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Archive for August, 2009
City of Heroes: Announcing Hero-Con 2009
Aug 12th
The 2nd annual Hero-Con event has been announced on the official City of Heroes website.
Hero-Con is an annual event for City of Heroes/Villains fans, and will feature a number of activities including:
- Developer Panel Discussions
- Live Mission Event and Contests
- Social Events with the Dev Team
- Banquet Dinner including live entertainment and awards ceremonies
- LAN center activities
- Community Address and announcements presented by Matt "Positron" Miller, and Studio Head, Brian Clayton
- Special ’Pre-Con’ activities the night of Friday, Oct. 23rd.
In addition, the event has been extended from a single day event, to a two day event this year. Hero-Con will take place from October 24th to October 25th, 2009 at the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose, California.
Tickets will set you back $79.00 and are being sold by Brown Paper Tickets.
Fans will receive an assortment of goodies for their ticket purchase as well, and they include:
- Goody Bag (which includes an Official Hero-Con 2009 T-shirt, a digital in-game item, and more!)
- Entrance into the Welcome Address and Grand Banquet Dinner/Awards Ceremony
- Direct interaction with Dev Team and Community Relations Team Members.
- Access to the City of Heroes® store (which will include items ONLY available at Hero-Con!)
- Attendance at Development Team Panel Discussions
- Opportunity to participate and win prizes in the following competitions:
- Gaming contests
- Official Costume More >
Conan Radio Launches and Seeks DJ's! – Hyborian Adventures
Aug 12th
Conan Radio Launches and Seeks DJ’s!
The Conan Radio team is seeking interested individuals for DJ’ing, Voice Over work, and Hosting of Radio Shows.
This week some of our wonderful players have launched a new internet radio station and have turned to the community for help. If you’re interested in being apart of a fun project that involves Age of Conan then please check out the wanted ad below!
IntroductionThe teams goals are to provide a 24 hour, 7 days a week internet radio station for everyone in Age of Conan. The past few weeks the team has been broadcasting off and on for the Cimmeria RP-PvP server with great success.
Requirements If you’re interested in becoming a DJ you’ll need the following:- A Solid Internet Connection
- A good amount of songs so as not to overlap yourself
- A working knowledge of how to broadcast music (I can also help you along the way if you have never looked into it)
- Free time (you will need to be present for your time slot)
As a DJ you don’t necessairly need to talk while broadcasting, but it would be nice if you did.
For the Voice Over interests:
- A clear, concise voice that can be easily understood
- The More >
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures: Update 5 Post-Mortem Interview
Aug 11th
The folks at Onlinewelten had a chance to sit down with Age of Conan Game Director, Craig Morrison, to talk about the recently launched Update 5, what lies ahead for the future of Age of Conan, and more in this latest interview.
On what former players can expect to find in Age of Conan should they return, or even for new players who have yet to take the plunge:
Onlinewelten: Many former players are still unaware of the huge improvements Age of Conan has gone though since its release. Would you like to use the opportunity now summarize of all the new content and changes in Hyboria?
Craig Morrison, Funcom: That’s not a question to answer easily in a short space, so it’s a little long! Earlier in the year we summarized the changes for the interviews I did at GDC in San Francisco and I think that list is relevant here. I actually found it quite hard to distill it down to a single page, so the short answer is that a lot has been done, the longer answer breaks down into quite a few areas!
- New Content: We have added countless hours of more content through updates such as Ymir’s Pass – the largest More >
Dofus: A Newbie’s Look at Dofus
Aug 11th
MMORPG.com Correspondent Cindy George writes this look at Ankama’s Dofus through the eyes of a new player.
The suggestion to try a game called "Dofus" arrived in my inbox after exclaiming how bored I was.
Dofus?
What the heck is Dofus?
A quick click on the link took me to a page where quite honestly, my first reaction was a snarky smirk and a little scoff. Needless to say I have not held a fascination with online games, nor have I had the attention span to successfully delve into this popular pastime.
I was intrigued by the seemingly odd pairing of a game and a cartoon. With a half piqued interest, I signed up. The painless process directed me to pick a character class, those which have such varied specificities that it took a bit of additional research to understand exactly what I was choosing. However being a girl, I was tempted to pick something cute, damn that gender influence. After much deliberation and reading, I selected the Eniripsa class. Humor struck me when I realized that these guys are the "healers" within the game, and as I have noticed within Dofus, there was a sense of humor behind their name. Eniripsa, is aspirine backwards, More >
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning: Former GM on the Rise and Fall of WAR
Aug 10th
Jeremy Monken, a former GM on Warhammer Online, writes an insightful piece over at The Escapist on the rise and fall of Warhammer Online from the perspective of a Game Master. Entitled "Casualty of Warhammer" the article details his history with Mythic, from touring the facilities, to his eventual employment at the company as a GM after losing his job at a D.C. newspaper, to his personal experience with the many layoffs that hit Mythic over the past year. which of course, eventually hit him.
By December, paid subscriber numbers for WAR had dropped from a reported 800,000 to fewer than 300,000. We quickly learned we weren’t immune to EA’s company-wide layoffs as two rounds hit my department and familiar faces disappeared.
The first to go weren’t surprises. CSRs that were less adept with the software and less able to deal with customers stopped showing up. It was the third wave that had most people updating their resumes. People who had become our friends and mentors – guys whom we would all ask for advice or help with difficult issues – got cut. It became obvious that nobody was safe. The party was over.
Our department became more spread out as our neighbors More >
EVE Online: Looking at COSMOS
Aug 10th
MMORPG.com EVE Online Correspondent Andrew Wallace writes this look at the upcoming social networking feature in CCP’s EVE Online.
The release of the Apocrypha 1.5 update is imminent, with all its associated rig tweaking, factional warfare changes, and specialised ship bays, but the hulking presence of this year’s winter expansion is lurking just over the horizon. With only a few months to go before release, its contents still remain quite ambiguous, with only a revamp of the 0.0 sovereignty mechanics being confirmed, until now. The drip-feed of information has begun (which hopefully means more information will surface after the 1.5 "mini-expansion" is out of the way) and, just in case you were looking for a way for EVE to consume even more of your life, CCP have just announced COSMOS, their own social networking service for EVE characters.
I say just announced, but COSMOS has been talked about for years- most recently as part of one of the presentations at last year’s FanFest- and, for some bizarre reason, shares the name of an existing feature (COSMOS is the codename for a series of constellations in the EVE universe, where special faction agents, or booster resources can be found). Although this is apparently More >
Aperçu des changements apportés par la mise à jour 5.4 – Hyborian Adventures
Aug 10th
Aperçu des changements apportés par la mise à jour 5.4
La refonte des capacités et des aptitudes de cette mise à jour concerne principalement le chaman de l’Ours et le barbare.
Chaman de l’Ours
En nous penchant sur le chaman de l’Ours, nous avons identifié plusieurs choses pouvant être combinées et peaufinées pour améliorer le gameplay de la classe. Cette réflexion a débouché sur ces modifications, qui suppriment certains éléments trop lourds à gérer et ajoutent de nouveaux mécanismes de jeu améliorant les dégâts causés par le chaman et différentes possibilités de jeu en fonction de la situation.
Gameplay
Nous tenions tout particulièrement à nous concentrer sur l’utilisation et la gestion des capacités du chaman de l’Ours. De nombreux joueurs nous avaient fait remarquer, à juste titre, qu’il y avait parfois beaucoup de paramètres à gérer en même temps pour tirer la quintessence de cette classe. Nous avons donc décidé de rendre cette micro-gestion plus aisée, sans pour autant supprimer les bénéfices des capacités concernées (et même, en les développant dans la mesure du possible). Les totems ont disparu, leurs propriétés étant désormais rattachées à d’autres capacités, aptitudes ou combos. Nous avons également réduit le nombre de capacités à activer d’un clic, ce qui devrait More >
Explicación de Dave Williams sobre el cambio en las clases en la actualización 5.4 – Hyborian Adventures
Aug 10th
Explicación de Dave Williams sobre el cambio en las clases en la actualización 5.4
En esta actualización, los cambios en las dotes y en las capacidades se centran en el chamán oso y en el bárbaro.
Chamán osoAl analizar al chamán oso, nos dimos cuenta de que, si combinábamos y pulíamos varios aspectos, mejoraría la experiencia de juego con esta clase. Los cambios realizados nos han permitido fusionar algunos de los elementos más molestos del chamán y añadir una nueva mecánica para mejorar su capacidad de hacer daño y de usar distintas estrategias en función de la situación.
Experiencia de juegoLa experiencia de jugar con el chamán oso y de gestionar sus capacidades era uno de los aspectos en los que queríamos centrarnos. Acertadamente, varios jugadores nos comentaron que, en algunas ocasiones, había numerosos pequeños elementos de los que ocuparse para obtener el rendimiento óptimo del chamán oso. Hemos abordado los cambios con la idea de reducir esto sin eliminar los beneficios de las capacidades y aumentándolos siempre que fuese posible. Hemos eliminado los tótems, trasladando sus beneficios a otras capacidades, dotes y combos. Hemos reducido el número de capacidades que se activan haciendo clic. Por lo tanto, el chamán More >
Dev Update: Class Changes (1.05.4) – Hyborian Adventures
Aug 10th
Dev Update: Class Changes (1.05.4)
Designer Dave Williams explains the direction behind the changes with classes Bear Shaman and the Barbarian.
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Bear ShamanWhen we took a look at the Bear Shaman, we identified several areas that could be combined and refined in order to improve the gameplay experience with the Bear Shaman. This has lead us to these changes where we have consolidated some of the more cumbersome elements of the class and added in a new mechanic to improve both the Shamans damage output and ability to utilize different strategies in different situations.
Gameplay ExperienceOne of the areas we wanted to focus on was the experience of playing and managing the Bear Shamans abilities themselves. Players quite rightly pointed out that there was a lot to micromanage on occasion to really get the optimal performance from the Bear Shaman. Therefore we approached these changes with a view to reducing this overhead without removing the benefits of any of the previous abilities and expanding on them where possible. We removed the concept of totems, rolling their benefits into other abilities, combos and feats. We reduced the number of abilities that required a click to activate. Bear More >
Dev Update: Klassenänderungen in 5.4 – Hyborian Adventures
Aug 10th
Dev Update: Klassenänderungen in 5.4
Der Bärschamane und der Barbar sind das Hauptaugenmerk bei den Talent und Fähigkeitsveränderungen in diesem Update.
BärschamaneWir haben uns den Bärschamanen angeschaut und verschiedene Bereiche dabei identifiziert, die wir kombinieren und verfeinern können, um das Spielerlebnis mit dem Bärschamanen zu verbessern. Dies führte zu den jetzigen Veränderungen, bei denen wir die etwas mühseligen Elemente der Klasse überarbeiteten und eine neue Spielmechanik eingebaut haben, um sowohl den Schaden des Schamanen zu verbessern, als auch die Vielseitigkeit unterschiedliche Strategien in unterschiedlichen Situationen anwenden zu können.
SpielerfahrungEiner der Bereiche, auf die wir uns konzentrieren wollten, war das Management der verschiedenen Fähigkeiten des Bärschamanen. Die meisten Spieler empfanden zurecht, dass man sich um einiges kümmern musste, um die Möglichkeiten des Bärschamane optimal ausnutzen zu können. Wir haben deshalb die Änderungen mit der Absicht gemacht, diesen Mehraufwand zu reduzieren, ohne jedoch die Vorteile der verschiedenen Fähigkeiten zu verlieren und sie wenn möglich auch noch zu erweitern. Wir haben das Konzept der Totems entfernt und die Vorteile in andere Fähigkeiten, Kombos und Talente verlagert. Wir haben die Menge an Fähigkeiten, die man mit einem Klicken aktivieren musste verringert. Bärschamanen sollten also jetzt eine sehr viel klarer strukturierte Hotbar vorfinden und es More >