Guild Wars 2 announced release date

Are you prepared?

28th August 2012 - Release the kr---hounds!

HOM reward - Heavenly Bracers

Guild Wars 2 confirmed released date. It was a momentous occasion for many fans and Arenanet when yesterday they finally let us circle that special date in the calendar---28th August is the magical number and hopefully they will indeed have everything ready by that time, considering how zealous the company has been regarding the date up until now, the backlash would be too damaging in the event of the release and the game still have glaring problems as other mmos have done so.

HOM reward - Fiery Dragon Sword

To be fair, the bugs and most problems I encountered were minor in nature and easily fixed...except for the ranger pet AI in the stress test that seem to have regressed (possibly running a older build, even though I couldn't confirm) and the pet most of the time simply stopped attacking on it's own---which considering it's a mandatory profession feature means that it's quite game breaking, on a more positive note the server stability and overall connectivity/performance have improved to the point that gameplay was fluid even in mass scaled battles with many players, and that's a very important thing, games that have big scale events/battles surprinsingly and disappointingly tend to NOT be able to handle the heavy influx of many players gathered in the same area, resulting in a crippled game feature and consequent backlash (Aion and Rift comes to mind). Thankfully Guild Wars 2 seem to be heading in the right direction in that sense, and I hope come release this experience will be even more heightened.

HOM rewards - Ice Breaker and White Raven Companion

At the heels of a announced release date, a short reminder to any who still hasn't gotten this game why it could be good...





Eight professions, five races...thousands of character combinations 

Which profession will you choose?

The personal stories add a singular perspective to players and following it's predecessor, enhances the experience of each individually created character to a level never seen in other games, the thousands of combinations refer to the personal choices done throughout the game but they all originate from the first choices done after selecting race and profession---from that moment and every other choice made for your character's story afterwards will affect the development of it's personal story and also the type/story you will see if you lead your party in the dungeons.

The 5 race's iconic heroes

Dynamic Combat, complex and entertaining skill/trait system


Due to the very active combat system and creatively situational skill/trait system, even if some of the professions use the traditional names from older mmos such as thief, warrior, ranger and elementalist, in Guild Wars 2 they still catch the players attention with their unique play styles. The attempt to rid the holy trinity of tank-dps-healer in guild wars 2 can be deemed a success as throughout large scale battles and pve events everyone's role is active and equally important and useful, therefore eliminating situations like bottlenecks due to everything relying on certain professions such as tank or healer to progress anywhere in the game. The following video was one I found to explain quite succinctly what we can expect for the game's combat system and overal mechanism.



Be rewarded for your skills, for knowing when and where to use the right skill, for using anything and everything at your disposable including each skills effects--combination of skills merged with another players or the active dodge system! After having tried out the betas I can say that I wasn't disappointed, as the saying goes "everything looks good on paper" but in this case, it works wonderfully even in practice and I find myself gladly waiting for more game time after each beta---something that hasn't happened in a long time as I tried one after another mmo and was only disappointed come beta time.

It's viable to use anything and everything you find

Progress doesn't wait for any profession or lack thereof

Statistics will not cripple you in this game

Any and all group combinations will work

Dynamic and Heart events and a engaging environment

Regardless of the event or the scale of it, the active role they play in the world, how they affect it or simply for the reward that players of any level will get and find it equally useful, players will unavoidably find themselves engage in some activity constantly or simply whenever they choose to in their current area, character evolution takes on a more active and compelling form this way rather then the traditional quest systems and more importantly everyone can join in at anytime and contribute to the events in progress without fearing players stealing mobs or items as the reward for mob killing shares according to damage done while items looted by another will still be there for yet another player, even during the heavy influx of players in the starter areas during betas, the game experience was still exciting and stress free unlike other mmos where players have to compete and often times be rude to others.




Dungeons and secrets hidden throughout the world

As I had mentioned before, personal stories affects what you will get in the dungeon, depending on who leads the party that will brave the dungeon, the path you will take once inside and the story you will witness changes, this means that what you will find inside both in enemies and rewards will be different each time you return to the same dungeon, from the known and explored dungeons we can see that making use of what is within and solving puzzles is just as important in terms of progressing within as it was on the outside, this makes dungeon runs far more entertaining and re-run values increased in comparison, additionally, like dungeons there are secret areas in the world of Tyria that can only be found and accessed through meticulous exploration and at the same time requires some platform jumping and other interactions to reach/complete.




And while these are only a fraction of what the game has to offer, it's easy to see that for a subscription free game, Guild Wars 2 has already exceeded many's expectations and I for one look forward to the final product to when it finally releases in August!

If not, GET PREPARED

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Guild Wars 2: stress test

 Great news for the fans, next Monday(14th of May) the servers will open briefly(about 7 hours) for a "important stress test", only the players who pre-purchase can participate and there are no specifics of what exactly they want us to test, but they said it is possible for us to encounter stability issues.

 Hopefully they are optimizing the graphics engine to spread the load from the CPU to the graphics card, because last beta-weekend I had to set my game to the lowest settings to play in the Mists("world vs world vs world" pvp) due to the amount of players and special effects on the screen.

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Guild Wars 2: Wants to beat World of Warcraft

 First a little history that some people might not know, Mike O'Brien the founder of ArenaNet, started this company in 2000 after leaving Blizzard(interesting isn't it?). Initially ArenaNet was called TriForge until it was acquired by NCsoft two years later.

 After the success of the first Guild Wars they are back in full force.

"Guild Wars beat all of our expectations and our company grew as we put out four expansions and we came together as a team and learned how to build content," - Mike O'Brien

 After years of waiting Guild Wars 2 is finally at the door, and their aim has changed since the first one. They are no longer content with surviving the MMO market, no longer will they remain in WoW's shadow.

"We’re in it to win it this time,...We were number two to World of Warcraft with Guild Wars, now we want to beat them. We’ll be satisfied when the Guild Wars 2 is the most successful MMO. I think we have something unique here and players are going to see it and understand why dynamic events are a way better content model than people have experienced before in online worlds. Word-of-mouth will get people to understand that we really are doing something new and different. The sky’s the limit once this game is out. Online worlds have a networking effect. People will bring friends to Guild Wars 2. We hope all the people who play the beta weekend will tell their friends about it." - Mike O'Brien

 It is indeed a bold claim but Guild Wars 2 certainly does have the capability for it, however he tried to soften the "WoW-killer" slogan by saying:

"Nothing is going to kill WoW other than WoW. Games just don’t die...One MMO has been on the top of the heap for seven years now, but there’s been a progression in the industry for other games being able to attract more and more players. And we’re set to climb to the top."

 Now with only 2 days away from open-beta(on the 27th), it is time for us to be the judge. Will it meet out expectations? I'm sure it be great but we shouldn't raise our expectation to be too high, after all no game is perfect which is why most of us hop from game searching for one we can call home.

On a side note, its interesting how the game is coming out on the year of the dragon, with the dragon being the main theme of GW2 and how the open beta opens in weeked as the 7th year anniversary of the first GW.

 I'm trying to setup a live stream in http://www.twitch.tv/sive0n, hopefully i will be able to play the game while recording with my outdated CPU, though they have announced in the forum that GW2 is currently using more CPU than the Graphics card, which will more than likely be a bad thing in my case.

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Guild Wars 2 - Released/Leaked Cash Shop info

  Recently Anet provided players with a glimpse explanation on the workings of microtransactions in GW2, in preparation for it's early beta testing during the last weekend. Naturally, a bit more information was leaked through the beta weekend about the cash shop elements and these has raised a lot of controversy and debate among the community. While I would like to remind my readers that these belong to a "early" testing on the beta, these items should still be able to provide players with a good idea of the in-game cash shop structure in general, with that in mind here are some of the shots that have been floating around the internet.

How does it work?
  As we all know F2P games are funded by cash-shops, this much is no mystery to most gamers out there. In these type of shops you can only purchase stuff with a special type of in-game currency which requires real money.

  Now lets explain how this works specifically in GW2. The special currency will be gems which like all currencies of the type can only be bought directly via real money, however it is not the only way to get them as there is also another way of acquiring them.

  Gems have a uncommon characteristic, they can be traded with other players for Gold which is the standard currency in GW2, meaning any player can get them without paying real money providing there are players trading them

  On the above screenshot it shows a in-game market tracking feature on the standard value between gems and gold. What this means is that trading gems will work just like a real-life stock market where players can look at a value/time graph of the gems current worth and decide when the time is right to buy/sell them.

  I foresee a lot of players keeping an eye in this since you could effectively make a in-game profit if use the old "buy-low, sell-high" technique.  I'll also add that the current expected estimate is roughly 5-6$(4-5€) per 400 gems.

Cash shop impacts

  While it's still early to say anything too definitive, it's all too easy to unsettle a community whenever the cash shop is the talk in question. Throughout all this, Anet reaffirms their position in their philosophy of microtransactions on visual perks, services and time-saving conveniences.

Available boosts

  As the Cash Shop images were leaked, I'm inclined to agree that they have stayed within the boundaries they set out for themselves. The game does not have a itemization advantage, nor does the faster leveling make a impact. These things I believe are crucial when referred to and influence what the cash shop can have to differentiate it between pay to win and simply pay because its nice or saves you some time while not giving you actual advantage over other players.

  As the easiest example, having a buff that gives you additional 50% experience while killing monsters for a hour, that by itself isn't much and when in a game where your level is automatically adjusted in dungeons and pvp zones to match the others, actual advantage is almost nonexistent.

The voiced concerns

  The biggest concern with the cash shop for the community, surprisingly isn't the shop itself but the gem currency. While it's true that the ratio between actual real cash paying gem buyers, and those interested to get gems with in-game gold is expected to be abysmal, I don't think that it's such a issue as most seem to think it is.

  As I refer again that most of the cash shop items are not in anyway crucial to gameplay, people who can't pay real cash for them might want some gems very badly for whatever use they intend, and yet its actually "normal" to consider that gems paid with real cash can hardly be compared with a virtual currency made in game, a point which I often find people forget as they complain about this issue.

Style items

  Guild wars has always been a very player driven economy, if someone is willing to pay whatever price for the gems, it's still in the end, part of the economy. This as a taken example inspired from EVE online and their PLEX influenced economy, is a alternative way to bring income home to Anet for a game without monthly fee, instead of illegal gold sellers who infest beloved games with bots and spawn farming.

  Also, taking GW1 as the first example where the cash shop with account services and costumes was made available, people who didn't pay real cash didn't even have the possibility to acquire this things, the existence of the gems raise controversy because it'll be a unknown factor how it will mold itself within the economy, but it's still a chance at these items for people who can't/won't afford them with real cash, and a convenient way for people with more money then play time to acquire in-game valuables, directly benefiting Anet and hopefully thwarting illegal activities.


Guild Wars - The game with the pioneer monthly-free plan

  The existence of GW by itself was unique the moment they charged players for the game, but at the same time kept it monthly free with only a mild cash shop to support itself, this was so with GW1 and it will continue to be so with GW2 albeit with a slightly more varied cash shop.

Areanet explains

  Personally, I always loathed "free" mmos with a pay to win cash shop. Awhile back, I tried a much talked WoW clone called Allods Online... it was well made, had decent gameplay and "good" graphics comparable to World of Warcraft. As I had quit WoW around that time the much familiar gameplay was still relatively new and entertaining up until I reached the part where I discovered that the game was literally impossible to play in higher level areas without Incense buffs, a simple explanation is that it equaled your character's stats to the environment, allowing you to progress throughout higher level areas, what put me off was the literal way that they enforced this system.

  I have tried games with cash shops that sold weapons and equipment but having to pay for a temporary buff to be able to play at all was new to me in the pay-to-win scene. My point with this is that even though GW has a cash shop some still mistake this as a pay-to-win game, while in fact nothing could be further from the truth. While the cash shop is obviously much more varied in it's selection of things to sell for other players, it's to be expected considering the game is operating at a much larger scale compared to it's predecessor, and yet Anet has done remarkably in keeping the shop and the game from crossing that thin line and becoming another pay-to-win environment.

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Guild Wars 2: Pre-order

 Great News for the Guild Wars 2 fans, information has been released about the contents of both the Standard and the Collectors Edition of the game. The Pre-Oder according to Areanet will be available starting April 10th, as usual doing so will bring small perks such as:

• Access: to all beta events
• Access: 3 days head-start. (start playing 3 days before launch)
• item: Hero's Band (+2 to all stats)

 Beyond the above you will get the following in-game bonuses if you buy the the Deluxe or Collectors Edition:

• Unique Elite skill that summons a pet to your aid for a brief duration.
• A non-combat miniature pet of a known hero(Rytlock) to follow you around in your journey.
• Limited duration/use items: pet banker(5 days), Glory boost and Influence boost scroll.

 One thing i have to say is that the physical items included in the Collector's Edition is one of the best i have seen offered in any game in the past, it just shows the quality and commitment that have been placed in making Guild Wars 2.

 The game cost varies slightly depending on which retailer you get it from but it will be around $150 for the massive collectors edition, $80 for the Digital Deluxe and $60 for the Digital Standard.

 On a personal note i feel that the prices are more than acceptable for a one-time-fee game, however i dislike that they are giving limited duration/use items with the Deluxe Edition as i would rather have something unique and everlasting.

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Guild Wars 2: Beta signup

  Finally the moment the fans have been waiting for has arrived. Starting today Areanet will be receiving applications for beta testers, however this will only last 48 hours so be sure to do it quickly.

  I hope i will be have the honor of being selected for the upcoming beta, as a MMO and more importantly a GW player i am very excited with this news, however since the NDA will still be applied even if i enter the beta i can not talk about it.

  Its a small price to pay in order to gain early access to the game before launch but in the end, Betas are meant for us to help the developers and not for our enjoyment, however that doesn't mean i wont savor every moment of it.

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Guild Wars 2: open beta announced!

 Today is the 24th of January 2012, the first day of  year of the Dragon according to Chinese calendar which coincidentally is the mascot of Guild Wars 2, because of this Areanet founder Mike O'Brien took the opportunity to reveal their until now "secret beta plan".

 According to O'Brien they plan to begin spreading beta invitation exclusively to the members of the press starting sometime next month. The invitation will be severely expanded over the course of the next couple of months(March and April) allowing players to finally have a taste of their favorite game.

We recently finished our first closed beta test, and we’re now ready to hold progressively larger events. In February we’ll invite select press to participate in beta testing, and in March and April we’ll aggressively ramp up the size of our beta test events so that many of you will have a chance to participate. And of course, this all leads to the release of Guild Wars 2 later this year.

 The launch day is still classified as "TBA"(To be Announced), but with this information some companies such as GameSpy think its is possible to speculate that Guild Wars 2 release date will happen somewhere around June.

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Steam and the Great Gift Pile

This year Steam has granted us with more Christmas discounts but this time they added a little "fetch the achievement" game.

 Every day Steam selects six achievement that range from "open your inventory" to doing some in-game achievement. Once completed you are awarded with a gift or a lump of coal. You can trade 7 lumps of coal for a gift which is either full game or a coupon, games and golden coupons can be used immediately while regular coupons like the lumps of coal must wait until the event ends.

Honestly i don't see the purpose of the coupons, so far i have gained 3 of them and the discount they give is smaller than the ones Steam are doing for Christmas, so why would i use a coupon if i can get it cheaper now... its ridiculous!

After the event in January 2nd everyone with 10 items in the wishlist will enter in a contest where the top accounts with more lumps of coal may win some awesome prizes:

As you might have guessed, this is an effort to showcase and sell older and lesser known titles, which are even cheaper with the Christmas discounts and not all bad, in fact, some of the most entertaining and innovative games out there are small titles.

So far i am actually having fun doing these achievements and trying out new games i never even new existed, some of them have potential, others just aren't my type but they were fun for the short duration i played, i am however still hoping to get a full game as a gift...

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Aion is going Free-To-Play!

  After 2 years in the European and North American market(3 years since the Asian release) with a subscription model, it is now going to use a mix of both free-to-play and subscription.

  There will be 3 payment models now:

• Starter: this one is the most basic with limited amount of character slots, chat, trading.
• Veteran: basic for old players and upgradable for Starter players, they can play the regular game with no limitations.
• Gold: this is the subscription model which gives significantly lower instance cooldowns, several xp and reward bonus.

  This also brings a bigger change, NCsoft will no longer publish Aion in Europe instead this honor will be bestowed to GameForge the leading European publisher of free to play online games that brings us well known titles such as Metin, OGame and 4story.

  Hopefully this change will bring to this game what any MMO needs to have... a larger player-base.
  Have you played Aion in the past? Will this change make you try it again?

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Guild Wars2: new class revealed!

  After nine long months of waiting ArenaNet finally decided it was time to show us the eighth and final profession available in Guild Wars 2: the Mesmer, which honestly was not a surprise to anyone as they already had announced it was a known magical class so by process of elimination it had to be it.

So what can we expect from the Mesmer profession you ask?

Illusions & Shatter
  The Mesmer main class mechanic is their ability to summon illusions(Clones or Phantasms) which take form of several(up to 3) uncontrolled NPCs that look like the caster and the ability to Shatter them on command applying several effects on nearby targets.

  Clones are exact copies of the player designed to confuse and they deal minimal damage so my initial thoughts were "that's awesome", but in practice it might be horrible because in order for it to be convincing you need the AI to behave like a player(unlikely since even the ranger pet which is a class mechanic is dumb as hell), or you can behave like a NPC meaning you most likely have to run in a straight line to your target which may not be the best idea, either way the player will be easy to spot and the clone will only be good to Shatter.

  Phantasms resemble the caster as well but they are translucent and purplish, they use illusionary weapons to damage or hinder your target, are more resilient then their cousin Clones and they have specific behavior according to the weapon they hold which varies depending on the casters weapon when summoned.

No more Hexes
  That's right, Hexes have been turned into visual illusions so players don't have to stare at the debuff bar like most typical MMOs which i find refreshing, however there is one particular example that they talked about i find weird... the old "backfire" hex is in the game and works exactly the same way(damage is dealt if the target uses an ability) but since it now takes the form of a illusion i imagine you get this weird npc looking at the target until it does something? how creepy is that?

  My only concern at this time is that Engineers have turrets, Ranger has a animal companion, Necromancer has minions, Elementalists can have a Elemental, Mermers have Illusions, even Guardian can summon a flying hammer for a time, that is 6 out of 8 profession have "pets" so the game may or may not turn into a summon fest which will most likely ruin gameplay for me, hopefully there will be lots of skill combinations to choose from so it will be unlikely to happen.

  Other then that i think the Mesmer essence from Guild Wars is still there and it will be extremely fun to play with. What are your thoughts, is the Mesmer what you expected?

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Guild Wars 2: Ranger pets receiving some love!

  Every Guild Wars fan or at least one that likes to watch videos, knows how the Ranger class has been among the weakest in the game, this is due to its special mechanic is the "pet system" because quite honestly its just bad from the AI to its utility, so bad in fact its probably the least played profession and the hardest to find videos of and its common for most rangers to just ignore/forget they even have a pet.

  The truth is the pet being the Class mechanic means it has a major role in the overall output of the profession and AreaNet knows this so they started to give it the love they have been promising for a while.

Pet Controls
  I don't know why the game did not had this from the start, but at least now pets have 2 modes, active and passive, being the first allowing your pet to automatically attack your target and in the second it will do nothing until you tell him to.

Pet Evolution
  Before Rangers had to tame and level up his pet, even though its fun the first time considering that you have multiple pets to choose from it gets annoying if you need to do it from scratch, this has been changed, Pet will now always have the Rangers level and their stats will be determined by its species.

Pet Species and Families
  All animal companions now belongs to a species and each species belongs to a family, for example a polar and a brown bear are different species withing the Bear family. The species will determine the stats of the pet and a Unique skill that needs to be manually used by the ranger while the Families will determine the 3 basic pet skills that determine the pets role and are automatically used by the pet.

Taming
   Ranger will no longer need to tame pet they already had before in order to play with it, by taming a pet from a specie it will unlock it for you so you from then on you can equip that species into any pet slot as long as you are out of combat, this means that a single ranger can tame all species and have a huge collection of pets to choose from.

In-Combat Pet Switching
  Yeah that's right, Ranger now have the ability to switch between 2 pet slots on the fly even while in combat, if pet is dead it will still switch however it will increase the switching ability cooldown but the pet will be alive and with full health next time you call for him.

Extra pet slot
  As of now Ranger have an additional slot from the previous 3 making a total of 4 slots, 2 terrestrial and 2 aquatic with amphibious pets will of-course be able to take any of the types, this will allow the Ranger to have more variety adding to its already versatile gameplay.

  I for one am happy so see this as Ranger is probably going to be the first character i will play with, however i would still prefer if we had a choice between a having a pet or something else like a quiver that allows the ranger to switch arrow types thus adding effects/conditions to the arrows or a trap bag that would allow the ranger to have several more active traps.

But its still a happy day for us Rangers...

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New Design!

Hey guys, i have been doing some changes to the blog over the past 24h and this was the final result, i really enjoy how it turned how and need a lot of tweaking to get it work properly but it was worth it.

The main reason for the changes are apart from the obvious awesome look, its now much more organized as you can browse the posts by their category and the search will now automatically search and show what you are looking for within this website.

Hope you enjoy it as much as i do.

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Global Agenda: Recursive Colony

  Recursive Colony is the first large expansion of the third person shooter Global Agenda since it became free to play. The theme of this expansion is an invasion of a horde of self-replicating robots that is menacing the player Domes them selves, so it is up to you to stop it reclaim peace within the Domes once again.

   From what i see it adds some new content both for PvE and PvP, some much requested features like the ability to select a new character without disconnecting and some other main features such as:

• New Open Zone with several instanced missions, quest chains, mid-high level content, and social spaces
• New enemies – including world bosses and instanced mission bosses
• Daily Repeatable Quests – for solo agents and teams. Some quests take place in zones, while others send teams into Recursive Colony hive nodes and ruins. These quests include new 4-man defense Raid missions – now available to smaller groups (1-4) at lower levels (20+)
• New Dyes, Flair, and Trails – rewards for winning missions, completing daily quests, rare bot drops and achievements
• New Pets – new pets available as rewards and crafted items.
• New Blueprints – for consumables and mods
• Easier crafting – components now within the zone, to help with leveling crafting skills
• New PvP Map – Push Dust will be entering the Merc queue from Beta
• New PvP Acquisition/CTR Map – Colony Caverns will be entering the Beta Queue
• Revamped Intro Missions – Tutorials now include class-specific elements to help train new players
• Some quests now affect the state of the world (example – Brownouts in Dome City…)
• Ability to transfer between different Open Zone instances (and VR Arena)
• Open Zone cross-instance chat channels
• Disconnect to Character Select Screen without re-login
• Improved Vendor Item Previewing

I will try the new content soon, hope to see you in-game!

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Star Wars: TOR, The Alderaan Warzone

  The Alderaan warzone - like the name implies is a pvp instanced area, just like in any other MMO but it has a BioWare touch to it, by that i mean that like other of their games it has a more theatrical feeling to it but with the help from the team from Warhammer Online it still feels like a competitive pvp match.

  On to explaining why... the players start the match in a one of two large dropships one for the Republic and one for the Empire,  the objective is to secure the map by taking control of its defenses which are some cannons that are spread around the map which will fire upon the enemy dropship thus eventually destroying it, the central cannon is the largest one meaning the one that will do most damage so its where most of the action will be focused at.

  There is no "respawn timer", instead you just wait for several seconds while your character returns to the fight which is done by speeder bike thus adding a cinematic feel to the game. In the end if you want to break the game into basics its just the typical capture and hold battleground but those elements are nicely hidden making it look like something new.

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Guild Wars 2: Sylvari redesign

  It seems that the designers were not pleased with the initial look of the Sylvari race, apparently they looked too much like the typical elfs which are humanoids that embrace nature(tree-huggers?) and not the intended "beautiful  plants", so they started to redesign it to make it more like a humanoid plant and this was the result:

  Personally when i choose a race for my character i look at their animation and how cool the armor looks on them, i can't see their animation until it is shown in GamesCom but their armor seems to be entirely made out of plants as well which for me is a major turnoff, specially in a game were the typical cloth/leather/mail textures look so awesome.

  As a result this means that the Sylvari race is off-limits for me and it will be more then likely that most of my Guild Wars 2 characters will be Human.

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Diablo 3: No Mods & No Offline...wut?

  Diablo 1 and 2 was part of my teen life, it brings back fond memories whenever I think back on the fun (and slightly masochist) times I spent with my friends in Hard Mode... now knowing that Blizzard forbids mods for a interface like Diablo 3 doesn't sway me much one way or another, the classic Diablo interface was never in much need for re-arrangings. And it’s no surprise they don’t want you modding the online game: it would rather undermine the item market.

  However it is a shame to know that there will not be a offline mode for Diablo 3, I very much enjoyed that aspect on the previous versions and considering how Starcraft 2 went way beyond standard limitations, the flexibility of the editor was such that you could create new games in it, I was rather hoping some of it would seep through to Diablo 3...

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SW:TOR - (Raid Loot) trend for the future?

  It's come to my attention that Star Wars is on test phase regarding a new way to sort through loot drop from Operations(raids) in game, now any mmo gamer worth their salt should have experienced at least some of the few classic raid loot dramas, DKP system? Ninja looted? Well if this new system works out we can say goodbye to them and some more!

Loot containers' (name is still a work in progress!) do indeed exist and are designed to alleviate the frustration some feel around high-level loot drops.

As it's currently implemented, at the end of a key encounter within an Operation, upon looting a high-level opponent, everyone in the Operations group will get an individual container which has a chance to give you a random piece of loot that's specific to your class. It could be part of an armor set, a weapon, and so on. If you don't get loot, you'll get commendations which can be used to purchase gear.

Please note, this feature is currently in Game Testing and may well be modified before launch.

• The items that do not drop for you (or do not appear in your loot bag) from boss kills can all be bought from the commendation vendor.
• To access new flashpoints you have to clear beginner ones.
• There will be no pre-raid armor grind. You will enter low-level raids in the armor you finished your story in.
• Loot bags can contain upgrades for weapons and armor.

  This means that Raid-Loot will start to be a personal-drop instead of raid-drop, it will definitely help to avoid loot issues within guild members but will it turn guilds into randomized groups? Hopefully the tests will prove otherwise.

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Diablo 3: Auction House

Just saw the announcement of the Auction House system that Blizzard is going to implement in the 3rd sequel of the Diablo series, it seems that players will be able to sell picked-up items in the AH for REAL MONEY, that's right it will be similar to a cash-shop, the only difference is that you can only buy items that dropped for someone else contrary to the cash-shops where the company creates the item for you.

So how will it work?

Its Simple you play the game as you have always done until some nice item drops, then you must make a decision... will you equip the item(and probably bind it to your character) or will you sell it... if you want to sell it you can sell it just like a regular AH but the bid will be done in real currency and Blizzard take a small percentage.

The community seems to be divided between opinions as some feel outraged and some say that its the best idea ever, Personally i am unsure of what to think, on one side these players that don't mind wasting money in a game can buy awesome items and gain an edge, but since the item needs to be dropped first the only difference is that the owner might not be the one it dropped to.

On the other side this idea will virtually eliminate Gold farmers all together because players can now sell their own stuff and gain money directly from Blizzard thus making Gold Farmers obsolete, also this will allow players to gain money by playing the game they like maybe even enough to be a decent profit.

Will this be the next generation of games? it may even make the "professional player" an actual profession... time will tell.

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Waiting for: Star Wars - The Old Republic

  Despite the constant stream of disappointments I've gotten over the last few years in terms of mmo games, sometimes I still find myself looking up for games like this, as they say, you can't lose faith hm? Anyhow, a resume on the scrapes of info we've gotten so far...

Factions/classes
  It's been confirmed to be consisted of two sides, the Republic and the Sith Empire. Each side will have unique classes, available only to that faction, with 4 to a side. Each of these classes will also feature a branching path along their progression, allowing characters to change the fundamental way a class operates. 

 Republic 

Trooper (Spec: Vanguard, Commando)

Smuggler (Spec: Gunslinger, Scoundrel)

Jedi Knight (Spec: Guardian, Sentinel)

Jedi Consular (Spec: Sage, Shadow)  

Sith Empire 

Bounty Hunter (Spec: Powertech, Mercenary)

Sith Warrior(Spec: Juggernaut, Marauder)

Imperial Agent(Spec: Operative, Sniper)

Sith Inquisitor(Spec: Sorcerer, Assassin)

Races

  The players may choose 8(i've read it was 9 though i never saw info on the 9th) races, from what was announced this include the well-known Humans and Twileks, as well as Zabraks and Trandoshans. What effect a given race has on the character as a whole is so far unknown, whether it will be purely cosmetic or not. It's also not clear whether there will be faction restriction to races, although some races, such as the Sith Pureblood, give the impression that they will be...

Planets

  There will be about 17 explorable planets from the trademarked Tatooine to the unknown Tython, each supposed to have large playable areas which should be great for both the lone explorers as well as the large pvp guilds.

Space simulation

Contrary to SW:Galaxies this part of the game seems to be very limited, with only a few ships to choose from and with little to no free roaming this appears to be just a glorified way of transportation then an actual feature.

I would imagine that the Star Wars fans should be excited for a new game from this well known franchise as do i, however SW:TOR doesn't seem to be adding lot of improvements to the mmo genre and with big IPs going to be launched in the coming months, one might might start wondering if this game will have what it takes to be a success.

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Guild Wars 2 at GamesCom

 GamesCom is the biggest European game expo and last year Guild Wars 2 was a hit with the fans, now in 2011 they will not disappoint as their booth will be better then ever.

A statement as been released from ArenaNet with information regarding what we can expect this year, and this time we will be able to experience many features never before shown to the public, this includes:

• 7 of the 8 classes: play with the new engineer class as well as the old ones(thief, guardian, necromancer, ranger, warrior, and elementalist).
• Charr started zone: play through the new Charr starter zone as well as the Human and Norn starter experience.
• Underwater experience:  swim and fight in underwater zones and combine your efforts with other player to kill a never before seen boss.
• New races: play for the first time as the advanced Asura or as the beautiful Sylvani.
• Character Customization: no more pre-made characters, change your looks as you see fit.
• PvP: yes for the first time ever we will be able to experience the the Player vs Player combat, and there will also be some exhibition matches GW2 Developers vs Boon Control guild at the ESL stage center.

Since the game is expected to be released before GamesCom 2012 this will be the last chance for Europeans to try the Closest-to-release demo of the game.

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