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Archive for March, 2010
Bounty Bay Online: capital cities of merchant’s alliances
Mar 30th
Starting today, Frogster has activated the capital cities of the merchants alliances in Bounty Bay Online for the first time. From Friday at 20:00 CET the cities of Alexandria, Venice, Lisbon, Bordeaux and Amsterdam can be attacked and taken over by guilds in the merchants alliances. The existing city battles for War- and Commercial cities now have new times at the weekends. The encounters between the guilds fighting for dominance now offer additional tactical possibilities and exciting battles at sea and on land thanks to the readjustment and merging of city battle times as well as the implementation of merchant battles. These merchant cites which are now ready to be besieged, as well as the reorganization of the existing city battles, offer city-less guilds in particular the opportunity to capture cities which up to now were defended by very large and influential guilds and alliances.
The eight cities which are available for city battles are divided into two categories War Cities and Materials Cities. Both types can be conquered by guilds at certain times. Up until now the battles for the eight cities have been split evenly over four days with only two cities per day being allowed to be conquered. The compressing of the More >
El lanzamiento de Mortal Online sufre un nuevo mes de retraso
Mar 30th
Star Vault ha comunicado que su juego Mortal Online no saldrá al mercado este mes como se anunció hace escasos quince días, sino que se retrasará un mes más para que la compañía tenga tiempo para prepararlo como se merece.
El anuncio lo ha realizado Henrik Nystrom, CEO de Realtime Worlds, a través del foro de Mortal Online, y en él pide paciencia a los fans ya que este tiempo de espera será bien empleado para pulir el diseño del título.
Visita la web oficial de Mortal Online.
War of Legends finaliza su fase beta por todo lo alto
Mar 30th
Jagex Games Studio ha anunciado hoy que el título War of Legends ha finalizado su beta satisfactoriamente. El juego ha sido muy popular durante la beta con miles de nuevos jugadores uniéndose a la batalla cada día. Para celebrar la salida del juego completo, el equipo dedicado a la comunidad de War of Legends ha organizado una semana de celebraciones dentro del juego. Jagex, adicionalmente, regalará paquetes de objetos a todos esos jugadores que ayudaron a hacer que la beta de War of Legends fuera un éxito. Nos ha desbordado la popularidad que ha tenido la beta de War of Legends y estamos muy agradecidos a la fantástica comunidad de beta testers que han hecho que el juego haya triunfado tanto dijo Mark Gerhard, CEO de Jagex Games Studio. Hemos visto cientos de miles de jugadores uniéndose al juego en la fase beta y ha sido especialmente gratificante ver alianzas enteras migrar de otros juegos de estrategia a tiempo real a War of Legends. Con una historia tan rica, profundidad del contenido, gráficos de alta calidad y un soporte a la comunidad insuperable, estamos seguros de que War of Legends continuará a atraer a los jugadores a unirse a la batalla More >
San Francisco llega a StreetRivals
Mar 30th
Farbflut Entertainment ha anunciado que StreetRivals, la versión para Facebook del popular y controvertido juego online Mendigogame, ha superado en pocas semanas tras su lanzamiento el medio millón de jugadores registrados. Con un crecimiento diario de diez mil jugadores, StreetRivals se ha situado en el cuarto puesto de la lista – encabezada por Mafia Wars – de los juegos de rol más populares en Facebook. Para celebrarlo, Farbflut Entertainment ofrece a partir de ahora a sus usuarios la oportunidad de iniciar la aventura en un nuevo mundo: San Francisco.
StreetRivals está aprovechando la buena aceptación que están teniendo los denominados Social Games – con un alto nivel de interactuación entre sus jugadores – entre los usuarios de Facebook. Gracias a sus contenidos con un gran componente de comunidad, como las donaciones o las provocaciones a nuestros amigos en Facebook, StreetRivals está creciendo viralmente, sin necesidad de publicidad, afirma Niels Wildung, gerente de la compañía creadora del juego Farbflut Entertainment. Próximamente, los jugadores de StreetRivals podrán además formar bandas y cumplir misiones junto a otros internautas.
El objetivo del jugador en StreetRivals es sacar de la miseria a su alter ego virtual – un mendigo sin hogar -. Para ello ha de pedir More >
PAX East 2010: Turbine on renting vs. owning in the MMO market
Mar 30th
Blizzard’s presence at PAX East 2010 was even smaller than I was expecting, with two or so Community reps there to oversee the StarCraft II tournaments going on. Boston-based Lord of the Rings Online developer Turbine, though, had a very large demo area which saw a lot of traffic over the course of the three-day event. Con-goers could stop by and demo LotRO, as well as Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited, and hobnob with the Community reps and developers present.
With the WoW-specific news at the event registering somewhere between “literally nothing” and “nearly nothing” on the newsy scale, I decided to stop by Turbine and ask them a few questions about their MMOs. I ended up speaking with their Design Director, Ian Currie.
“I’m from WoW.com,” I said, “so obviously I don’t normally do a lot of reporting on your games. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever even played DDO, and I’ve only played a little bit of LotRO.”
Currie, the gentleman in dead center of the photo above, smiled and said “You really don’t know what you’re missing, then, do you!”
“Apparently not,” I acquiesced, “but maybe you can help fill in the blanks.”
Continue reading PAX East 2010: Turbine on renting vs. More >
Warhammer Online: March 2010 Producer’s Letter
Mar 30th
Hello all!
In the 1.3.4 Producer’s Letter I made a commitment to writing a producer’s letter each month. True to my word, it’s time to give you updates on the progress the team has made since the last producer’s letter and to provide you with more information about the future.(read on for the full letter)
A focus of the last letter was on player/developer communication. Since then we’ve been using the Dev Discussion forum to give you insight into our current and future plans. Thanks to player feedback, we’ve gotten a lot of valuable information about some 1.3.5 features that are in development, and some great ideas for the future.We also have been working very closely with our community and customer support teams on tackling bugs, and we are pleased to let you know that you should be seeing some fixes for the buff dropping problems, Tomb of the Vulture Lord boss issues, and keep door bugs. We appreciate the community’s efforts in helping us to identify and debug these pesky problems.
Since 1.3.4 launched, we have been examining and evaluating Scenarios. The changes to the structure of Scenarios, new Scenario weapons, and Weekend War Fronts have shown to improve many aspects More >
Activision quietly restructures senior management
Mar 30th
An article from the LA Times reports that Activision Blizzard Inc. has quietly made some internal changes to senior management and internal organization. The company has apparently split itself into four units, one focused on the military game Call of Duty, another handling internally owned properties like Guitar Hero and the Tony Hawk series, and a third handling licensed properties.
Why these changes weren’t relayed to investors or the press is still unknown, but it’s likely due to the fact that they could be interpreted as a sign of weakness. Activision has seen flagging sales for two of its former cash-cow franchises, Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero, and a recent very public scuffle with Call of Duty creators Jason West and Vince Zampanella following their ejection from their positions as heads of Activision’s Infinity Ward studio painted the studio in a negative light with gamers. This kind of restructuring could point to turmoil within the company, an image that an industry juggernaut like Activision would want to avoid.
So, what do these changes mean for Blizzard, and for World of Warcraft? Apparently nothing, from what can be gathered — this is Activision’s first major change since they merged with Vivendi in 2008 to create Activision Blizzard. More >
Silence!
Mar 30th
Something we may not always think about what our spells and abilities actually do in the setting of the game. Sure, for us, the tooltip tells us the basic information and we go on from there, but what are we actually doing? How does Arcane Shot work? Does the hunter just have a special magic arrow they shoot me with? Do they somehow wave the arrow around and it becomes magic, say a few words in Darnassian or Troll or whatever? Some abilities are pretty obviously spells, like almost everything a mage does, but for other classes the border between magic and skill can get pretty blurry… moves like Cloak of Shadows really beggar the imagination to explain in a non magical way.
A recent discussion on the forums about Thunder Clap and its being suppressed by silence effects (it always has, or at least has for so long that I’ve just accepted it) brings out Ghostcrawler to explain the reasoning. Quite frankly, it’s a pretty reasonable explanation: if you’re silenced, no one can hear the Thunder Clap going off, and thus, it doesn’t do anything.
Continue reading Silence!
Comienza la beta abierta de Heroes of Newerth
Mar 30th
Finalmente ya esta entre nosotros la beta abierta de Heroes of Newerth, un juego de PvP online inspirado en el popular DoTA. Ahora todos los usuarios que lo deseen podrán adentrarse en el juego sin necesidad de ninguna clave.
Recientemente Heroes of Newerth recibió una gran actualización con un cambio completo en la interface y muchos cambios destinados a balancear el juego. Heroes of Newerth ya cuenta con 60 héroes a los que próximamente se sumaran unos cuantos más.
Lo peor de Heroes of Newerth era su complicada curva de experiencia para nuevos jugadores que nunca habían jugado a DoTA o alguno de sus clones. Este punto ahora esta ligeramente mejorado gracias a un completo tutorial que nos guiara en los pasos básicos del juego, los diferentes héroes, como ‘junglear’, como comprar mejoras para tu héroe…
Sitio Oficial | www.heroesofnewerth.com
Icecrown Buff increased to 10%
Mar 30th
Zarhym confirmed that after today’s downtime the Icecrown Citadel raid buff has been increased by 5%, to 10%. It has been previously reported this buff will eventually go all the way to 30%. If the buff does increase to 30% it would seem as if even the most casual of raiding guilds will be able to down the Lich King.
What do you think of this mechanic? Would you like to see more of it in the future, or do you think it makes things just to easy?
We have increased the potency of the Strength of Wrynn and Hellscreams Warsong buffs in Icecrown Citadel by an additional 5%. These buffs now increase total health, healing done and damage dealt by 10%. In addition, the number of attempts allotted for all final bosses on Heroic difficulty has been increased to 40.