When Sony Online converted Vanguard to free-to-play, I assumed it was being put out to pasture. Apparently not. Apparently someone somewhere was making new content. Because today, Vanguard gets a whole new area.
In this update, the Efreeti have returned and are imprisoning mortals beneath the fiery skies of Jhor Razkur, otherwise known as The City of Brass. Players are invited to join the fight against the Efreeti and their allies inside the City of Brass in this all-new adventure area.
The new City of Brass area can be accessed beyond the eastern walls of Khal. Users will face off against more than a dozen challenging named and boss mobs, earning valuable new loot. Daring souls who best these foes may summon forth The Keeper of Lesser Wishes, a 12-person encounter that is sure to test their strength.
Will someone take a quick break from Guild Wars 2, Rift, Lord of the Rings Online, or World of Warcraft to duck in there and let me know how it’s holding up? Is this new Orangetown in any way nifty? Because I played a bit of Vanguard about a year ago and was happy to discover that it’s just as good as I remembered it, considering it’s a mostly conventional MMO that emphasizes scope over detail. And you really can’t beat the absurdly detailed crafting and collectible card game diplomacy.
Funcom designer Tanya Short introduces the Albion Theatre, which will be open for business in the next update.
…you’ll be able to go inside, and put on whatever kind of show your heart desires! Our goal is to empower players. Open mic night? Sketch comedy shows? Extensive Shakespearean productions? Cabaret? Music video? It’s really an open toolbox — you and your friends can use the Albion to do whatever you want.
Intriguing. If you’ve played Lord of the Rings Online, maybe you’ve seen impromptu bards loitering around Bree, availing themselves of the game’s indepth music system. I was gobsmacked to hear a halfling plucking perfect Zeppelin out of a lute. Maybe this could be like that?
One group at a time can reserve the stage for an hour for a small fee. Anyone who joins that group at any time has free access to get on stage and do almost anything you can think of! Raise and lower the curtain, place out sets willy-nilly, change the backdrop, add visual effects (weather, filth, confetti, etc), adjust the lights, trigger sounds and music… and tadaaaa you can host whatever show comes to mind. We’ve also added the “stagesay” and “act” chat commands, which broadcast your screenplay across a broader radius than the usual “say” and “emote” commands.
We wanted to keep the Theatre as personal and player-driven as possible, with an eye to promotion. Any would-be directors or comedians can also organise their publicity, through the forums, chat, etc. We’ve combined the Theatre chat channels with the London ones for convenience, and we’re sure some of our fan radio stations (there are multiple!) might also help spread the news of the upcoming high-quality productions, and reviews of those past. Perhaps cabals will use their message of the day to track promising young screenwriters?
As much as I think it’s a fascinating idea, as much as I admire the thinking behind it, I can’t imagine Albion is going to be anything but entirely empty after a week or so.
To get a videogame movie made, game publishers traditionally shop their IPs around to the studios. Hey, Paramount, want to make a Daikatana movie? No? What about you, Fox? Columbia/Sony? Miramax? Microsoft went so far as to get a Halo script written first and then they allegedly got some dude in a Master Chief suit to schlepp it around. See how well that worked out? You can’t wow movie studios the same way you wow Gamespot reviewers.
But Ubisoft has a different idea. Go straight for the star power. They did that earlier this year by hitching Assassin’s Creed to Michael Fassbender’s production company and, by association, Michael Fassbender (who might not actually be in the movie, but never mind that).
This week, Ubisoft enlisted Tom Hardy (pictured) to spearhead a Splinter Cell movie. There’s no director yet, and no studio, and therefore no funding. But given Tom Hardy’s rising star, it’s a pretty safe assumption that the money will follow, and therefore a Splinter Cell movie is all but in the can, with Tom Hardy playing Michael Ironsides.
The first step in doing dungeons is wanting to do dungeons. Peruse the merchants lined up under the bright blue awning at Fort Marriner, trading for trophies you’ll earn in any given dungeon. Each merchant has armor relevant at the level when the dungeon unlocks. Furthermore, they also sell weapons and armor that you can only use at level 80, called exotics. This is a significant part of the endgame. Go ahead and check the stats. Furthermore, feel free to try on the armor (right click and then select “preview”). Pretty nifty, huh? Now try to tell me you don’t care about doing dungeons.
Read this week’s Guilded at Gamespy.
The Storm Legion add-on is now live for Rift. The most relevant part of the update for Rift dilettantes like me who haven’t hit the level cap is the new set of skills for each character class. But the most intriguing part of the update is Rift’s new player housing. Developer Trion takes the mostly traditional approach of giving players instances that everyone can ignore. Voila, player housing! Because, short of selling virtual real estate (imagine what a nightmare this boondoggle is going to be), what else are you doing to do?
But the instances in Storm Legion aren’t just places where you drop your trophies. They’re the sites of building sets where you can arrange components you’ve unlocked or crafted. Use them to modify the location or create your own structures, a la Minecraft. For instance, Trion proudly showed us someone who had made an entire Viking ship, and another player who had built a mountain with a jumping puzzle, and another player’s magical resort. Players can visit these instance to admire each other’s handiwork (pictured). Naturally, you can “like” your favorite creations, visit the highest ranked creations, or just sample them at random.
Is there anything relevant to gameplay in the housing? Of course not. This is no more meaningful than coloring your armor. And as someone who’s diligently collecting dyes and parceling them out among his characters in Guild Wars 2, I can completely understand the appeal.
Playing team deathmatch in Black Ops II on the night of its release, I rack up one kill and 27 deaths in one of my games. So that’s how it’s going to be, huh? Apparently, the kind of person playing online after a midnight release is considerably more, uh, committed to the gameplay. Or maybe my assault rifle of choice, the Type 25, just sucks.
Then I try the ironically named hardcore mode, which relies less on watching the minimap, since it doesn’t have a minimap. It furthermore relies less on the damage ratings of weapons, since all you have to do is basically brush someone with a slow velocity bullet to kill him. In my first game in hardcore mode, I get ten kills to eight deaths.
But by far the most reliable way to earn points has been farming UAVs. As soon as I hear the UAV announcement, I switch to the SMAW I carry on my back. One guided missile for an easy 75 points! And the best thing about UAVs is that they don’t shoot back.
The latest fall from grace for military personnel who collaborate with videogames is David Petraeus, who just resigned as director of the CIA and appears in Black Ops 2. The two incidents aren’t related. That we know of. In Black Ops 2’s 2025 storyline, he doesn’t look a day older than 60! Furthermore, his political career has recovered nicely from that whole mess about having an affair with his biographer, because he appears as the Secretary of Defense under a President named Bosworth. A female President. Kate? As anyone from California or Minnesota could tell you, anything is possible.
UPDATE: So President Bosworth is supposed to be Hillary Clinton, as is obvious from the voice actress and character model. But unlike Petraeus, she isn’t called out by name in Black Ops 2. Whatever Activision hoped to avoid by picking and choosing among real-world political figures — did anyone care that Kissinger and McFarlane were playable characters in the original Black Ops’ zombie mode? — is now all the more notable for the fortuitous timing of Petraeus’ resignation.
Apparently, there was some sort of midnight launch event for Halo 4 back in June that afforded Halo fans (pictured) the opportunity to take pictures five months before the game even came out. Some of them revealed an inclination to pretend to shoot their moms.
Seriously, though, these are pretty darn adorable, or at least awkwardly endearing in that “brother, I can dig it” way. As the saying goes, the golden age of sci-fi — and Halo! — is twelve.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=PHh7JtKFr_0#t=100s
The Political Machine 2012 edition of Tom vs Bruce is now live for early access supporters.
Bruce: Unless your political party is named Viet Minh or Khmer Rouge, someone has to pay the bills. In The Political Machine, you make money by a combination of building up an extensive network of headquarters and upgrading them constantly, and fundraising in various states. The bigger the state, the more money you make. As the biggest state, California commands all our attention. These solicitations are based on diminishing returns, though, so by the end of the game both candidates will likely be scrounging for quarters in laundromats in Compton.
If you’re an early access supporter, you should have your password by now. If you’re not one of those, we’d invite you to become one by donating $18 or more to our Paypal account at tomvsbruce.com, which will get you early access to The Political Machine as well as the next eight articles. Otherwise, we hope you’ll check out the article when it goes public on Wednesday. In other words, when it’s no longer relevant!
I’m an MMO dilettante. I’ve played a lot of them. But I can count on one hand the number of MMOs I’ve played in which I’ve leveled a character to a number higher than my age. Make of that what you will. And I would still have my thumb, pinky, and ring finger left over. The point is that I wasn’t sure what to expect in Guild Wars 2 after the ultimate ding.
There isn’t any more ceremony when you hit level 80 than when you hit level 2. In fact, there’s more ceremony when you hit level 2 because at that point the game is still keen to explain stuff. But by level 80, it knows you’ve pretty much figured everything out. So you’re liable to not even notice when you hit level 80. Nothing changes. You don’t look any different. No angels sing hosannas. You don’t ascend to demigodhood. Just another splashy light effect, no different from the effect you’ve seen 79 other times.
When it happened to me, I was busy clearing out the icy waters of Frostgorge Sound, diving underneath one of those majestic kodan settlements that’s half iceberg, half massive sailing ship. Me and another player, a level 79 guardian named Quite Eyes, had hooked up in that way Guild Wars 2 players hook up. We were just tagging along with one another, helping each other out, neither of us leading, neither of us following, one of us eventually inviting the other into a party even though it’s not at all necessary. Remarkably enough, we both hit level 80 from killing a veteran undersea assassin called a largo. We swam to shore and stood there at the edge of the sea.
We looked out over the water. I imagined we were catching our breath. I imagined our breath steaming in the cold. For all I know he was dinking around in his inventory with whatever bone fragments or scales he’d collected. But in those places in an MMO where my imagination fills the gaps in the actual game, we were like two guys who’d just finished a marathon or reached a peak at the same time.
He dove back in the water after a moment, but I excused myself.
Thanks for the party, I said. It was one to remember.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=Yf_gTmbxU60
The above IGN video review of Black Ops 2 was originally posted here, where there is now only the crater of a legal threat from Activision. Fortunately, it was reposted for your viewing pleasure. However, if you look closely at the score at the 3:18 mark, you’ll see the video review is obviously a fake. There’s no way Black Ops 2 is anything less than a 9.4 at IGN.
Thanks Squee!
Well, everyone knows the Aztecs were defeated by Spanish conquistadors. What this Crusaders Kings II add-on presupposes is…maybe they weren’t.
Okay, whose idea was it to simultaneously release Natural Selection 2, Primal Carnage, and Guns of Icarus Online? And to furthermore do it at the height of the holiday release season? All three games are gunning for the same audience. Namely, people who dig the camaraderie of team-based online shooters, but who are looking for the sort of twist that only an indie developer can provide. So the question you have to ask yourself is, “What flavor do you want? Aliens, dinosaurs, or zeppelins?”
Because I love Guild Wars 2, this is a column I don’t want to write. But because I love Guild Wars 2, this is also a column I have to write. And it’s long overdue.
Read this week’s Guilded here.
