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

Kritika: Reboot Announces Server Bans, Trade Restrictions, New Class


Kritika: Reboot has been quite busy these last few days. To start off the news, publisher ALLM Co. has announced several waves of bans due to illegal trading of in-game currency. The ban list of names can be found on the Steam news page. Secondly, in order to combat fraudulent trading of items, the company has sent out warnings by in-game mail to those who purchased in-game goods illegally. In addition to the warnings, Kritika has implemented trade restrictions on all characters under level 20.

And now some good news. Kritika players will be happy to know that it is now possible to reserve a character slot for the upcoming release of Kritika’s next character class. The HongRyoung is an archer class that uses bows and arrows and according to Kritika’s charts ranks at very high combat power with mid-tier difficulty and survivability ratings. Players can create a character and reserve a level that will present them with a celebration box for achieving. The class is not yet available to play.

Gamigo Disables Ayanad Library On ArcheAge Unchained


Gamigo today announced that the Ayanad Library has been disabled on ArcheAge Unchained pending removal.

Howdy everyone,

The Ayanad Library has been disabled. It was planned to be retired in an upcoming update, but because of the performance issues it is causing, we have disabled it on ArcheAge: Unchained. Players that were in progress on Ayanad Library related quests, like the Ayanad Earring, will have those quests refreshed in an upcoming update. Affected players will be able to continue making progress after the update is released, which is anticipated for some time this December.

Thanks for your understanding and feedback!

~The ArcheAge Team

The Ayanad Library is an instance in ArcheAge that many players use to level up their characters. It also appears to be the source for major server lag due to the number of players opening instances.

Source: ArcheAge

Jagex Grinds Out 120 Farming/Herblore This Week


Jagex this week gave its players a new reason to grind out those levels and farm those farms with the expansion of two skills and introduction of new content to RuneScape.

Foremost on the list of additions this week is the expansion of the Farming and Herblore skills, increasing the skill caps to 120 and enabling an array of new content to make that level grind a little bit more worth the time. On the farming side, players now have access to the Ranch Out Of Time (Blue Cheese Out Of Time for players in Buffalo) where players can farm and breed dinosaurs in a new set of farming paddocks located on Anachronia. In addition to dinosaurs, players will also be able to grow a set of new plants and access new farming plots.

On the herblore side, leveling past 99 will give access to potion bombs.

“As players work towards 120 Farming, they’ll unlock new content at every single level: new mushrooms, new cactus patches, and the elusive Money Tree await. They’ll be able to use all these new ingredients to make potent potions that provide short-but-powerful benefits on a whole range of attributes, and the new herblore skills will allow players to concoct something even more explosive: bombs!  Sticky bombs, poison bombs, vulnerability bombs and more – the higher your Herblore level, the more efficient you will become at crafting bombs. Have fun on our rather ferocious farm!”

This week also marks the launch of the Yak Track, RuneScape’s answer to the titular battle pass. \

Source: RuneScape

Bloodbath Steam: Valve Burns Down The House In Mass Game Ban


(Update: It looks like a total of 833 games have been banned by Valve today)

Bloodbath Kavkaz? Nah, Bloodbath Steam.

Valve is currently in the midst of what appears to be a massive ban wave of shady Steam developers, with hundreds of games caught in the crossfire and no sign of slowing down. The ban wave began just over an hour ago as of this publishing and has been knocking out games left and right.

Chief among the ban list is Dagestan Technology, a Russian publisher of titles such as Bloodbath Kazkov.

We will update if more information become available.

Source: Sentinels of the Store

Star Trek Online’s New Mudd Market Is Probably Fraudulent


Just when you thought Bethesda was going to take home the trophy for 2019’s “stupid and greedy” decision, Cryptic Studios rolls in and says “we can do it better, and possibly commit fraud in the process!”

This weekend saw the launch of the Mudd Market in Star Trek Online, a feature that by all means should be seen as a good thing. Its purpose after all is to sell items that have been previously unobtainable for a very long time. Ships, crewmates, and other items all being sold to people who have really wanted them but couldn’t get them. Simple, right? Well not so much.

Cryptic decided the best course of action was to launch the shop with ridiculously egregious pricing, offering items like a combat pet for the regular cost of eight thousand Zen (that’s $80 USD) and around $140 for a ship. The items are on sale, of course, at 75% off, but even the sale prices have gone over like a lead balloon to the community, many of whom are aware that many of these items were previously given away for free.

To complicate matters, official communications from Cryptic staff indicate that these prices were meant to be a joke, as in “ha ha look how crazy that Mudd is selling his rare goods.” Unfortunately for Cryptic, while the idea of the crazy used goods salesman might make for a decent lore point, the law has something to say about deceptive advertising.

You see, in the United States and several other countries there are laws on the books that consider it fraudulent advertising when you put an item on discount but never actually sold it at the regular price or had any intention of selling it at the regular price. These cases regularly end in multi-million dollar settlements. Cryptic has attempted to walk back these claims of ‘joke’ prices by claiming that the items will indeed go to their regular listed price after the sale ends.

Disgruntled customers are encouraged to air their grievances to CBS (who own Star Trek) directly via their compliance line by phone or by email. Complaints regarding deceptive advertising can be made to the Federal Trade Commission, your Attorneys General, or for those living outside the United States your equivalent consumer protection bureau.

Source: MassivelyOP via Reddit

Video: Check Out 25 Minutes Of Wild Terra 2 Gameplay


It’s been nearly a week since the folks at Juvty Worlds announced Wild Terra II, the technologically superior sequel to the title of a similar name. Today Juvty Worlds released a video showcasing the first 25 minutes of pre-alpha gameplay which you can view embedded above.

The video notes that;

“The game does not yet have most of the sound FX, many animations need to be improved or created, and animals leave a trail on the screen when moving. But we really want to share this video so that you can see what has already been done and how the gameplay feels. We took it off as it is.”

For those interested in checking out Wild Terra II, it is possible to buy into a founders pack. Juvty Worlds is funding Wild Terra without investors or publishers. The first rendition of the game is available on Steam in a free to play format.