Cataclysm – MMO Fallout

Everquest II: Cataclysm May Be On Its Way

everquest-2-sentinels-fate-logo — Cataclysm

John Smedley acknowledges that Everquest II players are not World of Warcraft players, as reflected in moves by Sony Online Entertainment to not jump on the bandwagon by introducing a $25 mount to…To be fair, I’m sure that the Everquest II Prowlers were being developed years before World of Warcraft did it, more likely around a time when Sony was allowing sandbox title Star Wars Galaxies remain unique rather than dramatically shifting gameplay, say, right after a major expansion, overly simplifying the gameplay in order to compete with WoW. That’s just crazy talk.

In an interview with Kotaku, Smedley admitted that it isn’t current Everquest players that Sony is afraid of losing to World of Warcraft, but rather the pool of new MMO players Sony is looking to grab away from Blizzard. Despite what one might think, Smedley apparently has deep respect for Blizzard and their behemoth of an MMO, noting:

“The reason I respect Blizzard so much is that they don’t make massive mistakes,” he said, talking about the risk of making massive changes to a massive game. “They have the goods and they know it. So why not take a risk like that?

Of course, Everquest II isn’t the only MMO looking at a Cataclysm. Maplestory is set to release the Big Bang patch, which is supposed to be a dramatic change to the game’s map and leveling curve. Crimecraft is set to launch Bleedout tomorrow, a PvE storyline system. Of course, more MMOs will follow with their own world shifting events.

Play WoW While You Patch WoW!

Technically, Turbine has been doing this for a while with their game clients, but given that few other developers are unwilling to take on this same method, I figured Blizzard gets some notice. What’s the worst part of patching? If you have low bandwidth, your answer is likely the downloading portion. On large patch days, you can probably forget getting any World of Warcraft action in until sometime later in the day, assuming your connection holds up during the patching process.

Tentonhammer is reporting an addition to the WoW: Cataclysm beta, that will allow players to stream patches, allowing them to download only a small amount in order to get into the game while the rest downloads in the background. Your experience will not be ideal, according to the patch notes, but the hope is to minimize the time between patching and playing. There isn’t much information as to what “less than ideal” equates to, but in the realm of big patches and slow download speeds, it is better than nothing.

Hopefully this feature is made standard when World of Warcraft: Cataclysm goes live later this year.

More on World of Warcraft as it appears.

WoW: Cataclysm Trailer

Excuse me while I go and resubscribe.

World of Warcraft: Expansion Leaked

Being my usual late self, this will no doubt be information to none but the three of you who don’t already read WoW news feeds religiously. World of Warcraft’s upcoming expansion has been leaked, along with several details of the title. Titled Cataclysm, very little is known about the upcoming expansion, although much is being speculated. Going off of the title’s name, all of the speculation reaches one point: There is going to be massive change to the world of Azeroth, possibly having to do with the previous expansion; Wrath of the Lich King.

The expansion will also open up two new races to players. Joining the horde are the Goblins, while the Alliance will be receiving the Wolf-like Worgen species.

I don’t think I need to reiterate just how successful WoW has been in terms of sales of not only the game, but the expansion. Since its release last year, Wrath of the Lich King hasn’t as much as shuddered from the top of the PC sales charts, and the announcement of another expansion will only boost sales more and reinvigorate interest in players who had long since left. At this point, an expansion to WoW is like a billionare deciding to buy yet another country whose GDP barely stands up to his monthly profits.