World of Warcraft lead developer Tom Chilton has been talking to Gamona.de about the contents of WoW's next big patch. MMO Champion spotted the article, which confirms that patch 4.3 will add the long awaited Deathwing raid, as well as a couple of intriguing new NPC vendors.
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The new Guild Wars 2 trailer may start out slow, but don't let it fool you. At around the two minute mark a bloody great dragon jumps out of the sea, then the epic score kicks in and and the real action begins. There's some satisfyingly physical combat on show, along with some of the enormous bosses they mentioned before. In addition to the sea dragon there's a gigantic steampunk robot who fires eye beams and a massive, stompy giant who bellows in the faces of the party in a true brown trousers moment.
Plus there's airships, classical music and someone firing two pistols in slow motion. What more could you possibly ask for? Check out our preview to learn more.
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Carbine are revealing their gorgeous new MMO at Gamescom this week. You can get the first details from our Wildstar preview, or check out the beautiful illustrated art style in the first Wildstar trailer above. It contains a good lesson for would-be adventurers. Don't touch the "dormant" giant robot, even if you really, really want to.
EA's press conference at Gamescom just ended, where after announcing Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes, Dr. Ray Muzyka showed The Old Republic's first "operation" - or raid, clarity fans - the Eternity Vault. It was first announced at E3 with a snazzy trailer, but this was the world's first chance to see it being played.
The Eternity Vault is an eight or sixteen player mission on an ice planet "where an enemy older than both the Republic and the Empire has been contained." It's a prison, and it must hold some real bad people inside. How bad is up to the players, who can change the difficulty of the raid before they start.
Funcom lead designer, Ragnar Tornquist has taken the stage at Gamescom to announce that classless, conspiratorial MMO The Secret World will be released in April next year. Beta registration will open next week on Friday August 26. A new trailer for the game was also shown. We'll have that for you as soon as it appears. Funcom are set to show The Secret World's player vs. player portion for the first time at Gamescom this week.
ArenaNet designer Jon Peters has been writing on the Guild Wars 2 dev blog about a number of big changes and additions we can expect to see in the Guild Wars 2 Gamescom demonstration this week. Read on for news on the new skill system and an overview of the new areas and bosses ArenaNet will be showing in Cologne.
A new screenshot posted on the World of Warcraft Facebook page, spotted by MMO Champion, shows two brand new NPC characters, a Void Storage merchant and a Transmogrifier. They'll likely be part of the upcoming 4.3 patch, but what do they do?
Well, the Void Storage merchant could perhaps offer "storage" for your inventory in some sort of "void," maybe offering a more efficient way of managing vast amounts of loot. The Transmogrifier is trickier, but suggests an ability to change the appearance or properties of an item. But why would you want to do that? We'll find out more from Blizzard's showing at Gamescom next week. Let us know your best theories about the new NPCs in the comments below.
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It's Sylvari week on the Guild Wars 2 site. Yesterday we posted some screenshots and concept art of the new race. The video above gives us a look at the Sylvari in their natural habitat, a giant sentient tree from which every member of the elf-like race are born. The Sylvari don't just wear leaves, they are leaves, which raises interesting questions. Do they eat sunlight and expel oxygen? Find out more about the Sylvari on the ArenaNet blog.
Carbine have been teasing their upcoming MMO reveal at Gamescom with a new blog post from art director, Matt Mocarski. He reveals the MMO will have an "illustrated look" inspired by Japanese animated films like Princess Mononoke, and will be set in a "future fantasy" world with magical and technological elements. Carbine have also thrown up a still from the upcoming Gamescom reveal trailer.
The ArenaNet blog will be hosting articles and screenshots on the newest addition to the Guild Wars 2 universe, the leafy Sylvari race. According to ArenaNet artist Kristen Perry, the brief for the new race boiled down to three words: "noble, beautiful, plant." You can read about the challenges of creating a race made of foliage on Perry's blog post, which also contains plenty of concept art. Writer Angel McCoy reveals more about the new race here. Check out the new screenshots and concept art from Sylvari week below.
Drakensang is an action RPG that carries the strong, gory whiff of Diablo about it. That's no bad thing, especially considering that Drakensang is free to play, runs from a browser and is remarkably pretty. The open beta is now live, meaning anyone who wants to give the game a shot can sign up now on the Drakensang site (press the huge green PLAY NOW button to get started), and launch the game from a browser of your choosing. Fling fireballs, kill imps, level up, or check out the screenshots below.
Jagex have told Eurogamer that beta testing of their new free-to-play, browser-based MMO, Transformers Unvierse, will kick off "very soon" in preparation for a full release next year. They've also dropped some new details. Read on for information about the class system, vehicle transformation and how Transformers Universe will relate to the recent cartoon series.
The New York Times report that five people in South Korea have been arrested on suspicion of organising a gold farming operation under the instruction of a North Korean government agency.
Seoul police say that a group of 30 young hackers deployed an army of bots to amass huge amounts of in-game gold in popular Korean MMOs like Lineage. These funds were then sold on to gamers for real money. They made an estimated $6 million in two years. A portion of those profits were wired back to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.
According to a senior officer at the Seoul International Crime Investigation Unit, the team of hackers “regularly contacted North Korean agents for close consultations.”
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The latest Star Wars: The Old Republic trailer introduces us to the Jedi Consular. He's good with a lightsaber, he's good with giant, levitated chunks of machinery, he's good at turning weak minds into sponge. He can even inspire nearby allies to help them fight harder. AND he has a beard. The choice between classes gets harder as we move closer to The Old Republic's release later this year.
A new teaser trailer for Jagex' upcoming Transformers MMO has snuck in. I thought it was a sandwich, but then it transformed, and became the moody, atmospheric trailer you see above. It leads me to believe that a game based around the paranoia that everyday objects might be robots in disguise would be a fine thing. For all we know about the new Jagex MMO, it could be that game. You can see the first, equally enigmatic teaser trailer here.
World of Warcraft players around the world have contributed over $1.9 million to help the Japanese earthquake and tsunami relief efforts. Massively report that all this money was raised by players purchasing the Cenarion Hatchling from the World of Warcraft pet store.
The pets were introduced into the game back in May. In the period stretching from the pets' launch to the 31st, July Blizzard gave 100% of the proceeds made from players purchasing the pets to the Japanese charity, meaning WoW players managed to raise $2 million in just three months.
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A new developer diary from Bioware takes us through one of The Old Republic's low-level Flashpoints. These instanced group missions have branching plot lines that are decided by the team in group conversations. We get to see a few of those in action. Every member gets to decide on their preferred response to each question, but a lottery decides who actually answers, which is an odd compromise. Could this leave most players feeling as though they have no control over the direction of the mission? We'll have to wait and see.
We're still figuring out which classes we're going to play when the huge MMO launches later this year. The beta tests set to run in September should give us another chance to get to try the classes first hand. The Old Republic is now available to pre-order.
Wargaming.net announce that they will be revealing a brand new project at Gamescom next month. It's surprising news given that they only recently unveiled World of Warplanes at this year's E3 conference. It's not clear yet whether the "project" will be a new game, or have anything to do with World of Tanks, all we know is that it's something wargaming.net "recently started to develop."
We got a chance to catch up with Wargaming.net CEO Victor Kislyi recently at a tank festival. In the shadow of a looming Churchill we discussed the future of the wargaming.net and the World of... series. Kislyi said "we are thinking about Battleships."
A mammoth update for free to play MMO Mythos is set to add new player vs. player arenas and a Dungeon Master mode that challenges you to wipe out dungeons as fast as possible for bonus loot. The patch, spotted by Massively, will also hike the level cap from 50 to 51, giving top tier players room to become even more powerful and opening up impressive new armour sets. You'll find the extensive patch notes below, taken from the Mythos site, where you can also sign up to download and play the game for free.
Carbine Studios announce that they will be unveiling their new MMO at this year's Gamescom. We've seen it, and will bring you exclusive details in issue 231 of PC Gamer UK, which will hit shelves on August 31.
The team behind the new game make this one to watch. Turbine founder and lead designer on Asheron's Call, Jeremy Gaffney is executive producer on the project. Producer Eric DeMilt worked on Fallout 2, and other members of the team helped make World of Warcraft, Everquest 1 and 2, City of Heroes and Diablo 2. Their mission statement is "to make the Next Great MMO."
