Diaries From Azeroth: We Only Said Goodbye With Words


I died a hundred times.

In the six hours that I have put into my Tauren druid over the past two days, I found myself in the same frame of mind going into WOW Classic as I did with Old School RuneScape many years ago: A lot of enthusiasm and confidence that this iteration will do just fine.

Money is far slower to come by, especially early on in the game. I think my retail characters would laugh at the idea that my level 9 druid takes a fair amount of time to scrap together a few silver to buy fishing training. I was actually overjoyed to fill up my bag on Venture Co mob equipment drops after fighting and dying to their mobs for half an hour only to come back and sell them for a cool three silver. Just had to sell one of my bandages and I had enough for the five silver cooking upgrade.

Another thing I saw plenty of during the opening days of the stress test was some real community interaction between players. Druids would cast buffs on other classes, you’d see people helping out and pulling extra mobs off of players, healing them during combat, and just generally answering questions in chat. There was plenty of trolling in chat, sure, but it was rather lighthearted and not so malicious as you’d see in other titles or maybe even in live itself if anyone talked in there.

As someone who started playing World of Warcraft back near the game’s launch, Classic isn’t so much hardcore as it is slower and more meticulous. Your health and mana pools don’t go as far, and enemies are better matched at your level and above, so you’re far less likely to pull more than one creature at a time and you’ll find yourself running out of mana or energy much faster. Mounts are a bigger achievement because of how expensive they are, the fact that you’ll be waiting until level 40 until you can acquire them, and the relatively lower speed of acquiring currency. Enemies drop quest items at a much lower rate, increasing the time you’ll need to spend farming areas with much lower spawn rates.

Everything designed around World of Warcraft Classic is built to be taken…slower. You buy your skills, you cycle your buffs, you level your weapon skills (remember those?), you read the quest text. Available quests don’t show up on the mini-map, NPCs for completed quests show up as dots and only once your draw near to them, and quest locations don’t show up on the map at all. Combat is slower, spells are slower, many of the abilities that you might know as being instant or nearly instant are not that way at all. Pulling in one equal level mob can be a deadly fight, two is almost guaranteed death. Mobs are far more likely to resist or block your attacks, and when you don’t have much mana to spare it can be deadly.

But as a result, the game feels more impactful. Leveling is a part of the experience, not just an inconvenience to get you to the end-game. Going into a group of level 9 mobs at level 8, then returning at level 9 to see how much better you fare is a treat. You won’t go from struggling to beating them with ease with just a level or two, but the fight gets easier. You have to cast one or two less spells, or spend less time running away from fights, or less time out of combat healing. You might have ranked up a spell or an ability in that time, or in my case started patching up my armor for some better defense.

How my life melds with World of Warcraft Classic will be interesting once the game goes live later this year. After all, the me of today is much different than the me of 2005 who had far less in terms of responsibility and time management structuring. I have no interest in gaining access to the beta or taking part in future stress tests as my time is far too precious to put hours into a character that will be erased within a few weeks. Still, for the six hours I played during the stress test, I felt like I entered a portal back into a simpler time in the MMO sphere where walking around and taking in the scenery was enjoyable and not just an inconvenience.

EA’s Loot Boxes Are ‘Quite Ethical,” Says EA


If there’s a company at the forefront of predatory and unethical business conduct in the gaming industry, it has to be Electronic Arts. From the company that brought about the high profile disasters of Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem to the wholly panned monetization schemes originally present in Battlefront II, Electronic Arts has become the poster child for various governments looking to put an end to what they perceive as video game publishers coercing children into gambling habits.

But Electronic Arts doesn’t consider what they are selling to be loot boxes, as noted by the VP of legal and government affairs at EA Kerry Hopkins. Speaking to the UK Digital, Culture, Media, and Sports Committee, Hopkins referred to loot boxes as “surprise mechanics” and stated that they are indeed quite ethical. It’s hard not to see this as a company desperately defending its questionable and highly lucrative business practices in the face of increasing threat of government regulation around the world.

Then again, perhaps we don’t need to hear about ethics from the company who patented a method to make subtle adjustments to a game’s difficulty in order to encourage more microtransaction purchases.

Source: PCGamesN

Black Desert: Pre-Create Your Shai Character, Get Rewards


Pearly Abyss has announced that the Shai class is officially available for…creation.

Starting today, Black Desert players are invited to participate in an in-game event to create and customize their Shai character for when the class officially becomes available on June 26. If you create your character before that point, you’ll be eligible for a number of rewards once the character goes live. The Shai is a boomerang-wielding support class, the first to be added to Black Desert.

  • Limited Edition title for Shai, `The Adorable Trickster`
  • Peek-a-Boo Black Spirit Cube Earring
  • Asula’s Accessory Box
  • Inventory +8 Expansion Coupon
  • Weight Limit +50LT
  • +2 Silver Embroidered Clothes Box
  • Extra Life EXP Scroll x10
  • Gold Bar 1kg (100,000,000 Silver)

Neverwinter: Undermountain Arrives On Consoles


Perfect World Entertainment announced today that the latest expansion Undermountain is available on Playstation 4 and Xbox One. The expansion is accompanied by five new adventure zones, endgame dungeons, feat overhauls, a level cap of 80, class overhauls, a revamped loot system, and more.

To celebrate the game’s anniversary, players can take part in the Protector’s Jubilee from June 20-27. Take part in limited activities and obtain unique rewards only available during the festivities.

For more information, check out the official website and take a gander at the launch trailer below.

[Video] Bless Unleashed Shows Off Big Bosses


Bandai Namco today released a new trailer for Bless Unleashed, showing off powerful field bosses that players will be tasked with defeating once the game goes live.

About Bless Unleashed: Bless Unleashed takes place in an untamed world with a rich backstory created with hardcore MMO players in mind. With deep combo-driven mechanics, player customization, and cooperative (PvE) and competitive (PvP) multiplayer, there is an endless amount of content and gameplay possibilities to keep players engaged. Developed using Unreal Engine 4, Bless Unleashed brings unparalleled visuals to a fully realized fantasy world, offering one of the most stunning MMORPGs produced for console players. Players adventure across an open persistent world where mythical beasts roam the land and player vs. player battles can take place at any time.

Bless Unleashed is set to hit Xbox One in 2019. More information can be found at the official website.

Blizzard Opens WoW Classic Beta To All Subscribers


Good news, everyone!

World of Warcraft Classic is gearing up for another beta test to run from June 19 to the 21, and you don’t even have to worry about signing up and praying to be selected for testing. All you need is a computer and an active subscription to World of Warcraft. Oh, and you’ll need to be living in the North America and Oceanic regions. Community manager Kaivax has asked players to play as much as possible during the first three hours, presumably to simulate the game’s opening hours when the servers finally go live.

For this stress test, all races and classes will be available for creation, and the maximum character level will be capped at 15. In addition to the open world, there will be instanced content available at that level. This will include Warsong Gulch for PvP as well as Ragefire Chasm, Wailing Caverns, and Deadmines. Of course, Deadmines will be a challenge for players to complete at this level. Please focus as much play as possible during the first three hours of the stress test. During this time, we’ll be looking for more issues to address under initial launch conditions. The stress test realm will remain available for 48 hours.

The client should be available today (June 18) for pre-load.

Source: Battle.net

In Plain English: Remember the Artifact Twitch Trolls? Twitch Is Suing Them


Donde los yikes!

And some of you thought it wouldn’t get any crazier than Jagex suing anonymous cheaters. Those of you who follow internet drama very closely may recall that last month there was a bit of a controversy surrounding the Artifact category of Twitch streams. Specifically that people were using the service to stream movies and in some cases really inappropriate videos like the Christchurch shooting and hardcore pornography. Twitch acted pretty fast to ban the accounts and stop new streams from going up in the section, but the damage was pretty much done.

Fast forward a few weeks and Twitch is suing! The lawsuit filed in the Northern District of California has been officially dubbed Twitch Interactive Inc. v. John and Jane Does 1-100. The lawsuit demands a jury trial and couches its claims in federal trademark infringement, breach of contract, trespass to chattels, and fraud. As always, links to the documents have been provided via Google Drive at MMO Fallout’s expense, below this article.

Among its claims, Twitch believes that users took advantage of automated software to continue creating Twitch accounts and streaming the live massacre and copyright infringing movies, as well as using bots to artificially increase the popularity of said streams in order to make them more discoverable by actual people. The streams actually became enough of a problem that Twitch was forced to disable streaming for all new accounts before imposing two-factor authentication for certain accounts. Those responsible for streaming the illicit material then went to the lengths of using old accounts and even purchasing accounts in order to keep streaming.

For using the Glitch and Twitch marks on a website associated with the streaming raids, Twitch is asking for injunctive relief, compensatory damages, and attorneys’ fees related to trademark infringement. For breaching contract by willfully, continuously, and materially breaching the Twitch terms of service, Twitch is asking for special damages in lost profits and other reasonably foreseeable harms caused by defendant’s breach. For trespass to chattels (unlawful interference with another person’s property) by continuing to access the service after being banned, Twitch is asking for injunctive relief, compensatory damage, attorneys’ fees, and other remedies. And for committing fraud in misrepresenting and concealing their identities, Twitch is asking for all compensatory and punitive damages available.

In addition, Twitch is asking the courts to permanently enjoin defendants from using Twitch services, creating any bot that would interact with Twitch, using the Twitch trademarks, and assisting in anyone else who might do the above.

Source: Google Drive

PSA: Grab Too Human On Xbox (Free) Before It Goes Away


Too Human broke real ground after its launch in 2008, and not because of anything in the game play itself. Along with several other Silicon Knights products, it stands as one of the only titles in the industry to have a judge order all stock be recalled and destroyed. Way back in the year of 2007, developer Silicon Knights headed by President Denis Dyack filed a lawsuit against Epic Games over contract disputes, mostly alleging inadequate support and missing deadlines with the Unreal Engine. Sometime during the trial information came forward that Silicon Knights had filed the lawsuit while simultaneously stealing the Unreal Engine source code to build their own platform. Thousands and thousands of lines with typos and developer commentary were stolen, with Epic’s copyrights ripped out, and claimed as Silicon Knights creation.

Thanks to the company’s criminal behavior Silicon Knights lost their lawsuit, lost a countersuit by Epic, and was forced to pay millions in damages and recall all copies of the games developed using the Unreal Engine code and the company went bankrupt and shut down shortly after. Founder Denis Dyack has gone on to form new developers in the time since, however has had no luck in crowdfunding at least partially due to the controversy surrounding his name.

Coming as quite a surprise and after six years of the game being unavailable for purchase on digital stores, Microsoft re-released Too Human and has made the game backwards compatible and available for free on the Xbox Store. You’ll want to activate the game to your account sooner rather than later, as the game won’t be around long. For a week, you can pick up the game plus the pre-order armor pack, as well as two themes if you are still going to play this on your 360.

Diaries From Washington DC: The Division 2 First Ten Levels


The Division 2 is a very Division-esque title, which is going to be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you approach the franchise. If you like your sequels to take the prior title and expand upon it, you’re golden. If you hated everything about The Division down to its core mechanics, you’re not going to find much to love here.

I want to talk about some immediately obvious positives in The Division 2, and particularly that the game is a whole lot less jank than its predecessor. The Division was pretty great when it came to movement and it’s kind of amazing to think back to the trailers when we were mostly all in awe at the simple idea that your character would close a car door automatically while taking cover behind it. That said, movement in the original game was kind of rough in spots and your character felt like he was walking on a treadmill leading to more confined areas being a real pain to get through. Additionally, while enemy AI wasn’t terrible it wasn’t exactly intelligent, and Ubisoft balanced this by making the game into a bullet sponge festival.

Thankfully The Division 2 has mostly fixed all of this.

Enemy AI is going to surprise you quite a bit as you experience what this game has to offer. Evidently the Washington DC wasteland still has plenty of brain food, as raiders will intelligently flank you, use grenades to push you out of hiding, send in suicide melee squads to force you from your cover, and just generally utilize more coordinated tactics than you might anticipate from such a game. It’s almost unfair at times when you get pitted against a dozen or so baddies in an open space and suddenly find yourself knocked out of cover while the sniper forcing your attention made way for the two guys who just appeared behind you. Unlike its predecessor, I have rarely come out of a death concluding that the game was cheating me.

On the other side of this coin the bullet sponge enemies are mostly gone and good riddance to them. I would say that The Division lands mostly on the realistic side of the Tom Clancy media spectrum so the idea of having gang leaders walking around with no noticeable body armor but somehow still needing two full reloads of shotgun shells from close range in order to kill is just ridiculous. The Division 2 still has named enemies, and they are more powerful than their low-tier mook buddies, but they aren’t sponges. They might have armored vests or helmets, and take a couple more shots to put down. There are a few enemies scattered about during missions that are covered in full body SWAT-tier bomb squad armor that take a lot of bullets to kill. They are far less present and can be dealt with easier than their predecessors.

It’s also nice to be able to walk around the various locations without your character bumping into everything like a drunken bumper car operator.

The game itself is freaking gorgeous. Obviously I’m saying this from the stance of someone with a computer good enough to run the game on its highest settings but boy did Ubisoft put a lot into making the DC wasteland look beautiful and create a living world in the process. The city itself tells a story and everywhere you look you can see the remains of failed quarantines, rescue efforts, and people just trying to survive. You come across a regular bounty of random events including public executions, propaganda broadcasts, and more, that can be easy targets for some quick loot. My personal favorite are the supply drops, where you’ll come across three supply crates that you can salvage for gear and resources. The caveat to this is that the various other factions are also out for these and can actually steal them from you. As far as random encounters go, the supply crates offered the most varied fun for me.

Gear, at least in the first ten levels, has been pretty great. The Division has been throwing enough stuff at me via the main missions, side missions, and generally tracking down and looting stuff in the wilderness that I haven’t felt bereft of new toys to play with.

The first ten levels of Division 2 have taken up around five and a half hours of gameplay, and so far I have to say I am enjoying this far more than I did with The Division. I am looking forward to discussing the game more as I continue playing.