Month: December 2012

Right on the heels of yesterday’s news that NCsoft had laid off part of its Seattle staff, Eurogamer reports that End of Nations developer, Petroglyph, has also been impacted by a round of layoffs. The report indicates that as many as 30 may have been affected. The report was reinforced by Twitter post from End of Nations Designer Adam Stevens who wrote, “Layoffs at Petroglyph. Looking like I’ll be Leaving Las Vegas.”

Naturally this led to speculation of the game’s cancellation, but End of Nations Community Manager Lance James took to the forums to indicate otherwise and announce that the game’s development is still pushing forward and has been moved in-house to Trion’s development studio in San Diego.

Hey guys, I wanted to give you a status update on End of Nations and let you know that we’re still moving full steam ahead with the game.Since our last state of the game announcement we have been hard at work on getting End of Nations to where we want it to be. We are committed to making End of Nations meet our standard of AAA and we will continue to develop the game until it meets our standards. Rest assured that we are not giving up on End of Nations and that we are set on giving fans what they want.

To give you a little sneak peek into what we are working on, some of the changes you’ll notice will include improvements that ease the learning curve for new players, a revamped UI system, advancements in player strategy, and most importantly a more polished overall game.

As End of Nations was reaching the pre-launch phase in its lifecycle, we officially brought the game development in house to Trion’s San Diego Studio and will complete the development internally. Our team has been hard at work implementing many changes based on your feedback from the beta events. Keep checking back for more updates as we are looking forward to showing off some of the cool new things the team has been working on.

Over the course of the Closed Beta, and Open Beta season I have seen players quit Ghost Recon Online because they claim it was too difficult. With the cover system being the main feature of the game, along with special abilities for the three different class it is no wonder why players claim that it is too difficult. Difficult in a sense that this game takes a bit more strategy, skill and especially patience compared to the generic run and gun shooters. In Call of Duty, players run and gun all the time with no sense of hesitation, but being ghost recon is a bit different, running and gunning will get you killed (unless your a recon that has cloak). The cover system is what I think makes this game so difficult, it is either players learn to adapt to a new game setting, or players learn to quit a game so soon. But other than the games mechanics, the level up system is what I also truly see frustrating players. I do agree with the fact that higher level players shouldn’t have a major advantage over lower level players, but with time comes great opportunity. I know it is difficult versing players who have a higher level weapon (which often is considered better than the lower level weapons), with better armor, devices and a major experience gap but that just means it is more difficult to kill them. If you are a true “Ghost” then you will stick it out through good and bad times.

The truth behind Ghost Recon Online is that it is a difficult game that require a lot of tactics, skills, and a whole bunch of luck. The cover system along with the use of abilities will either make the difference between an average player, to a highly competitive player. Anyone can go behind a wall and start shooting, but with the use of effective timing, and a little bit of luck a kill can be reached. I have always talked about luck, but with the critical system having a certain percentage to activate after every shot, it can really make the difference in a battle. Having a critical hit can relieve you from firing one more round into another player, which saves you time, ammo and sometimes your life.

With three classes to choose with from such as an Assault (Assault Rifles, and shotguns), Recon (Snipers and Sub- Machine Guns) and Specialist (Light Machine Guns and Shotguns) it might make it a difficult choice for players to choose from. But along with other variables such as the type of armor, health and even abilities players are always complaining about either other classes being too strong or too weak. Every class has their respective strong points and weak points and should be played accordingly for maximum efficiency. Perhaps it is the lack of knowledge of each class but when you are having trouble with a class, there is another player who excels at it. Know each class, guns, armor and even devices strong and weak points and players shouldn’t have a difficult time choosing. Whether you play the class the way it is suppose to be played, or play the class how ever you want it will be a difficult match if you don’t know what you are doing.

Leveling up and having access to better weapons is what players sometimes complain about. Also known as a leveling system, players are being frustrated with players having better access to weapons. Here is how difficult it gets facing a higher level player. I know the cheytac or dragunov is much better than the GI~level 10 snipers, or the f2000 having better control than the super fast firing sar-21 c assault but these weapons are much better (stat wise than the lower level weapons). The armor difference between a low level armor and a high level armor is huge. Players who have high level armor, either move faster, or receive more hits compared to a lower level. Devices can also be an issue as the squad device can give a little boost to players. Devices can range from faster device recharge, gunshot detector to more armor. Having a high level device ability can mean a player can use that ability more often, have better effects and/or be much more deadly than a low level using the exact same device. Other than the controls of the game, this is one huge factor that makes the game a bit more difficult. Facing a team of higher levels can ultimately spell defeat if your team cannot counter attack. But don’t be discourage just because these players have higher level armor than you. By playing the game fluently and giving your best shot tactically, and skillfully these “higher level” enemies will not bother you. Take upon the challenge and if you are a low level beating a high level with full equipment, imagine what you can do once you buy full high level gear and weapons. Just because these enemies have a higher advantage stat wise, doesn’t mean that they are invincible. This will help you become a better player as you know that the enemy has an upper hand while you try your best to kill them.

This game has a steep learning curve, so steep that Ghost Recon Online has implemented a matchmaking system only for low levels (1-5). This goes to show, with a lot of quitting threads and posts that this game is not your typical shooter. With a difficulty that is evident, players who quit always say that this game should not be recommended to anyone. I agree that this game shouldn’t be recommended for anyone, anyone who can’t take a good skill base challenge.

District 187 is now under the Free-to-play section on Steam. The game decided to up the ante and give away some great prizes to players who take screenshots and post them on the Steam Community will be eligible to win:A Premium Pack, which includes a 50% XP Boost item, a 50% Gold Boost item a God Hand (which reduces the time to interact with bombs) all for 30 Days AND 30,000 Gold!
AND you get 10 Penalty Immunity Cards!

Only Screenshots posted to the Steam Community with Steam between 3pm PST on 12/6 through Monday, December 10th at 12:01am are eligible.Screenshots should be of either the Haven Map or The Slums Night AND must feature a character using a Flashlight modification. The Game Master Team will choose 10 winners based on image quality and overall aesthics. Their decisions are final.

To post a screenshot using Steam follow this process:Log into Steam and Launch District 187.Make sure you equip yourself with a gun that has a Flashlight.Take a screenshot (in Haven or The Slums (N) using your Flashlight) by hitting F12.
After the match is over hit Shift+Tab to bring up the Steam overlay and Select “View Screenshots”.
Select the Screenshot you’d like to use and click “Upload” in the bottom right corner.

Fish pies not being stackable, mushrooms exploding under your house, and gargoyles activating their stone form mid-flight, are these things boring you? Whatever your answer is, they are not going to happen again, because Ultima Online has a patch for you, and they just got a whole bucket of fixes and updates posted to the test server.

In the updates, Lava Lobster fishing has been fixed, hats have stopped twitching, and gargoyle aprons have all been returned to their proper hue.At long last, golems can no longer be used to exploit combat training, and vendors are seeing some big changes. Rather than increasing their fees once per day, vendors will charge incrementally over time.

They’ll also give players a grace period before heading out after running out of funds, and all vending penalties have been abolished. Hit up the official patch notes for the lengthy list, if only so you can learn that “Robin’s Egg candy will no longer fill the tummy of the eater.”

Age of Wushu has spotlighted a new school which is also the first “Evil” school the Wanderer’s Valley. They do not care about anything, except making the Wushu world collapse. While rooted in secrecy like the Tangmen, Wanderer’s Valley are not dependent on the shadows. They prefer to know that their school instills terror across the world.

Many of the key leaders are fallen members of other sects. A Divinator that discovered he would die an early death founded the school. He knew that living a rich and full life would never happen for him. This knowledge turned him bitter, and the Divinator began recruiting the most infamous members of society to ruin the culture and land that he could never have. He took dark pleasure from watching others suffer as he eventually would. This pleasure in the suffering of others, and the belief that “life is short” is now the battle cry for the Wanderer’s Valley. They believe that they do not need to reveal their motivations, because in the end – it will not matter. The Wanderer’s Valley believes in living in the now, and letting the rest of humanity deal with their consequences. The school’s current leadership in Age of Wushu exemplifies this belief. The leader is a eunuch that wants to cast China straight into chaos, and a man so far removed from the rules – even the Beggar’s sect banished him.

The skills behind the Wanderer’s Valley members are just as fun as the evil they cause. A barehanded skill set called “Bone Corrosion Palm”, uses pressure points and poison energy to cripple others. The “Wind-Catching Blade” uses the strength of the two massive blades to slice through foes with a deadly combination of speed and force. Finally, the “Perish Blade” set is a signature move for the double sting weapon. It uses buffs through points, poisons to weaken an area, and insects to slowly eat away at enemies.

If you just want to see the world burn, then this is the school for you. Do you have what it takes to be the wild card, or is the eunuch more equipped to handle the dangers? For more information, you can visit the Age of Wushu official site.

Cryptic games have always been known for its powerful character customization tools such as evident in Star Trek Online. Even greater will this ring true for Perfect World and Cryptic’s upcoming Dungeons & Dragons action MMORPG, Neverwinter. Today, I am pleased to reveal the developer journal about Neverwinter’s character customization when a player steps into the Forgotten Realms.

In Neverwinter, character creation begins with choosing a race, class, and gender combo. Each race comes with unique racial abilities, which grants some bonuses to core stats — strength, constitution, and more. These racial abilities allow players to fully customize their play style. Furthermore, stats are also customizable, both through your choice of race and through rolling.

Create a sharp looking avatar with a large scale of options to customize physical appearance. There will be an option to choose from several preset looks or individually fine-tune each facet of your character – slim or lengthen hands, change shape and complexion, add height, show battle scars or tattoos, and much more.

Fiesta Online, the legendary anime fantasy MMORPG from Outspark, surprised their massive community today with a highly sought after upgrade for the game’s wildly popular mount system. For the first time ever, Fiesta players will be able to take friends for a ride anywhere they want to go in the vast open world of Isya. With the super stylish two-person Buddy Bike, one now never needs to go solo again. Spontaneous road trips, exotic honeymoons, the possibilities for adventure are endless. The update also includes a Zip Board that’s sure to impress as it hovers and speeds around town doing tricks and flips. Available in a wide range of colors to match players’ moods.

“As one of the premiere party MMOs, we’re really psyched to be offering Fiesta fans these super fun ways to enjoy the holidays this season.. This upgrade to the mount system has been one of the most requested items for months now and player feedback since launch has been incredibly strong!” said Philip Yun, CEO, Outspark.

The Buddy Bike and Zip Board will be available this weekend and players are being invited to try the new mounts for FREE at GM-led preview events all this week. Event details here. PLAY FIESTA FOR FREE at the official site and JOIN THE FIESTA COMMUNITIES.

Joymax has revealed their December update for Knight Age will be largely focused on the Pupa system. Well known for its mounted combat, a knight’s trusty Pupa companion is always by the player’s side. These loyal pets are more than what meets the eye; from collecting to combining, Pupae are an exciting part of the Knight Age experience. With this month’s update coming close, Knight Age prepares players through easy-to-follow guides on everything there is to know about these wonderful companions.

These companion creatures have been collected and trained by Knights since time immemorial. Their eggs are collected in the field, or as a rare drop from boss monsters (who may even drop a Pupa that looks just like them)! Pupae (plural for Pupa) fight and gain experience at the side of their Knight master. Many may look adorable, but their power and skill is not to be underestimated. Only one Pupa can be active at any given time, Knights have been known to collect numerous Pupa, training them to use in a variety of roles and special events.Each Pupa is associated with one of the four elements of the world: Fire, Water, Wind, and Earth, and which family they belong to will dictate their appearance and ability. A Pupa’s diet is filled with items, such as equipment, that knights no longer need. In exchange for this delicious food, Pupa will return to their owners a Panta – these rare gems are then used to enhance other equipment, such as armor and weapons.

Pupae can’t be bred, but instead new Pupa are created by merging two fully grown pets together. These mergers can create rare and powerful combinations, changing the Pupa’s elemental type and family. Merged Pupa have surprised their owners by changing to colors not found in nature, including green, blue, purple, silver, and even gold!Pupae can even be based on non-original characters. For example, the globally known chubby white bunny, Mashimaro, is coming to Knight Age for this month’s update!With Knight Age’s recent massive update, including the pink hippo and triceratops mounts, there’s something for everyone from group PVE content to intense weekly PVP action. Knight Age bustles with activity and there’s no slowing this game down.

Was this the year that gaming grew up? GameIndustry ask their international staffs this question. Four persons bring us to the hard look at the industry’s growing pains. What’s your opinion?omething seems to have changed in the last year or so. We’re not sure when it started, but nearly all of us could point to a spot where we noticed it happening.You might have seen it on Twitter, arguments cast in 140 characters or less. It may have been the sudden, vicious turn of a comment thread or the undertone of dissatisfaction in a headline. You might even have felt like this all along. Things are being challenged, conventions called to account.

Gender imbalance, the lack of inclusivity, the corruption of journalists, issues of maturity, sex and violence, copycatting, the exploitation of the customer – all these issues have been pushed to the fore over the last twelve months. Turned over and inside out, vaunted or ridiculed – there seems to have been barely time to draw breath this year between long, hard looks in the mirror.
For some it’s been a welcome change, the relief of realising that there are other people who feel just as angry, marginalised or outright excluded. For others it’s been an unwelcome distraction, unnecessary navel gazing which only leads to a pointless stirring of the pot and no real progress – frenzies whipped up by the press for cheap hits and self-glorification.

Whatever you feel about them, many have been almost impossible to ignore. Whether it’s the storm of abuse endured by Anita Sarkeesian, the crisis of confidence ignited by Rab Florence or marketing tactics which are somewhere on a scale between condemnable and very clever, this has been a year in which our industry has been pulled from many ruts, asked to reassess and re-examine.

How much has actually changed is debatable, but what is clear is that it’s unlikely we’re going to see these issues swept back under the carpet. Like it or not, these debates aren’t going away. We’ve hosted and participated in all of these discussions, and more, but we rarely get to comment on them directly. So, read on as we ask our international staff – was this the year that gaming grew up?

If you play League of Legends then it goes without saying that you have come across at least one individual that deserves to be banned from the game. There is a report function for a reason, but does that mean you should always use it?Start off by visiting the poll I made on the League of Legends forums to cast your vote!I’ll make it very clear; I do NOT ever use the report feature. Not that I never have a reason to, but mainly I have decided that it’s not worth my time to even bother. Instead I use the ignore feature. But why? It doesn’t even work. I know this because I use it excessively and have come across situations where I’ve ignored a player on my team one game and then queued up for another. To no surprise, the same person ends up on my team again. They start talking in game and I can hear them. Even though when I press tab, it is clearly marked that this person has been ignored.

So even the ignore feature is broken, but this isn’t about the peace of mind you should get by ignoring people. This is about the reporting feature being just as big of a broken crutch that serves no real function but to waste my time.You could claim that the report function works because of the Tribunal, but you would just be buying into Riot’s propaganda that attempts to make the players feel empowered.The truth is that Riot’s system fails because of the player, that does both the reporting and the judging. I understand that it requires a final review by Riot before any action is taken, but you must also take into consideration that these reports are mostly submitted by players who abuse the report feature. Let me explain why.

Take a typical normal game where there isn’t any leavers or AFKers. Your team may not be doing the best ever, but you are holding on. Suddenly one or two of your teammates get into an argument over having made a bad choice. Things start to degrade from there and the next thing you know they are arguing in all chat about how everybody should report the other. This kind of behavior only perpetuates the problems your team must overcome to win the match. It only serves as an unnecessary distraction from recovering from mistakes and making a comeback. I can’t recall how many matches I could have won if my team had just manned up and moved on to try harder. It’s more than possible to pull off a win by making a comeback. I know this because of the teams I have had that didn’t fall apart at the first sign of trouble and turned the match around through hard work in conjunction with determination.So as you can see, I feel a majority of reporting that goes on is unnecessary and only serves as spam that floods the system. This leads to real cases of reports on serious issues being lost in the pointless bickering.

Let’s take another example of reporting where a player leaves the game or goes AFK. Not when a player states they are giving up, but when it happens without warning. I feel that players who use reporting in these situations have absolutely no understanding or patience. In the end it is just a game and with that said I can understand if a player has to leave the computer for something important. It’s also possible that a disconnected player is having technical difficulties which prevent them from entering the game. Such situations range from client crashes to internet or electricity outages. There is simply no way to tell if sometimes if a player is truly having issues or if they just started them game knowing they couldn’t finish it or had to go AFK constantly throughout. I have personally had technical difficulties with my client constantly crashing and when I finally got it fixed and re-entered the game I was instantly bombarded by my team crying that I deserved to be reported and banned. Even after I explained my situation as soon as I entered the match.

In conclusion I feel that there are very few and specific circumstances where reporting a player is merited. I also feel that players should be more understanding when evaluating their use of the reporting feature. It also scares me that these same players who find any and every reason to report someone are also participating in the Tribunal. The only thing that brings me comfort is the fact that despite how many players have claimed to report me, especially for selfish reasons, I have not been banned or even been given a warning. Maybe then after all the system does work in some weird way? What do you think?