Tag: death

World of Warcraft Exploit Leads To City Massacre


In some MMOs, the idea of players being able to engage in PvP combat outside of designated areas can be horrifying. Someone gaining the ability to engage in combat where they shouldn’t could go on a rampage and make use of the full loot systems in games like RuneScape, and make the lives of many players miserable before they are eventually banned. In MMOs like World of Warcraft, the threat is slightly less present. Death is little more than a time setback, the penalty paid in a moderate fee to repair armor.

And speaking of World of Warcraft, everyone is dying. In the streets, in the houses, but mostly in the main cities. For several hours yesterday, on multiple servers, a kill exploit ran rampant through the major cities of Azeroth, with low level characters mowing down players and NPCs without a second thought. The exploit was hotfixed by Blizzard, and the perpetrators have presumably been banned. Eurogamer tracked down the source of the exploit, and found quite an interesting justification for the action:

“We had to. The first account ban for using the kill hack was issued around 30 minutes before we started nuking cities. We did so because we knew it was going to be fixed,”

Now might be a good time to explain that just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you are obligated to.

(Source: Eurogamer)

Darkfall: Down The Path of Trammel


Whenever the topic turns to a free for all PvP MMO, I often bring up the subject of what I refer to as “Trammeling.” It is also known as “pulling an NGE,” and occurs when a developer makes dramatic changes to underlying fundamentals of a game in order to achieve what they believe will appeal to a broader range of gamers. And like New Game Enhancements, this runs the risk that the current population who are more likely to depart may not be fully replaced by the potential for newer, more casual customers. This is not the same as Ropering, the concept of alienating potential customers by monetizing everything up to each individual breath.

Today’s topic covers death in the upcoming Darkfall 2.0 relaunch. As of now, when a character hits zero health, they enter an incapacitated state during which another player can gank them, or they can wait out the timer or hit a button the bleed out and respawn at their bind stone.

When 2.0 launches, death will work slightly different. Rather than bleeding out, when the bar empties players will revive with minimum health. Aventurine hopes this will add another layer to larger scale PvP combat as downed players will need to be ganked to ensure that they are unable to get back up and start fighting. To balance this feature out in player vs environment situations, higher level monsters will be more likely to outright execute the player, rather than simply incapacitate them.

The changes don’t end at ganking, however. When ganked, a player will enter a state of limbo, during which they will be able to equip items from their bank box and then respawn near their tombstone. This is time based, will cost gold based on how much equipment you take, and is time based: If you don’t hit a specific button in time, you are still teleported back to your bind stone.

Community reaction to this news is naturally divided. More news to come as Aventurine releases more details.

(Source: Epic Blog)

Pathfinder Online Invokes Everquest/RuneScape Death Mechanics


Pathfinder Online almost sounds like a cheap title one might use to parody an MMO with poor AI. That being said, the folks over at Goblin Works have piqued my interest with the announcement that death in Pathfinder will function similar to the old Everquest corpse walk, and yes I just used the words “upcoming MMO” and “old Everquest corpse walk” in the same sentence in 2012.

In a blog on the Goblin Works website, the team describes the mechanic in more detail. When a player dies, they can be resurrected by a nearby friend. If no one comes to their rescue, they will respawn at their bound location with everything they had equipped still on them. Anything in your inventory, however, is now in the possession of a soulless husk lying dormant on the ground of some creature-ridden cave. Should another player come across your fresh carcass before you do, they will be able to loot a random selection of your items with the rest being destroyed in the process.

According to the website, this is to ensure that players don’t just have friends loot them and give their stuff back, as part of your inventory is destroyed for good. It also means that players in groups can defend that person’s stash while they run back, even if no one in the group is capable of resurrection.

Pathfinder Online is an upcoming sandbox/themepark hybrid MMO with open world PvP based on the pen and paper RPG. Expect more articles coming up on Pathfinder, including how Goblin Works shoved my own foot in my mouth over a bounty system.

(Source: Goblin Works Website)