Today Blizzard launched a new service for World of Warcraft players that them to pay for a faction change. For $30.00 gamers can make their Horde character jump ship and join the Alliance or vice versa.
According to the FAQ, “Each Faction Change costs $30.00 USD (not including applicable taxes). This covers a single Faction Change for a single character.”
In order to change factions, gamers need to go to their Account Management page and click the “Change Faction” button. From here, you’ll be given a choice of which race you want your character to be from those available to their class and faction. If you are looking to just change your race, you’ll have to wait a bit longer. Blizzard notes in the FAQ, “We will be releasing a Race Change service in the near future for this purpose.”
Read: World of Warcraft Launches Paid Faction Changes.
Today publisher Gazillion announced that David Brevik, the creator of Diablo, will take on the role of lead developer on the upcoming Marvel Universe MMO.
Brevik, now director of Gazillion’s Gargantuan studio, once held the role of President of Blizzard North and served as project lead, design lead, and lead programmer on Diablo I & II.
Brevik stated, “Gazillion’s mission to bring MMOs to the mainstream while maintaining the depth in gameplay that enthusiast gamers demand is something that deeply resonates with me. Marvel is a perfect fit for this mission.”
Hopefully the Marvel Universe MMO will fair a little better than Brevik’s last project, Hellgate: London.
Read: Diablo Creator Leading Marvel Universe MMO.
Several months ago I posted a link to the first installment of Dark Horses’ The Old Republic’s web comic. Today Dark Horse released the second installment.
While the first episode was mostly talk, part 2 starts off with a bang. Lightsaber fights are abound as “young Jedi Satele Shan is marooned on an escape pod in an obscure star system…”
As a comic book geek, I love this kind of promotion. After reading through Act 1, I couldn’t stop thinking about how sweet BioWare’s The Old Republic is going to be. Unfortunately there is no solid release date for the upcoming star Wars MMO. Hopefully it will hit stores sometime this year.
Read: Star Wars: The Old Republic - Threat of Peace.
Today Funcom rolled out the fifth update for Age of Conan, and with it comes some big changes.
Dubbed the “Gangs of Tarntia”, the update adds the new region of Tarantia, which according to Funcom will add “several hours” of new content. In addition to the new region, the developer has also made some fundamental changes to items and questing.
Funcom stated, “Items now have statistics that are easier to understand and that are more similar to what you find in similar MMO games. With items being more important, questing and raiding will turn out to be a lot more rewarding than before.” Read more »
Today Blizzard revealed some details about their upcoming unannounced MMO.
According to Blizzard community manager Zarhym (his name on the World of Warcraft forums), “We’ve already stated it’ll be a brand new franchise, which means the lore, art, and game play are being developed entirely from scratch.” He went on to state that the new MMO is just a, “shell of a game thus far.”
Blizzard has stated in the past that it is developing the title with the World of Warcraft engine for testing purposes.
It seems like Blizzard is feeling pretty confident about the new title. Zarhym said, “It’s an overwhelming process, but a process through which we excel. Our track record supports this.”
Read: Blizzard Confirms New MMO Based on Fresh IP.
Today, during an event held by Atari in London, Cryptic Studios’ Executive Producer Bill Roper announced that Champions Online will hit the PC on July 14.
For those of you who don’t know, Champions Online is superhero themed MMORPG being developed by Cryptic Studios, the guys who made City of Heroes/Villains. Champions will feature a robust character creation process full of options to make your hero unique.
Champions will feature a more action oriented gameplay compared to other MMORPGS. Attacks will be controlled by four buttons, and each successful attack will increase your power meter, which allows for more powerful attacks.
The Xbox 360 version is set to arrive sometime after the PC version is established.
Read: Champions Online Release Date Announced.
Today PopCap released a free version of its casual pachinko-esque puzzler Peggle as a free add-on to World of Warcraft. Now whenever you have to wait, you can kill time by shooting pegs.
This version of Peggle features WoW themed levels, a “talent tree” to spec you Peggle skills, and a new “/peggleloot” command, which allows players to divvy up loot based on a Peggle shot. Whoever get the highest score with one shot gets the loot.
In order to snag the Peggle add-on, click here.
Read: Peggle Hits World of Warcraft with Peggle-based Loot Rolling, Custom Talent Tree.
After months of teasing and waiting for new gear, World of Warcraft poopsockers players are able to head into Ulduar to conquer new content.
Here’s a small trailer showing what awaits:
In addition to Ulduar, the patch brings a huge number of changes to the game, from fundamental ones such as allowing ground mounts to swim (yes!) to balance tweaks for each class. Given the amount of time this has been in testing, I can only hope that class balance has improved since the last time I played the game.
The full patch notes can be found over at Blizzard’s patch notes page.
MMO-Champion has the rundown on all the changes, including gear, mounts, pets, dungeon maps, recipes, and anything else you could possibly need.
Tomorrow another MMO dies. This time it’s Richard Garriot’s Tabula Rasa. Unlike some other MMO, Tabula Rasa isn’t going down without a fight.
Starting tomorrow at 8PM CST, and lasting till midnight, there will be a full on alien invasion. According to a message from the development team, “We request that all military personnel begin fortifying defenses at every AFS base in preparation for a massive Bane assault. If enemy troop movements are as large as we fear, and the Neph are truly prepared to lead all out war against us, this may be our last stand. Penumbra has been informed of the situation and is standing by on the use of their last resort weapon. We can not afford to be complacent or uncertain, but if it is truly our destiny to be destroyed, we are taking them all with us.”
I always get sad when a MMO dies. I can’t help but think of all the gamers who have spent hours and hours of their time, only to have all their winning vanish at the flick of a switch. Hopefully this last event will be something to remember.
Read: Tabula Rasa: Humanity Dies Tomorrow.
A previously unannounced patch for World of Warcraft will go live this week, bringing the game to version 3.09. This will bridge the gap between the current version, 3.08, and the significantly more massive 3.1 patch, which is far from release.
3.09 includes a few major changes, namely:
Paladins:
- The duration on all Seals has been increased to 30 minutes and can no longer dispelled.
- Divine Plea: The amount healed by your spells is reduced by 50% (up from 20%) but the effect can no longer be dispelled.
Mages:
- Arcane Power now increases damage and mana cost by 10%, cooldown reduced to 1 minute. (Note: The spell is actually different in game and increases damage and mana costs by 20% with a 2 minutes cooldown. However it would probably be better to wait until servers are online to confirm that.)
- Arcane Power and Presence of Mind now share a category cooldown. Arcane Power causes a 15 second cooldown. Presence of Mind, once consumed, causes a 1.5 second cooldown.
MMO-Champion has a full breakdown of the changes, but the Divine Plea and AP/PoM changes are huge nerfs for Holy Paladins and Arcane Mages, which appear to be well-deserved in light of current PVP standings. Holy Paladins are by far the best PVP healers due to being clad in plate armor, while Mages have, according to many players, the single most ridiculous burst damage in the game.
With 3.09 in effect Wednesday, Mages no longer have 11,000 or more burst damage on hand with a single click, reducing their obscene damage significantly.
We’ll see how this all plays out as the weeks follow into 3.1, but it seems Blizzard is serious about balancing the huge amount of PvP DPS running around after all.
It looks like it’s time for crappy MMO developers to pay the piper. First we heard about the shutdown of Tabula Rasa in February, and now Age of Conan developer Funcom is merging servers to account for low populations across the board.
When it’s all said and done, the total number of AoC servers will sit at 18, a far cry from the original 49.
It just goes to show that most of the companies trying to get a piece of the MMO cash cow are failing miserably after the release of Wrath of the Lich King. I’m going to throw out Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning as the next victim of Blizzard’s juggernaut. Flame away.
Read: Age of Conan Losing 63% of Severs
