World of Warcraft – Patch 5.0.4 Out!
The pre-Mists patch for World of Warcraft, patch 5.0.4, is now out!
This patch updates all classes with a new talent system, with new abilities and spells, and changes to glyphs, and amongst the other changes, adds account-wide achievements, mounts and pets, AOE looting and cross-realm zones.
There’s also the Attack on Theramore Island to look forward to; a world event which will become available in the weeks before the launch of Mists of Pandaria, due on the 25th September.
World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Cinematic Trailer
The cinematic trailer for Mists of Pandaria was shown today at Gamescom..
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvYXoyxLv64] (more…)
One Week of Diablo III!
Well.. I say a week.. heh. Launch day was a no-go, with Blizzard having somehow been unaware of how many of their customers would actually want to play, and the servers being unable to cope with this demand. These problems continued the following day, with connection problems, lag, and maintenance on the Battle.net servers.. and still they weren’t finished, as there was yet more surprise downtime and maintenance later on during the week.
The only positive thing that could be said for Blizzard in this was that they got on with the maintenance straight away.. but they should have had some indication of demand from pre-order and sales figures, and from the open beta weekend which was plagued with the same problems, and they should have ensured that their systems were ready to deal with it.
Anyway.. I went with the Demon Hunter, with plans to play the game through alone, at my own pace.. with exploration, reading all the journals, watching all the cutscenes and playing with the crafting system a bit too. I had a friend drag me through Diablo II ages back, and didn’t get to explore or enjoy the story; that isn’t going to happen again.
The first part of the game was available during the open beta.. and available as a trial of the game via the Starter Edition or Guest Passes. The first part of Act 1, up to the Skeleton King, seemed to play the same as during Beta, ignoring the random elements of course!
Diablo III Starter Edition and Other News
Diablo III launches tomorrow.. woop!
For those who aren’t planning to buy the game right away, there will be a Starter Edition and Guest Pass!
Information about this was originally leaked, as Battle.net account holders discovered they had access to the Diablo III beta client.. and that they were able to create characters tagged with a Starter Edition label. Blizzard have since taken the beta down to address “an issue affecting the beta accessibility”. (more…)
Mists of OMG So Many Pandas
I finally got my own invite to the Mists of Pandaria beta this morning, having checked my email only minutes after finding out that the Diablo III beta is open this weekend as well! Another weekend of beta gaming? I nearly picked up some Relentless when we went shopping, too.
I’d been told the Pandaren starting area was busy.. but I don’t think I knew the meaning of “busy” before now!
Mists of Pandaria Info..
Loads of information has been released this morning about Mists of Pandaria, the next expansion for World of Warcraft!
There’s a full list of features on MMO Champion, including screenshots of the Pandaren female:
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.
RIFT Lite Announced
Trion Worlds have just announced the launch of a Life version of fantasy MMO RIFT, accessible to anyone with a Trion account.
The Lite version of the game will allow new players to try out the first 20 levels of the game, accessing capital cities as well as other areas, with no cost or time restrictions, rather like World of Warcraft’s Starter Edition.
Via Massively.