Newslist For MMOValue

While many living up north enjoyed their white Christmas, many others are ready for all the snow to go away already. In the Lord of the Rings Online, it would appear that this Dwarf is either well into his holiday cups, or just feels like attacking snowmen to take his frustration out against the winter. This fun little snowman was found by Florin E., who writes in to tell us about it: I just saw the easter egg “little castle of sand” and I am really excited. I’m going to find it by myself, I love this. I do not know if you have already published this easter egg. Long time ago I was farming ore near Thorin’s Gate and I found this snowman. Note: you can [also] see a little snowman in the Matthom house in the Shire.

Castro Lord of the Rings Online

There’s a new version update out on the Vana’dielian streets, and that means we’ve journeyed to Jeuno to meet up with our super-seekret contacts at Square-Enix and talk shop on what’s new in Final Fantasy XI.

This latest expansion pack, A Shantotto Ascension, comes bundled with the November version update, as is customary for the past few updates to the title. So, in addition to being able to pay 10 bucks to attempt to foil Professor Shantotto’s aspirations of having her own empire, the game has been updated with a brand new crafting system called synergy, the new ability to add “slots” onto your items and upgrade them with evolith modifications, more job updates, and an improvement to the existing wedding system!

As you can see, it’s a busy time in Vana’diel, and we got to jaunt around the world and find out more. So come along, follow in our adventurous footsteps, and find out what all the fuss is about!

The Legend Torn, Her Empire Born

The tour opened up with a long journey (and by long, I mean a magical teleport that took two whole seconds) to the bustling town of Windurst, where I was introduced to a cutscene featuring the magical experiments of the great Professor Shantotto.

For those of you not in the know, Shantotto is one of the game’s foremost black mages and makes appearances in many of the Windust questlines and even the world event questlines. She’s a curious little woman as she speaks entirely in rhyme, usually showing up as some sort of powerful figure or weasling her way into adventures. In short (but not shorter than her), she’s a little full of herself. Then again, if you could bend space and time, you’d be full of yourself too.

In any case, the opening trailer showcases a rare accident in the Professor’s experiments, creating a large warp rift that pulls her in and triggers a gigantic explosion (shown above.) The Professor disappears from Windurst from some time, only to later reappear with an army of odd, Tarutaru-like solders. However, the Shantotto that reappears is nothing like the old Shantotto — this one is fixated on creating her own empire and conquering all of Vana’diel to showcase her might.
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gmaxwell Final Fantasy XI

Classes are one of those central components of our MMOs. From the early days of Dungeons & Dragons to the use of class based systems in MUDs, we’ve been relying on the concept of characters with unique sets of skills working together to get the job done.

Andrew Vanden Bossche over at Gamasutra has recently sat down and looked at everyone’s favorite FPS, Team Fortress 2, to analyze how classes have gone beyond their original roleplaying roots. While the article isn’t exactly MMO-focused, it certainly does have bearing on our genre as we too begin to branch out away from the sword-and-board fantasy and into FPS territory with games like Global Agenda and Darkfall.

So if you want to see how experience and bullets go together while making gameplay more social and fun, check out the full article at Gamasutra.

Kins Uncategorized

The start of the beta signups for Final Fantasy XIV was certainly good news for the many people anticipating the game next year, but it didn’t exactly pierce the fog surrounding the game. Square-Enix, of course, has always played their cards close to their chest when handing out previews, but there’s still so much more to learn about the game and a number of curious people. FFXIVCore, a fansite with an active base of users translating as much new information on the game as possible, has posted a set of new scans and translations detailing that most important of processes in an MMO: character creation.

While there isn’t as much hard information as fans would like (and isn’t that always the case), the characters on display boast a wide variety of slight differences, as noted by the article. There’s also some information regarding a third force in the game’s main conflict, the Garlean Empire, although details on it are scant. Still, the promise of a detailed character creator is certainly alluring, as are most of the pictures we get regarding said character creator. Final Fantasy XIV often winds up releasing news and previews in chunks, so it’s best to keep an eye open for the next few days for further possible information.

Castiglione Final Fantasy XI

So here we are, at the end of 2009. This marks the first full year of the Death Knight class, and it’s definitely been an eventful year as Blizzard’s balanced and rebalanced our class to help us fit into the ranks of the more established classes. We’ve been called flavor of the month and overpowered. I dislike the former label on philosophical grounds but grudgingly admit that the latter label has probably been correctly applied at certain points in time. Still, overall we’ve definitely had the ride of our lives over the last year as the devs have worked on a patch by patch basis to get us all figured out and settled in. Lets look at each tree and look back at the highlights and lowlights.
Blood

In a lot of ways, Blood is a very underrated tree. While Unholy is flashier and Frost coasts on that whole “tank spec” myth and the dual wield thing, Blood has been a solid workhorse that many non-death knights and even many death knights don’t notice.
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Catelet World of Warcraft

Today a guildy induced me to run Heroic Halls of Reflection on my tanking warrior. Sighing, I slapped on my heroic set and we went into the instance (actually, we ran all three ICC heroics) and when we finally got to the Lich King, said guildmate said “Okay, we’ll do the ledge strat.” I had no idea what the ledge strat entailed, and told him so. He said “go stand over there” and so, bewildered, I did as he asked.

What followed completely trivialized the event. So much so that I’m torn: on the one hand, I hate HoR in no small part due to the difficulty of picking up multiple abominations and tanking them while also trying to get aggro on the spell casting Risen Witch Doctors. The ‘ledge’ strategy is very simple: let Arthas walk past you and lumber his slow way up the tunnel after Jaina or Sylvanas like he always does. Meanwhile, the hordes of undead he spawns? They come running back to you, even if you’re still at the door to the ledge. Since you could never stop the Lich King from getting to Jaina anyway, you don’t lose anything for staying behind him, except that you no longer have to adjust in the event that the Lich King is getting closer to you with his aura of hurty.

Even more trivializing is that the further away from you this all moves, the longer it takes for the multiple mobs in the wave to reach you, making it much easier to pick up the various mobs and have them all be DPS’d down before more arrive. I never had more than two abombs on me at the height of the event’s last wave, they lumber in so slowly.

Overall, I know two things: I’m horribly tempted to do this event this way every single time, which probably means at the least Blizzard needs to rethink how the mobs path or how the Lich King works, and furthermore, doing it this way absolutely reduces the difficulty of the event so sharply that it becomes much easier than the Falric and Marwyn event.

Castillans World of Warcraft

Every day until January 2, 2010 we will have new prizes to give away along with new loot codes for WoW.com’s Twelve Days of Winter Veil contests. Today, we are giving away 1 Disco Inferno code courtesy of WoWTCGLoot.com. As you can see in the movie above, this in-game item summons a disco ball that comes with a lightshow and disco music. Any player that clicks on it will /dance. The perfect celebration item for your next guild meeting or surviving a PUG with your sanity intact.

To enter for a chance to win, leave a comment in this post by Tuesday, December 29, 2009, 12pm ET (noon). Limit one entry per person and make sure you’re registered with a valid email address. We’ll be choosing one winner randomly from the entrants and contact them via email after the close of the contest.

Don’t forget to check back every day through January 2nd for new contests celebrating the Twelve Days of Winter Veil!

Castiglione World of Warcraft

Following the success of their previous raid sets, Onyxia’s Lair, Molten Core, Magtheridon’s Lair, and the Black Temple, Upper Deck has released the first Wrath-themed event pack with the Naxxramas Raid Deck and Treasure Pack last December 22. Unlike their previous raid offerings, however, the Naxxramas Treasure Packs are stand-alone products which can be used separately from the raid deck.

According to Dan Bojanowski, Upper Deck’s World of Warcraft TCG Senior Brand Manager, the stand-alone approach “was created as a direct result of customer feedback.” Aside from containing the standard content such as exclusive foil cards, the set would also include “alternate art heroes featuring heroes from the Drums of War block in Naxxramas-themed gear and settings.”

The Raid Deck, which is available for $29.99, contains a 110-card raid deck, 15 oversized boss cards, a 16-card Treasure Pack, and a UDE points card (or Loot card) and rulebook. Treasure Packs retail for $9.99 apiece and contain 15 random foil Treasure Pack cards out of a total of thirty collectible cards, a hero in Naxxramas-themed armor, and a UDE points card or Loot card. Hero cards are drawn from the Drums of War expansion set with variant art, with a total of ten cards with new art to collect. Each Treasure Pack also has a chance to contain a random Loot card from the Fields of Honor expansion set.

Mustapha World of Warcraft

Upper Deck recently announced a new item available in-game for players to claim using UDE points accrued from collecting the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game. The item, Landro’s Pet Box, is a grab bag of sorts that can randomly give the character one of the following loot items: Papa Hummel’s Old-Fashioned Pet Biscuit, Path of Cenarius, Sandbox Tiger, Dragon Kite, Ethereal Soul-Trader, or Bananas, the Monkey. Items previously available through UDE points were limited to a selection of epic tabards, permanent fireworks, and a Carved Ogre Idol that turns characters into ogres for 10 minutes.

According to the product description, Landro’s Pet Box will more commonly give out Pet Biscuits, Paths of Cenarius, or the Sandbox Tiger, but will occasionally grant the rarer vanity pets. Players will not receive duplicates of vanity pets already obtained through the Pet Box. The item can be purchased through the UDE points store for 2,000 UDE points (the same cost as tabards) and is only available on US and EU realms. Landro’s Pet Box marks the first time items previously available only through loot cards would be made available through UDE points, allowing players who miss out on elusive loot cards another shot at obtaining the items.

gmaxwell World of Warcraft

There’s been some interesting chatter going on around the internet lately about mysterious in-game earthquakes happening throughout Azeroth. Seemingly at random the screen will shake back and forth for a few moments. There are no visible mobs or other occurrences that would cause this. However, these earthquakes are being reported by more and more people.

We know that Deathwing is going to tear Azeroth up in a big way. Take a look at the Cataclysm trailer for how destroyed the land is going to be. Barrens ripped in half, parts of Azeroth’s climate will change, and general hell will come forth unto the plentiful lands. We also know that the world event ushering in the Cataclysm is going to be big, really big. The event itself is not in the patch files yet.
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Castillans World of Warcraft

World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself; contact our tips line (attention: World of WarCrafts) with your not-for-profit, WoW-inspired creations.

It may be relatively quiet around here this week, but World of WarCrafts is still managing to keep the holiday spirit rolling. Allow us to pass along several submissions from crafty readers with a Christmas-y bent … First up, the Christmas tree ornaments (above) sent in by Faylinne from US Duskwood. Faylinne created these as a gift for Cyer of US Blade’s Edge, the friend she credits as inspiring her to play World of Warcraft. Sounds like great results from both sides of that particular equation.

Join us after the break for a Horde cookie cutter and gingerbread cookies, plus a small gallery of sweets from a baker new to WoW-themed desserts.

Next up, a mini-gallery of Horde holiday gingerbread cookies from Herzreh from Ysera. Herzreh fashioned an old cookie cutter into the Horde symbol to add a WoW twist to the usual tree cookies on this year’s holiday cookie tray. Nicely done!

Castille World of Warcraft

Ah! There it is… the holy grail of Christmas gifts! The Red Ryder 200 shot ranged model air rifle… What I want for Christmas is a Red Ryder BB Gun.

In a nod to the holiday classic A Christmas Story, this year’s WoW in-game Christmas gift is your very own Red Rider Air Rifle. You get it from the Winter Veil Gift underneath the Winter Veil Tree.

You use it to cast the spell Pelted! which expands one of the 200 charges the Red Rider Air Rifle has. You’ll want to fire off the gun to the faction leaders first to get your BB King achievement (Alliance version, Horde version). You can miss with the gun, so do the achievement before blowing the rest of the charges.

For additional information on all the Winter Veil achievements, check out our Over Achiever’s Guide to Winter Veil. This gift is active on the EU servers, and as of 8:00 a.m. EST, the gift now appears active on the US/North American servers as well.

Castillans World of Warcraft

As we’re heading towards the final confrontation with the Lich King and the end of this chapter of the World of Warcraft saga, we end up reminded of how much of Wrath of the Lich King was designed and never used, or used sparingly, or even resurrected later, fittingly enough. But not only do we have loads of models that either weren’t used at all or were used later in places completely unrelated to where they were supposed to drop, we have entire zones that either didn’t happen at all, or did but which don’t seem to go anywhere.

We’re all familiar with the strange case of Azjol-Nerub. Originally it was intended to be a complete underground zone that players were to level in, do quests, and so on. Then that was scrapped and we instead got two instances and an NPC who was clearly the remnant of a once far more expansive plot. It’s a shame, too, because those two instances are tantalizing hints at how vast and expansive an Azjol-Nerub zone could have been. Frankly, I found (and still find) the Nerubian architecture in those instances far superior to Naxx both in design and its surprising color palette. And when you look around Ahn-Katet and realize how vast the cavern is and how little of it is actually seen in the instance, or run Trial of the Crusader and fall into yet another astonishingly vast and underused space, I don’t see how you can not wonder why the Azjol-Nerub zone never manifested itself. Perhaps we’ll see World of Warcraft: Underground at some point.
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Castillans World of Warcraft

Tinwhisker sent us this link to a set of entertaining PUG bingo cards on the official forums, made by Cruce of Scarlet Crusade. While I’m not sure I would actually have gotten bingo on any single run, some of the squares have certainly happened in many of my runs:

A pure DPS class doing triple digit DPS (especially Death Knights; sorry to all the good DKs out there).
RankWatch. Almost every run.
Three or more members are “the Patient.” I guess it’s nice to show that they have some PuG experience, but that just makes egregious failures that much more disappointing.
Someone starts on a mob the tank hasn’t even hit yet. More often than not.
Melee DPS attacking from the front. It’s really not that hard, folks.
One thing I’d add to the list is people protesting that they don’t take the game that seriously when you give them advice, like that they might want to put up diseases before using other strikes on their DK. You don’t have to break out the spreadsheets, but there’s a certain minimum effort to not be letting everyone else in your group down.

(So if you need the Cheapest, Fastest WoW Gold,WoW CD-Key & WoW Time Card, Secure WoW Powerleveling just buy here!)

Castillans World of Warcraft

Perfect World International fans had quite a few reasons to celebrate with the release of the recent expansion, Rising Tide, but it did bring one slight downside with it. After all, the new race included with the expansion is quite appealing, but that means players need to go through the whole leveling process again. However, that slight downside should be easily negated for anyone who chooses to take part in the game’s new contest — and we do mean anyone. Because the contest requires only one thing to win a prize, and that’s participation.

The game’s developers have laid down the gauntlet — they want 50,000 fans on Facebook by the end of January next year. To help give the game’s fans an incentive, they’re making it a contest, and the main prize will be given to each and every Facebook fan if they reach that goal. That prize is two solid weeks of doubled experience, drops, and spirit. Plus, five lucky fans among that number will also receive five levels for free! Take a look at the official announcement, and if you’re a Perfect World International fan, time to start working your way toward that fifty thousand mark.

Castres Uncategorized