Archive for the ‘MMO RPG’ Category

Star Wars: The Old Republic uploaded screenshots, animations and some information on the Jedi Knight class today. From the screenshots and animations the Jedi Knight looks like it will be an exciting acrobatic class to play with the ability to use robes as well as heavy armor for protection.

Also seen are some kind of force shield, the ability to throw the light saber at enemies and have it return, and what appears to be a mind wipe skill. Check out the awesomeness on the Holonet.

Star Wars Galaxies patching servers with Hotfix 14.4. Changes posted to the community server include:

Death Troopers

• All camps, except for Epsilon, should have survivors pathing to the camps
• Camp Forward Watch quests no longer end early
• Camp Defense Quests now include communication from the quest NPC if you fail the quest
• Fixes for DT Armor
• Reworked the Delivery Volunteer pathing
• Adjusted respawn time to several spawners at Camp Epsilon
• Cleaned up the camp survivor behavior
• Death Troopers Hidden Content quests should clear when 10 minute timer expires
• Camp Alpha Survivor quest should now clear from player journal when failed

Graphics

• Shadow changes have been reverted for more testing
• Shadow color is now based on the time of day

Misc

• Blackwing Lightsaber Crystal will now have a more orange glow
• Adjusted origin point of ‘Imperial Oasis Incident’ painting to allow more movement flexibility

Just two months after Turbine introduced the new free-to-play option for Dungeons & Dragons Online, they released the first huge update for the game today.

• Five new adventure packs will be available for purchase on Friday, October 30th for character levels 17 – 19.
• Hair Color Reversal Tokens are available to change the color of your hair back to the original color at character creation.
• Create characters with 32 ability points instead of 28 by earning 1750 favor or spending some Turbine Points.
• Demon Sands Adventure Pack now offers epic difficulty in the Menechtarun Desert adventures for 20th level characters. You must complete the dungeon on elite setting in order to unlock epic challenges.
• Veteran Status will provide you with the ability to create veteran characters who can select their abilities for levels two through four when on the Heart of Wind Airship.

World of Warcraft Community Site provides a look at the new Dungeon System that will be replacing the LFG feature in the upcoming content patch. This appears to be a real treat and welcome feature for the game.

Highlights include:

• Cross-Realm Instances and Grouping allows you to group with players from other realms. However, you won’t be able to manually invite specific players.
• Teleporting into instances and back to where you were before you went to the instance, just like the current Battleground system.
• Daily Random Dungeons where you can earn emblems for slaying the final boss in heroic and normal difficulty dungeons.
• A new non-combat pet is available for participating in PUGs.
• Looking for Raid (/lfr) will provide information on those looking for a raid dungeon group.
• “Need for Greed” loot option will be updated to recognize when someone can equip an item. It will also prevent pure melee classes from need rolling on spellpower items and classes will be limited to their dominant armor type.

Check out the full details on the World of Warcraft Community Site.

Six weeks ago I tried out the beta version of the Warhammer Online client for the Mac. You can read about my trials downloading the client and experience with the beta in this posting. In this post I indicated that I would be sticking with the PC version as the performance on my 2.93GHz MacBook Pro was not all that great.

Today I downloaded the released version of the Mac client to try it out and am happy to report that I encountered no download problems and the performance is much better. I would even consider playing the game on the MacBook Pro if I found myself without my regular gaming machine.

If you are playing on the new MacBook Pro with the discreet video card, don’t forget to enable the High Performance graphics option in the Energy Saver preferences. Failure to do this will result in the game being virtually unplayable. You will likely find that doing this causes your MacBook Pro fans to come on and stay on for the duration of your gameplay. The temperature of the aluminum body will heat up to where the keys may become too hot to touch. These problems can be annoying but are no fault of the game, rather due to the enabling of the discreet graphics card.

Setting the in-game video quality to Fastest Frame rate resulted in a very enjoyable playing experience and the scenery looks great.

All in all, I think this is a great start and a welcome addition to the Mac platform. Hopefully, more publishers will publish their games on the Mac. And while a native version would offer even greater performance, the Cider Portability Engine from TransGaming used in the Warhammer Online Mac Client shows that even emulating can offer acceptable performance.

Check it out for yourself and download the new Mac Client.