The swap to the F2P model will happen this March. New and old players will start their adventures with a Welcome Pack full of treasure, including experience potions, a decorative house item, a cosmetic weapon augment, and even a Mercenary to help you tackle trolls heralding your demise.

This isn’t the first time a Sony Online Entertainment has made the move away from the traditional subscription model. Within the last six months, the switch to F2P increased DC Universe Online’s concurrent users by 600% and EverQuest II’s new player base by 300%.

As expected, the payment method seems to have the flexibility of the EverQuest II model, with “recurring subscriptions, non-recurring subscriptions, Silver or Free memberships, item unlockers, and more.” With 18 expansions, the hardest part to the cash shop could be choosing where to start.

SOE will be discussing the details on their webcast Thursday night (February 2nd), but if you have questions, be sure to read the full announcement and check out the FAQs.

The backbone of the Rift app is the ability to chat with your guild in real time. Browse over a list of your current characters, select one, and seconds later you can see (and respond to) what people are saying about you while you’re at work. You can also see what guild members and friends are online, send them private messages, and make entries to the guild wall–an exclusive message board for your guild.

As I was chatting with my guildies today, I noticed that items and player abilities were being linked within the app. I clicked one and my phone immediately loaded up a picture, akin to the game’s tool tips, showing me the item’s stats, icon and designated equipment slot.

If playing games is more your thing, the Rift app also contains two mini-games that mimic scratch tickets, giving you the chance to win in-game rewards. I played a few games of each (tic-tac-toe and matching three of a kind) and earned various rewards, including crafting mats and collectible artifacts. It costs 1 token per game, and I started with six credits, but easily played 12 games thanks to the free replay bonuses given out as prizes. If you’re in an extra large line at the DMV, you’ll be able to scratch a few more games than that, as you regenerate one credit ever hour.

Another feature allows players to see what invasion events are happening at any given moment in Telara. So if that DMV line takes so long that you run out of mini-game tokens, you can at least see what events you’re missing out on, close your eyes, and pretend you’re there battling back baddies. Even better, the application has a customizable alarm system that can notify you the second an invasion strikes in a particular zone during a specified time.

Sure, MMO mobile apps may not make for the most productive work days, but this one does a great job of keeping you connected with the game world and your in-game family.

Check inside for the full list of our fifty things you need to know about The Old Republic.

• 01 Your choice of faction isn’t as simple as just goodies and baddies. You’re just as likely to meet corrupt Republic politicians as you are to meet hardworking and downtrodden Imperials. You can’t change your mind either, so go with whichever matches your long-term ambitions: do you want to be a respected Jedi Master, a feared Darth, or a legendary smuggler?
• 02 The Old Republic’s character progression system provides a wide range of potential roles: three of the four classes can heal, three of the four can tank, and three of the four can deal damage, depending on the advanced class you choose at level 10.
• 03 Warriors and Knights tank and do melee damage; Inquisitors and Consulars do ranged damage, heal, and can specialise in stealth; Troopers and Bounty Hunters provide fire support and tanking; Smugglers and Imperial Agents heal, provide crowd control, and can specialise in long-range damage, or stealth and melee.
• 04 Gender has an obvious impact on your character’s voice, and each race has a unique cosmetic emote: humans can cheer, cyborgs can scan people, and Twi’leks can dance. Oh man, can those Twi’leks dance.
• 05 Your starting planet depends on your faction and class. Jedi begin on Tython, which is the current home of the Order; Sith begin at the academy on Korriban, in the ancient excavation that you last explored in the original Knights of the Old Republic. Troopers and Smugglers find themselves in the middle of a civil war on Ord Mantell, and Bounty Hunters and Imperial Agents work for the approval of a crime lord on Hutta.

Every character has a basic ability that fires or swings their weapon.

• 06 There is no auto-attack: instead, every character has a basic ability that fires or swings the currently-equipped weapon. This is in the ‘1’ slot by default, and any ability in that slot can also be used by right-clicking an enemy in range.
• 07 Every class has a buff that lasts an hour and significantly increases certain stats. You should always keep this up, and cast it as soon as you enter a group: that way it’ll automatically apply to everyone.
• 08 Imperial Agents and Smugglers play significantly differently to other classes as a result of the cover system. By using your ‘Take Cover’ ability (F by default) you can crouch or roll behind a handy obstacle, increasing your defensive stats and unlocking coverbased abilities.
• 09 Both classes should drop into cover first thing in group fights, and when engaging foes at long-range. They soon unlock the ability to drop portable cover. Do this in hard-to-reach places, but you’ll still need line-of-sight to shoot.
• 10 If a conversation choice has a blue or red icon next to it, this means it will earn you Light Side or Dark Side points. These unlock alignment-specific equipment later in the game. Pick a side: there are no rewards for neutrality.

Dark side conversation options include the ability to force choke your enemies.

• 11 During non-story group conversations, you’ll roll a die to determine whether you get to speak. Either way, you’ll earn social points used to access new emotes and costumes. If your group makes a Dark Side decision and you choose the Light option, you’ll still get Light points, so don’t disengage your moral compass.
• 12 You’ll earn planet-specific commendations by doing missions. These are medals specific to a planet that can be traded for high-quality equipment. You can view all of your commendations on the ‘Currency’ tab in your inventory.
• 13 TOR is a pretty game, but it can look even better. If your graphics card can handle it, we definitely recommend enabling anti aliasing with some simple tweaks. Click here for our handy guide.
• 14 Every planet has hidden items called Datacrons. These glowing artefacts offer permanent increases to your stats. Some are found after a few minutes of solo exploration, some require fourplayer cooperation for upwards of an hour to snag.
• 15 Some items have modification slots for upgrades. These can be tailored to fit your play style – like fitting your lightsaber with a crystal that boosts willpower and subsequently your Force powers.

Some weapons can be upgraded to suit your play style.

• 16 High-quality modifications can be bought from commendation vendors. The best ones can be crafted after level 10.
• 17 If a doorway has a red forcefield over it, you’re not the right class or on the right mission to enter. Players of other classes can accompany you on your story missions, but you’ll need to tick a menu option before players of the same class can join you…
• 18 …But other players won’t get credit for completion of your story missions. That means all loot and XP is yours. They will, however, get experience from the enemies they kill, and the warm glow that comes from helping a chum.
• 19 Through story missions and certain achievements, you’ll earn titles to indicate that you’re a Jedi, a Sergeant, or just very nice. Set these by clicking the arrow next to your character’s name on the inventory screen.
• 20 Missions designated as Heroic are designed for groups. ‘Heroic 2+’ can be tackled by two or more players and their companions, or soloed by careful players. ‘Heroic 4’ is intended for a full group of four.

Companions have a specific key stat that affects their skills.

• 21 You’ll receive your first companion around level 8. These are summoned and dismissed using the blue portrait at the bottom-left of the screen. Click the ‘plus’ icon to see their full range of abilities – here you can set which ones you want them to use.
• 22 Click your companion’s portrait and use the button in the bottom-right to send them to sell your trash loot. They’ll return in a minute with your credits, the faithful buggers.
• 23 Companion customisation items dramatically alter the appearance of your allies. You’ll receive one on your starting planet, and others are available from specialist vendors.
• 24 Each companion has a particular key stat that affects the majority of their skills. You can tell which it is by mousing over each item on their character sheet to see where the bonuses are coming from. Prioritise this stat over all else when looking for equipment.
• 25 Equipment will change appearance to match the class equipping it. If you give your Bounty Hunter companion a piece of Trooper armour, it’ll look handmade rather than shiny and white.

The Ultimate Christmas giveaway will run until Christmas Eve. Every day we’ll be posting about a new prize that’s up for grabs, and you’ll have 24 hours after the time of publishing to enter. Sadly, we’re only able to open this competition to UK residents.

Our stockings are stuffed full of prizes today readers, because we have an astonishing 150 copies of Rift to give away. No, that is not a typo, one hundred and fifty lucky readers will win a boxed copy of Rift, complete with 30 days playtime. We gave Rift 86% back in PC Gamer UK 226, and you can read the US team’s Rift review online. If you’re planning to join in, why not check out the PC Gamer Rift Guild to find someone to play with?

Check inside for details of how to enter.

To enter, just answer this question:

In the game are portals to other planes that spew out monsters. Currently there are Air, Fire, Water, Earth, Life, and Death, but I want you to make up a new kind of Rift! What dimension does it connect to? What comes out?

The best, funniest and most creative answers will win a copy of Rift. If you win, you’ll get a private message via the forums. Let us know your address and we’ll send you your prizes shortly after Christmas. Remember, this competition is open to UK readers only. Also, if you don’t claim your prize within three weeks of being notified we’ll offer it to someone else. Full terms and conditions can be found here.

Good luck everyone!

To snag your new swag, just head to the counterpart post at GamesRadar and follow the instructions there. You’ll have a leg-up over the competition when you net your 5-slot Adventurer’s Bag, extra storage, HP and MP potions, and some resurrection scrolls—the perfect set of items to get your heroic journey started.

Do you fancy yourself a born leader? What if you could prove it, without the fake photo smiles, baby-kissing, or mud-slinging of real world politics? With TERA’s upcoming political system, you can set out on a campaign for control from the comfort of your butt-contoured chair. In this exclusive video, hear from TERA producer Chris Hager as he explains the ins-and-outs of taking office in an MMO. Whether you attain leadership through brute force or popularity, you’ll have a heck of a time working to please the people and get the server population on your side. But hey—isn’t that what politics are all about?

The mod is currently extremely basic. Players can chat with eachother and see a representation of other players. The mod’s description claims other players are represented by a ‘spectral horse’, which sounds hilarious, but the version I tested instead had unclothed player models in a standard animation pose, gliding around. You can attack and cast spells on other players, but they don’t currently display any effects.

Despite all this simplicity however, the mod represents an impressive first step on the road to a true Skyrim MMO mod. We’ll definitely be adding it to our Skyrim Mods list, and keeping a close eye on it.

If that sounds like your sort of thing, you’ll want one of our codes to try it out. Check inside to see what you get and how to get it.

Each code will grant you the following:

• A powerful set of ‘Gamer Gear’ armour
• 7 days deluxe membership
• 50 gold bars to spend on the in game market

 
To claim your code simply go to our competition page and fill if your details, you’ll receive an email containing your codes when the competition ends on Monday morning.

Once you’ve got your code, head to the Crimecraft website to redeem it.

If you’re not sure if you’re going to splash the cash for the DLC, check out ourDC Universe Online Lightning Strikes preview to see what you get.

What are you doing, Matt?” asked my friend. It was March 2002 and he had spotted me through the window of our college computer room. Why wasn’t I in the pub with the rest of our friends? I explained that I was playing a free fantasy MMO called Runescape. Technically, that was true. It was certainly true enough to suffice as an answer for now.

“Oh. Right.” He was clearly unimpressed by the low-resolution 3D blobs trundling around the screen. “Is it to do with killing dragons and goblins?” “Yes,” I lied. “It’s just a bit of fun.” I wasn’t happy that my new friends at college thought I was spending all my free time killing waves of magical monsters, but it was better than the truth. The truth was that, driven by impatience and greed, I had found myself running a coal mining business fuelled by child labour.

In my defence, I didn’t intend for it to end up this way. I don’t think anyone living in rural Cheshire ever really intends to get into child exploitation. I never really planned to start buying Rage Against the Machine albums, and I wouldn’t recommend that either.

None of what I achieved back then could be carried out today, anyway. In 2007, Runescape’s developers introduced the Grand Exchange, a marketplace in which players are able to easily buy and sell their goods for fair and reasonable prices. Back in 2002, though, Runescape was a wild new world. Outside of the game’s NPC shops, buying and selling items usually relied on players simply standing on the streets for hours at a time, shouting their best offers at anyone who’d listen. It was a world ripe with opportunity for deceit.

Wizards and chickens, a classic combination.

I wasn’t always a manipulative git. My earliest obsession with Runescape was driven by a confused fascination. My younger brother had started playing shortly after the game first went online in 2001, and initially I was happy to watch over his shoulder as he mindlessly pottered around this strange and muddy world of unappealing shapes and colours.

Most of his exploration revolved around an area known as ‘the Wilderness’, an anything-goes PvP zone that was especially deadly for low-level players unaware of the dangers. My brother explained that if you were quick, you could nip across the border and grab bits of unwanted loot from the corpse of the winner’s victim. The trinkets were cheap, but he seemed to enjoy playing the part of a professional vulture.

Mostly though, he’d be in the windmill. “I’m making pies,” he said, picking up two freshly spawned tins from the kitchen floor.

“You collect grain from outside, then grind it in the mill to make flour,” he explained. “Then you get clay to make a jug, and fill it with water to turn the flour into pastry. You put that into the tin with some berries or meat, then it goes in the oven and you sometimes get a good pie.” This specific distinction explained the abandoned black discs that covered the kitchen floor, and why none of the other players seemed interested in scavenging them.

Magicpants was a lover, not a fighter.

Part of me knew I should stay away, but there was something strangely compelling about an MMO that wouldn’t give you the ability to make a pie until you’d burnt about 15 of the bastards. In February of 2002, my character Magicpants was born.

At first, Magicpants just wanted to be a warrior. After hours of constant battle, he learned the true cost of warfare: fruity pies. Healing up naturally took ages, so it was always best to stock up on tasty cakes before dashing into the field. Pies were expensive to buy though, so most of the world’s bravest warriors would run out in to the Wilderness, fight for a while, and then retire to the kitchen to master the art of pastry. It was odd. The elves in The Lord of the Rings might have had a penchant for magical chunks of bread, but you can hardly imagine Legolas nipping off to make a cheeky Bakewell tart. After seeing the carbon-coated carpet of the windmill’s kitchen, I decided I’d be better off risking death.

Unfortunately, this meant that I often found myself biting off more than I could chew. Fights were tough, and weren’t made any easier by a zoomed-in interface that made it almost impossible to move and talk at the same time. To compensate, players would boil down messages to impenetrable acronyms that, even now, make very little sense. Sporadic bursts of movement paired with exclamations of “HH” usually translated as: “Oh God, help me! I’m being killed by a goblin!” Few players ever worked out these cries, causing me to fall again and again to depressingly avoidable deaths.

After one too many, I realised why so few people in the game seemed capable of social interaction.

Go to page two for the rise of the Magicpants empire.

It seems that developers Sony Online Entertainment have put a great amount of attention to detail into the design, though. It reminds me of those videos showing how much effort Crytek put into the paunchy, jumpy man’s suit for Crysis 2.

You’re probably asking yourself, “What are these drones and how can they possibly be worth 356 copies of Orcs Must Die (which is on sale for only $3.74 in today’s Steam sale)?” Dark Orbit is a spaceship MMO and players use drones to help aid their ships during interstellar combat. The most powerful drone is the level 10 Zeus Drone, which is extremely rare and difficult to make, making it a hot commodity for anyone seeking a top position in the game. So Bigpoint decided to sell them at a ridiculously high cost, to see how many would bite–and way more than I would’ve guessed went for it. Pay-to-win may not be an endorsed strategy for many gamers, but sales numbers like these show that people are more than willing to pay for the extra power to step up their game.

Click the image below to see the full page.

The “shooter” control scheme is simple to enable: either go into the menu and select it from a drop-down, or hit B on the keyboard. A targeting reticule will pop up on your screen, and the camera will switch to over your shoulder, similar to a third-person shooter. Going into shooter mode also changes the way you enable your abilities. The left and right mouse buttons are your main and alternate attack, and the middle button is your melee attack. Just point at your target and use an ability to activate it. No more Tab targeting for you!

Green beams make any gun better.

This might seem like a simple change, but it adds a tremendous amount of fun to the ground combat. Running and gunning through Klingon and Romulan outposts seems much more epic when you can dive into a Max Payne–style leap across hallways with your dual phaser pistols. Not very Star Trek, but a hell of a lot of fun!

While the majority of the game remains very solo player friendly, the end of the game leans heavily on fleets, which are STO’s version of guilds. There just isn’t as much to do as a solo player when you reach the higher ranks as there is when you’re leveling your captain through the earlier portion of the game. Klingon content, a lackluster afterthought at the game’s launch, has grown immensely, but it’s still not as vast as the Federation content.

I need to stop buying gear at the same place my friends do.

Hmm, that guy at the computer console is really focused on his work.

Hey you! Yes you with the face, did you enter our Old Republic beta key giveaway? You did? Then I suggest you check your emails, because you and thousands of others should find a key there waiting for you. Remember, you have to register it on the Old Republic site before midnight tonight, or it’ll expire! With that finished, you’ll be able to join the beta weekend on the 25th of November.

If you didn’t enter, it’s too late now, the giveaway is over. Sorry.

Flash Fact #2: Sony are capitalising on this by working on a new DLC pack called Lightning strikes.

Similar to the Green Lantern themed Fight for the Light pack, this pack offers a new set of content themed around one of the iconic DC characters, in this case The Flash. New with Lightning Strikes will be an Electricity power set, a new map based around the Flash’s home town of Central City, new gear, new characters and more.

Check inside for a rundown of what’s included and some early screenshots:

Included in the DLC pack are:

• Electricity Powers – Including powers like Tesla Ball, Shockwave and Ionic Drain
• Central City – A new zone with solo and group missions
• New Gear – Including a Professor Zoom inspired set for villains and a Black Lightning inspired pack for heroes.
• New Characters – Including Livewire, Black Lightning, The Top, The Trickster and Static.
• The Flash Museum Duo – An adventure starting in the Flash museum where players travel back in time to make sure Barry Allen becomes The Flash.

Click through for full details:

The update includes:

• The Ember Isle was once the home of Rift’s Kelari Elves, and has only recently been rediscovered. A volcanic Island full of ruined, ancient cities. It’s designed for level 50 players and features new monsters, colossi and zone events.
• New Raid – The ten player raid ‘Rise of the Phoenix can be found in Stonefield
• New Warfront Mode – Black Garden now includes the ‘Stockpile’ mode.
• A second tier of ‘Planar Attunement’, Rift’s post level cap advancement system.

 
More details can be found at the Rift site.

Our own Old Republic beta key giveaway ends today, so you still have some time to grab one and secure your place. If you’ve already entered, your code will arrive as soon as the doors close, but be sure to register it before midnight tomorrow, or it’ll expire.

Last weekend beta testers put a million hours into The Old Republic. Given the amount of extra players invited, the next one looks set to smash that record.

For the same reason, pre-orders of the game are being carefully limited “One of the ways we can ensure the service is good is we’re not selling beyond a certain point,” said Zeschuck. “Like, at a certain point it’ll sell out. We will release more units based on the stability of the service, then we will turn that dial carefully.”

The number is set to get bigger too, with a massive stress testing weekend planned in the near future. If you haven’t already been invited and want to try it out, check out our Old Republic beta key giveaway, you still have another day to enter and secure your place.

What are your memories of MMO launch days readers? Will The Old Republic manage a hassle free release?

Update - If you’ve already received an email telling you you’ll be invited to a test weekend ‘very soon’ you won’t need one of these keys, you’ll get your invitation in good time.

To enter, simply go to competition page and fill in your details, you’ll receive a code as soon as the giveaway ends. Pop that code into the Old Republic website before before Friday November 18 (when it expires) and wait. You’ll get an an invitation for the beta weekend as soon as it kicks off.

If you get into the beta, why not join the PC Gamer guild? Which class will you be? So far I’m liking the Imperial Agent and the Smuggler.

On top of its three factions – The Vanu Sovereignity, The New Conglomerate and The Terran Republic – there are six character classes each to choose from. “Each faction has specific gameplay implementations that basically make each faction feel like a unique game,” says Higby. “Terran Republic isn’t always going to beat Vanu and New Conglomerate isn’t always going to lose to Vanu, but they have a unique approach that they’re going to have to take to take those guys out.”

Planetside 2 keeps the classes fluid, rather like Team Fortress 2’s approach. “You’re not locked into a class when you play,” says Higby. “So when you create your character you’re don’t select a class an then you’re always that class you can switch back and forth any time you respawn, any time you’re at an equipment terminal. You can constantly try out each one of those classes and figure out what about the classes you want or what your empire needs.”

Like its predecessor, Planetside uses a certification system to power up players’ abilities- which makes it easier to switch specialisation and classes mid-game. “Our advancement system is time based, so it’s similar to Eve Online,” says Higby. “I can go here and I can start earning these certs and they’ll just start to tick down over time whether I’m online or offline…You can definitely tailor make each one of these classes to fit your specific playstyle.”

Higby demonstrates the classes themselves with the Infiltrator, a “spy-type character”. “You can really spec out in different ways, you can spec out this infiltrator to be a really sneaky gadgety, sabotage focused guy, or you could spec him to be more recon focused. And you’ll be able to say, hey this time when I get my loadout I’m going to bring my sniper rifles and a few gadgets and I’m going to be a very dedicated wilderness sniper character. But then next time you respawn you might say okay cool I’m going to bring a bunch of C4, I’m going to bring motion detectors and now I’m going to be a subterfuge/obfuscated kind of ghost recon character.”

Working alongside the Infiltrator is the Engineer. “He’ll be sort of like an analogue to the medic,” says Higby. “He can use combat engineering abilities to be able to able to place barriers, to be able to place emplaced guns, repair vehicles. But he can also beyond just doing cool support stuff – he can do a lot of offensive stuff too.”

Each faction uses unique colours and sounds to distinguish themselves on the battlefield. If you’re being attacked by a blue thing making a bassy noise, you can be pretty certain that it’s a New Conglomerate person with a light machine gun. “A hundred metres away it’s hard to tell, but the sound is always identifiable,” says Higby.

On top of the classes and certificates, there are what Higby terms “sidegrades”. “If I’m less of a precision player and more of a spray and pray type I could be like I’m going to configure my weapon to have a larger clip, more recoil, less damage but I’m going to be able to fire 50% more bullets per second,” says Higby. “Those sort of customisations are kind of the heart of what we’re doing with weapon customisations and vehicle customisation. So you create it, not so that you get a power advantage, but so that you’re tailoring for you.”

Tellingly, when Higby started out in Planetside’s quality assurance department he played mostly as the New Conglomerate, because they appealed to his rebellious nature. His faction of choice having moved up the ranks? “Now I’m more in a management role I kind of find myself leaning more towards the ideals of the Terran Republic, like discipline, order and the rule of law,” he says.

Wait, no. That’s not the best part. Not anymore. The real best part is that you can play it – or at least, its PVP arena – from now until October 30. After that, it’s receding back into the fog of war and/or game development “since technically it isn’t even ready for an open beta.” And while beggars can’t be choosers, every class kitted out with level 30 gear is hardly moldy table scraps.

So go check it out while you still have the chance. Just search “SC Universe PvP – Dev Preview” on Battle.net and you should be good to go. And maybe even a little jacked up. Maybe.

Today at PC Gamer, we’re giving away magic beans! And you won’t even have to trade away your cow to get them either.

We’re giving away 1,000 goodie bags for side scrolling hack and slash MMO Dragonica, to celebrate the release of their expansion, New Origin. Each one is full of useful items, including the aforementioned magic beans, although these ones double your experience rather than growing a giant beanstalk full of angry giants, which is much more useful.

Check inside for details.

If you’re not familiar with Dragonica, it’s a hybrid of retro Golden Axe style button mashing action (so much so that it even supports USB adapted SNES and MegaDrive pads) and traditional MMO mechanics.

Each code can be redeemed by taking it to Gatto, the laughing cat and exchanging it for a goodie bag containing:

• 12x Jack’s Bean (Group Double XP for 10 minutes)
• 10x 2x EXP Potion for 1 hour
• 1x Medium HP Eternity Potion (Big Barrel of Health)
• 1x Medium MP Eternity Potion (Big Barrel of Mana)

 
You can enter by going to our competition site. Just fill in your details and your code will be mailed to you when the competition ends on Monday October 2nd. This competition is only open to European readers. You have till January 31st 2012 to use your code.

If you already have an account for another gpotato.eu game, it will carry over to Dragonica, if you don’t, it’s easy to sign up, and download the client.

Core Blaze reminds me of some of my favorite Sony games of the past, with combat reminiscent of Mark of Kri and intense bossfights against titanic monsters ala Monster Hunter. You’ve got four dynamic weaponsets to choose from: sword and shield (tank), great sword (slow-but-hefty DPS), dual blade (lightning-fast DPS), and long bow (ranged DPS). What’s nice is that you can switch between these styles whenever you want (provided you’re not in combat), meaning you’re never locked into a role that won’t benefit your party. Combat emphasizes twitch reflexes, with evasive maneuvers keeping you healthy and combos being a necessary part of maximizing your damage-per-second. A gamepad is recommended, but know that button-mashing won’t get you very far in CB’s cooperative battles.

Ah, my favorite pasttime: slicing off scarecrow legs.

As you’ll see in the above trailer, bossfights don’t pull any punches, demanding quick thinking and even quicker sword-slashing. That blue panther-monster is Liang Qu, the ice-empowered guardian of the Hunter’s Cave instance. Fighting him will be about reacting to his lunges and dodging properly when he bounces off the walls, claws bared. You can also damage various parts of his body, granting a boon that could turn the tide of a fight. For instance, if a player shatters Liang Qu’s fangs with a great sword, he’ll unleash a super-charged berserk mode for extra damage.

Here, kitty kitt-AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Besides battling against feline monstrosities, Core Blaze sounds like it could offer interesting discoveries for those players who prefer to explore the world. Depending on what time of day it is, and what the weather’s like, you may be able to access side-quests on previously-unreachable paths. For instance, while trekking through the Forest of Meditation, rainy weather will raise the water levels in a nearby river will allow adventurers to access a hidden encounter in a seemingly-inaccessible cave. Other items, like a hook shot (Legend of Zelda, anyone?), will bolster your beast-hunting ability.

The tank just remembered that he left the stove on.

Core Blaze is preparing for a Q2 2012 release in Asia, with a North American release date not yet determined. We’ll be keeping an eye out on this one, and be sure to check out our upcoming exclusive interview with the developers (as soon as it’s translated!).

The K90 MMO keyboard and K90 MMO mouse, along with the FPS friendly K60 and M60 keyboard and mouse have been developed under the auspices of Ruben Mookerjee, who in a previous incarnatiuon oversaw the launch of Logitech’s G-series of gear.

Mookerjee takes his new role at Corsair seriously. For some people, he says, getting the right peripherals “is a matter of life or death. At Corsair, we say it’s more important than that.”

One assumes he’s speaking figuratively about shrugging of the mortal coil in-game. Hopefully.

The peripherals don’t need much in the way of build up, however. Last month I reviewed the Mionix Zibal Z60, and thought it was one of the best keyboards I’ve ever tested. First impressions of the Corsair K60 suggest I should probably have been a bit less effuse with praise.

Both the K90 and M90 keyboards are built around an aluminium chassis and feature Cherry MX Red mechanical switches. These don’t have the same hard ‘click’ into position as the Cherry MX Blacks of the Mionix Z60 and Blues of the Razer Black Widow, and as a result feel slightly softer, but they are quieter while being just as responsive. Mookerjee explained that noise from the keyboards is further reduced by not putting a plastic cover over the aluminium base – there’s nothing for the sound to resonate through. An interesting theory that seems to work.

The K90 features 18 extra macro buttons down the right hand side which can be programmed into three presets for class changes in MMOs. The K60, meawhile, doesn’t have extra keys but it does include a truly awesome one-sided wrist rest. As well as providing all the support you need without taking up your entire desk, it opens up to store the black capped WASD and number keys as well as the tool for switching them out. By default, these keys are coloured red and have a different texture and contour to the rest of layout.

As far as mice go, both have aluminium bases designed to lower the centre of gravity and provide a flat, durable surface to the desk, as well as 5600 DPI sensors. The M90 has nine macro keys arranged in a circle around the thumb, which should be easier to reach than those on, say, the Razer Naga. The M60, meanwhile, has a ‘sniper button’ on the thumb rest, which acts as a shift key for temporarily lowering the resolution. The idea, Mookerjee says, is that instead of scrolling up and down resolutions while sniping, for example, you simply hold this key down and release it when done.

The best bit – especially for the keyboards – is the price. The K90 is pricey, at £109/$129, but the K60 is – by my reckoning – one of the best value mechanical keyboards around at $89/$109. Plus it looks amazing.

Production samples for a full review should be available closer to the on sale date, which is scheduled for next month.

Current players have access to the new in-game store and the new First Ward area. The head start program will also feature a number of events, with the developers promising costume competitions and a live alien invasion by the forces of Hamidon and Praetoria.

The full update will go live later this year, marking City of Heroes’ transition to a free to play game.

The Old Republic European beta will be starting shortly, with the game due out later this year.

Speaking about the emergency meeting of the Eve player council, following protests over the Incarna update Gianturco said. “Worse, our interactions with CCP’s upper management in the aftermath of the Emergency Summit have shown us that the suits are not treating the needs of the players with the gravity they deserve; our willingness to negotiate in a chill way with the [Flying in Space] teams (which has met with obvious success) is being misinterpreted as a sign of weakness and compliance by the suits. ”

Gianturco is just getting warmed up it seems, promising that “In the coming weeks we are going to be making some extremely loud statements regarding the neglect of FiS, the failure of Incarna, and the need for CCP’s management to pull the game out of this stall. We need something new to do, not something new to wear. “

Graham was impressed by Age of Wulin when we saw it at Gamescom last month, and it looks like it has some interesting ideas, one of the most unusual being that your character becomes an NPC when you are logged out, helping populate towns with offline players.

Age of Wulin is will be released next year.

Sadly the statement contained no information Star Trek will follow Champions in using Steam’s new free to play system or continue with its own payment model.

Would you be more likely to try Star Trek Online when it’s free?

Sadly the blood vomiting Red Lanterns are nowhere to be seen. Shame, they seemed such charming fellows.

Otherland will be free to play, and is slated for release in 2012.

The Secret World will be released in April 2012. Beta registrations start next week on the 26th of August.

Firefall looks more exciting every time a new video is released. The latest trailer on IGN shows how players’ gargantuan jetpacks can spawn glowing wings of energy that let them soar over the MMO’s vast redstone landscapes. It’s easy to forget Firefall will be free to play when you watch a team launch themselves off a cliff and dive bomb a battlefield. Find out more about Firefall in our preview.

The devs have also recorded a new diary on Firefall’s sound design. Many of the sounds they create have unusual origins. Check out the video below for footage of a man breaking a hammer over a pumpkin.

Every day is better when you’ve seen an adorable panda shooting a bow and arrow at a gargantuan monster. Well, technically, it’s a Popori, but you get what I mean. Check out this exclusive footage of the new Dark Cathedral dungeon, coming soon to the Korean-import MMO TERA. Whether or not you’re a fan of the MMO genre, the visuals on display here are UNDENIABLY gorgeous. This quick playthrough of the instance gives you a look at all the bosses you’ll have to down if you want that phat loot, as well as the ominous interior of the once-pure cathedral. If only more games could incorporate low-cut dresses, killer pandas, and dudes smacking around skeletons with two-handed cleavers, the world would be a better place.

Details on the closure within.

Speaking with Massively President of Sony Online Entertainment John Smedley said that the closure was a “Mutual business decision” and that “The contract would be running out in 2012 anyway, so we feel like it’s the right time for the game to end.”

Smedley denied the recent hacking of Sony Online Entertainment had anything to do with the closure had anything to do with the decision, saying; “We have been in talks with LucasArts for a while about this, and we’ve just been trying to figure out the exact timing for a while now. None of that stuff had anything to do with this.”

He also said that the game’s cancellation was not due to low population numbers, saying the “Populations have stayed pretty steady for a long time now” but that fans would not be allowed to access the source code in order to run their own servers post closure. He remained upbeat, saying: “The game’s been running for a long time now, and it’s been a great run. We’re glad to have done it.”

In game events leading up to the closure seem likely, with Sony planning to detail them in upcoming weeks, subscribers will also get the chance to play some other Sony Online Entertainment games for free in towards the end of the MMO. Anyone wanting to participate in those final events will need to be a subscriber ‘in good standing’ by September 15th.

Update: The winners have been Chosen! (See what I did there?) If you’re one of the lucky winners, you’ll be receiving your key shortly. Thanks to everyone who entered!

Need more Asian spice in your MMO palate? Allow me to direct your attention to The Chosen, a free-to-play MMO that’s been ported from China to the states by Snail Games. Now, admittedly, I know next to nothing about this game—but I’m a sucker for stories set in the turbulent Three Kingdoms period, and the Diablo-esque action looks to be right up my alley. Want to know how you can be one of the first to play The Chosen with access to the closed beta? Read on to find out how you too can become a true Dynasty warrior.

Nice hat!

If you’d like to join the ranks of The Chosen, you’ve come to right place. To enter, simply leave a comment below saying, in whatever manner you choose, that you want a key! It’s that simple! The first 50 people to comment, explicitly stating that they want in, will be emailed (via the email address connected to their PCGamer.com account) a key with instructions. Now, get out there, and make the Emperor proud.

“So you’ll jump into the character creator first and as you’re going through and setting up your character the entry level zones will then download in the background. Once those download in the background it downloads the rest of the game.”

The new system will launch alongside City of Heroes: Freedom later this year, with the aim of making it more accessible for new player: “Our hope is that a new player for the very first time that wants to try out City of Heroes is in the game within five minutes.” Clayton said.

Details and screens of the new areas are within.

Clayton told us: “First off it starts with a new zone called first ward and first ward is sort of the next major progression in the praetorian storyline. It’s probably got some of the sexiest graphics and the best content that we’ve introduced. It’s got new villains to go after, new types of seers. I think it’s four new villain groups that are introduced with that content, we also introduce a new incarnate trial called the underground which is absolutely phenomenal, we’ve been beta testing that for, gosh, I think close to a year now. It’s by far the most allotted content that our beta testers have seen and loved.”

He added “You’re not only playing in new environments against new villains but at the end of it you get to go against the Avatar of Hammadon, which is a whole new giant monster that we’ve introduced with really cool boss mechanics and things like that. Also in the first ward zone we have a new monster called the Seed of Hammadon, which is a huge mothership that was created by Hammadon that launches little fighters out of it’s bays and you can fully interact with the giant monster and the fighters and things like that.”

In addition, the move to free-to-play will introduce a new tutorial section, Clayton told us: “if you know City of Heroes we took one of the entry zones for the hero side, Galaxy City, and it’s been completely destroyed by meteors and we’ve got some exciting new villains and monsters for our new customers to engage with right away. They’ll also be fighting next to signature heroes from the City of Heroes IP. So it’s a very seamless, clean and contemporary and just a very fun experience all the way.”

Speaking about new items and costume pieces Brand Manager Hosun Lee said: “One of the most popular items is going to be something called an enhancement unslotter. Right now when you do a respect in City of Heroes you have to do the entire character, you can’t do one power at a time, we’re going to give players the ability to basically do respecs a la carte. We’re also granting players new costume parts. It’s got some great features players have been asking for once again such as glowing energy wings to make you look more angelic, you can leave a trail of fire behind you when you’re running, things like that. As well as other consumables such as double xp boosts, ability summons, temporary pets and a lot more than that.”

Finally, following issue 21 Paragon are promising monthly updates for VIP subscribers: “We’re adding a new kind of content to the game called signature stories.” Producer Brian Clayton detailed “Signature stories are exclusive to VIP customers. What’s really cool about that is that you now get to partake in the epic moments of the City of Heroes story unfolding and every month we’ll be releasing these new signature stories which will be able to be participated in from both the hero perspective and the villain perspective. So each story arc is anywhere from three to five missions, but you’ll be able to participate in it from each side so it’ll be anywhere from six to ten missions per month.”

More screenshots below.

Details within.

Producer Brian Clayton told PC Gamer that the team had been working towards the new model for “Well over a year at this point.”

When asked how much content would be available to free players, Clayton said: “I think there are a few things we’re going to set aside for the VIP subscribers, but the majority will absolutely be available.” Taking the game’s famous character creator as an example he said “I believe the percentage that free players will have access to is somewhere close to 70/75% of the costume sets and costume pieces.”

City of Heroes will also include a loyalty system to offer subscriber like benefits to those who do not take out a subscription but do purchase a significant amount of in game items: “And in fact I think we’re one of the few, or maybe the only, that will allow these… I call them premium players: players that sort of play a-la-carte, they pick and choose a few things that are very interesting them from the store but they don’t actually become a VIP subscriber. These folks who have purchased enough things through the store they’ll be able to sort of grow through our paragon rewards program and as they hit different tiers within that program, even though they’re not a VIP subscriber, they’ll be able to open up more of the initial limitations that are put on a free player.”

Current City of Heroes subscribers will become VIP subscribers come the switch, but will begin accruing ‘paragon points’ from July 1st, which will be spendable in the in game store when it launches. VIP players will also get a new monthly version of the current veteran rewards system and their own server.

There will be some restrictions placed on free players though, with only two player slots and eight archetypes available. For example, while the mission architect system will be completely unlocked for VIPs, free players will have to unlock it (somehow, NCsoft declined to specify) in order to fully access it. Here’s a full description of how the features break down.

Play for Free:

• Play as a Hero or Villain for up to Level 50.
• Play up to two characters (total).
• Select from 8 character archetypes and over 100 power sets.
• Play in 45 different game zones.

 
VIP Players:

• Existing City of Heroes subscribers retain all benefits, including 12 character slots per server.
• Receive 400 Paragon Points a month to use in the Paragon Market.
• Experience VIP content, including the City of Heroes Going Rogue™ expansion.
• Play on a VIP-only server.
• Enjoy one free character transfer per month, priority queuing, and VIP customer support.

 
Returning City of Heroes Players:

• Get everything that play-for-free players get.
• Retain everything you already purchased or unlocked, including character slots, super boosters, expansions, Veteran Rewards, and Epic archetypes.

 
So what do you think readers? Will this shift inspire you to try out City of Heroes when the update lands?

After watching that video, you may be feeling bad about yourself for not possessing an afro with that level of awesomeness. But don’t worry! We’d be delighted to give you the Wonder Girls (a $25 value) or Disco (a $9 value) costume packs. To enter, all you have to do is email contents@pcgamer.com, with “Oh yes, I’ve got the look.” as the subject line. In the body of the email, specify which costume you’d prefer, which faction you’re a part of (Elyos or Asmodian), and why you want your outfit of choice. We’ll be giving out prizes to 20 Disco winners and 6 Wonder Girls winners; soon, the Aion community will be basking in your fashionable glory. We’ve also got 30 codes for the Wonder Girls dance emotes to give away, and let’s face it: we could all use some sweet dance moves in our repertoire.

We’ll select the lucky winners on Tuesday, June 21st. Now get out there and bust a move!

Read on for the details.

When asked about the possibility of an MMO, Ray told the website “I think there’s many, many different directions we could go in in the future with new IPs and extensions, business models and platforms. We really want to go where our fans are and some of the ideas you mention – there are definitely possibilities.”

Dr. Ray did insist that Bioware are “committed to The Old Republic for many, many years plus launch,” saying: “It’s going to be a massive endevour to drive content towards fans and make sure the service quality is really high… we have some really cool stuff going on with our Virginia studio out of Bioware Mythic.”

We’re exploring new types of online play. We also have some new things in the pipe we haven’t announced yet out of our Edmonton studio… We’re obviously looking at Mass Effect, Dragon Age – they’re epic franchises, and we have more things planned in the future. Mass Effect 3 is the beginning of a Galactic war. The future’s bright.”

Mass Effect 3 is due for release in March 2012. You can read Josh’s first impressions here, and Tom’s “15 things we want to see from Mass Effect 3″ here. Star Wars: The Old Republic will hit PC later this year. We have a whopping three previews on the site.

Starting tomorrow, each of the five games will offer exclusive in-game content to those players who try out the “free-to-play game of the day.” That likely means Champions Online will soon be inundated with new players wearing Pyro masks or wielding Gordon’s crowbar, which can only be a good thing for all involved.

Read on for a few more thoughts.

You can find all five games in the new free-to-play section of the Steam store.

The news here is that Steamworks’ micropayment functionality is being used across all the games. The tech was originally rolled out for Team Fortress 2′s Mannconomy update, and it has been generating wads of money for Valve and prompting occasional ire from gamers ever since. Given that these games were already free-to-play with micropayments though, it seems like little cause for further consternation.

Instead, it seems like a good thing. Free-to-play games vary in quality wildly, and there’s so many of them from so many developers that it’s difficult to work out which are worth your time. Having a bunch of them in a central place like Steam, where you can see what your friends are playing, should make it easier to work out what’s worth your time. It’ll also stop these games being so marginalised and take away a little of the stigma of playing them. If that results in the good free-to-play games getting the attention they deserve, then that’s great.

So many rumours are swirling about a potential multiplayer mode to be announced for Mass Effect 3 that they’ve formed a giant rumour tornado. It’s currently sweeping across Los Angeles, leaving a trail of destruction and frantically whispering games journalists in its wake. Truly upsetting to behold.

Not that you’d know from BioWare’s doctorly heads, Dr. Greg and Dr. Ray. They’re the calm eye at the centre of the rumournado. When one of our Future friends also at E3 asked them if ME3 would be the first game in the series to feature multiplayer, they responded that they had nothing to announce. Nothing to announce at E3. That, for those of you yet to have your coffee, means that a multiplayer mode could yet be announced in the future. CVG certainly seem to think that’s the case anyway, having dug through job ads to find sufficient evidence, and their argument’s fairly convincing.

Click through to watch another video where two very powerful men grin meaningful grins.

Failing the inclusion of a multiplayer mode in Mass Effect 3 – which CVG say might be a ‘horde’ style, with groups of humans holding off AI enemies – there’s always the outside chance of a dedicated multiplayer shooter set in the rich Mass Effect universe. Back before the Spike TV VG awards that showed the game’s first trailer, a noisy corner of the internet was adamant that we’d be getting a pseudo-Battlefield with biotic powers. BioWare have refused to rule anything set in the universe out, saying instead that they want to “go where their fans are.” This could even mean a Mass Effect MMO in the future: the company’s development of the Old Republic mean they’ve got the know-how, even if their commitment to TOR means they’ll be keen not to stand on their own MMO-toes. See the video below for full details, and a complete lack of denial.

EA certainly have the developers to do what they want with Mass Effect. Imagine a DICE-helmed multiplayer shooter, detailing battles on Virmire, or Reaper-infested Earth? Oh dear, I’ve gone all tingly. But should the Mass Effect universe be diluted, or kept as a monstrously successful, neatly wrapped-up trio. I’m not sure. What do you guys want?

City of Heroes (and City of Villains, for that matter) won’t let trippy anime or Rise of Legends have all the steampunk fun—they’ve unleashed the Steampunk Pack on the world of superpowered individuals, complete with snappy new costumes, powers, auras, and emotes. Want to see the glory of low-tech fashion for free? Read on to see how you can win the pack and join your fellow Victorian-era allies!

To enter, simply email contests@pcgamer.com with the subject line “I’m a dapper dandy, old chap!” We’ll randomly choose 15 lucky winners on this Friday, June 3rd. Now, be warned: you’ll need an existing City of Heroes and City of Villains account to make use of this pack, so only enter if you already play CoH games—otherwise, you could end up winning a code you can’t even use! Good luck, and remember: modern-day conveniences are for sissies. I’ll take a Victorian Bike over a car any day.

UPDATE: Winners have been selected and the codes have been mailed out. Thanks to everyone who entered!

The 2.5 update for Aion – Empyrean Calling – is now available. The game was already easily one of the most graphically impressive MMOs on the market, being built on the CryEngine that powered the original Far Cry. There’s also an expanded character customisation tool and several other touches and alternations to further improve the game. You can see them all in motion in the video above.

Players can access the new content on the games test server now.

[via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

The team have devoted years to their bespoke engine: “We took a new approach. No off-the-shelf 3D engine was used… pick a direction and start to walk, or swim, or fly a riding beast or ride a dirt bike. At best you’ll circle the globe and return to your starting point.”

You’ll get to create your own ship from scratch, pack it full of your space mates and engage other players online, all while you develop your own empire. The graphics are looking a bit, well, “basic” at present, but the developers insist that “more and more” of their efforts are getting directed towards “graphical beauty, stability and performance… Shore of Hazeron is about to bloom.”

Hyperbole or not, it’s definitely intriguing. Visit the official site for more info, and to sign up. Let us know how you get on in the comments.

That’s not what players hoped they would hear after the conclusion of River of Souls—Rift’s first live world event that took place over the past two weeks. What was promoted as a massive, epic war that would make the “vicious invasions you see every day look like a lazy Sunday in the park,” turned out to be something of a disaster that left the devs publicly apologizing and offering free rewards to anyone with an active account. So what went wrong?

I guess this means she won.

Domino effect

The problems started in the first stage of the event, which required players to complete a few daily quests and close Death rifts around Telara; unfortunately, it was simply unbalanced. The high-level zones didn’t have enough rifts constantly opening to satiate the max-level community’s thirst for new items (which could only be acquired during this one-week event), resulting in lower-level areas getting flooded with level 50 players. It’s clear that this wasn’t the intended experience (since low level characters had no chance at participating, thanks to the roaming bands of max-level characters stealing all the rifts in their zones)—but to their credit, Trion pushed through regular updates in an attempt to make sure there was enough to do for everyone, and enough incentive to do it. Eventually, they struck a balance, but it came at a cost: a week-long delay of the second and third phases of the event—the real meat of the content, which were supposed to include large, epic battles with Alsbeth the Discordant’s full-blown planar invasion.

But that’s not what we got on the Seastone server (apparently the event’s success varied from server to server, but even the best reports weren’t very good). Instead, phase two was short and extremely simple: there were no rifts that needed closing or towns that needed to be saved—just a few simple bosses in each zone that were slaughtered in a matter of minutes. In fact, the entire World Event would have likely ended in under a half-hour on my server if not for instability causing full-blown crashes that required Trion to reset the event a number of times.  The servers that didn’t actually go down were still impaired by lag and disconnection errors. Even if you ignore the technical hurdles, the event seemed conceptually flawed: with such a short window of time to participate, the majority of players would miss the event—anyone that wasn’t sitting around waiting for it to happen didn’t have a chance to participate.

The not-so-thrilling conclusion

Stage three, the final confrontation with Alsbeth, was even less dramatic. After phase two was complete, the game’s entire population was directed to go to one spot on the map—a design choice that definitely didn’t involve the server maintenance team. Having thousands of people within a few hundred feet of in-game space proved to be as problematic as it sounds, especially on a PvP server, causing even more technical problems that hindered the River of Souls’ progression.

Alsbeth simply didn’t spawn, despite global messages continually heralding her arrival. For over an hour, players fought with lag, bugs, crashes, and each other while waiting to battle The Discordant. When she eventually showed up, the stage was over in a matter of seconds. She appeared, talked to a few NPCs, and then died without a single strike. While no one knows for sure what happened (I’m sticking with my theory that the sight of all those players so tightly clumped together gave her a heart attack), the rumor around the forums and guild chat is that Trion actually had to slay Alsbeth themselves, rather than let her battle lead to more server crashes.

Crossing the streams crashes the server.

And then it was over. No rewards. No grand finale. Just a dozen or so minutes of actual gameplay spread over three hours of frustration, crashes, and bugs. The end of the River of Souls live world event opened up a new raid instance for the highest-tiered players to enjoy, but it was hardly enough to justify the lackluster event.

The next day, Scott Hartsman posted an apology of sorts in the official forums. In the River of Souls World Event Wrapup thread, he explains that they’re going to reward players with some new items, whether they contributed to the event or not, and admitted that the “later phases of the event were too concentrated and time-compressed, which caused issues on a number of worlds.” While their offering makes up for the lack of rewards at the event and builds up some good will, Trion needs to take a step back and reassess their approach to World Events: even if it weren’t for the issues, the River of Souls World Event probably wouldn’t have been much fun in the first place.

Every problem has a solution

Luckily, Trion doesn’t have to look any further than their regular events for inspiration; events which regularly provide incredibly epic battles, despite being on a much smaller scale than the World Events. Rift’s events are at their best when there’s something at stake. Players need to know that simply running around and killing things isn’t going to be enough to prevent a zone from being overrun: there has to be some fear of failure, even if it isn’t a game-over scenario. Despite the River of Souls fiasco, I firmly believe that Trion can make live events work in Rift.

They just need to take the concepts that make zone events (where a huge number of rifts open across a zone and armies start marching through the cities, taking them over and slaughtering the citizens if you don’t defend them) so much fun, and stretch them across the entire world, treating each zone like a city. Instead of having a city fall under the enemy assault, have an entire zone fall. Make players go through the whole world city-by-city, clearing out the invasions in order to win it back.

In fact, it might even be better to have overrun cities be temporarily converted into mini-public dungeons. Add in a few high-level guards, throw a few bosses in, and make the final enemy spawn a rift before he dies. You don’t have to add in new elements to create intense scenarios, just take the elements we’re already used to and make them bigger, better, and more fun.

Everyone attacking one big enemy at once isn't really that much fun.

Rift is popular, and world events will always have thousands of players waiting anxiously for something epic to happen. And Trion is more than capable of giving the fans what they want. But they need to keep people spread across the entire game world, not just for server stability, but to make it more fun. Force players to make the difficult choices of which areas they want to attack and which ones they want to defend, and then make them liberate occupied zones in order to kick the planar invasions out of Telara.

Lastly, Trion needs to find ways to deal with the game’s high-level population. At this point, it feels like a majority of the players are at or near the level-cap, something the devs seemed to have underestimated. Low-level content is necessary during World Events, and it’s no fun for lowbies if bored high-level players end up steamrolling the low-level content.

You better believe Trion is hard at work at developing a new style of live world event, like the suggestions I’ve offered. River of Souls left a bad taste in the community’s mouth: beyond the lacks of rewards, it did a poor job at displaying Trion’s planned direction for the future of Rift. Many, including myself, were expecting big things from the River of Souls. Its failure cast some doubts on Trion’s plans for the future of Telara, and there are far too many MMO options out there to leave players wondering if the game’s future is going to be worth their time and effort.

It’s not even close to “too late,” though. I’m still a big fan of Rift, and I hope Trion proves the naysayers wrong with a brand new, mind-blowingly awesome world event—and soon!

Board-member Patrick Streppel commented on the success of the game’s launch in UK and European territories, and that North American gamers were currently taking part in closed beta.

In regards to expanding Black Prophecy’s universe, Gamigo currently plan to add to the game in small, monthly patches that address bugs and slight improvements, but the developers do have much larger plans for the MMO. “About every three months a big update (add-on) is planned that will raise the current level cap and also provide all new game content in the form of new story missions to advance the main plot, new hubs and open world sectors to explore, new missions to master and, of course, more items to equip” explains Streppel.

The larger-scale plans also include the ability to ‘station walk’, which sounds very familiar, but would be a welcome addition to this already solid free MMO.

You can see the letter in full on the game’s forums, and register for the free-to-play space MMO here.

[via Joystiq]

The announcement comes as Bigpoint release their latest patch, which allows you to command Battlestars and Basestars, as well as other new ships.

If you’d like to sign up for the Colonial fleet, or cause mass human genocide as a flying toaster, join BSG Online at the game’s official site.

Frogster’s hack and slash MMO won’t be officially released until April 28, but anyone who wants to sample the game just needs to sign up. The level cap has been increased to 50 and the snowy region of Umbral Peaks has been unlocked. According to Frogster, there’s still plenty of tuning to be done before the final release.

Mythos will eventually be available as a free download or a boxed copy that’ll retail for £9.99. The latter will come with exclusive items and pets, and will let you play two days early.

Are you having fun with Mythos? Let us know in the comments.

World of Tanks will be released tomorrow! When we heard this news, we immediately imagined ourselves dispensing indiscriminate tank justice. You shouldn’t be afraid to enter this free-to-play war either because zombie General Patton himself visited us today and gave us 21 starter packs that we will disperse to our fans. If you’d like to be one of the fortunate 21, and not end up as a flame broiled tank commander, read on for your chance to win.

Is something burning?

World of Tanks has you commanding your own tank and participating in big Counter-Strike-like battles where once you die, you’re out till the next round. Sign up for the war here.

But fear not fellow Tank Commanders because as your ranking officer, we here don’t want to see our brothers-in-arms end up as BBQ. Therefore, we have some gifts for you.

Our starter packs will give you a bonus tank as well as 2500 gold to spend on parts to upgrade your vehicle!

Interested? This is what you have to do. In the comments below tell us what you would name your tank. Could be anything: Fluffy, Colonel Explosions etc.

We will declare winners tomorrow.

Update: Well, now we’re a bit embarrassed. It seems that our April Fool’s Day filter still needs a few improvements: Gaijin recently revealed that this game announcement was meant as a joke. That doesn’t stop us from hoping that somebody somewhere is actually developing a massive flight sim game, however.

Wings of Prey creators, Gaijin Entertainment have announced that they’re working on a new online flight sim set in World War 2. It’s called World of Planes, and will let hundred of planes fly together in one game. World of Planes will stretch across Eastern, Western, Pacific, and Mediterranean theatres of war, and allow players to upgrade their planes as they level up, and take part in three month long wars to defeat enemy countries, gain ranks and earn new flying machines.

Gaijin Entertainment say that World of Planes is intended as a serious sim. Realistic damage modelling will calculate the angle of impact of incoming bullets, and accurately model which ones will ricochet, and which ones will do serious damage. You’ll be able to carefully tune their engines with a screwdriver, and tailor the exact set-up.

A global career mode will let you fly planes from Germany (from early Bf-109 till early jets), USSR (including jet BI-1), RAF (from Spitfires to Gloster Meteor), Japan and the USA. You’ll then be able to take part in real time wars. It’s possible to defeat countries by bombing ground targets, eliminating infrastructure and obliterating ground troops. Pilots of the winning country will then gain extra ranks, and the war will start again.

Release is still a way off, but there are plans for a closed beta this Autumn. The idea of massively multiplayer war in the skies sounds pretty exciting, and the Wings of Prey and IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey developers know a thing or two about making air sims. Would you be interested in becoming a World of Planes rookie?

Meet the new neighborhood watch.

Darkfall and a few other MMOs have proven that persistent city-building can work, with guilds proudly constructing, protecting and showing off their self-built cities. And the trend looks like it’s growing: two new fantasy MMOs, War of Angels and Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising, plan to expand city-building features even further this year.

But what good’s a city if you can’t fight over it? In War of Angels, guild towns can only be built on specific plots of land, which must be wrestled from other guilds’ control if you want one. And you do want one—whoever’s in control can decide what buildings are built (ranging from skill-boosting research huts to banks and armor-making blacksmiths), collect taxes from the NPC vendors that’ll sell to all players and hire NPC guards to keep the peace.

You'll have to start small--Rome wasn't built in a day.

But the developers at Heatwave (who took over development of the Roman mythology-themed Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising from the now-defunct Perpetual) plan to expand city building in a different direction with their player-built Estates—in an instanced valley, players will grow a small army camp into a thriving city. More than just a vendor hub, Estates will be a major source of gameplay, with resource management that’ll require you to complete quests out in the world to keep things running smoothly. Kill a big boss? Why not chop off its head, drag it back to town and build a statue in honor of your intense badassery? The peasants may even come by to admire you.

Watch your kingdom grow
In WoA, your city will start off humble. Wisely upgrading its buildings– such as the blacksmith, post office, skill research lab and inn, will reward you whole guild.

Is this legit? The blog only dates back to January 2011, and the author’s Twitter account goes back several months before, with 157 mostly WoW-related posts. If it’s a cleverly orchestrated scheme, it would’ve required several months’ worth of planning, all leading up to this. But of course, stranger things have happened. What do you guys think?

“With the right hardware, stereoscopic 3D technology will take online browser-game graphics to new heights. Today, Bigpoint is demonstrating once again that conventional PC and console games have nothing on Bigpoint browser games with demonstrations of Battlestar Galactica Online, Toon Racer and Ruined Online in full 3D,” the company said in a press release.

“There is one special place where everything works. That’s the laboratory, where you don’t have enough traffic from users to really stress the system. It confirms our worst suspicions of technical support; we are trapped by the reality that the users will always be able to take down the system.”

For more information on EVE online, visit the official site, or join the PC Gamer Eve Online Corp.

If you’ve looked at your World of Warcraft latency report since patch 4.0.6 went live last week, you may have noticed that what was once a single large number – often over 200ms on a decent connection – has been divided up into two smaller numbers called Home and World, which are 32ms and 178ms respectively on my current machine.

Many people – including me – initially assumed that the former, lower number was something to do with their LAN. Turns out we were wrong, and in a post picked up by MMO Champion’s Blue Tracker, Blizzard representative Brianl did an excellent job of explaining what was going on:

In essence, ‘Home’ refers to your connection to your realm server. This connection sends chat data, auction house stuff, guild chat and info, some addon data, and various other data. It is a pretty slim connection in terms of bandwidth requirements.

‘World’ is a reference to the connection to our servers that transmits all the other data… combat, data from the people around you (specs, gear, enchants, etc.), NPCs, mobs, casting, professions, etc. Going into a highly populated zone (like a capital city) will drastically increase the amount of data being sent over this connection and will raise the reported latency.

So far so straightforward, and Brianl went to describe how the difference between the two figures can be used to diagnose connection problems.

If your ‘Home’ connection latency is low and your ‘World’ connection latency is high, that frequently indicates that there is some sort of QoS congestion controls being applied to your internet connection, at either the micro (LAN) or macro (WAN) level. A common symptom would be that you would be able to chat, but not to cast.

The most interesting part of the discussion, though, is a few posts later. Brianl revealed that around the same time as the patch, Blizzard had also made some changes to the way the ‘World’ servers for instances, raids, arena and battlegrounds handle network traffic. The changes were designed to lower client latency, but because the changes resulted in higher pings for less than 2% of players they hit CTRL-Z and reverted to the old system on Sunday night.

The problem, according to Brianl, was that reducing the ping times means increasing the number of times a game client talks to the server per second. On slower connections, or where ISPs deploy traffic shaping policies to throttle heavy users, the increase in packets sent to and from the servers was enough to flood the available bandwidth and cause substantially higher latency, making the game unplayable.

So far, so much kudos to Blizzard for trying something new and then fixing an unforeseen problem pretty quickly. Also, to Brianl for bothering to explain something fairly esoteric for a lot of players.

But here’s where we get licence to indulge in some rampant speculation. Traditionally, the MMO client/server server relationship has been planned with high average latencies in mind in order to manage the vast quantity of information coming in from thousands of players at once – and the actual lag is disguised by game design which doesn’t require perfect synchronisation between the two. That’s why WoW and Eve et al aren’t ‘twitch’ games: a 16 player FPS server running a relatively tight map can afford to update each client in near real-time without using much in the way of bandwidth. For MMOs, there’s a literal ton of data in each update with player positions, NPC movements, item caches and so on.

Even in instances, there must be a point – probably higher than the 12ms Brianl claims he was getting over the weekend – where lower pings won’t actually have any noticeable effect on the gameplay.

Thus we can reasonably surmise that playing around with the underlying network structure isn’t necessarily to benefit current WoW players, but to test a new architecture for the next game – Titan – and that it needs FPS-style response times. QED.

Or they could just be trying to make WoW better, of course.

More seriously, though, it does raise highlight an issue about how technically viable a large scale MMO with all the rich detail of WoW but the fast pace of – say – PlanetSide – is. The WoW problems were caused by two things: invisible traffic shaping by ISPs and wireless connections including 3G and WiFi not being up to the task. It’s one thing for Blizzard, which now makes up a significant part of all internet traffic, to experiment with low latency gaming and be able to move from one network management system to another smoothly and quickly to avoid complaints. But for an MMO of the future which is more reliant on low pings and whose parent company isn’t as well resourced, and is fighting against more traffic shaping in the non-neutral net, it’s going to be a massive issue to overcome.

Towards the end of last year, a leaked Blizzard memo confirmed the existance of “Titan,” rumoured to arrive in later 2013.

Read our review of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm here. Tim really, really likes it.

(via arstechnica)

The fixes are the usual tweaks to various gameplay issues, with slight alterations being made to some of the classes (Druids, Paladins, Priests and Rogues) and some Dungeons and Raids (The Bastion of Twilight, Blackwing Descent, Deadmines, Throne of the Four Winds and The Vortex Pinnacle).

You can find the full list of fixes over at the official World of WarCraft website. While many have already been deployed on all realms, Blizzard note that some may not be implemented until your realm is restarted.

[via VG247]

It’s made up from 100% in-game footage, and features all the hallmarks of the critically-acclaimed TV series, with Cylon Basestars, Raiders, Colonial Vipers and the titular Battlestar itself. Characters such as Adama and Caprica Six also put in appearances and – despite the fairly limited graphical horsepower – are instantly recognisable.

There’s still no date for the game’s launch, but you can sign up for the beta now.

The MMORPG is set in a mythical version of New England, and see players stepping off a boat in Boston and then having to fend for themselves in the ‘New World’.

The game puts emphasis on a player-driven world that promotes crafting skills. Even more interesting, when your character dies he’s gone forever, leaving all your creations to be pillaged by other players. Harsh. Video explaining it all after the jump.

Whilst only in the early stages of development, Salem is due for a 2011 release.

Here’s Game Designer/Creative Director Bjorn Johannessen talking more about this exciting MMO. He doesn’t die in the video thankfully. -

You can see all the latest updates from the Paradox Interactive press conference on our live blog.

For the die-hard Star Wars fans who no doubt will be playing The Old Republic come release day, BioWare getting Tython wrong would be sacrilegious. Not only as a starting world does it have to make a exceptional first impression, but it must also convey all that is mystical about the Force in it’s atmosphere. “It’s hard with the Jedi because it’s really easy to make these serene monks boring,” explains Erickson. “Tython was definitely boring for a while. You were popping around doing your Jedi trails and it was a little… a little Hogwarty.”

Luckily BioWare are a developer who never settle for second best, and so after much work Tython is now a Jedi paradise of rolling hills and clean, white cliffs. You can read the full play test of The Old Republic in the current issue of PC Gamer UK, available in stores now. You can buy the latest issue online with free postage right here, or subscribe to save money and receive your issue early every month.

In a post on the official SWTOR forum, Old Republic lead combat designer Georg Zoeller confirmed that players will be allowed to respec within an Advanced Class. However, when it comes to changing from one Advanced Class to another, things get a bit hazy.

“You may be able to spec to another Advanced Class, but that is something we haven’t entirely made up our mind about as there are plenty of arguments that can be made – pro and con – and future class developments could influence this” Zoeller explained.

News that you can respec classes will no doubt prevent many players from throwing themselves into sarlacc pits in frustration after choosing the Force flower-picking skill by mistake.

[via Massively]

Players who purchased game time around the release of the first section of the Incursion update are having their subscriptions extended to “January 31^st, insuring that your account will be active for this amazing third instalment of our 14^th expansion.”

It’s a generous move from CCP. Their decision to divide the Incursion expansion into three sections may not be the most obvious decision but it does allow everyone has the chance to check out the impressive Incarna Character Creator that launches in today’s update.

If you play EVE or are looking to get into it, why not join the PCG Corp? Simply sign up here in our forums and submit an application.

The demo will let you do all of the same activities as those with access to the full game, but you’ll be restricted to one sector of space. The demo can be downloaded now from GamersHell

Miner Wars is still in early stages of development, but the team behind the game have many exciting plans for future releases. The engine the game uses can handle huge space fights with up to three hundred players. The plan is to let players pilot much larger vessels to encourage huge space scraps. Check out the official Miner Wars page for more information.

[via RPS]

It’s mentioned that GamersFirst are aiming to get 3-8,000 people on the closed beta for a while before moving into a bigger open beta phase. Those who participate in the beta will receive an unspecified form of reward when the game is fully released. Book-Larsson says “As a thank you to our beta testers we expect to give away a token that shows you were a beta tester back in the day. Trust us, we will not forget who you were.”

He also reveals more information on what will happen to old APB characters. Players will be able to reclaim their old characters along with all of the items and customisation options, but they won’t retain their mission progress. Book-Larsson mentions that Real Time World points won’t be refunded or useable in APB: Reloaded, stressing that GamersFirst “simply have no information about anything you bought via EA, Digital River nor Steam.”

For more information on GamersFirst’s plans for APB, check out our interview with Bjorn Book-Larsson.

[via Bluesnews]

Hiromichi Tanaka (left) and Sage Sundi (right)

PC Gamer: FFXIV hasn’t scored very highly across the majority of gamer websites and magazines. What’s your response to complaints like poor menu implementations, cryptic instructions, lag, lack of monsters?

Hiromichi Tanaka: All the points you mention are things we are planning to fix straight away. This morning, we announced our plan of version updates. So you can see we are reacting very quickly to all the feedback we are getting from our players. We believe that, because the expectation was so high, it made it even more disappointing for the players.

There was a lot of feedback we received during the beta phase which we should’ve managed to implement before the launch, but because we found a lot of bugs during the beta phase, we were focusing on fixing them. That’s one of the reasons we were not able to implement all the things we were planning to do in the first place. That’s why we do feel very sorry for the people who are unsatisfied with the game status.

PC Gamer: I understand you’re fixing many of these issues, but looking at the official website, where you’ve announced what you’ll be changing in Nov/Dec – a lot of these things are basic gameplay elements. Do you think FFXIV could’ve benefited from more development time?

Hiromichi Tanaka: Because it’s an MMO, time is always not enough. We always need more time, especially because we expect players to enjoy the game for five years to ten years. Release timing is only one of the points that we go past – it’s not a final goal we achieve. So we will continue working on it with the players, and listening to them. This will continue, and the development team is really working hard to improve the game.

PC Gamer: Would you have liked it if the release date was maybe a couple of months later, to smooth out the last kinks?

Hiromichi Tanaka: It is very difficult to make the decision. If we had more time, we probably would have had to fix more bugs, and so it was very difficult to judge which time to release the game, because we want people to enjoy it as soon as possible. That’s why we made the decision to release it now.

Sage Sundi: If we had three more years (laughs), we would’ve had three more years worth of implemented content. But we had six months [from the first stage of alpha testing], so that’s where we are with the game.

PC Gamer: When I met you before, I asked if any other MMOs inspired you during the development process, and you only mentioned FFXI. You also mentioned you hadn’t played World of Warcraft. Do you think any design issues could’ve been avoided if you’d played other MMOs?

Hiromichi Tanaka: We have a big development team. Some people do play WoW, some play Everquest 2, some people play Star Wars Galaxy. So all their different experiences were combined in the game. One person’s idea is not going to make the full game, in one specific shape.

Also, if everyone was playing the same thing, then we might have ended up with a copy of one particular game, so that’s something we also wanted to avoid. Further to game experience, when we listen to all the player feedback, those players have experience in different MMOs. So when we listen to them, that means we are listening to the player’s experience of different MMOs. So that’s how we get the feedback.

One of the main focuses we had for FFXIV was introducing the excitement of MMOs to Final Fantasy fans, so that’s why we didn’t want to have a copy of other existing MMOs. We don’t think the amount of experience of the development team has of MMOs was actually affecting in any way.

Sage Sundi: When we listened to all the feedback from the players, some really expect the same game style as WoW, some expect something very similar to Everquest 2. But then again, some feedback is the standard to all the MMO audience. So, really deciding which feedback is important as an MMO – not just because one title is doing that – what should be implemented in FFXIV is very challenging to decide, but that’s why we have several different teams worldwide listening to different feedback, and we do analyse what should be implemented in our game.

PC Gamer: Recently, Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada said that “Currently, the service isn’t satisfactory”. Can you comment on that?

Hiromichi Tanaka: From the game design point of view, we do agree, and all of the development team do understand that it’s not up to the expectation, and that a lot of players are unsatisfied with the quality of the game itself.

One of the reasons for this, as we discussed earlier, is that a lot of issues should’ve been fixed during the beta phase. But because we were focusing on the debugging side of issues, we were not able to implement everything before launch, and that’s one of the reasons we believe it’s in its current state. So all the team is working hard to update it and fix those issues as soon as possible.

PC Gamer: Wada went on to say “We’re in the middle of quickly improving it. We want to do everything we can to win back players’ trust.” What do you believe will win back players’ trust and get people to return to the game?

Sage Sundi: That is the actual game improvements we are trying to do. If the players see what we are working on, and if we can bring all the satisfaction to the players, we believe that that will bring back the trust.

Also, after we got all the feedback during the beta stage, the players might’ve thought that we were not listening to them, because we were focusing on fixing the bugs – we need to make sure that they know that we are listening to them. We think more transparency is something very important between the development team and the players. But we believe when they see all the updates we are planning to do, they can be assured that we are listening to them and taking all their feedback seriously.

PC Gamer: At the moment there’s very little reason for people to quest with each other. Are there any features we can expect in future that will encourage players to get together? Are there any plans to put in dungeons/raids/PvP?

Hiromichi Tanaka: Exactly – that is the plan. We are planning to put more content in so people can enjoy party plays, or playing with other players. Because the armoury system was so designed to be convenient to solo players, it seems like it’s really focusing too much on solo gameplay at the moment and there’s not much point at joining the party at this stage. But what we’re trying to do now is give more unique identities to each character class, so it will have more meaning to be a different class in one party – that’s something we’re starting to implement in this upcoming version update and the next version update. That’s something you will notice that’ll be different, so people will be experiencing more exciting party plays.

PC Gamer: Why did you decide to implement quite strict limitations on the amount of Guildleves you could do in a day?

Hiromichi Tanaka: That was our intention, because the reward of completing a Guildleve is so big, we didn’t want to have it unlimited. If it was unlimited, the players who have a lot of time can keep on doing them and get a high level really quickly. But the initial plan for the Guildleve was to allow players who haven’t got much time to still get a good game experience. That’s why we didn’t want the Guildleve to be unlimited.

PC Gamer: Will there be any plans to ease the limitations? They’re quite strict at the moment.

Hiromichi Tanaka: Yes, we are trying to adapt the Guildleve system itself, so we are looking into adapting those restrictions. Also, there will be more variations to the quests you can experience, so please look forward to those as well.

PC Gamer: Recently, players have been posting videos of terrain they think was copy and pasted (eg. 1, 2 – maps showing all the relevant areas). Is that the case, and if so why?

Hiromichi Tanaka: Since FFI, we have always used the same design to show the scenery. We have one map divided into different parts, and then we use those parts. Otherwise, the data size is going to be terabytes. So, from the memory size point of view, it’s important to compile the data size. That being said, because we wanted the game to be seamless, we do understand there’s a lack of variation. So that’s why we do want to have more unique aspects in the area, depending on what area of the game it is. However, even for the 3D version for other MMOs, using the same data is quite common in designing the game.

PC Gamer: I understand when it’s elements of a landscape, like a tree or rock. But these seem to be whole areas, to an extent that you don’t see in something like WoW.

Hiromichi Tanaka: One of the explanations for that is the size of the parts of the data that we use. Back in the days of FFXI and even WoW, the memory of each part was much less than what we have to use now. These days, because of the graphics, the same size of the parts costs more memory size. If the PC itself has that same size of the- has got larger in the same manner, then we can increase the map in the same way. But the same size of the data is now like ten times more memory size, so that’s really costing the game data size.

PC Gamer: If WoW could do it then, why isn’t it doable now?

Hiromichi Tanaka: One of the reasons why is because of the quality of the graphics – it’s different from WoW. What we’re trying to do in each part is costing more memory. Basically that’s the difference. WoW was designed a few years ago, before FFXI. FFXIV is designed with the latest graphical technology; that’s why it costs that much of memory data.

PC Gamer: On the website, you mention seasonal events. Can we get any hint of what’s to come?

Sage Sundi: Because the world in FFXIV has a different culture compared to our actual world, we can’t really expect the same thing as Christmas and New Year. But there’ll be something very similar that you might recognise. How you actually experience the new event will be quite interesting, so we hope you look forward to that. It’s coming very soon.

PC Gamer: Finally, is there anything you’d like to say to people who’ve bought FFXIV and are maybe feeling a bit put out?

Hiromichi Tanaka: We have announced our plans for the new version update, and we do understand you were expecting them to be implemented in the first place. But we hope to make the game better and better with your co-operation, and we hope we can progress together with the players. So hopefully you will take a look and see how the world and the game experience will change and how it’s evolving. And if you like it, we do hope you give it a try again and enjoy it.

PC Gamer: Thank you both for your time.

You can see what Square Enix have planned in the updates due later this month and in December here, or read our review.

Contest Update: We’re giving lifetime access to the premium features of Fallen Earth’s app to ten lucky readers! Details at the bottom of the post.

We’ve got two new exclusive tutorial videos for the app (the first video can be found here). These latest videos detail how to use the auction house and how to communicate with other players currently playing on the Fallen Earth servers. We review the app in-depth in our January 2011 issue, which will be hitting subscribers in just a few weeks.

The app is available on the iPhone , Android , and Blackberry. To activate the premium version, users must go through the Fallen Earth website and purchase the the $9.99 app while logged in to their account. Learn more about the app here.

Contest: Want access to the premium features of Fallen Earth’s app? Tell us in the comments below, if you were only allowed one weapon to take on the horrors of a post-apocalyptic landscape with, what trusty tool you’d take into the wasteland and why. Ten winners will be selected on Tuesday. The contest is open to everyone, but you must have a Fallen Earth account in order to win.

It’s the enemy’s turn now and he uses his “Ninja Pigs” monster card to summon a trio of pigs to attack me. Luckily, the next turn I draw a “Meteor Strike” card from my deck and I’m able to incinerate the enemy faster than a pyro taunting a sniper.

When pigs fly...

I’m playing Wizard 101, a free-to-play MMO, with an optional subscription to gain access to premium areas, by KingsIsle. Battles are turn-based and players use a deck of cards to summon monsters and cast spells. Each player specializes in a school of magic that determine which spells the player can learn without spending training points.

I recently sat down with Fred Howard, Ben Conrad, and Todd Coleman from KingsIsle to discuss the game’s upcoming expansion packs, and how they plan to use the packs to revamp the entire leveling and endgame experience with new areas, spells, and other content across all level ranges.

Celestia, KingsIsle’s newest expansion, which launches today, targets the Grandmasters, players who have reached the level cap of Wizard 101, who Ben describes as, “the most loyal segment of players who put in the most hours…The high level followers are always in endless need of new content and we always want to push forward and fulfill that want.”

Features of Celestia are:

• New story arc villain, Morganthe the Spider Queen
• Level cap being raised from 50 to 60
• Three new schools of magic for players to learn
• More spells added to the existing schools of magic
• New pets for players to discover

But KingsIsle also wants to make changes to make the game more accessible to a broader range of players like parents, grandparents, families, and people who have never played in a game with other players before. To that end, areas like the intro tutorial are being revamped to make the areas more engaging and immersive for new players. It is a continuous process that KingsIsle says they will look over these zones again and again to find out how to make areas more approachable for new players.

Along with the new expansion pack, a new collector’s edition of the game will be on sale in stores soon (because the game is free to download and play, you don’t need to purchase the boxed game from the store). The collector’s edition gives players exclusive items such as:

• The largest personal house that a player can currently get in the game
• A dueling circle that lets players battle each other
• A Gryphon mount
• A spear that can be scaled to the player’s level or saved for higher levels.
• 5000 Crowns, the in game currency

It is well known that Unicorn have healing properties.

I haven’t delved too deep into the game yet, but I’m really enjoying the battle mechanics, which remind me of playing trading card games. There’s the strategy of planning out your battle deck, deciding which cards to use in battles, who to attack, and waiting until you have enough resources to summon the spells you need. If you (or your kid) play Wizard 101, post in the comments below to let us know your thoughts on the incoming changes.

They also mention that they’re hiring to keep up with the growth spurt. If you fancy colouring in Orcs for a living, click here to try your luck.

Speaking to EDGE, executive producer Todd Harris said, “World Of Warcraft has set the standard in terms of what the market place and end gamers think of as MMOs. We think there can be a lot of different types of MMOGs that can be successful. I think small [developers] can do it if they’re conservative with their projections and their costs.”

MMOs can’t afford to try to be a huge phenomenon anymore – there are just too many of them. As Jim Edge pointed out, you need look no further than recent MMO tragedy APB for an example of what can go wrong when you think too big. Oh, Jim Edge. You are as wise as your beard is long.

Incidentally, I had ten copies of Global Agenda. I was quite looking forward to playing ten characters at once and cackling, but I accidentally mailed them out to ten people who came up with lame uses for jetpacks instead. I’m clumsy like that.

The old areas will have new quests, new geography, and new dungeons. Horde players can now make Goblins, Alliance users can rock a Worgen, and all races can now use a few extra classes that were previously locked off. Blood Elf Warrior, anyone? The level cap will be increased to 85, the talent trees will be streamlined for all classes, and the whole game will feel new again.

You don’t have to buy the expansion to enjoy the new Azeroth or the changes to the talent trees, though. Those will naturally affect the whole World of Warcraft.

Their logic goes like this: Zarhym, a Blizzard employee, mentioned in an off-hand announcement about the current arena season that the next season would begin about a week after Cataclysm’s launch. Then, buried in a snippet of game text, it seems like both Wowhead and MMO Champion found this:

“Arena battles and Rated Battlegrounds are only available during an active player versus player combat season. Season nine will begin on December 14th, so be prepared at that time to take your shot at glory!”

One week before December 14th? December 7th. Additionally, it looks like Blizzard has hidden this date in cryptic, totally-not-obvious quest text – a Goblin engineer states that the chance of any sort of worldwide Cataclysm occuring is “less than 12.7%”. As Wowhead say, “Looks like we have a release date of December 7th on our hands. Tentative, of course, don’t quote us, but there you go.”

Giveaway: Tell us in the comments what food, decorations, or random debris in a dungeon that you want to kill kobolds with and why. 50 winners will receive open beta keys for Vindictus. Winners will be selected tomorrow (September 30). Only residents in North America (see ‘Contest rules’ below) are eligible for this contest.


Contest rules

• Activate your keys at: http://vindictus.nexon.net/Key/AccessInfo.aspx
• Keys are only valid for the open beta period and will expire Ocotober 6th, 2010.
• The servers are located in the United States, one on the West coast, and one on the East coast and only IPs from North America will be able to connect. Sorry, Europe, you’ll have to wait until the European beta is ready in a few months.

I’ve been playing Vindictus for the past week and been having a blast. The game feels more like an single-player role playing game that has co-op instead of a large MMO. You won’t find large monumental cities or hundreds of people gathering around in an auction house. All quests are instanced with the party leader hosting for up to three other members as they quest through a dungeon.

Instead of the chat box filled with people looking for groups or people declaring their classes and levels, players just go to the dock and look at a sign post showing which groups are available to join, the difficulty, and the quests or any bonus missions attached to it.

Pants acquired.

What grabbed my interest in the game is the absurd and crazy interactions that adds a little bit of humor to the atmosphere. There are pigs who run the auction board, dogs running and barking everywhere, and the shopkeepers are cats and owls!

In one mission, my party and I were tasked with defeating a kobold in an ice cave. It sounds like a boring mission at first, but what makes this mission memorable is that he must be killed using an object found in the cave in order to get bonus points at the end of the dungeon. What object did I choose to use? A thighbone from a rotting carcass in the cave. It wasn’t my only option, but I think you’ll agree after looking at the screenshot below that it was the best option.

The kobold’s tough, though, and I can’t go it alone, so it’s a good thing I have three other party members to help me gang up on him. One member hooks the kobold’s legs with chains which causes it to flop onto the ground, flailing its arms around in an attempt to escape, as we move in to cobble him to death.

Teamwork is the key to victory, just like in other MMOs.

Every time your party kills a boss in the dungeons, the game goes into a slow motion mode. The hud is removed and you get to watch as the now dead boss flops around from different angles–which can lead to some unintentionally hilarious moments when the body soars across the room.

I think that Gnoll is trolling

There’s even a little preparation area before you start the dungeons aboard a ship. You can practice your combo moves here, practice tossing fruits, barrels, and large dice around. There’s even a little wood target practice duck that quacks every time you hit it.

Once again I roll poorly and start last, just like in Mario Party.

Give Vindictus a try. If you get a beta key, once you sign up, you’ll also receive two more beta keys that you can give to your friends. Your friends will also receive two keys of their own when the keys are activated. It’s a giant pyramid of keys being given away!

“Mark absolutely loves APB, and everyone here loved what they saw. We’ve got our hands full of Gears Of War 3, BulletStorm and the recently announced Project Sword. If any talks like that are going on, then they would be confidential.”

A big fat maybe, then.

Yesterday we reported that APB’s servers were shutting down. If you’re curious, here’s our APB review.

[via BBC]

“APB has been a fantastic journey, but unfortunately that journey has come to a premature end. Today we are sad to announce that despite everyone’s best efforts to keep the service running; APB is coming to a close. It’s been a pleasure working on APB and with all its players. Together we were building an absolutely amazing game, and for that, we thank you. You guys are awesome!

From all of the Realtime World staff we thank you for your continued support.

The servers are still up, so join the party and say goodbye!

- Ben ‘APBMonkey’ Bateman (Community Officer)”

[via Edge]

*He mostly refers to himself in the third person.

Raids

We now have at least 6 seperate 10-man raid teams running each week. Two of them are working on ICC-heroic modes, while another has managed to get Bloodbathed Frostbrood mounts for over a dozen players. The late night raid team still prevents evil bosses from relaxing after normal raid times are over – they can never know when a horde of drunken/sleep deprived PCG’ers will storm their lairs.

After clearing ICC, one of our teams has gone back to Ulduar’s 10-man mode to get everyone nice shiny rusty proto drakes. Yogg+1 and Firefighter are still no joke, even with ICC gear.
Team Tryout provides a great place for those newer 80′s or players unfamiliar with raiding to get their feet wet – wiping with friends is always more fun than wiping with strangers.
Special mention goes out to those players who have stepped up recently to lead raid groups: Denika-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka, Belara, Slimbutnails, Aphaes, Sarkris and Hyrath among others.

Our 25-man raiding structure has recently changed. We want to provide a platform for some really steady progression, while still giving opportunities to newer raiders to get stuck into the more epic feel of a larger raid. Team Donkey has moved up to kill 8 of the 12 heroic ICC bosses, with Deathwhisper on notice. Team Uber still provides a place for brand new raiders to get involved, and have cleared 8/12 normal.

Bike: model's own.

Events

We recently had a guild raffle that managed to raise over 5000g for the guild bank. Congratulations to Sparqle for his prize of a Mechano-hog mount, and to the other prize-winners too!

The precursor event to the Cataclysm expansion recently hit, so we’ve had many players run down to south Durotar to help Vol’jin and the trolls ensure Zalazane’s fall. Keep it up mon!
Some of our players also went back to Naxxramas recently to complete the Dedicated few achievement. Nothing is quite the same as rofl stomping content you outgear :)

We still get a steady influx of new players – about 30 in the last month. Some of those have already integrated into our raiding teams, while others are leveling up ready for Deathwing’s arrival. Hullo to all our newer guildies!

We caught him for a quick photo sesh before he shot off to 1-man Sargeras.

Misc

Gratz to Klogaroth who recently became the first guildy to get over 9000 achievement points! The race is on for the second person to reach that milestone with four players over 8000 and closing him down.

Special mention to Nacarat who last month joined a PUG raid to Tempest Keep. At the end of the raid the extremely rare Phoenix Mount dropped, and after Nacarat was lucky enough to win the roll, the mount was ninja’d by the raid organiser. After submitting a ticket to a GM, Nacarat was fortunate enough to get the mount returned to him from the ninja by a Blizzard GM. Kudos to Blizzard for helping our guildy out, and a huge grats to Nacarat on such a cool looking mount!

Finally another mention for Klogaroth for getting his hands on the legendary item Shadowmourne!
This axe is the culmination of a lot of hard work from many players – it’s about 18 months since PCG started raiding, and 8 months since we first stepped foot into Icecrown Citadel itself. Thanks to everyone who has been a part of the guild in that time – you’ve all contributed to the long series of events that are required to make the weapon.

Until next month, good luck & have fun.

Akee
PCG guild, Steamwheedle Cartel

In celebration of how cheesy this hilarious video is, let’s all come up with things Gandalf can say. I’ll start: “An MMO is never launched early, Mr Baggins. It arrives precisely when it means to.”

Ten codes. A few giga-shedloads of readers. We need to decide who gets to try on the jetpacks. Unfortunately, we’re not allowed to organise a jousting tournament since that accident last time, although I still maintain that it’d be safe enough if we used regular lances without explosive tips.

No, this time we’ll compete with comment boxes. Comment below with your idea for the lamest thing to use a jetpack for. Changing a lightbulb, keeping the carpet clean, that sort of thing. The ten lamest jetpack uses will win a copy of Global Agenda on Steam.

I spoke to Todd Harris, Global Agenda’s executive producer, about the new retail box. I asked him if there was a game in it: he said there was. I asked him if he wanted to talk about it: he said he did.

"Are you buying that new Global Agenda game?" "Nah, I'm not into modern war shooters."

PC Gamer: You’re releasing Global Agenda in a box! What’s the agenda there, then?

Todd Harris: Well, with no required monthly fees, we see an opportunity for even more people to join the GA world. Digital Distribution has been great for us. In fact we’re still the top selling MMO on Steam even though we released over eight months ago. But retail is a very important channel and so we’re excited to add UK players who want the full Global Agenda package – box included.

PC Gamer: Why did you decide to transition to a subscription-free game? How did the community respond?

Todd Harris: We moved Global Agenda to subscription-free because that’s the payment model our players asked for. It sounds simple but basically we put out a survey and chose the model that was overwhelmingly preferred by both our active players and potential buyers. So, with Global Agenda you buy the game once and play all existing content forever. Future expansion content will be charged for separately. Our inboxes were then flooded with thank-yous and hug e-mails so apparently the community likes the plan. I think it comes down to the fact that many of our players enjoy Global Agenda as their secondary MMO or as a shooter. They play the game very regularly but sometimes in smaller doses since our mission structure allows you to progress in 15-minute sessions of PvE or PvP as you choose. So, the no-sub model matches how a lot of people play the game.

PC Gamer: What’s been your biggest success with the game so far?

Todd Harris: We most proud of the positive player reviews and how they’ve supported Global Agenda growth since launch while so many other MMOs unfortunately decline after launch. We are the number one shooter MMO and our growth has come primarily from positive word of mouth. More specifically, our players tend to highlight the intense combat and freedom of movement that comes from the jetpack. Some MMOs don’t even allow you to jump and we let you fly!

PC Gamer: What’s the biggest thing on the game’s to do list? What would you ideally like to improve or add next?

Todd Harris: Our next free patch includes many community requests including achievements and badges, additional player crafting including a craftable prestige pet, and character profile slots to support quickly switching your weapon load-out and skill-point spec.

In future expansion updates we’ll be introducing even larger maps that allow more players to simultaneously battle on them.

PC Gamer: How do you observe that players participate in the game’s world? How many people are ignoring the territory-control aspect? How many people are going all out to pursue chunks of land?

Todd Harris: For PvE players, high level characters join a number of very popular gametypes. In our 10-person Defensive Raids your team protects the objective against a swarm of Recursive Colony robots. In our Ultra-Max difficulty dungeon-crawl type missions four players infiltrate facilities of the evil Commonwealth faction. We also have a DoubleAgent game mode where your four-person team goes against not only Commonwealth NPCs, but also two real players fighting alongside the bad-guys and trying to stop your team.

For PvP fans, our Agency vs. Agency end-game alows pre-made groups to compete against other player-made groups over territory and facilities. With no top-down factions the conflict is very player-driven and dynamic and unlike any other MMO endgame. Last season we had over 15% of our players participating in this AvA end-game, and it looks like the participation will be even higher this season.

PC Gamer: How many players are sticking to rigid schedules to hold zones?

Todd Harris: In the current Agency vs. Agency play, groups can choose which zone they participate in based on their player availability and timezone. We have weekend and weekday zones and within each zone there are regions with different published open-hours. This format has allowed smaller player agencies to own and hold territory. Last season the competition was very intense and it went down to the final hour of the final day before a winner emerged.

PC Gamer: Global Agenda is, at heart, a fast paced team shooter. On the design end, how do you make sure it isn’t just a spammy spam-fest?

Todd Harris: Our top priority during developent was class balance and the overall feel of the team shooter combat. Spam is minimized because some quick kill weapons, such as a Robotics’ turrets or Recons’ sniper rifle, can clear out players in a hurry. Then it comes down to good map design that allows those classes to do their thing while also supporting the roles for Assaults and Medics.

PC Gamer: Where can our readers buy it, and what will it cost?

Todd Harris: Global Agenda is available at retailers across the United Kingdom, including GAME, The Hut, Zavvi, Play.com, Shopto.net, and Amazon UK. The suggested retail price is £24.99 and we think PC gamers will find Global Agenda to be a great way to satisfy their MMO fix AND shooter fix in the same game – no monthly fee required!

PC Gamer: Thanks Todd.

Right, get commenting. Ten people will get a free copy of this game. Are your ideas lame enough for you to be one of them?

Death Knights have had their Frost and Blood presences switched, and the Blood tree overhauled to become the dedicated DK tanking tree. Hunters can now keep five pets with them and switch them on the fly – you can also store 20 pets in your stable. Gotta catch ‘em all!

A sore one for you: all types of armour now cost about the same to repair – as much as plate, that is. Now, when you wipe, everybody gets to rage quit.

But the big deal is the talent revamp. Talent trees are now 31 points of fun, clickable abilities – none of this “2% STA from items per talent point” crap. Those passive stat boosts unfold as you choose a tree and increase your ‘Mastery’ stat, found on high level items.

You don’t get to fly around Onyxgrimmar though. Not yet.

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.

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.

Warriors

• Warriors can now equip shields in any equipment slot, including the main hand and face.
• (Not really)

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 in 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.

This is FunCom’s MMO, The Secret World. Doesn’t it look ridiculously good? Oh, okay, there’s some nonsense about Illuminati and Templars, but an MMO without levelling sounds like an ISP that doesn’t need 5-7 business days: an improvement.

In combat, you get to pick seven active abilities (buttons to press) and seven passive abilities (stuff like, oh, increased speed, better resistance, etc). Some of the spells inflict states on enemies that other spells can exploit. It sounds almost Guild-Wars-y – you’ll need to pick your build to suit your team.

It’s also great that you wont end up looking like you’ve been swallowed by a suit of armour, or wearing a green traffic cone because it’s got great crit rating.

FunCom are the guys behind The Longest Journey and its sequel, Dreamfall. Notice the magical-girl-in-her-underpants theme. Right, have at some artwork and screens.

Although who would specialise in Infantry? They’re like smaller, weaker, slower tanks. And air force is just cheating. No, there’s something unnatural about not being in a tank if you can possibly help it. Be warned: if you attempt to disagree in the comments, someone in a tank will just roll right over your argument with 30 tons of common sense.

• Jedi Consular
  • The Shadow deals damage with a double-bladed lightsaber
  • The Wizard fights with a single bladed lightsaber while healing allies.
• Imperial Agent
  • The Operative can use stealth. In combat, uses a blaster rifle or energy blade for burst damage.
  • The Sniper class deals straight ranged damage with his sniper rifle.
• Sith Inquisitor
  • Sorcerer - straight damage with sith favourites like force lightning. Armed with a single bladed lightsaber.
  • Assassin - Can use stealth to surprise foes, dealing massive burst damage with a double bladed lightsaber
• Bounty Hunter
  • Powertech - We’ve asked Bioware what this means. Shields? Jetpacks? Some sort of utility class with tricks up his sleeve, probably.
  • Mercenary - Again, no idea what this is yet, but we’ve asked Bioware to clarify. More likely to be a straight damage dealer to Powertech’s utility class.
• Trooper
  • The Commando wears heavy armour and acts as a tank.
  • The Vanguard isn’t as well armoured and focuses on quick damage.

We’ll bring you more info as it becomes available.

[via Darth Hater]

Oh wait, what’s this?

It looks like the Sentinel, on the left, is good at using a lightsaber in a really damaging way. He’s the damage dealer. Don’t ask me how, but when he cuts off your hand and the energy blade cauterizes the wound, he knows how to make it hurt up to 50% more. And he’s got two! The official site has this to say:

“Control and focus are the hallmarks of the Sentinel. Through years of training the Sentinel learns the art of using two Lightsabers simultaneously to create an intricate web of damage that is almost impossible to evade. Manipulating the Force, the Sentinel can see holes in the enemy defense, potential flaws in their own technique and how best to plan for both.”

See? He can see into the future and know that he’s going to cock up this lunge and this Sith asshole is going to stab him in the balls.

On the right, you’ve got the Guardian. He’s really good at killing people with a laser sword in a threatening way. When this guy stabs you with a searing hot beam of energy, he also pisses you off. Also, he’s got a bunch of armour. Here’s the word from the Jedi Knight’s class page:

“A wall between the good people of the Republic and their enemies, the Guardian stands firm in the face of overwhelming odds and dares opponents to attack. Perfect concentration and use of the Force allows smooth movement even in heavy armor–making the Guardian a hard target to take down. Leaders on and off the battlefield, Guardians are known for inspiring allies to amazing feats, making them invaluable for conflicts of any size.”

“You there! Stab those droids!”

Edit: Josh has just reminded me that the latest issue of PC Gamer US, which hit newsstands today, features an extensive reveal of these classes. It’s got more details, some developer comments, and much bigger pictures.

If you head to their site you can ‘pre-order your starter pack’ for £15. You get an equivalent amount of “speedboost,” which is NFSW fake money points, and a week of accelerated experience gain. You’ll also get early access to the beta, which is mad considering it’s released next Tuesday, and you’ll get an EXCLUSIVE!!! virtual Toyota Corolla AE86. Which, again, is either much too fast and wonderful for it to stay exclusive for long, or just a reskin of another car that you don’t really need. Here’s their official blurb on the pre-ordering.

Crucially, buying this starter pack (whether you pre-order it or not, I assume) lets you level up to 50, whereas the common rabble will be rubbing bumpers with a level 10 cap.

Cars, people. They need levels and experience points just like everyone else does.

Fluidic space. Yes, it's disgusting. Yes, you still have to go there.

They’re preparing to release their Season Two patch, which will raise the level cap to 51 and unlock a fifth tier of ships for Vice Admirals and their sweaty Klingon equivalents, the Lieutenant Generals. You’ll also be venturing into fluidic space to fight the Undine in their home dimension, which is a little bit rude if you ask me. You can read all the additions here.

Obviously the weekly content won’t be on that scale – he cited something more along the lines of a new quest every week. I’d love to see new content in a game as often as that – who the hell wouldn’t? Do you think they’ll keep it up, though?

[MMOGames via Slashdot]

There’s not a lot of information available at this point, but we know it’ll be out next year. In all these pieces of concept art, though, there aren’t any people. There are space fighter things, giant walkers, and orbital drop pods. In a bland, “hey dudes we’re making a game but we can only say it’ll be out next year,” video on their site, there’s another piece of concept art that features a sort of mech thing. It could be a vehicular combat MMO.

Runescape was certainly the first MMO I ever played, and for all its flaws, it was successful enough for the company to build the FunOrb games portal off the back of it. They know what they’re doing. We’ll keep you posted of any updates, but you can head over to their site and have a poke around yourself if you like. In the meantime, have a few more screens.

From the post by lead systems designer Jericho, “Realtime Worlds’ goal is to grow APB into the game that its players want it to be, so we’ll be asking for comments, posting polls and throwing ideas up for you to mull over at various points throughout the process.”

Here are the main points they’re focusing on:

• Combat
  RTW are evaluating “almost every aspect” of the shooting in APB, from the basic feel of gunplay to the statistics of individual weapons.
• Matchmaking
  They’re improving the match-you-against-Sauron matchmaking mechanism that made some of your earlier fights so frustrating.
• Vehicle Handling
  This looks like a top priority for RTW – they said they’re already underway on a major fix for some of the wonky handling that’ll make it “less slippy overall”. You’ll still be able to drift around corners, though.
• Missions
  They’re adding more interactive missions with more strategic choices.
• Rulesets
  APB’s biggest, coolest promise remains just a promise: custom rule sets for different servers. They name-drop a Newbie rule set that’ll be safer for new players, a Pure Skill rule set which may include locational damage, and the Chaos rule set, where all players can shoot eachother.

You can read our APB review here. We’ll let you know when you can jump into a test realm and try some of these out. I think it’s great that Realtime Worlds are willing to address the major issues with the game, especially if they’re taking pains to leave the core experience unchanged for those who enjoy it. Still, I wonder if they’ll manage to pull it off – it seems like a tall order. What do you think?

Frogster are implementing a host of relationships within the framework of the Free to Play MMO, including family and bonds of friendship with up to 20 people – clearly a boon for the RP lovers, for whom the meek WoW-copying I somewhat thrashed it for might not matter as much as the ability to roleplay having a gay squeeze or a gruff uncle with angel wings. It’s nice to think that this is a victory for gay rights, but it’s probably just a ploy to get two buxom elf ladies to snog.

Play it here.

[via Kotaku]

This looks like the kind of thing a Goblin would get up to. Why bother waiting for a fish to run into a hook when you can invent something that efficiently disperses shrapnel into every fish within a given radius?

[via El's Professions]

They’ve faithfully reproduced the uniforms and vehicles of London’s top terrorist-catching, Queen-protecting, London-patrolling bad asses, complete with shiny jacket and black body armour variants. Look at their hats! See also the Strathclyde police flavour. I’m sure people have recreated infamous gangs by now, but it’s nice to see some idolising of the brave ladies and gents who keep us safe in our beds.

Read our APB review here.

 
Check the comments in about 15 minutes to see someone inevitably posting screenshots of another MMO that features slutty elves and panda warriors. Or slutty pandas.

You’re tasked with repairing Moonbase Alpha after a meteor hits it and it starts pissing oxygen. Don’t they walk funny? You can keep track of it all here, or on this currently-empty launch site that’ll probably be closer to the annoying flash-ridden fireworks shows we’ve come to expect from launch websites. We’ll give you a shout when this pops up on steam.

Update: I’ve taken all the MMO nonsense out of the title – this isn’t an MMO, it’s just NASA’s big toe into the hot bath of multiplayer gaming. The MMO will be the next plunge. Sorry for the mix up, folks.

[via Edge]

[via CVG]

PCG: What lessons have you taken away from raiding in Wrath of the Lich King?

Tom Chilton: I would start with that we have to be very careful of letting people do both 10 and 25 man content. It started off without being a significant problem in Trial of the Crusader, because it was such a short instance that when people were doing 25 and 10 it was like: that’s fine, it’s still pretty lightweight in terms of time investment. But it became pretty brutal with Icecrown. We know we have to be pretty careful of that. We’ve learned a lot about our emblem system. We’ve learned that, at any given time, we want to have two tiers of currency. We want to have the top tier and the second tier, and not have it drag on and on. We’ve learned about making our raid locks a little bit more forgiving, because pick up group raids have become more popular than ever with Lich King, whereas that was really totally irrelevant in Burning Crusade and before that. The idea of being locked to a particular raid was totally palatable because, sure, how else are you possibly going to get a raid anyway?

PCG: When Lich King was in development I remember you saying “raids are awesome but not enough people are seeing them”. With Cataclysm is there a specific thing where you’re thinking “this isn’t living up to expectations, so we’re putting our effort into that?”

Tom Chilton: I would say it’s more incremental evolution of our philosophies and no radical departures. I think that we can continue to broaden the audience for raiding, and the things that we’re doing are reasonable quality of life improvements. We don’t have any thing as dramatic yet as a raid finder, like we introduced the dungeon finder. That’s the next thing that, if we were able to make that work, that would significantly introduce a whole bunch of new people to raiding. We’re just not at the point yet where we can make that work reliably.

PCG: You still need mods to raid. When your philosophy is making a lot of people join in, that still seems like a barrier to entry.

Tom Chilton: For sure. For sure. I think that the number of mods that you need to raid has gone down over time. I felt a lot more reliant on mods back before Burning Crusade than I do now. I think people are down to just using Deadly Boss Mods and even then it’s interesting how the mods have evolved to broadcast important information to people who don’t have the mods.

There are several cases where I’ve raided over the last six months or so when I didn’t even have a mod installed, and I felt that I was able to do fine. Granted, that becomes less true as you’re taking on more hardcore content, or, depending on role. I was playing a DPS role. If you’re playing healer I think it’s a different story.

With Cataclysm we definitely have a goal in mind of improving the healing experience and changing the gameplay enough to where you’re paying more attention to the field and less attention to the mods, to where we can hopefully help that. I kinda doubt that we’re going to completely solve it, at least with the launch of Cataclysm. Hopefully, with each patch we’ll see continued improvement.

PCG: You’re talking about continued improvement to the interface?

Tom Chilton: Right. Both continued improvement to our own interface, and improvement in terms of game mechanics to alleviate the need for the interface altogether.

PCG: I think one of the key lessons of World of Warcraft’s success is that you always go for the big epic idea, but when that doesn’t work you reduce it down that what is the most fun. So you went from 40 man raids to 10 man raids. Are there any more simplification… well, simplification’s a really difficult word because people think it means dumbing down… Is there any more work you’re doing to ease the burden?

Tom Chilton: A lot of the simplifications that we’re doing are to do with our stats systems. We’re trying to find stats that really aren’t giving us a whole lot of bang for our buck, and simplifying those. We have a core philosophy that anything you add to the game, anything you add to the game at all – it doesn’t really matter what it is, increases the complexity of the game.

What we’re trying to evaluate in a lot of cases is whether you’re getting a justifiable amount of depth out of that increase in complexity. An example would be: if we add a spell to the game, imagine we add a spell like dampen magic to the game, right? Then I think you can look at a spell like that and say it increased the complexity… people are putting it on their action bars, they’re having to train it at some level, there might be a talent associated with it somewhere… if that spell doesn’t have a clear role then it’s increasing the complexity of the game but it’s not increasing the depth. Spells without a clear function just adding complexity. We try to identify those things in any kind of expansion and as many as we can, as often as we can, we either try to eliminate it or find a way that it actually adds a justifiable amount of depth.