Category: News

ASTA Marks End of Open Beta


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Webzen has marked the end of open beta for ASTA and official commercial release of the MMO. ASTA is built on CRYENGINE 3 and boasts a broad crafting system, dungeons that change their difficulty based on player skill, a player-driven economy, and more.

Set to launch on May 31st is ASTA’s first expansion, Myth I: Wrath of the Berserkers. The expansion introduces a new race, the Raksa, as well as their race-specific class the Berserker. The berserker is a DPS class that uses dual-wielded weapons and is capable of buffing its own stats to make for a formidable foe.

Berserkers inflict damage by swinging their double weapons, such as swords or axes, with great power and speed. They exploit any gap left by a defeated enemy to mount their next attack. Using continuous attacks such as “Bloodstain”, rather than powerful single blows, Berserkers are well capable of turning a situation in their favour. Berserkers can also use Combat Art Skills to enhance their own strength, and Soul Skills to improve the strength of the summoned creature “Cursed Doll”.

Wrath of the Berserkers also introduces new quests, new rewards, a new dungeon, and raises the level cap to 55.

More details can be found at the official website.

Blade & Soul Is Getting More Expensive


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Blade & Soul is about to get more expensive for European users, as NCSoft has announced price hikes coming to those who pay via Euro and British Pound. Beginning June 1st, prices for premium membership will increase for parity with the in-game Hongmoon store, according to NCSoft.

New prices will start out at €11.99 and £9.59 for 30 days of premium. Roughly translated to USD, this means European players will be paying $13.43 and $13.87 for the same service that Americans currently pay $11.99 for. Any subscription prior to June 1st will be locked in at the current price.

(Source: NCSoft)

[Video] H1Z1: KOTK Unveils New Ignition Mode


Daybreak Game Company have released the official trailer for H1Z1: King of the Kill’s newest game mode, Ingition.

Ignition is a high-intensity, frenzied game mode where the clock is always ticking. Players are outfitted with an explosive device that’s set to blow unless they gear up fast, jump on their ATV, and gun it to the safe zone. Every second matters in this turbo-charged battle to the death as players race from safe zone to safe zone before their time runs out.

Ten Years Later, Half Life 3 Still Doesn’t Exist


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It’s been ten years since Valve announced Half Life 2: Episode 3 and the internet is pretty much convinced that the game will never be made. Originally conceived back when episodic gaming was nowhere near as prevalent as it is in this post-Telltale world, Valve hoped that splitting one giant game (Half Life 3) into three parts and releasing them episodically would shorten the wait between releases.

The idea worked, at the start. Half Life 2 launched November 2004 with Lost Coast bridging the gap in October 2005, Episode 1 in June 2006 and Episode 2 in October 2007. It was a big change from the wait between Half Life 1 and 2, a problematic development cycle that saw a six year wait.

But even the wait between Half Life and Half Life 2 seems like small beans compared to the ten year wait that players have endured just for the small confirmation that Valve is even working on the title. In that time, Steam has grown to become a platform more profitable than Google. We’ve seen Valve launch several titles, a lucrative skin market for multiple games, mold their games for eSports, run numerous high profile tournaments, launch a hardware brand, VR, and more.

And yet, despite this massive success, the company refuses to comment on Half Life.

The lack of information coming from Valve has only fueled the speculation on why Half Life 3 hasn’t been fully announced. Is it because they are making too much money elsewhere? Because they waited too long and believe that the game missed its mark? Or because they are waiting for major engine updates to Source? Or because they’re figuring out a way to add microtransactions to a single player game?

Either way, we’re looking at the tenth anniversary since Valve announced the next Half Life 2 game with just as much information as we had ten years ago.

Turbine Disabling Lord of the Rings Sales Through May


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If you were looking at picking up anything in Lord of the Rings Online this week, you’re out of luck. In a post on the official forums, Turbine announced that sales for the nine year old MMO will be halted for a week on Tubine’s store as well as through Steam and Amazon. The announcement comes with a rather ominous “plan” to turn the features back on in June.

We want to announce that at 12:00pm EDT 5/20/2016, we’ll be temporarily interrupting our DLC/Offer sales on Steam, store.turbine.com, and Amazon. We plan to turn these back on June 1st, 2016.

Speculation is rampant on why sales would need to be suspended for a full week, with all likelihood pointing to an overhaul to mirror the company’s shift in focus from big expansions to smaller content packs.

(Source: Lord of the Rings Online)

ArcheAge Issues Warning Against Toxic Behavior


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Stomping down toxic behavior is all the rage these days, between Riot Games putting the kibosh and permanently banning certain players for life, to Blizzard pledging to tackle racism after the latest Dreamhack conference, Jagex taking on streamer harassment and KKK cosplay (a phrase that shouldn’t exist), and now Trion Worlds with ArcheAge. The game has become a lot less friendly and Trion’s customer service isn’t happy.

In a news post published yesterday, Trion Worlds has committed to taking a more hands on approach with toxic behavior.

We are going to be much more conscious about what we allow to be said in public chat channels. We know that some will do their best to test boundaries and try to skirt our intent and then appeal the action with a technicality. Ultimately if our determination is that your chat is contributing nothing except grief to a player or community we will take actions to prevent that.

So what does this mean? Well, you can call a boss a bitch but you can’t call another player a bitch. Personal attacks, using alternate accounts to harass a player who has put you on ignore, spamming the chat channel, physical threats, and more will result in action taken against offenders. Trion also reminds players that this only extends to in-game chat, and that the company can’t extend its reach to outside platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc).

(Source: ArcheAge)

Otherworldy Creatures Invade Champions Online


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Beginning yesterday (May 19th) and going through June 2nd, heroes in Champions Online will be able to group up and take on otherworldly invaders in the Nightmare Invasion event. In order to participate, players must be over level 10 and in a group of at least three.

Strange otherworldly creatures have started invading Millennium City, and you need to stop them! A mysterious stranger called Golden Seraph has appeared in Renaissance Center, pleading for assistance in stopping this invasion. Who is behind this new invasion, and what does it ultimately mean?

There are exclusive rewards for heroes who participate in the event.

(Source: Champions Online)

Snapshots: Unsurprising Racism Edition


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If you caught our coverage of RuneScape’s latest ban controversy, you probably made a mental note of Jagex’s statement that a player was permanently banned for dressing up as a KKK member. Some of you may have wondered how it is possible to dress up like a klan member on RuneScape. Well, here’s your answer.

The outfit is apparently a combination of desert robes, a gnome hat, and a noose wand. Why does RuneScape have an equippable noose? For catching Kebbits, a part of the game’s hunter skill. Jagex, for their part, are generally quick to ban players for wearing such attire.

Less surprising is that players actively seek out these outfits, look in any corner of the internet and you’ll find a legion of desperate attention-seekers acting out and being as edgy as possible to get their fifteen minutes, with the genuinely racist members sprinkled somewhere in the crowd. Even less so the people who brazenly, and unconvincingly, attempt to play the ignorant card like they don’t understand why such conduct is looked down on.

(Credit for the image: NPC_2006 on Reddit)

Play Marvel Heroes Instantly With InstaPlay


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While download waits increasingly become a thing of the past, the thought of having to sit through a 20 gigabyte client for a free to play game is still a daunting task that puts some people off. Who has time to wait for a game to download when you’ve got villains to beat up?

Luckily, Gazillion has your back. Thanks to a partnership with InstaPlay, gamers will be able to get into the game instantly and start playing immediately.

“With InstaPlay, our new players can get into Marvel Heroes 2016 immediately. It’s instant gratification and instantly awesome,” said Dave Dohrmann, CEO of Gazillion. “We evaluated several technologies last year and felt Click2Play was hands down the best solution for our needs.”

(Source: Gazillion press release)

Jagex Releases Chat Logs Of Banned Players


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Yesterday we reported a backlash forming on the Old School RuneScape subreddit by players angry over multiple account bans that been instated over the previous night. Several accounts were allegedly banned for harassing a streamer, with players brigading the subreddit demanding proof in the form of chat logs that the players were legitimately punished.

While Jagex initially refused to release the chat logs, product manager Matthew Kemp has posted several redacted chat logs of the guilty parties.

The harassing streamers/players comment was used as that was why these accounts were initially looked into. The bug abuse rule was used as it was an appropriate length of punishment for the offence. Our systems do not work by applying a mute or ban and then deciding the time, but by choosing a rule which has been broken and applying a predetermined punishement. This system is not the best for all circumstances but we have to work with what we have.

Unsurprisingly, people who break rules and act toxic in games still lie and pass the blame when they are eventually punished. Even less surprising is that other toxic players on the subreddit have moved the goal posts as an excuse to ignore the proof that they demanded just yesterday.

(Source: Reddit)