New character, new events.
Tag: Pathfinder
Maplestory Adds New Party Quest With Squadron of Heroes Update
MapleStory’s latest update goes live this week as Squadron of Heroes continues on from the major Pathfinder update earlier this summer.
In the Squadron of Heroes update, players level 61 and up can take part in a new Ancient Ruins Party Quest for rewards, as well as partying up in cross world party quests that reward currency that can be used to purchase items from the party point merchant shop. In addition to working with other players, one can also create a party of characters across their account to take on the Immortal Gorgons for daily and weekly rewards.
A new theme dungeon called Partem Ruins will be available for players level 135+ with new mini-games and adventure tiers being added to the Adventure Islands.
And finally this wouldn’t be a MapleStory event without another burning event. If one burning character just isn’t enough, this time around Nexon is offering two burning characters who from level 10 to 150 will gain two additional levels.
More information available at the official website.
MapleStory Adds Pathfinder Class Today
The Pathfinder is here! Nexon has announced the release of the much anticipated bowman class to Maplestory and now you too can finally log in create one of your own. The Pathfinder joins the ongoing fire leveling event offering 3x leveling speed for new characters, as well as the Adventure Island activities.
More information is available at the official website and in the preview trailer above.
Source:
Beta Impressions: MapleStory Rolls Out the Pathfinder
I played a bit of MapleStory this week.
It probably comes as little surprise to my readers that I still have an active MapleStory account, and even less so that Nexon invited me over to check out the upcoming Pathfinder class release for the game.
The Pathfinder is sort of an oddity as a character class, as the story revolving around this character is that she has been blighted with an ancient curse. What this translates to is that your character starts out with reduced stats. Thankfully it doesn’t stick with the player very long, even by MapleStory standards, and by skill level four the curse has been weakened out and removed from your system.
If you haven’t quite figured it out, the Pathfinder class is the latest hero added into a game with a heck of a lot of classes. I enjoyed the time that I had to play with the Pathfinder not just because I tend to play the archer class more in MMOs but because the character is just sort of an all-around bad ass. The Pathfinder is a bow-wielding class, of course, but the focus appears to be more geared toward crowd control. Many of the attacks and especially those that you receive toward the start of the game are geared toward just inflicting mass damage against anything stupid enough to come too close.
I should also note about the curse dampening that the class doesn’t start out gimped by any measure. Your character is effectively slightly less powerful in an area of the game that comprises of the tutorial locations. I assume there is some effect of some stats starting out with a 20% debuff, but considering how low your stats will already be starting out, the Pathfinder isn’t exactly going to be the Dark Souls of MapleStory classes. I’m sorry for having written that, but I had to get the joke in.
As you level up even further, the curse becomes more of a blessing as you not only overcome the stat debuffs but then utilize that ancient curse on your foes in the form of an offensive debuff attack. You also gain the ability to call forth a shadow raven with associated skills later on to improve that mechanic. The shadow raven hangs around for a while and attacks your enemies.
During my time with the Pathfinder, I also checked out the Secret Forest of Elodin theme dungeon which was as adorable as I have come to expect from MapleStory content. I won’t spoil the story for you, but it has to do with nightmares, hearing scary voices in the woods, and making sure that the good and decent folks are safe and sound. This mission, to the best of my knowledge, was already made available in the live game on June 12 (my birthday of course) and is available to all players at least level 30.
I didn’t have as much time as I wanted to play through the Adventure Island, but the even is running in the live game until August 27 and is looking to offer a ton of very cool rewards. The gist of the event should be familiar to MMO players. Players at level 61 can start earning adventure points to convert into adventure coins by killing monsters within 20 levels of their character. You can also make use of AFK items to obtain experience and coins. As the event goes on, higher ranks are being rolled out with better items, better tasks, and better passive stat boosts.
I can’t wait for the Pathfinder to hit the live server, which it will on June 26. It was a fair amount of fun for the time I had playing on the test server and I think that MapleStory players are going to enjoy it along with the various events ongoing that will make leveling another alt a bit lighter of a load.
Stay tuned to MMO Fallout for more MapleStory talk, or just head over to the official website and take a dive in for yourself. Big thanks to a number of people for bringing MMO Fallout on board to check out the class.
Pathfinder Online Early Access Rates
Pathfinder Online recently entered Open Enrollment, meaning the price of admission has changed once again. Many seem to be under the impression that you still need to drop a good grand to gain entry, which was the case during the alpha stage.
Right now you can gain immediate access for $100 by buying the Early Enrollment pack. The package comes with three months of game time and other digital goodies. For those who can wait another month, there is a $50 pack that grants access beginning in February, and only contains one free month of game time.
Early enrollment should not be confused with open enrollment, which is not set to begin until January 2016. Also keep in mind that while the game is in early access, you are still required to pay a subscription.
Goblinworks does not consider this to be a beta period.
(Source: Pathfinder Online)
Pathfinder Online Holds Early Enrollment Back
If you’ve been waiting patiently for the Pathfinder Online Early Enrollment period to begin, well you’re going to be waiting a bit longer. In a post on the Goblin Works developer blog, Ryan Dancey announced that early enrollment will be put on hold until the developer can deal with issues relating to stress tests and server capacity.
We have set an internal objective of being able to handle 2,000 simultaneous connections, and 100 characters active in a single Hex as our minimum threshold for server performance. This reflects our expected peak concurrent activity for the first 10,000 players in game – roughly what we anticipate during the first 90 days of Early Enrollment activity. Currently the server does not reliably meet that benchmark.
The blog post does not mention a timeframe for when early enrollment will launch. Stay tuned.
(Source: Pathfinder)
Pathfinder's Backing Of Elder Scrolls Online
Goblinworks CEO Ryan Dancey found himself in the news this week by penning an editorial defending The Elder Scrolls Online and the game’s planned subscription system. In the op-ed, Dancey states his belief that not only are subscriptions responsible for more than $100 million a year in the west, but that it is hard to imagine that the revenue from microtransactions even approaches 50% of that figure. Now Dancey’s figures are hardly scientific, but the overall point that he seems to be making is that the optimal route for MMOs (particularly Elder Scrolls Online) to take is to launch with a box price and subscription to recuperate development costs and then switch over to a system based in microtransactions with an optional subscription intact once it makes sense.
I remain convinced that the market is going to continue to support subscriptions for these games regardless of budget so long as the subscriptions are intelligently linked to a microtransaction model as well. The evidence of ongoing success with that model seems incontrovertible and the implication that there are millions of people happily paying for game subscriptions shouldn’t be controversial to anyone who digs into the numbers.
Whether or not you agree with Dancey’s conclusion, the editorial is still a great read. Check it out at the link below.
(Source: MMORPG.com)
Pathfinder’s Backing Of Elder Scrolls Online
Goblinworks CEO Ryan Dancey found himself in the news this week by penning an editorial defending The Elder Scrolls Online and the game’s planned subscription system. In the op-ed, Dancey states his belief that not only are subscriptions responsible for more than $100 million a year in the west, but that it is hard to imagine that the revenue from microtransactions even approaches 50% of that figure. Now Dancey’s figures are hardly scientific, but the overall point that he seems to be making is that the optimal route for MMOs (particularly Elder Scrolls Online) to take is to launch with a box price and subscription to recuperate development costs and then switch over to a system based in microtransactions with an optional subscription intact once it makes sense.
I remain convinced that the market is going to continue to support subscriptions for these games regardless of budget so long as the subscriptions are intelligently linked to a microtransaction model as well. The evidence of ongoing success with that model seems incontrovertible and the implication that there are millions of people happily paying for game subscriptions shouldn’t be controversial to anyone who digs into the numbers.
Whether or not you agree with Dancey’s conclusion, the editorial is still a great read. Check it out at the link below.
(Source: MMORPG.com)
Keeping Up With Kickstarter
After several months of rehab from Kickstarter, I think it’s safe to talk about some of the MMOs that are seeking funding without opening my wallet and throwing heaps of cash into them. It’s been a pretty interesting past few months for Kickstarter in all respects, including that of the MMO world. If you haven’t been paying attention, Greed Monger made good on its funding goal of $30 thousand, at over $90 thousand raised altogether. Greed Monger is an interestingly named title that focuses on crafting, economics, and politics. Inspired by Ultima Online, Greed Monger brings back some much underused MMO features including non-instanced player housing. The game will be free to play and supported by the purchasing of houses. Players buy parcels of land on which they can build whatever they want. The kickstarter is long over, but you can still check out the features at its funding page.
I’m joking. I’m not even one paragraph into this and I’ve already dropped $50.
Emperor’s Forge has a pretty interesting concept: Players divide into cities of up to 50 players, all competing for the Viceroy title to lead the city. Cities can form together and then form a country. The goal of all of this is to name someone King or Queen of the kingdom (or queendom?). Once a player is named king, he can actually be killed by players of warring factions, who will instate their own leader as the new king/queen. Players level up by gaining nobility ranks, and the higher a player’s nobility the more features they have access to. Emperor’s Forge will allow players to own houses, set up shops and hire NPCs to staff them, as well as soldiers, and more.
The Emperor’s Forge Kickstarter has until February 4th to hit $80,000. The game will be free to play and available on PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android devices.
Unless Xsyon gets some last minute funding, it looks like the Kickstarter is going to fall short of its goal. Xsyon’s Kickstarter ends on January 1st, and so far has only accumulated $6 thousand of the $250 thousand goal. Xsyon is live, and you can check out the game for yourself on the free to play server. Xsyon is a sandbox MMO where everything is player-crafted, from the equipment to the buildings. Set up in tribes and build yourself a compound, go out and kill wild animals (or players) for their precious goods and use them to craft even more equipment with which to kill more animals and players. Set up trade routes, level your skills, and help the new world rise from the ashes of nuclear apocalypse.
Haven’t we seen Pathfinder here before? The answer is yes, we have. The previous Pathfinder Kickstarter project was for a tech demo of the full product. The latest Kickstarter, asking for $1 million dollars, has accumulated over $400,000 with 26 days to go as of this writing. Pathfinder is an upcoming MMO based on the Pathfinder pen and paper RPG. It will be a sandbox game with a focus on player interaction, be it in the form of politics, diplomacy, economics, warfare, and exploration. Otherwise, the Kickstarter page offers much more detail on what reward tiers are available than what the game will actually encompass.
Pathfinder Online Meets Kickstarter Goal: 27 Days Remaining
You know with all this publicity that Pathfinder Online better launch and be the greatest thing since sliced black bread. Goblinworks still has 27 days left to their Kickstarter project for Pathfinder Online, and not only has the goal been met, it continues to be exceeded. One thousand people pledged over sixty thousand dollars so far, and the number continues to rise even as I write this article.
So, check it out. Pathfinder Online is a hybrid sandbox-themepark MMO based around the pen and paper game of the same name. By donating, you can gain access to some interesting rewards.
(Source: Pathfinder Kickstarter)
MMO Fallout 