Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last two weeks, you’ve undoubtedly heard the gnashing of teeth that erupted due to Warhammer Online’s recent billing issues. Today, Mythic Entertainment’s Studio Executive Producer, Jeff Hickman, sat down and wrote a very honest apology letter regarding the recent issues, including the steps they’ve taken to correct them.
Caused by a now-solved system issue, the Warhammer Online billing error caused multiple charges to show up on the statements of many subscribers (and previous subscribers). The fixes were rolled out on April 13th, and they believe they have now resolved all outstanding issues with banks and credit issuers that may have occurred. While most banks did remove any fees that had been incurred due to the incorrect billing, Hickman notes that EA has agreed to pay all charges for any others whose banking institutions are refusing to remove fees due to their error.
Also, as a way to apologize to players, and in an attempt to earn back some good will from their player base, Mythic is offering players a bonus of 100% experience and renown when fighting enemies and monsters for the next two weeks. They’re also adding in a vendor who will carry an assortment of special items for players — from mounts and disguises onwards. Each player will be mailed two tokens, and will be allowed to choose what they like best from the available goodies. Coupled with their new systems to ensure this never occurs again, Mythic certainly is working hard to make sure their community is happy. How this will all play out among their numbers we’ll have to wait and see.
Castres Uncategorized
Amidst all of the Final Fantasy XIV news, it would be understandable if players had a bit of a harder time remembering what holidays are coming up in the venerable Final Fantasy XI. But it would be very sad to miss out on this one, the time-honored Feast of Swords that gives everyone a chance to swing wooden blades at animated samurai armor. It might seem a bit odd to have such a holiday presented as foreign in a Japanese game, but that’s always been one of the oddities of the setting.
Per the custom, there’s a short fiction piece detailing the lead-in to the event, which continues the trend of Final Fantasy XI’s moogles being portrayed as inscrutable meddlers. The holiday proper begins on April 27th, with the usual procedures. Talking to an event moogle gives you a special blade, and finding a moogle in one of several zones lets you enchant the blade to hunt the local armor. You won’t be able to fight anything else, but it’s all worth it when you slay the creature and get your ever-coveted cosmetic event rewards. In short, it promises to be fun times for adventurers of all levels, although possibly less fun for animated samurai armor.
Castille Final Fantasy XI
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Castille Aion
Everyone’s favorite apocalyptic wasteland got a little bit livelier with today’s patch. Version 1.3.11 of Icarus’ Fallen Earth brings several noteworthy additions to the residents of the Grand Canyon province, including a new dueling system, the first stage of the New Gallows conflict town revamp, and a new fatigue system. The update also brings a laundry list of tweaks and bug fixes, as well as the curious decision to reduce vehicle crafting XP by 50% and research book crafting XP by 80%.
Massively also managed to snag the non-combat pet pictured above, but sadly the doggies have since been removed from the in-game vendors. We’ll unravel the mystery of when and where you can expect to get your own post-apocalyptic pooch as soon as we confirm the details with Icarus. In the meantime, check out the update announcement and the patch notes, and don’t forget about our previous coverage of the additions from the test server.
Castille World of Warcraft
Everyone’s favorite apocalyptic wasteland got a little bit livelier with today’s patch. Version 1.3.11 of Icarus’ Fallen Earth brings several noteworthy additions to the residents of the Grand Canyon province, including a new dueling system, the first stage of the New Gallows conflict town revamp, and a new fatigue system. The update also brings a laundry list of tweaks and bug fixes, as well as the curious decision to reduce vehicle crafting XP by 50% and research book crafting XP by 80%.
Massively also managed to snag the non-combat pet pictured above, but sadly the doggies have since been removed from the in-game vendors. We’ll unravel the mystery of when and where you can expect to get your own post-apocalyptic pooch as soon as we confirm the details with Icarus. In the meantime, check out the update announcement and the patch notes, and don’t forget about our previous coverage of the additions from the test server.
Catherine World of Warcraft
Hot on the heels of some pretty nice financial news for Jagex and comes some good news for RuneScape players: new content.
Not just any new content, either. Jagex is calling the Dungeons of Daemonheim expansion the biggest update in RuneScape’s history. This expansion is going to keep players busy for quite a while: it’s added a completely new underground world consisting of five separate levels, each of which gives “customized rooms.” The customization feature is what makes this update so exciting for players: “Every room in the Dungeons is randomly generated and customized to the skill level and abilities of the players that enter it. No two rooms and no two experiences will ever be the same, providing billions of different play-experience combinations.” The update adds the Dungeoneering skill as well, giving players a brand new avenue to explore.
The Dungeons of Daemonheim expansion is live now, so if you’re a RuneScape fan and haven’t checked it out yet, it’s definitely time!
Castres World of Warcraft
Tales of Fantasy has entered closed beta, and IGG is ready to celebrate the milestone. They’re sharing the party with the community in the form of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, a massive guild event.
The event is designed to encourage fans to play together as part of an active guild. The description might be a bit confusing, so here’s how it works: between now and May 14th, guilds will be ranked according to member levels. Your guild must have at least 40 members, and overall member levels need to total at least 1,000 to qualify. The event includes a screenshot contest for special in-game titles as well.
IGG has set up a ranking board, and every Friday it will be refreshed to reflect the current top guilds according to each guild’s total member level. Check out the ranking board page for all the details, and then rally your guild and get to playing! Good luck to all!
sarah2009 World of Warcraft
Over the past few hours, I have come to the realization that I have purchased a $25 imaginary space horse. To be honest, I do not regret my horse purchase. I do not have horse remorse. What I have gleaned, however, is a keen understanding of the nature of video games moving forward, in particular the massively multiplayer genre.
World of Warcraft is not new to the world of microtransactions, or in this case, macrotransactions. I do not believe anyone considers $25 to be a microtransaction, which seems like a healthy bit of cash. A few thoughts came to my mind. First, we now have the Blizzard price list for all sorts of purchased add-on content and the range of money we will be shelling out in the future. Pets are $10; mounts are $25. The celestial horse’s success yesterday proved beyond a doubt that the $25 pricetag was not a deterrent for many purchasers, as the queue pushed over 100,000 people at times in the U.S. store alone. Early sales were estimated to be in the 400,000 area, with more climbing steadily. This horse is a hit.
My second thought was how drastically the dynamic has changed for Blizzard and why, potentially, it has changed. This past year showed a stagnation in the number of accounts created for World of Warcraft, leaving Blizzard with the same number to tell shareholders at their next meeting a year later. With new ways to monetize the player base other than the number of accounts, Blizzard has essentially given shareholders the go on holding onto increasingly valuable Activision Blizzard stock and to expect wonderful new profit generators. New ways to monetize existing subscriber bases are always being explored, and the Celestial Steed has cemented the pet and mount store as one of the absolutely critical endeavors.
This is only the beginning for macrotransactions in World of Warcraft. As long as the items up for sale do not give another player an advantage and stay purely cosmetic (with the exception of the race change, which has the potential to alter balance), I am confident Blizzard will provide some compelling additions to the already mind-blowingly successful pet and mount store.
Mustapha World of Warcraft
If you’ve spent any time hanging out in Dalaran recently you’ve no doubt seen your fair share of flying star unicorns and probably have heard non-stop the lamentations of Lil’ XT.
There was previously a bug that caused Lil’ XT’s sounds to be sent out to a much wider range than they were supposed to be heard. When a few dozen people have them out it can get quite annoying. There’s now a hotfix that disables some of these sounds. It’s not a complete solution, but it’s better than turning off sounds all together.
Vaneras is an EU community manager, and we’re not sure if the hotfix is active in the US. However, if it’s not in the US right now I’m sure it will be soon.
VanerasA hotfix was recently applied, which temporarily disabled some of the sounds Lil’ XT makes.
The issue was that some of his sounds were flagged in such a way that they play for everyone around him and not just the player that owns the pet, an annoying problem to be sure. We can’t alter volume or who the sounds play for through a hotfix so the temporary workaround is to disable them completely right now until the proper fix can be patched in later.
source
Castille World of Warcraft
This was actually an offhand remark of Ghostcrawler’s a few days ago, but it didn’t seem to get much attention. In a thread devoted to the possibility of extending buffs like Blessing of Kings to additional classes in Cataclysm, Ghostcrawler mentioned the following:
GhostcrawlerObviously things like Rebirth can’t just be handed to out to more classes unless we did something like a second exhaustion mechanic for battle rez or whatever. For now we’re going to try the cooldown at 30 min again. In Icecrown’s world of limited attempts, a 30 min cooldown likely meant you just cooled your heels until the cooldown was available again. In Cataclysm the hope is sometimes you’ll have the benefit available but not every time, which scales back on how much of a game-changer it is.
An alternative to a longer cooldown for Rebirth is something where one druid using it would trip everyone’s cooldown for a few minutes. That it’s a bit gamey, but might solve the problem.
Also keep in mind that Rebirth is much more useful in today’s game where people tend to die from massive damage. In a world where people sometimes die because the healers have run out of mana, then Rebirth doesn’t buy you quite as much.
Castro World of Warcraft
How could I not cover the Celestial Steed for this week’s Phat Loot Phriday? My Starry Pony has absolutely been the talk of the town ever since it went on sale this week. I went into a Warsong Gulch today . . . and my entire team was riding one.
What’s so cool about My Starry Pony? First, it’s full of stars. I mean, look at that. It’s made of stars. Of course, this was a model technique made popular by Algalon, who’s all about warning the Titans that we mortals have totally run amuck. But the design is absolutely awesome. It’s made of stars!
What else is cool about My Starry Pony? You never have to buy another mount. It scales from level 1 all the way through level 80. (No way to know yet whether or not the mount will do whatever cool trick mounts do in Cataclysm.) The Celestial Steed will automatically become the context appropriate mount for your character, moving at the appropriate speed according to your level and training. It will even switch between being a normal ground mount for old Azeroth, or an airborne princess in Northrend. You will only need a single action bar button for your mount — it’ll fly or fall appropriate to the area you’re in.
The last thing that’s cool about it is that it shows up in your mailbox, even for character you’ve created. That makes it the single, easiest mount to get. Warning, though: you do still have to train the riding skill, just like you would have to with a normal, mundane, boring, not-full-of-stars mount.
While requiring the training skill means that the Steed doesn’t vastly change gameplay, its one-size-fit-all nature definitely makes it the most convenient mount, especially since you won’t ever need to spend gold on another mount. (At least, not until Cataclysm changes the rules again.)
Kiuperli World of Warcraft
During the Twitter Dev Chat, we learned that in Cataclysm, 310% speed flying mounts will be handled differently.
Bashiok – #BlizzChat Developer Chat on Twitter 4/16Q: Do you intend to have all 280% flying mounts scale to 310% when a 310% mount is earned, or will only purchased mounts do so?
A: Our current plan, is that in Cataclysm, you can learn a new rank of flying that lets all flying mounts move at 310% (even current 280% mounts). That will probably be as fast as mounts will ever get. We don’t like it that when you get a 310% mount that you stop using your old ones.
Q: If 310% speed is becoming trainable, does that mean we’ll be able to fly in Azeroth from the get-go?
A: We have considered the concept of “Old Weather Flying.” Just kidding. More than likely, you’ll just be able to fly from the beginning.
source
No word yet on if players with current 310% speed mounts will still have to learn this new rank of flying skill or not. Previously, 310% speed mounts were seen as status symbols and prizes to be gained via achievements, PvP, rare drops or so on. Personally, I’m hoping people with 310% speed mounts are at least grandfathered in as it would be annoying otherwise to not even be able to ride your mount once the change went live.
On the up side, at least we’ll be able to fly in Azeroth right away instead of having to train yet another rank of flying.
gmaxwell World of Warcraft
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Catelet World of Warcraft
After one iteration at the start of the new year and another run that coincided with VanaFest 2010, you would think that Final Fantasy XI was done with the Mog Bonanza for a while. But you’d apparently be wrong, as the official site has just announced that it will be running once again. But it’s kind of understandable when you realize it’s to celebrate the momentous eight-year milestone the game is hitting. That’s a fine reason for players to start up the number-guessing engine in their heads again, especially when the rewards are still more wonderful prizes for every adventurer.
Most of the rules from prior offerings still apply here — a maximum of ten marbles per character, with prizes handed out in ascending ranks. Getting just the last digit right nets some small but pleasing prizes, while getting all five brings huge piles of gil or rare equipment. While it’s not on par with the Relic and Mythic weapons offered at VanaFest, they’re still desirable for almost any player. So mark your calendar foor May 16th, when marbles go on sale, and enjoy a solid eight years of Final Fantasy XI.
Kins Final Fantasy XI
Cryptozoic, the new publisher for the World of Warcraft trading card game, dropped us a line to let us know that they’re preparing the game’s newest expansion pack, Wrathgate, for release on May 25. If you’ve been following the trials and travails of the WoW TCG in the past few months, you know that this is a big relief and a concrete sign that the game’s in good hands.
And there’s loot, too!
“The 11th set in the World of Warcraft TCG, Wrathgate features 220 new cards straight from Northrend and the new Argent Crusade faction. Yes, players can recruit figures from Warcraft lore like Highlord Tirion Fordring for the battle against the Scourge. Also, players can use new Wrathgate crafting materials to forge brand new gear for their TCG heroes.
Each booster pack contains 19 game cards. As with previous sets, players have a chance to open one of three new Loot cards randomly inserted into Wrathgate booster packs. The codes on the Loot cards are redeemed for cosmetic upgrades to World of Warcraft® MMORPG characters. The loot cards in Wrathgate are Landro’s Gift, Statue Generator, and Blazing Hippogryph. The latter is another TCG exclusive mount — a flying hippogryph to set the skies on fire.”
To commemorate the occasion, Cryptozoic is running a special contest, the winner of which (and a friend) will attend the internal unveiling of the expansion, hang out with its creators and maybe even eat some food here and there.
Koeningsmark World of Warcraft