Wargaming, the developers of the tank MMO World of Tanks, provide a taste of the promised “fun mode” with a gameplay trailer. This is called “Tank Rally” and will be open to WoT players from September 29 to October 12.
On a modified version of the map “Port”, teams compete on an obstacle course to be the first to cross the finish line. The tracked vehicles not only drive alongside each other but also make life difficult for each other with rocket fire and ramming tactics. But not only projectiles make the race an explosive experience. The creators also promise additional interaction possibilities, such as spectacular jumps that are supposed to bring a whole new dynamic to the free-to-play online shooter.
Unlike Formula 1, all participants of the rally are given the same competitive conditions. Without exception, the pilots only have access to the tank model “M24 Chaffee Sport”.
Mein MMO says: Wow, this strongly reminds us gaming nostalgic ones of the famous Mario Kart or even further back to the Amiga classic Super Cars. It’s a shame that the Tank Rally is of limited duration. The video looks like a very fun event that has been carefully crafted.
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The plan for the next week is now set for ArcheAge. On the overcrowded server Kyprosa, no new characters can soon be created, new servers for Europe are on the way, and inquiries have also been made in Korea regarding server transfers.
Surge ten times greater than expected
The queues at the fresh sandpark MMO ArcheAge are still large. ArcheAge used the values from the beta as a reason to conclude the interest of players at launch.
Thus, they provided enough servers and then a few in reserve. However, the surge was ten times greater than expected, as Community Manager Scapes states in the official forum. And the reserve servers had to be brought online soon.
ArcheAge and the sleeping jury
The queues are due not only to the surge but also to tricks that allow players to stay on the servers even when they are not at the computer. This way, they avoid the AFK check, bypass queues that occur when relogging, and also increase their labor point regeneration. This leads to some absurd situations like this sleeping jury, as can be seen in a screenshot posted on reddit:
In the ArcheAge forum and also on reddit, accusations against Trion Worlds are increasing, stating that they left some loopholes open, allowing players to remain logged in indefinitely even if they had not been active for hours.
These loopholes include, for example, sitting AFK in a courtroom or hitting a training dummy for hours.
As a comment on reddit states: “People have known all the dirty tricks since Korea and every single one still works here.” Some therefore demand to increase labor point regeneration even when players are offline to at least curb this incentive.
This is what Trion Worlds plans to do next week
Trion Worlds wants to solve the issues with long queues primarily through three measures:
When the new servers arrive, the creation of new characters will no longer be possible on the largest server Kyprosa, which has a higher capacity than the rest. Trion Worlds reserves the right to prohibit character creation on other European servers as well. In the USA, such a ban already applies to four worlds.
At XLGames, the Korean developer, inquiries have also been made about whether a type of server transfer can be offered. Currently, Trion Worlds cannot do that yet. If this service comes that allows players to move from overcrowded servers to new or low-populated worlds, it will probably happen without land ownership.
In the MMO shooter Destiny, the Guardian’s power increases through equipment starting at level 20. What tricks are there to increase the Light Level with Marks, Coins, and Materials ?
Those who rely on luck in Destiny are left behind
In Destiny, many players become frustrated with the Light Level. Progress can only be made with better gear. Those relying on Engrams and hoping that a legendary Engram yields a legendary item are often disappointed.
The tiny chance for useful random rewards after Strikes or rounds in the Crucible leads to frustration. Even if something great comes out, it may not fit the player’s class or has poor stat distribution. Is it therefore impossible to level up in Light? And does it all depend on luck? No, it doesn’t. That’s what the pros say in the English-speaking forum on reddit.
Marks, Coins, and Materials – the three Ms of Destiny
Instead of hoping that the Cryptarch or the RNG God takes pity on the poor Guardian, they should take matters into their own hands and rely on the three Ms: Marks, Coins, and Materials.
Engrams and RNG, the pro advises, should only be seen as a “nice bonus” and players shouldn’t invest too much hope in them. Players can earn guaranteed legendary items every week if they just know how. That’s the real opportunity to get a higher Light Level. According to a current guide, players should do the following each week:
collect the weekly maximum of Crucible or Vanguard Marks. This is easier than it seems by trading materials for the marks and participating in public events or patrol missions.
increase their reputation with factions. This is also facilitated by trading in materials. Those who reach rank 3 with a faction are guaranteed to receive a legendary weapon from the faction’s arsenal as a bonus.
earn Strange Coins. These become easier to obtain as you grow stronger. Either through the grind with blue Engrams and as mission rewards or when completing the heroic weekly quests at levels 24, 26, and 28 – then you get three coins each time.
With the Marks, players can stock up on guaranteed legendary items from the faction traders and can even get an exotic weapon or armor piece from the vendor Xur every weekend with the coins. Sounds much better than relying on chance.
It’s important for frustration-free achievement of the weekly caps on these Marks to actively pursue those activities that yield these Marks.
Materials as a key resource in Destiny
According to the guide creator, it is not widely known that the yields from planetary resources double after a Guardian achieves a certain amount of kills on a planet. With this bonus, 50 Materials per run can be obtained solely from chests and farming natural resources.
There are further bonuses of this kind that reward diligent work permanently. Those who complete 25 VIP patrol missions receive higher rewards for city tasks. By effectively utilizing these bonuses, players can save themselves a Strike or a round in the Crucible.
The heavy stuff is really worth it
Lucrative opportunities to use time effectively in Destiny also include patrol missions or public events. The materials can be exchanged for Marks at various merchants, and the Marks can ultimately be exchanged for items.
The stronger a Guardian becomes and the more the challenging missions and tasks open up for them, the less they have to rely on luck or grinding. Particularly the missions on the Nightfall difficulty in Destiny, designed for Light Level 28 and above, are repeatedly mentioned in every guide on reddit as an essential component to obtain excellent drops and unlock XP bonuses for the week. Destiny gives players the choice, as is common in MMOs, between doing an overwhelming amount of simple tasks or tackling fewer but harder challenges.
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For missions of this caliber, a full team of well-equipped and coordinated Guardians is recommended.
The point is: There are systems in place that significantly ease and shorten the path to increasing the Light Level.
500-800 Reputation gathering per hour
Also on reddit, there is an unusual method for quickly accumulating reputation. Here, three Guardians team up and divide the Cosmodrome among themselves. Each of the three takes a third of the area and clears it out as quickly as possible, keeping an eye on VIP missions.
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Founders are now receiving 30 free days as Patrons in the Sandpark MMO ArcheAge to compensate for the issues of last week.
After several attempts to restore the founders’ status and privileges, it seems to have finally succeeded on Saturday evening our time. After a night shift by Trion Worlds staff with the Korean developers of XLGames, who develop the original Korean game, they managed to solve the pesky Patron bug. This bug caused founders, who were supposed to receive benefits, to not get them in-game.
First, the 30 free days will be consumed
Those who log in as founders now and find that they only have 30 days of Patron status instead of significantly more, because they purchased a more expensive package, need not be alarmed. This is intentional. As the community manager Scapes informs, founders have received 30 free days as a “bonus” as Patrons.
First, the time from this bonus will be deducted, and only when the 30 days are up will the actual Patron game time begin. These bonus days should also apply to players who are not founders but have already purchased Patron time.
As seen in forum posts, not everyone has received this bonus time yet. However, this should happen gradually. Those who are still missing Patron time, which they are entitled to, should contact customer support.
ArcheAge has solved a problem, now it’s time to tackle the queues
Next, Trion Worlds is targeting the still long queues. While the USA has received two new servers, Luzius and Ezi, and a block is in place on the four largest servers to create new characters, the necessary hardware for additional European servers is on its way to the data center in Amsterdam and must pass through customs first. At least for Sunday, new EU servers are therefore ruled out.
Currently, Trion Worlds is working hard to improve the AFK check system and ensure that the queue advances faster until they can open new servers.
They likely do not want to increase the capacity of existing servers further. This has already been done – the servers have been increased by 20% since launch, with the most popular server even by 30%. Thus, Kyporsa is the largest ArcheAge server at least in the western hemisphere. According to Trion Worlds, further expansion would have negative effects on gameplay. There simply are not enough resources for such a server population, leading to technical issues.
Update Monday 10:30: In a statement, Trion Worlds CEO Scott Hartsman now speaks of compensation for the Patron players, but not of 30 days, but rather that the Patron status will be calculated only from Saturday, September 20. This would be a credit of 8 days and a bonus of 4 days. Because the head start, which was originally not supposed to be counted towards Patron time, has indeed been accruing since September 12.
This is an AI-powered translation. Some inaccuracies might exist.
In the survival MMO H1Z1, players – like soldiers – must watch out for prominent objects, such as water towers, if they want to meet up with friends.
The zombie MMO H1Z1 is supposed to be different. They have proclaimed “realism” as their goal. If there ever is a zombie apocalypse, it will unfold just like in H1Z1, fans and developers agree. Just as high-ranking US military officials once said that if attacked by giant combat robots, the US Army would respond just as in the Transformers movies, which were authentically researched.
Now, in a “realistic” zombie apocalypse, it would probably be hard to log in next to your friend or magically “sense” him on the mini-map. And in H1Z1, it is supposed to be part of the adventure to find each other in this world. Because it is expansive. And since the first areas of the world are modeled after the Pacific Northwest of the USA – which is a pretty sparsely populated region on the border with Canada – everything might look a bit bleak and monotonous. Many forests, farms, small villages – very little flickering neon light or cool water slides.
Therefore, players should prepare to meet up with friends based on distinctive landmarks, and those should also be clearly visible from afar. Phrases like “Meet me at the house with the doghouse” or “I am at the intersection where three zombies are lying in front of a pickup truck” make it difficult. Hence, well-visible water towers should serve as landmarks. They were recently introduced in a blog post, and to the delight of fans, they were all presented in multiple colors.
Well, saying it is the delight of fans might be a bit exaggerated. On Reddit, the announcement was rather met with gallows humor. There – as everywhere else – people are waiting for a date for early access. It seems that nothing will come of it in September either. SOE is not sending any signals in that direction. And at the Nvidia event, a delegation from H1Z1 was present, but unfortunately, nothing was announced.
This is an AI-powered translation. Some inaccuracies might exist.
During the weekend, Destiny provides more precise numbers about the MMO shooter. An average session lasts three hours during the week, and even four on weekends. The deaths that have already occurred in the Crucible are now in the tens of millions.
100 million hours, Bungie proudly announces, have already been spent by players in Destiny. Enough time to watch the extended version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (the really, really long one) exactly 8,797,653 times. That’s quite a lot of Lord of the Rings.
Destiny captivates: Typical session lasts three hours
A typical session of Destiny players lasts about three hours. On weekends, the sessions even exceed four hours.
And 167 million “activities” have already been conducted in the game. A Crucible match, although involving 12 players, counts as just one activity.
One last special note: In Destiny, PvP players do not just die once, but a dozen times. A billion deaths of players have already occurred in Destiny’s Crucible, in PvP mode.
This is an AI-powered translation. Some inaccuracies might exist.
In the SF-MMO WildStar, the guild Enigma has achieved a World First in the 40-man raid Datascape. While other progression guilds, including the German guild Chase, are withdrawing from the game.
For many players, the raids in WildStar are the ultimate goal. Before you can enter, you must complete a long access quest, the gear must be right, you need to master your character from A to Z, and then you need 39 others for whom the same applies.
While for most normal mortals the 20-man raid “The Genarchive” is hard enough, top guilds managed to overcome this months ago and have been hanging out in the “Datascapes”, a 40-man raid, for a few weeks now. Since it was also difficult for the top guilds to increase their raid roster in WildStar from 20 to 40, many struggled to make significant progress (additionally, certain encounters in the raid were apparently buggy).
While Enigma is currently celebrating another World First kill, other guilds, as reported by readycheck.org, are ceasing their raid activities. Both Voodoo, who could still compete with Enigma in the Datascapes, and the German progression guild Chase are turning their backs on WildStar. Chase was unable to expand to 40 players. Voodoo was simply tired of waiting for improvements in the game from Carbine. Although they loved the game, they have now decided to take this step. You can find the full statements from both guilds in the sources.
But now to the positive: If you want to see what raiding at the highest level is like in WildStar – Enigma has released a kill video of “Volatility Lattice”.
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The fantasy MMO The Elder Scrolls Online is currently enjoying a musical tribute from a fan.
The Disney song “Let it Go” from Frozen is once again inspiring the masses. This time, a TESO fan has reworked the song to fit The Elder Scrolls Online and “MMO.” Although this tribute to the joys of playing together in an online game may not quite match the original in terms of singing, the song has received approval from the employees at Zenimax and has brought smiles to some fans’ faces.
“Everyone in the office loves the song,” was the response from the community management at The Elder Scrolls Online.
Since Update 4 has also been rolled out without at least those major issues that have accompanied such updates in the past, perhaps there is now some time to catch our breath and simply enjoy the game we have.
In the video, Tamriel looks damn good. We have to say that.
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The dark fantasy MMO Rift is now introducing the fundamentals of the minion system, which will be introduced to Telara with the new expansion.
Rift, the MMO from Trion Worlds, which isn’t currently driving many crazy, plans to introduce a new feature with the expansion “Nightmare Tides” on October 8: collectible minions. This is a similar model to what players of Star Trek Online already know and what players of World of Warcraft will encounter on November 12.
Minions count across all characters for each character of the same server cluster in Rift. Players can only own one version of a minion at a time.
Minions are sent on missions, from which they can return with Dimension items, notoriety, artifacts, or crafting materials.
Minions have advantages in the form of elemental points that predispose them for specific missions. If a mission favors a minion with fire affinity and you send such a minion into the field, it will have a higher chance to return with more loot. A mission cannot fail; it can only yield more or less loot.
The missions take place in real-time, and minions have a stamina value that regenerates automatically.
Minions can be obtained as rewards for a variety of things. Some will also be available in the shop.
Mein MMO says: Yeah, this is essentially the system one would expect. It is basically a variant of the Duty Officer system in Star Trek Online, although there is nothing really surprising or new about it. It is merely a kind of mini-browser game within the game: It gives players a bit more to do and, above all, a sort of display case, where some won’t rest until every slot has the appropriate minion. Clever, but not exactly groundbreaking. World of Warcraft seems to want to go a bit further here.
The MMO Kingdom under Fire II, a mix of strategy and action, is set to conquer the Playstation 4 as a free-to-play title in the summer of 2015.
Kingdom under Fire II has gone through a turbulent development process. Some have been looking forward to the unique mix of various genres for years, but there have always been difficulties: sometimes the developer ran out of money; sometimes it was said that the technology was not yet ready to implement the ideas of the game. Currently, Kingdom under Fire II is playable on PC in Southeast Asia, and even an English version exists in Malaysia and Singapore.
Kingdom under Fire II aims to be the spearhead of the Free2Play MMO movement
The game is expected to begin its great success in the West in summer 2015, according to the developer Blueside. They plan to release the game for the Playstation 4 in English, Chinese, and Korean versions. The CEO of Blueside, Sejung Kim, speaks of rapid growth in the MMO segment for the Playstation 4. They would like to participate in this with Kingdom under Fire II and march ahead as a free-to-play online title.
According to mmoculture, an XBox One version of the title is still awaited. It is suspected that Microsoft may be opposed to F2P titles on their platform. Accompanying this news, there are two trailers for the game.
In the beta of the space MMO Elite: Dangerous, players can now expect a first major update. We present the changes in a short video.
The Elite beta test is running, just like in the premium beta, in different phases. So far, there has been little happening. Since the start of beta 1 on July 29, there have only been a few minor changes and bug fixes. Now, however, Frontier Development is gearing up considerably.
On September 30, the first phase ends and the beta of Elite: Dangerous moves into the second phase, Beta 2. Here, a proper update is served up with some changes and innovations for the hungry fans of the space MMO.
The main focus of the changes is clearly on the endless expanses of space: these are becoming significantly larger, more populated, and include some new challenges.
If you have played SMITE in the last few weeks, you have probably noticed the relatively new button on the main screen, the small ship icon that takes you to the “Odyssey”. But what exactly is it all about?
At first glance, it is clear that it is likely not referring to the voyages of Odysseus, although the entire concept is of course inspired by that. This refers to the “journey” to the SMITE World Championship in January 2015. Each week, the journey progresses further and a new item is unlocked, which can then be purchased in the game for jewels. This may seem like a very prolonged marketing campaign, since content that you also have to pay for is released over twenty weeks, but it serves another purpose: Every item from the Odyssey increases the prize pool for the World Championship, and after just a few weeks, the prize money already amounts to a whopping $800,000!
And to encourage purchases, each item also comes with a treasure chest for free – it can contain just about anything, some examples include a voice pack, a special skin for a deity, a special guardian skin, or an account booster that increases your favor gain for a few days.
The biggest highlights of the Odyssey are undoubtedly the “Run.exe” skin for Mercury and the “Pixel-Buster” skin for Freya – each costs 600 jewels, which is around 8 euros. Whether the gimmicks are important enough for someone to pay such an amount is something everyone must decide for themselves – however, those who own a majority of all Odyssey items receive (in addition to the chests) more nice perks, such as exclusive frames on the loading screen.
SMITE is a free-to-play MOBA with a mythological background, which comes very close to the MMO gameplay feeling due to its third-person perspective and the telegraph system. Interested? Then it’s best to read our review of SMITE.
This is an AI-powered translation. Some inaccuracies might exist.
In the newly released World of Warcraft short film “The Lords of War – Part 4” Blizzard reveals the backstory of the orc leader Kilrogg, who had to retreat deep into the jungle with his tribal companion at the behest of his father due to the arrival of the Arakkoa. For Orcs, such a fearful, cowardly way of life is of course deeply dishonorable. How exactly Kilrogg changes the fate of his followers and why they are called “Clan of the Bleeding Eye” you can best find out by watching the short film yourself.
Kilrogg will likely be one of the boss enemies in Warlords of Draenor, but the name is already not entirely unknown in the game, as the warlock spell “Eye of Kilrogg” is named after this very orc.
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In the sandbox MMO ArcheAge, many paying players have not received the privileges they are entitled to. A hotfix aims to remedy this.
Update 11:10: The servers were offline for only a few minutes, contrary to the announcement, and are now back online. Many players continue to complain about not enjoying Patron status. This seems to be another failed attempt by Trion Worlds to comprehensively solve the issue.
Update 20:15: As the Community Manager Scapes reports, they plan to make another attempt in the coming hours to resolve the Patron issue. This is the most critical change currently underway, which is why they held discussions overnight (US time) with the Korean developers of XLGames to find a solution to the Patron problem in ArcheAge.
Original message: From 10:20 on Saturday morning until around noon, the European servers are expected to remain closed. During this time, a “possible” hotfix for the Patron issue is to be implemented.
The careful wording shows how cautious Trion Worlds has become with its phrasing. In recent days, they had announced that they had the problem under control but had to backtrack. The fix was expected to be applied during the bi-weekly European server maintenance this morning, but that did not seem to happen: the servers came back online after only one hour instead of the expected two hours, but without the anticipated hotfix.
The thread where players who hopefully had few exceptions with the missing Patron status were asked to report swelled as if a peanut allergy sufferer had accidentally picked the wrong spread.
Without Patron status, the only option in ArcheAge is to reach for the bottle
In ArcheAge, the Patron status grants doubled labor point regeneration while in-game, and at least a single regeneration while logged out. Without this status, players regenerate the essential points for progression only when they are online and since players continue to have significant issues bypassing the queues to actually log onto the servers, the problem is further exacerbated.
Paying players who were sure they could use their time in-game to pursue crafting tasks now find themselves without the necessary resources. If they want to craft, they must resort to labor potions, which either cost gold in the auction house or the premium currency “Credits” in the in-game shop.
The issues have been intensified by the fact that the first rents for houses are now due. To pay them, Patron status is required; otherwise, the painstakingly gathered farm could soon be found back in the mailbox. However, players can be reassured: they have seven days to pay the rent. By then, Trion Worlds intends to have resolved the issue.
Founders: Old problems resolved, new ones appeared
However, a fix has been found for founders who never received the title, cloak, or other benefits of their purchase. Now any founder can claim a founder pack for a single character via their account page at Trion Worlds. This allows founders who were not affected by the bug to equip another character with the cloak and other bonuses.
However, there is currently excitement on Reddit about the “10% discount” on all items in the cash shop, which was promised to founders, now disappearing from the game. Over the weekend, Trion Worlds stated it would be difficult to respond to this. However, they are confident that a solution will be announced next week that will satisfy the players. This is apparently another item on Trion Worlds’ growing to-do list, from which they hope to solve the Patron problem by this afternoon.
World of Warcraft new expansion Warlords of Draenor will bring some new things into the game that are too strong, even a bit crazy. And that is exactly the plan.
In an interview with Polygon, Cory Stockton, who is responsible for the design of the Garrison, explains Blizzard’s plans and a fresh design approach: it’s okay to risk the balance. After ten years, you can do crazy things. He absolutely expects that there will be comments about some of the new abilities and features in the Garrison like, “Blizzard is crazy! This needs to be nerfed immediately!” The forums might explode, there would be topics of discussion, that is exactly what is intended.
After 10 years, it’s okay to do something crazy
In the conversation with Polygon, much revolved around a workshop in the Garrison that introduces items that clearly “break the rules”: grenades, jet packs, and gloves that can shove enemies away.
All these things have been designed with the intention of breaking the rules that have been in place for so long. A few years ago, no one would have thought that such things would be introduced in World of Warcraft. Today, these are conscious decisions to keep the game fresh.
World of Warcraft, now master of hotfixes, takes more risks
But of course, Blizzard is already standing by with the fire extinguisher, should one of these fires really get out of control. Over the years, they have become the masters of hotfixes. And if one of the fresh Garrison items is exploited, they can fix and nerf it quickly.
When asked why Blizzard brings these items into World of Warcraft if they are going to nerf them anyway, Stockton replied, “That’s just how it works. If you introduce weak items and tell players that you will buff them later, they have already lost interest in them.” If players once believe something is bad, it stays bad. That’s why it’s better to start strong and then correct as needed.
Today, unlike the early days of World of Warcraft, it is also possible to tailor items specifically for PvE or PvP, so that an item only deals damage to enemy players or to mobs. Such possibilities were not available at the beginning. This also explains Blizzard’s new courage.
Garrison will be further refined over Warlords of Draenor, then likely abandoned
The Garrison in Warlords of Draenor will be developed throughout the entire expansion and new content will be created for it. Perhaps new buildings will be introduced, or maybe the upgrade level will go up to four.
After the expansion, the concept may be transferred to other zones. However, the currently built Garrisons will likely remain on Draenor. The follower system that is introduced with the Garrison is probably also going to be used for further expansions of World of Warcraft. Here, great potential for the future is seen.
The rush at Sandpark ArcheAge continues and leads to queues and frustration. Now more servers have been announced.
Update 19:30: A new statement is here. While the NA servers are currently being set up, the EU servers still need to go through customs. The servers were purchased in North America and now need to be brought to the data center in Amsterdam and presumably cleared through customs beforehand. Trion Worlds explains that it would have taken longer to purchase the servers directly in Europe because they would have first needed to find a business partner. Despite the difficulties, efforts are being made to ensure that Europe receives the servers as quickly as possible.
Furthermore, founders will receive an additional five days of Patron status, as the head start has already been deducted from the time, although this was not originally intended.
Original Announcement:
In the USA, the workday at Trion Worlds has just begun and they are already announcing new servers. After CEO Scott Hartsman mentioned last night US time that new hardware had arrived in Texas, community member Scapes announced at 5:20 PM our time today in a thread where people were complaining about the current situation: “Good news! New servers are on the way for Europe and North America.”
A precise schedule for when the servers will arrive has not yet been established. It could happen within the next few hours, possibly during our peak playtime – as mentioned, it is currently just morning in the USA.
Four European servers launched for the head start, three more opened shortly before or at release, bringing the total to seven servers for players. The new servers would be the first since the release on Tuesday.
Free Character Transfer Being Considered
Further discussions are currently taking place in the forum about what measures Trion Worlds could still use to alleviate the rush on the four original servers and better distribute the load. For one, there is the idea of offering a free character transfer from an overloaded server to a fresh one. It is also not ruled out that, as soon as the situation eases on some servers, character creation on the busiest servers may be temporarily suspended.
Moreover, the account system is still not functioning properly, resulting in players who should have Patron status not receiving it. This issue was supposed to be resolved with a fix in Europe already yesterday. However, it appears that this did not work.
The problematic server Eanna, which has been experiencing issues for several days, was down again today, which surely worsens the overall situation. Currently, ArcheAge is already causing problems: AFK players are blocking valuable server capacity.
In other MMOs, one would slowly expect the initial rush to subside after players have reached the maximum level and perhaps play less. However, ArcheAge is a special case that rewards players who are online. Additionally, the weekend is approaching, which is expected to see increased traffic.
In the UK, Destiny has proven to be a system seller for the Playstation 4 and the Xbox One. However, the Playstation 4 benefited a little more from it than the competition from Microsoft. Responsible for the sales boost are budget-friendly bundles, where hardware is sold together with Destiny.
Destiny, Bungie’s luxury MMO, was intended to boost the sales of the next-gen consoles Playstation 4 and Xbox One as an attractive MMO shooter. Both Microsoft and Sony positioned Destiny as a flagship for their consoles. They offered their hardware at competitive prices and included Destiny for free as well. Now the first results of this duel are in – at least in the UK. For both companies, Destiny was worthwhile, but for Playstation somewhat more.
Both Playstation 4 and Xbox One with record weeks thanks to bundles
In the UK, sales of Playstation 4 consoles increased by 300%. Some are referring to it as a “second Christmas” for the Playstation 4. Consoles typically sell best at Christmas. Although no specific figures have been announced and only comparisons are being made, it seems that the Playstation 4 is benefiting significantly more from Destiny than the Xbox One.
Microsoft also reported an excellent week thanks to Destiny and its own bundles. This may have been due to the reduced price with which they wanted to undercut Sony. However, they had to concede defeat to Sony in the United Kingdom. For every newly sold Xbox One, there were two sold Playstation 4s, reports mgv.com, citing industry sources.
Only one in two hundred makes it into the coveted legend ranks in Hearthstone, according to a statistic.
“You are better than you think,” Blizzard encourages us in a new blog post. And the statistic proves: Even if you are somewhere in the perceived nirvana of rank 12, 13, or 14 (kind of an ELO hell), you have already surpassed 75% of the remaining players.
From season to season, many only played up to rank 20, to grab the card back, and then gave up the ascent to a higher rank, the so-called ladder climb. Because it is tedious: For each win, you get stars; with each defeat, you lose some. Although winning streaks offer bonus stars and the ranks in Hearthstone rise steeply. However, some lucky streaks come to a sudden halt when the right card doesn’t show up or your deck proves to be vulnerable against exactly the card combination that everyone else seems to play. And then you tumble back down, your portrait image becomes more and more humble, and so does your mood.
75% of all players in Hearthstone are between rank 25 and 15. 17.5% of all players are between ranks 14 and 10. At the top, it gets tight: only 5.5% manage to reach rank 9 to 5, one in twenty players. Ranks 4 to 1 are achieved by only 1.5% of the players. And where the music plays and the biggest streamers move, only 0.5% of all players reach the legend rank.
From Rank 5, the real struggle begins in Hearthstone
According to Blizzard, the level significantly increases from rank 5, winning streaks become rare, and more time goes into theorycrafting to forge the perfect deck.
In that, Hearthstone encourages players who are making their way up, in the blog post to courage and pride. Regardless of whether one is playing as an angry chicken or a powerful sea giant, it is important to have fun with the game.
Blizzard’s free card game Hearthstone enjoys unbroken popularity. Recently, Blizzard announced that 20 million players have grabbed the cards with World of Warcraft motifs at least once. Hearthstone is booming and even at rank 15, you are not entirely at the end of the food chain. Good news indeed!
This is an AI-powered translation. Some inaccuracies might exist.
At the Nivida event Game24, a representative from NCSoft announced that the MMO Blade & Soul is set to come to the West soon.
Currently, a 24-hour Nvidia event, Game24, is taking place. “Game Reveals” have also been announced. We at mein-mmo.de expected that there would be some news regarding SOEs survival MMO H1Z1, but many have been waiting much longer for Blade & Soul.
Shortly after the introduction of a Dota player and after the two moderators had a laugh about a dozing Skype user, they suddenly announced that NCSoft wanted to make an important announcement.
During a longer prepared segment, one of the Executive Producers from NCSoft, who has worked on many titles from the Korean publisher, presented his works: including Lineage 2 and Blade & Soul. He referred to Blade & Soul as an MMO that focuses primarily on character development. Amid this general showcase, he also mentioned that they want to offer Blade & Soul in English before the end of the year.
Since the stream was live and the presentation was only subtitled in English, and this important statement for fans was found amidst theoretical considerations about the role of an MMO in a standardized society in general and the benefits of Nvidia graphics cards in particular, the nuances of the statement are currently unclear. It will soon be clarified whether this refers to a beta (which is to be expected), what extent the port will take, what the exact timeline looks like, and what the details will be.
At Gamescom in Cologne, a representative from a large Blade&Soul fan site had the opportunity to speak with the Product Manager for the game in the West and already received some information there. Among other things, a confirmation of the port and that a release for the end of 2015 is planned. Officially, however, this was not the case, as they wanted to wait until September.
Apparently, NCSoft has decided to announce this in the context of a live event, which is airing in the USA at a rather late hour.
It is certain that there will be more detailed reports in the next few hours, and hopefully clarity will arise about what exactly was announced.
Update 25.9 1:20: Okay, we have finally found a video of the event. The crucial passage begins around 5:15. And yes: Jan Hyun Bae, the CPO of NCSoft, indeed states that Blade and Soul is set to come to English-speaking countries before next year.
Update 25.9 15:45: NCSoft just contacted us by phone and pointed out that there is likely a translation error in the video. Blade and Soul is no longer set to release in 2014 for Europe and North America. However, it is definitely coming in 2015.
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Since 2012, I have occasionally played Guild Wars 2. Thanks to the absence of an item spiral, this is going quite well. However, lately, there have been growing calls for even more content. We take the feature release in September as an opportunity to ask ourselves: Is Guild Wars 2 still worth it?
2 Years of Guild Wars 2 – What’s Happening?
Admittedly, this question carries a certain accusation. But it must be directed at the game and ArenaNet as well. In China, the game had a strong launch this year, despite inaccurate player numbers. In Europe and North America, however, players have already experienced 2 years of living story and world vs. world battles. At least the living story regularly provides refreshing content. When the malevolent Sylvari Scarlet Briar attacked Lion’s Arch in the spring and laid waste to the capital, I had just jumped back into the adventure that is Guild Wars 2. By the way, Scarlet was also killed, but she didn’t hesitate to awaken an ancient dragon. So, future adventures following the living story, which change entire regions in Guild Wars 2, are ensured.
The Thing with PvP
Contrary to the positive trend of Guild Wars 2, there are also many threads in the official forum predicting doom for this MMO. I have particularly noticed criticism of the PvP system. The structured PvP is said to be too monotonous, there are too few skills, and new maps would also be desirable. On the other hand, there is the grand adventure called World vs. World. Three servers battling for a week, and with a victory, they climb the rankings. I spent a large part of my Guild Wars 2 time in WvW and often found myself among the winners as a riverbank player. Once you have captured every fort and fought through countless battles, often being yelled at in the server’s TeamSpeak, WvW also becomes monotonous. Nevertheless, it offers a unique PvP experience in the MMO world that I haven’t encountered before.
…and what else is new in Guild Wars 2?
With regular feature releases, efforts are made to bring some momentum to the operations of Guild Wars 2. The first one was in April and the second followed in September. Especially the changes to the Trading Post were absolutely necessary to stay up-to-date in the MMO market. The world of Guild Wars 2 is made more beginner-friendly through the feature release. Similar to Wildstar, players now receive a reward for each level they ascend. Great for the new players in China, but less interesting for Europeans.
Several improvements have also been made in WvW and with the WvW Autumn tournament a new event has been announced. “Bye, Bye WvW Rally” – it will once again be about fame and honor between Spaniards, French, English, and Germans! GW2 knows how to handle cross-border feuds skillfully.
Buy-to-play and Improved Trading Post
I consider the Buy-to-play model in Guild Wars 2 to be very successful. This payment model is rare, but it works wonderfully for the ArenaNet title. Once purchased, you are not dependent on a subscription and can log in when you feel like it.
To keep customers satisfied and especially engaged with the in-game shop, regular updates are essential and can rarely be postponed for weeks as seen with Wildstar. The more players are logged in, the more costumes and other useful items are sold through the Trading Post. This was fundamentally improved during the feature release which was very comprehensive. You buy once, you play forever. This model is the most customer-friendly form of distribution as a quick look at new content is always possible.
Guild Wars 2 Is Worth It… But Differently
Two years have passed for the game now, and right at the start, players (myself included) wondered how an MMO could survive without a clear item spiral. Guild Wars 2 has managed exactly that and provides the community with regular updates, whether with content for the PvE area or feature releases for all other areas. However, the content runs out quickly, so one can only say to a limited extent that the game is still worth it or even generally worthwhile: Hardcore gamers will quickly find themselves running out of steam, especially when they have leveled all classes to 80. It is particularly here that the calls for an expansion are becoming louder.
Casuals and occasional players will continue to have their fun, as there will always be something new to discover in Guild Wars 2. The advancement of the living story alone invites players to check back every two weeks. Additionally, the buy-to-play model does not bother with annoying subscription costs. So yes, Guild Wars 2 is worth it and as the Raptr numbers or trending data from Google confirm, the game still belongs to the most popular MMOs on the market.
