An Introduction to The Elder Scrolls Online

Bethesda have published the first video of The Elder Scrolls Online, presented by members of the development team.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_Fr6VF_1LA] (more…)

Something for the Weekend

Diablo III will apparently not have PvP at launch, as the systems aren’t up to scratch yet.  Instead, they’ll be patched in when they are ready.  In the meantime, Blizzard are apparently putting the finishing touches on the game.. for which there is still no confirmed release date.

CryEngine 3 is now available for free non-commercial use!  AI, animations, dynamic lighting.. check out the preview from IGN:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TtgW20IEm0] (more…)

Firefall Beta Starts Now

Firefall is a team-based shooter / MMO hybrid under development for the PC by Red 5 Studios; a studio founded by Mark Kern, former team lead for World of Warcraft.  The game will be free-to-play once launched.  To take part in the beta, sign up for an account: beta invites will be issued in waves.

The latest Dev Diary details how player actions will affect the roll out of new content in the game:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQrQWRiXFss]

The game is set in a future Earth, where the promise of a new clean energy source leads to the arrival of a hostile energy storm called the Melding, that engulfs most of the world.  A bloodthirsty race known as The Chosen has also emerged and threatens humanity’s survival..

Players can choose from three battleframes: assault, medic and recon, each of which can be customised with different weapons and loadouts.  These are equipped by the player’s character, so you can switch between battleframes too.

Firefall has both PvP objectives and cooperative PvE missions.  PvP consists of Team Deathmatch, and a Sabotage game mode, which has teams take turns being on offense or defense, with three different points to capture and hold.  Confirmed PvE missions so far include a Thumper mission, where players defend a mining machine against waves of enemy creatures while it gathers resources, and Rescue missions, for which no information has yet been released.

Firefall has no set release date; as players join the beta and play, the team collect feedback and continue development of the game, with plans for the game to be rolled out ‘organically’, rather like Google’s Gmail service.

Catching More Espers

A few weeks ago, I came across Geomon, a role-playing game by Loki Studios, where you fight and capture spirit-based creatures called Espers.  The game makes use of geolocation, time of day, and weather conditions to determine which Espers will appear on your radar, and it is this part of the game which has really had me coming back.. I love the fact the enemies are different every time I turn the game on.

Missions were added to the game today, adding a little more direction to the game.

These are optional, and rather simple: for instance, “Where is my Mind?” requires me to scan and dissipate (defeat) four Mind Espers.  “Night Glider” suggests using a particular Esper to complete the mission, so I think there is a potential for more challenging missions later, but for now, it’s nice to have something else to make progress towards.

I also came across an Alpha this week..

The Alpha appeared as a star on the radar, and when I clicked to look, I found he was “only” level 12, compared to my level 13 Varg.  He turned out to have rather a lot of health, and after a few strikes on either side, he summoned minion drones to fight in his place, which I had to defeat before fighting him again.

I would have liked to capture him.. I should probably note that I really love the creature design and sheer variety between the Espers I’ve seen so far 🙂

On defeating him, I received a huge XP boost to all five Espers in my party, even the ones that died in battle.. they don’t normally receive XP after a fight where they are defeated, so this was unexpected, though I’m not going to complain about it 😉

Geomon is still being developed, so there a few features are still incomplete, such as Bounties.  I have collected some items listed as Bounty Samples, and at present they don’t have any use that I can see.. but they don’t take up any room in the inventory so it isn’t a problem.  I’m guessing that Bounties will be PvE, with powerful Espers to hunt down rather than any kind of PvP, as I think this would be easier for people to drop in and out of.

There is some PvP in the game, in the form of Duels.. though when I’ve looked at the mode so far, I’ve only turned up an AI Sparring Drone.  Duels work like the fight against the Alpha, with minions being brought out first.  There is also a 30 second time limit for you to make your move or lose it, and you have no access to your inventory for healing items, I guess so it can’t be exploited by somebody buying a large stockpile of improvement items 🙂

More Silly Things

Tonight saw triumph in Grim Batol, on Heroic..this leaves The Stonecore and Halls of Origination to do, as well as the last patch’s Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman.  Getting there, slowly! 🙂

There was also another return to the Arena, this time with three of us, as Norfolk n Chance 😉

We didn’t do too badly, with enough wins to pick up some new PvP gear and get an achievement: “World Wide Winner”, for winning a ranked match in each arena.  I hope we’ll be doing more 3v3 as it was rather good fun 😉

Afterwards came the silly, with a couple more of Vorlak’s random trinkets..

He looks rather too big for the sidecar, as I look too small for the bike..

And from one extreme to the other.. the Voodoo Gnome.. am I allowed to call this cute?

More PvP and our new 2v2 team!

Over on the Tol Barad peninula, I found the last two critters for ‘To All the Squirrels Who Cared for Me’!  The plan for the night had been to make our new 2v2 Arena team, but first we went for Tol Barad.. the Horde won the round so I picked up Tol Barad Victory as well as a nice haul of points, and some more PvP gear. 🙂

On to the Arena then, with 2v2 team ‘The Twisted Lockbox’..

We went for matching Mechano-Hogs and pets, but had a string of defeats as expected 😉

Towards the end we started to get easier opponents, and I was learning to stick to healing instead of trying to hit enemies with my rather ineffectual attacks.  I find PvP in the Arena to be a totally different game again from the PvP in Battlegrounds.. or maybe I’ve been doing it wrong in there as well..

Getting a Taste for PvP Blood!

We ended up going for some PvP this evening, with some new Battlegrounds for me: Eye of the Storm and Battle for Gilneas, which I loved!  It helped that we were fairly successful in defending ourselves, and held onto the capture points 🙂

At the moment I prefer capture points to capturing flags, and much prefer a nice open playing field where I don’t have any line of sight issues.  After a couple of battlegrounds, I had enough Honor Points to get the Bloodthirsty Gladiator’s Mooncloth Robe, which gives resilience so I don’t die quiet as easily 😉

There were a lot of people in our run of Alterac Valley..

Even with so many players, it felt like there was more waiting around with little action.. we burned down a tower though!

Trying out the PvP again!

A while back, we made the 3v3 Arena team “Norfolk n Chance”, and attempted to try out some PvP.  We weren’t very successful, with me getting wiped out not long after the fight starting each time.. too squishy!

We tried again tonight..

Putting on an organised front didn’t help us much, but it looked good 😉

We managed to get our first win when we arrived into one Arena for our opposition to randomly disappear.
This won us the Step Into The Arena achievement and the Call of Battle achievement for the guild.. I wouldn’t have been happy about this really, as we hadn’t earnt it, but then we were matched against the same opponents for our next Arena match, and won! 😀

After we’d completed our allowed 10 matches, we headed on to some Battlegrounds.. Strand of the Ancients, where I managed to get a good few kills in, and Arathi Basin, which seemed so much easier this time round.

This ended up being rather a late night.. just as well it’s the weekend!

Baradin Hold, Zul’Aman and Serpentshrine Cavern

Baradin Hold, a level 85 raid, was tonight’s conquest.. as the Horde had won in the PvP Tol Barad and therefore controlled the area, this rather short raid was available for a few hours.  Finding people to start with was a bit of a pain, as there were others looking to make groups of their own as well, with specific class requirements and so on.  Once the group was assembled, the worst of things was over.. we ended up with nice enough people 😉

At the moment the raid contains just one boss, Argaloth, though more may be added in time.. as well as only having the one boss, we split into two groups..  Argaloth’s Meteor Slash ability deals a lot of damage to whoever is in front of him.. this requires players to stand on the tank so that the damage is shared between all those players rather than all going to the tank and killing him.  The two groups then swap, so Argaloth hits the second group while the first recover.

(Screenshot taken from Wowhead)

By splitting into two groups with a healer in each, it just felt like I had my regular group to look after plus a few extra people to heal every so often.. so aside from the requirement for more players in the group, it didn’t feel very much different from a regular dungeon fight.  Our first two attempts failed, but we took him out on the third try.  I also won some new gloves 🙂

Zul’Aman, newly returned to the game, was our next port of call.. for now this is still a raid, but will become a Heroic dungeon somewhere down the line.

The guys gave me all the Amani Hex Sticks we found, with a mention of a pet being involved. 😀

These are for using them on frogs; this removes a hex and turns the frogs back into people, who then drop a box with loot, or are vendors for random items.  Eventually I hit the right frog.. and won Mojo, who rushed at me and jumped into my pocket.. I thought I was being attacked! 😀

The group found him irresistable.. kissing Mojo turns the player into a frog!  When you kiss him, he whispers things to you as well.. 😉

Finishing Zul’Aman was no problem for our overpowered group..

After Zul’Aman, we headed for Serpentshrine Cavern, a raid in the underwater Coilfang Reservoir.

Heading into this raid, I was shown the Tier 5 Priest Gear, and told I had to roll on it.  It is a fairly nice set, so I decided I would collect it.. and maybe see if we can catch anyone else out in PuGs..

Last week we met an idiot in a PuG.. he saw our tank in old gear and quit without asking or even waiting to see if he would switch into something more up-to-date.  I’m now thinking about turning up to these groups in the nice looking Tier 5, or even in a simple dress.. this might prove a good way of getting rid of impatient, annoying type players right at the start 🙂

Anyway.. Serpentshrine Cavern!

I’d been here with a friend before Cataclysm, and I had remembered it being a little tougher.. we cleared the packs on the platforms fairly quickly.

In a very interesting twist, The Lurker Below has to be fished up from his pool before fighting him.  With an achievement up for grabs we rolled to see who would do it, and I won.  It took a few tries, but eventually I caught a big one..

The Lurker Below’s knockback was annoying, as it came from more than one of his abilities, I kept being caught by it.

Fathom-Lord Karathress managed to kill us on our first attempt, resulting in a rather long run back across the water and down into Coilfang Reservoir.  Eventually we got the better of him.. and moved on to Morogrim Tidewalker.  His mechanics included teleporting us into the waterfalls, where we were temporarily incapacitated before being dropped and incurring falling damage.   This meant I had a bit more of a challenge in healing, so I enjoyed this fight most.

After killing all the bosses, an impressive looking bridge is lowered to get to the final boss, Lady Vashj.

We had no problems the first phase, which was all about damage, but in the second phase she becomes immune, with her shield generated at four points on the platform.  To knock out the shield we had to get Tainted Cores from Tainted Elementals which appear in the water around the platform.. the interesting mechanic here was that once you have a Tainted Core you are unable to move, so you have to throw the Core to the next person, who throws it to the next..

However, Enchanted Elementals continually appear and head for Lady Vashj, and need to be killed as they give her a power boost.. they weren’t hard to kill alone, but there were also Coilfang Elites, which took a bit more to put down, and then the Striders, who used Panic and disrupted us far too much.

We decided that four people wasn’t enough, so put this off for another night..