.0 client installer. This client includes all the smaller updates and allows anyone to jump straight into Aion: Assault on Balaurea after installing with no patching required!

This full client is available via direct download from our partner GamersHell, it’s also available from our own Torrent server.

NCsoft Torrent:

ftp.ncsoft.com/Aion/Client/Torrent/Aion2.0.0.2_FullInstaller.zip.torrent

Gamershell 1.9.0.3 – 2.0.0.0 Download:

http://www.gamershell.com/download_63074.shtml

GamersHell Full 2.0 Client Download:

http://www.gamershell.com/download_63072.shtml

Enjoy.

—The Aion Community Team

Thank you for your patience!

***

Question of the Week
Cerafina of Perento asks:
“With the launch of 2.0 in a few days, will my current XP be reset to 0% of level 50? Also what happens to my current soul debt?”
Hey Cerafina.
When Aion: Assault on Balaurea goes live on the 7th September, as was the case with the release on the Korean servers, you’ll find that your current experience will still be 100% of level 50 – obviously only if it was that before. This means that once you’re in game all you’ll need to do is kill one monster or complete one quest to tip yourself into level 51. In regard to your soul debt, the soul healers of Atreia aren’t of the understanding kind, and you will still owe the same amount you did before the expansion. This means that you’ll be able to pay it off in full and gain a slight advantage when it comes to gaining experience points to level. I hope this answer quells the rumour that experience points will be reset to the beginning of the level when you first log in after Aion: Assault on Balaurea goes live!
With the expansion so close to going live, we wanted to remind you about the exclusive pets that are available from certain retailers and the levelling guides in our PowerWiki to help you get off to a bang:
Asmodian Leveling Guides: 51-52 and 53-55
Elyos Leveling Guides: 51-52 and 53-55

For those of you lucky enough to have made the trip to Seattle for PAX; look out for the exclusive Tutty N’ Beans swag packs and the Aion: Assault on Balaurea Launch Party with a special concert from the Wonder Girls. For the rest of us, you can always follow the action on the NA NCsoft Events page.
Do you want the Aion team to answer your question or discuss a topic of your choice? Send an email to community_aion_en@ncsoft.com with your character name, server, and question!

***

In Other News
Let’s take a look at what’s been going on in the Aion community.
Five Brave Elyseans vs. Tahabata
Rheeza from Vaizel sent us this video, showcasing a 5-man effort to take down Tahabata (without a plate class). After successfully doing so, they were lucky enough to see a Tahabata Tome drop.
“No Point” AMV by Nill
We posted a link to Nill’s music video called “Behind Enemy Lines”. This is a previous work of Nill, but quite impressive and worth having a look at!
Aion Insanity – the lighter side of Aion
Qaz posted this neat video over in our forums. It’s a bit like switching between TV channels.
Nightflower’s Guides
Nightflower of Zikel has been creating several wonderful guides to the new Single Player instances in Assault on Balaurea.
Don’t forget to send us your Eye on Community creations or contributions to community_aion_en@ncsoft.com!

***

Knowledge Is Power
Remember to follow the Community Team on Twitter and Facebook to stay on top of the Aion news!
Aion Facebook Page—Become a fan today!
Aion Steam Gaming Group—Join our Steam community!
Tamat (NA Community Manager)
Ayase (UK Community Manager)
Arathaur (FR Community Manager)
Imhotep (DE Community Manager)
This article series is a way for us to highlight current, interesting, wacky, passionate, intriguing, dramatic, or just plain awesome things going on in the community. Please send your submissions to community_aion_en@ncsoft.com.

—The Aion Community Team

We will be bringing the Israphel server down at 7:00 a.m. PDT, September 3, 2010 (more) for maintenance.
The maintenance is estimated to take no longer than 1 hour.
Thank you for your patience!

-The Aion Community Team

As someone who’s been around the convention circuit a time or two, PAX Prime is without a doubt one of my favorite gaming shows. There’s just something about the level of passion radiating from attendees that reminds me why I love what I do. If you live in Washington State and you’ve never had a chance to come experience the show, I’d really like to encourage you to do so. You’ll be glad you did!

I digress.

This year at PAX Prime, we have a lot of fun stuff planned for you. In addition to having a great Aion®: Assault on Balaurea™ demo playable on the show floor, we have a number of killer swag giveaways including the return of our Tutty ’n’ Beans with an exclusive item pack. You can also visit the booth to find out how to win one of two custom Aion modded PC cases sponsored by Antec and NCsoft.

At 4:30 p.m. on Friday, the Aion team hosts a panel in the Raven Theater 3AB to discuss how Aion has evolved in its first year in North America and Europe. Key members of the Aion team, including two Aion developers from Korea, will share how the lore, design, and gameplay of Aion is evolving to give you an improved gaming experience. Near the end of the panel, the audience has an opportunity to ask questions, so come prepared for answers and for a surprise gift for attending! You can find more information about the Assault on Balaurea panel here.

Aion wouldn’t be successful without you, our loyal fans. To recognize that fact, we’re throwing a launch party and you’re invited! Join us at the Experience Music Project for an evening of Aion with a special live performance by pop sensations, the Wonder Girls. Show up early because the party begins at 8:00 p.m.! Due to capacity limitations, admission to the event is limited and will be granted based on a first-come, first-served basis.

For more information about what we’re doing at PAX, make sure to check out our PAX Prime event page. You can also follow our whereabouts on Foursquare! If you track us down, we might even have some goodies for you.

To follow us on Foursquare, you’ll first need to create an account either using the Foursquare website or with your mobile device (iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Palm, and so on). Once you’ve created your account, add aion_tamat, and watch our check-ins to follow our movement throughout the day. We’ll see you in Seattle!

Fly high, Daevas!

Tamat ~ Andrew Beegle
Community Manager

Starting Tuesday, August 31, we’ll be posting two questions per day on our Warcraft Twitter page that will focus on key aspects of each World of Warcraft character class. For each of the ten class questions, we’ll be selecting five winners at random from those who answer correctly to receive their very own SwagDog Class Icon custom t-shirt!

Read more here and/or check out the full set of rules.

Because of a recent remark made by Activision-Blizzard CEO Robert Kotick about raising the price of video games (and, perhaps, the recent news that StarCraft II’s release is being pushed back until 2010), some gamers and MMO fans are on the verge of an all-out, nerd-rage meltdown.

But is the anger really justified? Or is this just another example of the anonymous online collective banding together for a quick “screw the Man” tirade, only to dissipate and retreat to its usual consumer habits a few weeks later?

In a conference call between research analysts and Activision-Blizzard last week, one of the analysts—Tony Gikas—asked about the company’s “comfort level” regarding its new, higher-priced games. (He was referring to games like Guitar Hero, which are bundled with special controllers or peripherals.)

Activision CEO Kotick replied, “You know if it was left to me, I would raise the prices even further,” according to the transcription from the conference call (via vg247.com). As you can imagine, if you haven’t already seen the resulting blowback from the community, a whirlwind of accusations and speculation ensued.

Some websites and blogs reported the story with a level-headed approach, while others pretty much demonized the CEO, accusing him of devaluing customer loyalty for the sake of pure greed. One guy,(“James” of WeDoTech.net, even called for a boycott of all Activision properties in a video that’s been making its way through the blog circuit. He claims Kotick and Activision-Blizzard are setting a harmful example within the industry, and placing us in danger of a gaming price-fixing fiasco reminiscent of the late 80s.

This isn’t the first time Kotick has met opposition from the media and gaming communities; he’s been quoted as saying that Activision-Blizzard doesn’t consider a game worth publishing unless it has “the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises,” according to MTV Multiplayer.

Another scathing—yet truthful?—commentary comes from a classic ArsTechnica editorial, written by Ben Kuchera back in January:

With Kotick, he’s very brazen about his need to squeeze every last dollar he can out of every franchise under the Activision Blizzard label. He wants to exploit his games. He wants to make sure he has a sequel every year, and don’t forget the Wii and DS ports. Why have one StarCraft game if you can have three? Just because people are used to Battle.net being free doesn’t mean you can’t find some way to make more money from the service.

World of Warcraft may look like it will go on forever, but the only thing greater than the loyalty of those players is Kotick’s cash-lust. The only question is if the two will ever collide.

As an MMO fan, it’s a bit easier to turn a blind eye when you’re confronted with news and commentary like these, especially if you only play PC games and don’t dabble in the console market. But don’t mistake MMO or PC properties as inherently immune to the same issues and concerns that the console gaming community faces.

It used to be that the traditional, “living room gaming” market; i.e., console games, utterly decimated PC games, in terms of sales. In recent years, the gap between the two has significantly started to narrow. The whole Activision-Blizzard entity is, itself, a testament to that fact. Admittedly, Activision-Blizzard makes for an easier target to exemplify this concept, but the same is true with companies such as Electronic Arts, Atari and Sony; console and PC gaming have become bedfellows, both sharing a single publisher or developer.

That also means the successes or failures of each industry within a company like Activision-Blizzard aren’t as insulated from each other as they were in the past. To illustrate that dynamic, consider the pushback of StarCraft II’s release date. Activision-Blizzard explained the reason for the delay, claiming it needed to work on the Battle.net service before it launches the game. A portion of the official release:

Over the past couple of weeks, it has become clear that it will take longer than expected to prepare the new Battle.net for the launch of the game. The upgraded Battle.net is an integral part of the StarCraft II experience and will be an essential part of all of our games moving forward. This extra development time will be critical to help us realize our vision for the service.

According to Kotaku’s coverage of the story, Activision-Blizzard is forecasting its global revenue in 2009 lower than it originally predicted—and partly due to StarCraft II’s new release date. The upcoming StarCraft II trilogy will no doubt be a money-making cash cow, and it’s no surprise that Activision-Blizzard wants to make sure Battle.net is working optimally by the time the game launches. You have to wonder, though—would things be different if the two industries weren’t so intertwined as they now are, relying on each other’s success and affected by each other’s failure?

Sometimes it’s difficult to remember that a video game publisher’s sole reason for existence in this world is to make money, especially with the kind of media coverage we’re privy to online. It can be tough for many gamers to see anything but the color red when they have honest issues and concerns as consumers, yet stumble upon an itemized report of Kotick’s $15 million salary for 2008.

“[...] once we say ‘tanking niches’ players have visions of the DK who parks outside of Icecrown until boss 4, 17 and 31 (yes, IC is that big),” he wrote. When you consider that dungeons the size of Karazhan only featured half as many bosses, it leads you to believe that Icecrown Citadel could be the largest instanced structure we’ve ever seen.

When it comes to “leaked” information, WoW.com has hit just about as many as it’s missed. That’s why we’re reporting that they’ve reported inside sources have leaked the big one, and “confirmed” to the website what the next playable races in WoW will be (and for which faction). You can check out the site’s post here, or click through to the jump if you’d like to know what WoW.com claims the next playable races will be.

Quoted directly from WoW.com:

Our sources have told us that the new races of Cataclysm will be:

Worgen – Alliance

Goblin – Horde

In addition, Blizzard is celebrating the release of episode 10 with a contest. All you need to do is answer five questions pertaining to the interview and you could win a “Blood Elf Rogue vs. Draeni Paladin” diorama from Sideshow Collectibles, which is worth $299. Check out the rules and submit your answers here. You can find the questions after the jump.

It’s been a little while since our last BlizzCast, and we’re celebrating its return with a brand-new contest.

Are you a BlizzCast enthusiast? Have you downloaded every episode within minutes of its release? Do you take notes to distribute amongst your guild? Well then, this is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. Listen carefully to BlizzCast 10, answer the questions below, and you may just win yourself a fantastic prize.

1) Who was the interviewer in this BlizzCast?

2) For what purpose or purposes is Tirion Fordring running the Argent Tournament?

3) How did the Tribute system come into being?

4) What was Senior Game Designer Dave Maldonado looking forward to in patch 3.2, Call of the Crusade?

5) Why is Lead Encounter Designer Scott Mercer so excited to go to BlizzCon?

Check out the Contest Rules and submit your answers here: http://www.blizzard.com/submission/contest-form.html?contestId=7

Contest Rules: http://www.blizzard.com/us/misc/contests/blizzcast/index.html

There’s also two noteworthy hotfixes that were discussed in detail in other threads. Heal over time spells now trigger HoT-related effects, even when the target has full health. Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street talked about this change in a thread about Val’anyr: “This means that effects that were able to proc from HoT ticks that did some healing can now also proc from HoT ticks that overheal completely. The most notable such effect is that Val’anyr’s absorb shield should now work as advertised.”

Also, Crygil made a long post about changes to Hot Streak for mages. Here’s the final result: “Hot Streak triggers exactly as stated in its tooltip: ’2 non-periodic spell criticals in a row using Fireball, Fire Blast, Scorch, Living Bomb, or Frostfire Bolt.’ Only non-periodic damage interacts with it, and only those spells listed. Periodics do not affect the streak in any way. Direct damage from the listed spells always count, for or against the streak.”

8/8/2009

• Prayer of Mending will now trigger Divine Aegis on the healed target and not the priest who cast Prayer of Mending.
• Players on vehicles, when the Isle of Conquest battleground ends, will now properly receive the appropriate number of Isle of Conquest Marks of Honor.
• General Vezax will now cast Shadow Crash slightly less frequently. He will also refrain from casting Searing Flames multiple times in succession.
• Hand of Reckoning is no longer able to be used on targets that are immune to taunt, including players.

8/6/2009

• Alchemist transmutes, while in raids, will now count towards quest completion.
• Steam-Powered Auctioneers are no longer attackable.
• The Generals in Isle of Conquest now do less damage.
• Druid, Priest and Shaman heal over time spells now appropriately trigger heal over time related effects, even when the target has full health.
• Mage Hot Streak Update:
  http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=19110153306&sid=1

Whether you like the Prince of Darkness or not, BlizzCon will be filled with all sorts of news and announcements. You can find out how to order either the DirecTV footage or the Internet stream in our preview guide to BlizzCon. Also, keep an eye out for our coverage on ZAM.com during the event.

You can also check out WaxPaper’s excellent BlizzCon guide over here!

The weapon damage and armor of items in the 5-man heroic Coliseum have been updated to match their levels, and epic gem recipes are now available from Aldor and Scryer vendors in Shattrath. You can check out all nine fixes after the jump.

• The weapon damage and armor of items dropped in the 5-man Coliseum Heroic version have been updated to match their item level.
• Using Braxley’s Backyard Moonshine will no longer trigger the regurgitation animation.
• Wintergrasp Commendation and Commendation of Bravery can no longer be used inside any battlegrounds.
• Kel’Thuzad should no longer cause some players to disconnect during the encounter.
• Reginald Arcfire will no longer grant Horde players access to the Alliance auction house.
• Epic gem recipes are now available from the following vendors in Shattrath:

  Kirembri Silvermane (Scryer)
  Nemiha (Aldor)
  Inessera (Aldor)

• XT-002 Deconstructor will now spawn in fewer adds.
• The Black Knight will now drop a Frozen Orb in heroic difficulty.
• Razorgore can once again be controlled multiple times and defeated appropriately.

Ozzy told Classic Rock magazine in June he was looking for a new guitarist to replace Wylde, although Wylde said in an interview with a radio station on July 29 he’s never even gotten a phone call from Ozzy about being replaced.

So will Ozzy be at BlizzCon? The Blabbermouth article emphasizes “this information has not yet been corroborated by anyone in the Osbourne camp and should be treated as a rumor only.” So only time will tell to see if this actually happens. Members of the ZAM team will be on the floor at BlizzCon, so we’ll be sure to keep an eye out for the Prince of Darkness.

Since this is a content update and not an expansion, don’t expect to see an opening cinematic. Instead, you’ll see in-game footage of massive dungeon fights and the Isle of Conquest battleground. If you’d rather see it in HD, you can download it for PC and Mac from the official site.

Imagine a game that has innovative combat, amazing graphics, in depth PvP, and has had months of polish. This is what Age of Conan fans had been hoping for prior to the release of AoC and many…

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