Tag: Update

RuneScape Reduces DailyScape Grind


DailyScape is the not-exactly-positive name given to RuneScape by players who are somewhat fed up with the game’s daily grind. Not so much over the game itself, which is a massive grind no matter where you look in it, but over Jagex’s insistence on daily, weekly, and monthly tasks that start to feel more like busy work than something worth accomplishing.

This month Jagex took aim at daily challenges, a feature that is often long and tedious, requires the player to hand over their creations, and go out of their way to complete the task. Imagine being told to make hundreds of bows only to hand them over for a reward kinda worth the value of the goods that went into it. With this week’s update, RuneScape daily challenges will be more manageable and consistently rewarding;

“So, to solve this issue we’ve simply increased player agency. Instead of having several Challenges per skill, most of the time there will now be only one. This single Challenge will require you to interact with the skill in a manner of your choosing. You might be asked to run five laps of an Agility Course, but you’re free to pick which one. Or maybe you’ll need to cut 28 logs – if so, you’ll be able to choose from whichever trees you like.”

The daily challenge rework blog post can be found here.

Snapshots: Pearl Abyss Reveals Crimson Dawn Shots


Pearl Abyss has released some screenshots from the upcoming title Crimson Dawn, as well as some development notes players might find interesting.

Crimson Dawn began as a project to tell the backstory to Black Desert Online’s world, but grew and added more unique elements to produce new lands, elements, and characters. The character we see featured in key art is Macduff, son of Martinus. Macduff is the leader of a band of mercenaries and struggles with the responsibilities of his position. Throughout the game’s single player campaign, we will see the exploits of many mercenaries available for hire. As for the online portion, players can expect a number of features that MMORPG players have come to expect.

Crimson Dawn is expected to hit beta in 2020.

Black Desert Officially Launches On Mobile


Black Desert Mobile is officially here, as the game goes live globally. Black Desert Mobile generated successful response with 4.5 million pre-registrations and has enjoyed a successful launch in multiple countries including Korea, Japan, and Taiwan.

To celebrate the successful launch, Pearl Abyss is rewarding mobile gamers with a series of in-game items and gifts from the Bunny Bunny Ornament, a Tier 1 Horse Emblem, a Verdon Outfit Chest, and Krenvatz Barding. Additionally, those with Amazon Prime will be able to redeem monthly goodies starting immediately. Black Desert Mobile is available in English, German, Spanish, French, Russian, Thai, and Indonesian, with Portuguese to be added in 2020.

Device information available here.

Mobility: Elder Scrolls Blades Cans Chest Timers


Chest timers are so early 2019.

Monetization in Elder Scrolls Blades is getting a little less ridiculous this week as Bethesda released patch 1.5. The latest patch completely removes chest timers, allowing players to immediately open them. In addition, players who spent gems on increasing chest limits will have those gems refunded. Even better, ESB has promised that the update will add more chests to each level, each with a guaranteed gem, along with more loot dropped from enemies, and bosses in each job that may drop legendary equipment. You’ll also have 20 more inventory spaces to store that extra loot.

The full list of changes can be found on the patch notes page here.

Black Desert Available For Pre-Load On Mobile


Black Desert Mobile is now available for pre-load and character creation.

The mobile port of Black Desert goes live on December 11 at 00:00 UTC, but you can go through the painstaking, multi-hour process of creating your character right now. Eager gamers can download the client from the Android or iOS store and get the client ready, as well as create up to three characters from the get-go to start their grinding career once the servers go live in a couple of days.

There are five characters available at launch for Black Desert Mobile: The warrior, ranger, witch, giant, and valkyrie.

Old School RuneScape Suffers Major Technical Difficulties Over Weekend


(Update: Old School RuneScape underwent maintenance this morning that appears to have fixed the issue)

If you have tried to play Old School RuneScape this weekend, especially over mobile, odds are your experience has been less than desirable. Absolutely horrible more like.

Long story short, Old School RuneScape has been suffering issues causing the game to be completely unplayable for many people on mobile and the official client and Jagex has yet to figure out what is causing the problem or the million dollar question of how to fix it. The last update to an alert posted on December 7 notes that the issue is still being looked into, but as of midnight on December 9 the problem has yet to be fixed.

The issues are still actively being investigated and resolved. We’ve also edited the article to reflect the issues that some players are experiencing with the desktop client. We’re also aware of issues affecting some Old School RuneScape players when attempting to connect to the official Old School RuneScape game client. These players are experiencing long loading times, with ‘Loading configuration’, ‘Loading application resources’ and ‘Loading application’ all taking a long time. Our SysAdmin and our Game Engine teams are investigating and are working on resolving the issues as a matter of priority.

In addition to the connection problems, players who have been able to log in have reported major server lag with some servers suffering more than others.

Source: RuneScape

Maplestory Introduces Hoyoung Class This Week


Maplestory’s latest content update is live, and it brings with it a brand new class for the side-scrolling MMO. The Hoyoung is an anima thief class that utilizes the ritual fan and fan tassel. Accompanied by Taotie, one of the four perils, Hoyoung goes on a journey to fix his mistake and reseal the monsters he had a part in accidentally unleashing upon the world.

Also included in this week’s update is the city of Cernium. Prince Carlisle and the Maple Alliance invite players to join the fight to save Cernium from imminent danger and bring peace to Maple World.

December 18 marks the launch of new glory events, including:

  • New Glory Guard Missions – Missions will all provide chances to earn Glory, used to purchase exciting items in the Alliance Supply Depot.
  • Glory Guard Rank Event – Joining the Glory Guard to save Maple World from impending danger offers players opportunities to level up through the ranks from Sentinel, Guardian, Master, Commander, and finally, Justicar.
  • Alliance Supply Depot – Players can spend their hard earned Glory Coins in this one-stop shop for members of the Glory Guard.
  • Camila’s Bakery Christmas Event – Through December 31, players can celebrate the holidays with a variety of Christmas-themed events such as mini-games and puzzles. Rewards include holiday themed costumes, damage skins, and other fun goodies!

Source: Press release

Black Desert: Shai & Mystic Class Come To PS4


The latest update for Black Desert on the Playstation 4 is here. Today’s update introduces the Shai and Mystic classes. The Shai is a support class that focuses on avoiding damage and aiding allies. The Mystic on the other hand is a powerful brawler that pummels her opponents into the ground using martial-arts skills.

Also included in today’s update is the introduction of dark rifts. Dark rifts appear randomly throughout the world and can spawn powerful bosses that in turn drop powerful gear upon defeat. Players will need to have completed Journey to Mediah quests in order to see dark rifts on the map.

Shai Skills

  • One-Two-Three – Shai’s basic attack using the Florang, which can be thrown up to three times.
  • Eat This! – Shai recklessly throws her Florang at her enemies. This skill has the longest range of all the Florang skills.
  • Come Out, Come Out – Shai reveals hidden enemies around her by waving around her Vitclari.
  • Over Here! – Shai creates a shielded area that protects her allies.
  • Play Dead – Shai falls to the floor, tricking enemies into believing that she is no longer a threat. Monsters can see through this ruse, but players on the other hand…

Mystic Skills

  • Wolf’s Frenzy – The Mystic hides in the shadows to unleash a barrage of hits against her enemies.
  • Rage Hammer – Unleashes her inner power into a massive attack onto the ground, knocking down foes.
  • Soul Basher – The Mystic performs a flurry of kicks that deals damage to her enemies.

Source: Press Release

Ghost Recon Breakpoint Players Demand AI Partners


Ghost Recon Breakpoint was such a disappointment that its release sales and subsequent response from the community resulted in Ubisoft taking a big financial hit and also fundamentally overhauling the way that they approve and release games. Since the game’s launch and commercial disappointment, Ubisoft has been taking strides in figuring out just what the community wants out of the game. Since they missed the mark so clearly the first time around.

Cue in a big community survey, and the results are in. In terms of content changes, more than half of players requested the AI partners that were present in Ghost Recon Wildlands be added into the game. More than a third of players requested the removal of gear score and tiered loot, as well as enemy AI improvements, and the ability to sell all equipment at once. Finally, nearly one third of players asked for the online-only nature of the game to be removed.

But you already knew that if you read the header image.

If you head over to the Breakpoint Reddit post, Ubisoft has laid out a massive list of changes coming to Breakpoint over the next year as well as when players can expect them to be implemented.

Kickstarter Ketchup: Identity By Asylum Entertainment


Identity is an open world MMORPG by Asylum Entertainment that was successfully Kickstarted back in early 2015 to the tune of $187 thousand Canadian dollars. Following a tumultuous journey, it finally launched into early access on Steam on November 30, 2018. One year later, MMO Fallout is ready to check up on its progress.

Identity describes itself as:

“Identity is a modern-day open-world MMORPG for PC and Mac with complete freedom to do almost anything you can imagine at any time in first or third person views.  Live as an honest civilian, a criminal, police officer, paramedic and many more.  There are no levels or skill grinding, but talent and perk progression so that it’s the actions of you, not your character, which matter most.”

Sure. In reality, Identity has presently released with its first “module” called The Town Square. The town square lets you walk around and enjoy a “bunch of interesting and fun things to do.” What are those fun things to do? Who knows. It might behoove the folks at Asylum Entertainment to actually list some of the activities currently available in-game on the store page whose existence is solely to sell people on your game. It is $30 in early access after all.

How is the public enjoying their open world MMO? They aren’t. All time reviews hold the game at 38% “mostly negative” rating on Steam while the last month rates in at an even more dismal 29% “mostly negative” rating. Traffic ratings are even worse, as the title hasn’t broken double digit peak players since April of this year. The latest content patch news posted is from June 26, however the developer has been quite active on their Twitter account. Assuring people that the game has not been abandoned and referring to Steam’s refund policy.

Identity doesn’t appear to be in a great place right now, but that’s not to say the project is dead or abandoned. According to Asylum Entertainment the next module up for release is the Swat module followed by racing. We’ve seen games start off on rocky grounds and then recover over time, so who is to say that Identity has already doomed itself? Only time and a proper release schedule will tell.

Source: Steam