From EVE Community Team,
During downtime on Friday, April 8, 2011 from 11:00 UTC to 11:30 UTC all EVE Online websites will be taken offline for 10 minutes to facilitate some server maintenance.
During this downtime eveonline.com, account management, API services, EVE Gate, and the forums will be unavailable.
March will be a busy month for both MMO gamers and companies. There are 2 important game conventions in this month, GDC 2011, which has ended days ago, and PAX East, which will open on March 11. As usual, lots of big reveals do satisfy desired gamers(Guild Wars 2 new profession) and will make this month unforgettable(TERA and Guild Wars 2 demos). If you will be able to play some games that you are waiting for in March, it will be really a perfect month.
So what do we have this month?
The Aion® 2.1 Part 2 update has been pushed to the North American and European Union test servers (PTS). The update focuses on crafting in Aion, so craftspeople, start your looms and get ready at your anvils! Read details in the 2.1 Part 2 patch release notes. Read more…
MapleStory is about to get a major dose of tech, mech and fresh attitude. The Mechanic character class becomes available on January 19th and is the latest addition to MapleStory, Nexon’s 2-D side-scrolling massively multiplayer online game. The Mechanic will be a formidable force to help the Resistance in its fight against the evil Black Wings, a sinister cult dedicated to the resurrection of the vile Black Mage.
The Mechanic is a powerful new hero that will appeal to both new and experienced players alike. Mounted atop a state-of-the-art ME-07 mech, the Mechanic uses advanced technology to activate robot minions to wreak havoc on unsuspecting Black Wings. Read more…
The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about warriors, who hurl themselves into the fray, into the very teeth of danger, armed with nothing more than the biggest weapons and armored with the absolutely heaviest armor we can find. Hey, we’re not stupid, we’re just crazy.
This week, we look at the Cataclysm beta from the inside. If that’s not something that interests you or you’re looking to avoid spoilers, boy howdy, is this not the column for you. Seriously, you probably shouldn’t even look at that screenshot, really.
With the much-awaited level cap increase rapidly approaching, the development team is putting the finishing touches on a new set of weapon skills that promise to be formidable additions to players’ arsenals of abilities.
Today, we’re pleased to be able to offer a video sneak preview of the fourteen visually striking new skills that will be joining the fray with the upcoming version update.
The Midsummer Fire Festival is here and so it’s time to pick a continent and flame it.
Day: Saturday, June 26
Time: The Pre-Event Mixer will be at 5 p.m. EDT (2 p.m. PDT, 3 p.m. realm time) and the flaming starts at 5:30 p.m. EDT
Meet at: The fountain in front of the Court of the Sun in Silvermoon City on Zangarmarsh (US-PVE-H)
We’ll have our usual get together before we embark on the Flamefest. The first half of the event will be for all levels and the second half will be for epic mounted characters that have all the flightpaths. If you want to participate in the entire event, you have plenty of time to make a DK before Saturday.
We’ve had a ton of fun when we did this before and I can’t wait to do it again. Hope to see you Saturday!
Regardless of whether or not you play EVE Online, this is something you have to see — especially if you’re a lover of either science fiction or pretty things.
This Russian blog has a whole lot of cool spaceships from EVE Online that have been turned into all sorts of cool pieces of art. And yes, not all of them are necessarily “nature” art, but most are more or less — with the major exception of a robot and alien from, er, Aliens. There’s one that’s even a sneaker! Although, we’re personally fans of the apple, eagle and Star Wars images. They come in wallpaper format for your laptop or desktop and honestly, there’s not too much more to say about them besides praise them. Mmm…. beautiful wallpapers.
Well, the fans and readers of industry site Gamasutra have voted for their game of the decade, and their choice is simultaneously surprising and yet unsurprising. In a list that’s full of single player games, the MMO that redefined MMOs has hit the top of the list: World of Warcraft.
Why was it chosen for the very, very hefty spot of game of the decade? Well, the readers have spoken on the final article, and it seems the list is almost as massive as the game. Everything from massive game design, to how it single-handedly changed how MMOs were played in the last 5 years, to how the game itself impacts a player’s life. For those reasons and more, it’s been voted in as the game of the decade.
For the full list of quotes from Gamasutra readers, and for the list of the top 12 games of the decade, check out Gamasutra.
The open beta isn’t open anymore and the roleplaying first-person shooter MMO has converted into the real thing. Face of Mankind has gone into the “retail” phase and has put all of their accounts on a “premium trial period” to get a taste of what a paid account has to offer. The premium trial period will last until December 29th, so be sure to make your mind up quick.
Good news for veterans of the game, however, as you won’t need to subscribe to play this time around. Face of Mankind is instead taking a free-to-play/subscription approach, putting things like access to civilian clothing usage, department creation, carrying a third weapon, and faction leadership and other benefits solely in the hands of paying subscribers. Free-to-play accounts can still play and progress in their faction up to rank 4, own 10 clones, and have 20 spaces of inventory.
The pricing for the game is also extremely reasonable. Face of Mankind’s monthly fee is only $9.99 a month instead of the usual $15 a month that most MMOs charge. Multi-month subscriptions are also being offered at discounted rates, so there seems to be a plan for everyone.
So good hunting for those who are taking the plunge into FoM, and we hope you lead your factions well.
WoW’s fifth anniversary and the interviews surrounding it have ended up providing us with some previously-unknown tidbits of information — which is a good thing, especially when it comes to stuff we’ve been wanting to hear about for a long time.
This particular tidbit comes from the Warcry network interview with J. Allen Brack and Samwise Didier about the game’s anniversary, and it’s about a subject near and dear to our constantly-complaining hearts: new character models. They might even be coming in Cataclysm.
Says Brack:
“Even though things would be better with new (character) models, we’d probably spark a lot of player outrage. So we’ve talked about giving players a choice between the classic models or the new ones, but it might not be something we want to take on at the same time as we remake Azeroth.”
That’s pretty big news.
We’ve been wondering about the status of these old models for a long time. His language indicates that it might not be a Cataclysm feature, but we sure hope so. Troll models are a bit long in the tooth — pardon the pun — and human males desperately need an update more than almost anything. But really, all of the pre-BC models do. Even just a few extra polygons and animation fixes would really help. Draenei, blood elves, and now goblins and worgen all look so good compared to our old dumpy avatars.
If you’re wondering why less character customization options exist in WoW than in many other MMOs, just ask Samwise, who had this to say:
“We gave very simple choices, and there wasn’t any of this ‘Is my guy five pounds overweight? Are his eyes sea blue or sky blue?’ Don’t get me wrong, that sort of thing is cool, but we made a very simple UI and character creator, and that’s one of the main things that helped people gravitate to the game.”
Makes sense. Just, please, Blizzard. Listen. Make everyone’s models look better — the number of people who’ll complain that their human female just isn’t as moonfaced as she used to be is incredibly small compared to the number of people who’d resub in anticipation of not having a hare lip on their human male. Don’t worry about the luddites. Just bring WoW’s graphics into this decade, and bring our models with ‘em.
If you’re looking for a way to relax this weekend, why don’t you hie off to Houston and get tickets to the Gamer MusiCON ’09, an all-day event celebrating music from the video game industry. If you’re familiar with the Video Games Live, the whole event has expanded somewhat with the help of Blizzard Entertainment and will now have a full hour-and-a-half Blizzard Live! to go along with the traditional Video Games Live! concert.
Blizzard Live! will feature music, both old and some never performed ones, from Blizzard’s different game worlds – Diablo, Starcraft, and Warcraft – paired with exclusive game footage and synchronized lighting. The Video Games Live! segment features music from other popular games like Chrono Trigger or Mega Man.
Of course, just like any great geek and gamer event, Gamer MusiCON will feature a lot of fun in between, such as costume contests, Guitar Hero faceoffs, a Q&A with Blizzard’s composers, autograph signings, and lots of swag. The event, conducted by Jack Wall and hosted by Tommy Talarico, comes to life with the help of the Houston Symphony. It will be held at the Jones Hall in downtown Houston. You’d better get your tickets today! Oh, and don’t forget to bring a date.
This got somewhat lost in the news shuffle over the holiday weekend, but Blizzard has posted another issue of their extremely irregular Gadgetzan Times fan-fic-oriented newsletter, for the first time since May 2008. This time around it consists of two pieces of short-form fan fiction, an amusing “classifieds” section, and a slightly half-hearted crossword about the dungeons of WoW.
It’s an interesting thing for Blizzard themselves to come out with, as it has been from the start. I really like the idea — characters from Azeroth report on events in and around their world — but it could use a little more polish and effort, not to mention a more regular timetable. On the other hand, they’re still publishing more regularly than my Illusionary Tactics column. Maybe I should not call this particular kettle black.