First of all, “together” is one of those words that gets really bizarre if you look at it too long. Second, one of the reasons that Shawn wanted both Karen and me to write this column is that we have different playstyles: Karen’s much more of a group-oriented player, while I’m more inclined to solo. However, I’m starting to wonder whether this is as much of a difference when it comes to RIFT.
Lars Buttler said that RIFT “is the most social game in the history of gaming.” That’s a pretty audacious statement, and while I can’t totally agree, I can see what he’s saying. One of the Holy Grails of MMO design is somehow coming up with game features and tools that encourage players to socialize and group more, particularly in a post-World of Warcraft solo-friendly field. Read more…
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The time for more changes to Final Fantasy XIV fast approaches, and this patch promises to be a bit more substantial than its predecessor. While patch 1.15 brought a number of improvements to the game’s mechanics, the actual amount of content remained the same.
Patch 1.16, on the other hand, is slated to bring in something new — world quests. While there are no exact numbers, the addition of more world and storyline quests promises to be a huge boon for the game’s players and a welcome update. Read more…
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The Final Fantasy XIV team has posted a trio of articles on the Lodestone. The first is another ‘Ask the Devs’ article featuring several questions about item repair. The second is a link to Player Poll The Second, with devs asking players for input on the battle system. Finally, devs have posted the 1.5b patch notes deployed on February 17th.
Q.What determines the rank required to repair an item?
A.This is determined by either the synthesis rank or the optimal rank of the item. If both are present, the lesser of these two values is used. If your crafting rank is equal to or higher than the repair rank, then success is virtually guaranteed. If it is less, however, you may attempt to repair the item, but the chance
of success decreases for each rank disparity. It is not possible to attempt repairs when this disparity is greater than ten. Read more…
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The term “huntard” stretches all the way back to vanilla, when all the gold farmers were hunters (and actually farmed). While usage of the term has died down a bit due to widespread educational programming, it still exists, and we now know more about the huntard than ever before. Sometimes these bad players are just teenagers with parasitic worms burrowing through their brains, driving them slowly mad; other times, they’re hillbillies destabilized from imbibing massive quantities of impure corn liquor and generations of profoundly unbiblical procreation.
But more often than not, the classic huntard behaviors aren’t directly related to mental acuity. Modern medical science now knows that huntardism is a disease, often infecting newer players who just honestly doesn’t know any better. They’re trying their best. All too often, they’re newer players who got some crazy and foolish advice (usually from other classes) and, not knowing any better, have done their best to follow it. But here is hope. Recent studies show that 90% of huntardism is, in fact, curable.
Read more…
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If you’re one of the lucky souls in Final Fantasy XIV’s recently expanded beta testing, you might well be a new arrival. And even though the beta build isn’t the final release of the game, there’s still a lot of different things to do. So where do you begin? Thankfully, there’s a new guide available from Famitsu (translated by FFXIVCore) that should give a fair picture of where players can start. It covers everything from sights in the city to the options available for retainers.
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The new 31-point talent trees are now in the beta! More information incoming tonight as we get it in …
Update: The patch is now available to download for beta testers. Just fire up the client and wait for 300 megs of new talent goodness.
BlizzardA first pass on new talent trees has been implemented.
Each specialization has been reduced to a 31-point talent tree.
Players will now get a total of 41 talent points to spend.
31 points must be spent in the primary specialization tree before any points can be placed in additional trees.
Players will be asked to choose a specialization at level 10. Doing so will result in the unlocking of a spell or ability unique to that specialization, as well as one or more passive bonuses.
While this is a first pass on all of the talent trees, death knight, druid, paladin, warlock, Arcane mage, and Assassination rogue trees are not as far along as other specializations.
More information regarding our plans for talent trees can be found on our Cataclysm forum.
Read more…
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We’ve all been soaking up all the newly released Cataclysm info from this morning. I was so busy drooling (and hammering) on my keyboard about the hunter changes that I only got around to thinking about the profession and guild changes after my fourth coffee.
Here’s what we know:
All professions seem to have a new cap of 525.
You will be able to learn the next level of crafting skills at level 75. Well, alchemy works that way, and I assume that at least the other crafting skills will be the same level. No word on gathering skills yet.
Guild perks are programmed into the client and have been data-mined; however, the more complex leveling system has been abandoned. No precise writeup about how guilds gain perks, but I hear they still work for experience.
Read more…
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The Midsummer Fire Festival is pretty decent for a WoW holiday — good experience and gold from extinguishing and honoring fires, fun cosmetic rewards and occasionally mind-numbing achievements. Wait, what was that last one?
Torch Juggler has become notorious this year, as the achievement is not only difficult for people who are unable to click their mouses and buttons fast enough, but it is also part of the meta-achievement for completing the Midsummer Fire Festival and gaining the title “Flame Keeper.” So, here’s how to get Torch Juggler in three easy steps.
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The Spiritual Guidance duo, Fox Van Allen and Dawn Moore, haven’t always gotten along so well. While some attribute that to the natural way that the shadow abhors the light, the real reason is the time they were on The Price is Right together in 2003. I mean, two hundred dollars for a grandfather clock, Dawn? What were you thinking?
Some days, I wish Spiritual Guidance was a TV show. Not only would the world be better able to appreciate my own physical beauty, but I’d be able to do one of those “Last time, on Spiritual Guidance” opening montages, filled with dramatic clips that tell you exactly what happened last week.
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It seems pretty likely that fairly soon we’ll be looking at a updated Midsummer Fire Festival. Why am I so sure, you ask? Well, as many tipsters have stopped to inform us, there’s a plethora of new gear in the armory that looks likely to be iLevel 232 updates of Lord Ahune’s loot table. We have the Frostscythe, of course, which people have noted before. But now we also have updated versions of his infamous cloak drops, in tanking, physical DPS, and two forms of spell cloak. The first cloak has spirit, meaning that classes like mages as well as healers that use spirit might like it, while the second has crit, haste and spell power but no spirit, meaning it’s better for shamans and paladins than the spirit one.
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Those of you rubbing your hands together in anticipation of Aion’s forthcoming 1.9 patch can now get the jump on the mere mortals who will be stuck downloading the mammoth update on launch day. In a notice posted on the game’s official website, the Aion community team clues us in on the option to download portions of the patch well in advance of the scheduled release (currently Wednesday, June 2).
“You can already prepare for this by pre-loading the patch and have it ready for installation on launch day. Your NCsoft Launcher will now begin to incrementally download the update over the next couple of days leading up to launch,” reads the notice.
You can also get a sneak peak at the 1.9 patch by logging into the Aion Public Test Server.
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Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration will show you how, brought to you by Joe Perez, otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and the For The Lore podcast.
Last week we talked a bit about some addons that you may have found useful as a restoration shaman. Sadly though, shortly after that post, news broke that AVR/AVRE would be going away in patch 3.3.5. The addon did some things that Blizzard was just not too happy about. The week was not filled with all bad news, though. We have had some amazing Cataclysm screenshots every day, Rich Maloy had an awesome post on enhancement weapons and the loot tables for Ruby Sanctum 25-man and 10-man have been slightly updated.
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New around here? See all our collected tips, tricks and how-to’s for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide.
Today’s WoW Rookie blows the whistle in a bit of traffic directing at the buzzing intersection of Raider Boulevard and Rookie Lane. This isn’t a casuals-versus-raiders debate — far from it. What we have today is more of a guide on how to peacefully co-exist with players who enjoy the game in a very different way than you do. While we’ve written on this topic before, reader Peter sent in a request that made us consider that it might be time to revisit the issue.
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EVE Online has always been one of the most open and accessible MMORPGs in terms of in-game data. The new Tyrannis expansion, recently delayed a week to May 26th, will expand on the game’s history of making its APIs (application programming interface) available to players and enterprising programmers.
“In Tyrannis we are delivering a vastly improved contacts system and the new calendar. For these features, we will be providing a new set of APIs for you to consume in your own applications. Not only will we expose this new data to you, we have made some changes to existing APIs, and two Outpost related APIs have been added to help ease outpost management,” writes CCP Stillman in an EVE dev blog entry posted earlier today.
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Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related.
Some interesting information has come to light over the past few hours. The one that caught my eye? Some new talents have been added and others have been removed. Chakra, one of the new talents that was mentioned during the priest preview has been included. I did manage to figure out what the talent was designed to do. When I read the talent, I began to really understand the ramifications of the talent. There are going to be some upcoming Cataclysm spoilers in the post. If you do not wish to be spoiled, then you’ll want to stop reading.
This is your last chance to back out. No? Well, let’s keep reading then. The talents aren’t quite finished yet for all of the classes. It looks like they’re still in the process of removing “junk” talents (or talents that increased some spell or stat by some percentage). For one thing, Meditation is still in there for priests. Other talents have been moved around. Another example, Searing Light for priests has moved into the first level for holy spells and takes the place of Improved Renew.
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