We are working hard on learning and documenting the new game content in the Cataclysm expansion beta. While the talent system and skill set is a major state of flux right now, a couple of the 5 man instances are functioning quite well. We have had quite a bit of time to learn Blackrock Caverns and the Throne of Tides.

Blackrock Caverns seems to be functioning very well and the fights are slightly more complex than some of the previous 5 man dungeons, it seems fairly well balanced with the current amount of damage and healing that the pre-made level 80 characters are doing. With a good group, you can expect to wipe a few times while learning the fights… with a bad group, you can expect a migraine class headache.

The Throne of Tides, on the other hand, is still very buggy and at least one aspect (a large elevator near the entrance) is still incomplete and requires the use of a teleporter NPC. This instance has several mechanics that seem to need some pretty serious tweaking. One of the more humorous is a mob attack that throws you up into the air inside a fairly low-ceilinged tunnel, causing you to bounce up against the top of the tunnel for a few seconds before falling back down. The final boss fight in this instance also contains a mind-control mechanic that can drag the fight out for an easy 10-15 minutes – this might just require a tactic that we haven’t figured out yet, but it definitely seems to need some tweaking.

Aion pets have been sighted! (on the korean servers at least) however that means we NA’ers shouldn’t be far behind!

 

The first type of pet and will probably be the most popular is the decorative pets, while they have no game play value, they do have really nice unique appearances (omg one of them is a mushroom!).

 

 

The next type of pet will no doubt be a huge hit in abyss and pvp in general and it’s the “Alertive” pets which a kitten and a big headed puppy (aww). The main feature of these “Alertive” Pets is that they meow and bark when an enemy player gets within a certain range of your character.

 

The next type of pet is perfect for the “closet hoarder”. It’s the Warehouse Pet, which is a donkey/mule looking thing! How cool is that! The different Warehouse pets have different size storages and prices, the storage they can hold is 6, 12, 18 and 24 slots.

 

The final type of pet I’m sort of uncertain about and it’s known as the Productive Pet, it’s suppose to give you Dyes, jewels, ores, balaur mats, enhancement stones, manastones, aethers or a hairpin when you feed it, there’s no real information about it yet so I’m not sure if you’re guaranteed an item everytime you feed it.

 

I’m sure you’re all wondering how to get them, I mean who wouldn’t be! The answer is simple, just buy it! In each races large city, a Pet Manager NPC has been added where you can buy, sell or abandon your pet eggs. Once you buy a pet egg you use it from your bag, once you name it (name is changeable btw!) you then choose the color, and then choose the accessories you want on your pet and you’re done!

 

In case you’re wondering the prices range from 117,502 for the basic decorative pets up to 5,023,210 for the Warehouse Pets.

 

Once you have your pet named, colorized and accessorized you can summon them from the Pet List which is found in the start menu.

 

Once your new pet is popped into the world you can check it’s basic information by double-clicking the summoned pet from the Pet List or using the “[” key then a window with its basic information will pop up for you to see. When summoning a Warehouse-type pet, you’ll notice a green paw on your bag screen which lets you put items directly into your pets’ bag.

 

Like most pets in the real world and games, they need to be fed and Aion pets are no exception. When looking at the 2^nd tab on the basic information you’ll see your pet’s current status, amount of food, and snack information. It’s important to remember that different pets eat different foods and some will refuse certain food you give them.

 

Just like your character your pets have their own quests too, ranging from earning prize books, to special emotions and even fly with you, yes you can get a puppy with wings.

 

All in all, I think these Aion Pets will receive nothing but praise, I’m not sure about all of you but I think this is long overdue, having a pet around really makes the mmorpg worlds a lot less lonely!

Guild Wars 2 combat information woah I said Guild Wars 2!

Some new news about combat has finally come out for Guild Wars 2.

Seems like there’s a big gap between releases of Guild Wars 2 information which is a good thing; it makes it so much more appealing! Unlike previous Guild Wars 2 posts this one is jam packed with oodles and boodles of information about combat and the Elementalist!

One of the first things talked about in the post was how two of the game designers use a combination of skills to block a drakes attack while the second player knocks it into the air so the first player can backstab it. This to me is what the original Guild Wars skill system was missing; not only is it effective however it also sounds visual appealing and adds a fun co-op system to the game.

The main issue I had with the original Guild Wars is that the skills were really bland and I felt like after I learned what a skill did I just never thought about it again; however with combinations like this it should give a lot of the skills a lot more diversity.

One main thing I’m happy to see returning is the limited skill selection; I thought this worked fantastic in the original Guild Wars and if it’s improved in any way it’s going to be even more amazing in Guild Wars 2; I wish more MMORPG companies followed this route although it still leads to many cookie cutter builds it’s still a great way to add diversity to a limited number of classes.

Read the rest of this entry »

Star Trek Online News

In Star Trek Online’s first massive update, Season One Update One, almost every one of the players most wanted “wish list” change has been… well changed, here’s a few of them!

Difficulty Slider – yes it exists! All your asking has not been in vain, players who choose to leave the difficulty slider at default won’t notice any changes, however if you move your difficulty slider to Advanced or Elite, players will instantly notice a huge difficulty increase, and along with the difficulty you will get even better and awesomer (not really a word) rewards. However, don’t think its all fun and games, since dying in Star Trek Online on Advanced or Elite leads to…

Injuries! Yep, you heard me right, we have death penalties! While this may not sound like good news, Star Trek Online was lacking this key gameplay component, previously anyone just pretty much suicide in any mission as many times as they wanted until they completed it, however now if you’re playing on Advanced or Elite, you have a chance to get an injury, which consists of…

Minor – The negative effect of minor injuries is small, and only several minor injuries would hinder a player.

Major – Major Injuries are significant, but the character can continue to function at little performance difference. More than one major injury that modified the same stat would start to affect a character’s performance.

Critical - A character can continue and succeed with more than one critical injury, but each critical injury received is costly to treat and will hinder the character.

All injuries disappear after 30 minutes, or can be healed by a few different methods, but trying to PvP or Raid with Major or Critical Injuries is going to severely reduce your capabilities, woo! Thankfully we now have…

Auto-fire – OMG it’s true, players can now set all their weapons to auto-fire, while they focus on their skills and positions, thankfully this change is live before the entire Star Trek Online player base is diagnosed with carpeltunnel!

New and Boomier weapons! I’m sure most of you have noticed that the Admiral weapons were really lacking, thankfully in the recent update, Admirals will see a bigger and better selection of weapons to choose from, and hopefully this will lead away from the current cookie cutter admiral builds.

One thing I’m sad to not see changed yet is the skill cap, but I guess not everything can be changed in one update, since it is Season One Update One, here’s to hoping it’s in Season One Update Two!

Features of the upcoming May 11 Expansion, Rise of the Godslayer

I’m sure almost everyone here was on the Age of Conan Hype-train when the game was just announced, and it probably a lot of you were disappointed when the game was released and had a lot of problems, especially with the missing content after Tortage. However after many “Most Improved” awards, I think Age of Conan’s going to become the game that it should have been when it was released. Gateway of Khitai fixes one of the biggest issues, the lack of content between levels 20-40. It is a Level 20-40 zone that is supposed to continue the Tortage feel and I think this one zone alone is going to help a lot.

While Rise of the Godslayer is an expansion, I think the main thing players should realize is that it’s not the typical MMO expansion. Rise of the Godslayer doesn’t add any levels to the cap, instead it’s more like a giant band-aid expansion with some cool new content. While some people may respond negatively to the fact that the level cap is still 80, one thing to remember is that adding more levels usually makes the game more unbalanced, and doing that would in my opinion take away a lot of the resources they could be using to fix the earlier levels of the game. I for one never had a big problem with the game once you get max level, aside from the sieging issues; the end game of Age of Conan has always been fun to me.

One very interesting feature of the upcoming expansion is the offline leveling. As long as it’s not a major game changer, I think it can be great for the population, my only concern is people making a full list of characters, and having them all 80 in a few months. While there isn’t a lot of information released about the offline leveling, I think small things like that, which seemed to be geared more for the casual players, it a great way to bring the Age of Conan populations back up to where they should be, and hopefully keep them there. I’ve always been a fan of the game, so I’m happy to see that Age of Conan is getting back to its rightful place!

Caspi from Refuge on the EU server Taerar has just “achieved” every single achievement in Wrath of the Lich King, even the 25man Lich King Heroic kill, which means essentially that he has “beat” Wrath of the Lich King! Seeing as there’s nothing else to obtain or complete, I wonder if he was sad to see that there was no Achievement for completing every Achievement. Maybe Blizzard should make the “Completed every achievement” and name it Caspi!

Although it’s only friends and family at the moment this is still fantastic news because it means that the expansion is now playable to a large extent. Hopefully we’ll be able to get some information about beta once the alpha has been going for awhile. If any of you are lucky enough to know a blizzard employee, you should have them request you a key a.s.a.p.!

It seems like the expansion was only announced like a month ago. I guess in these modern days of MMORPGs, you get used to waiting years for games and expansions to be released, and thankfully Blizzard never makes us wait long!

Just remember, due to this information, I’m sure there’s going to be large amounts of scams trying to get information saying you can get into Alpha, remember that they are not real and it’s only a friends and family alpha!

Nifty picture guide to the inner sanctum Blizzard employees enjoy!

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/04/earning-your-sword-a-picture-tour-of-blizzards-offices.ars/

There’s been talk out in the Blogosphere on which is the next game to outsell the current Guinness world record holder for this honor, Modern Warfare 2, which sold a whopping 4.7 million units in the first 24 hours of its release (Wikipedia).

Could Blizz be the next holder of this honor? Honestly, it seems likely given their track record, and the games that are coming out this year… however there is one glaring issue. Blizzard is PC only… and the biggest sellers these days span multiple platforms (Xbox, PS3). Not to say Blizz doesn’t hold a record of their own already, with 2.8 million copies of Wrath of the Lich King sold in 24 hours, making it the most successful expansion of all time. With such a massive following however, it’s certainly still possible. It could probably be done with just the population of Koreans who follow SC2! It will be interesting to see what happens in the coming months.

You can now preorder AOC’s upcoming expansion “Rise of the Godslayer” directly by going to http://register.ageofconan.com. Rise of the Godslayer is AOC’s new action-packed expansion due to release May 11. Read about Rise of the Godslayer or check out our up-to-date Age of Conan leveling guide.