Yearly Archives: 2013

OnRPG Shotgun News 2/14: Gas Powered Games, Unreal 4, Camelot Unchained, and Much More!

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OnRPG Shotgun News 2/14: Gas Powered Games, Unreal 4, Camelot Unchained, and Much More!

By Shannon Doyle (Leliah), OnRPG Elder Scribe

 

 

Wargaming Acquires Gas Powered Games

Just days after announcing they would be ending their Kickstarter campaign for action rpg Wildman it has been announced that developers Gas Powered Games has been acquired by Wargaming. This is just the latest in what seems to be a huge expansion by Wargaming into several genres across a variety of platforms. With over 15 titles Wargaming employs more than 1,400 across the world. World of Mechs anyone?

 

 

League of Legends 3.02 Patch Preview Goes Live

A new five minute long video has been released going through some of the big changes coming to League of Legends in 3.02. Changes will come to Akali, Nasus, Riven, various items, and Ohmwrecker. Some are just bug fixes while others are complete changes to abilities. Watch the video and find out all the details there.

 

 

 

Untitled 11 Bit Studios Multiplayer Preorders Begin

Are you a fan of the Anomaly series? Have you heard about 11 Bit’s secret game? Well if you haven’t take a look at the video below. A twenty six second teaser for the game that has so far been kept completely secret. And now you can get your hands on the game…almost. You can now preorder the game for half price if you order it before they announce the game on February 28th.

 

 

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NCSoft Projects to use Unreal Engine 4

News has come from Korea that NCSoft will be creating two new series of games using the Unreal Engine 4. Speculation over which they may be started as soon as it was announced with the popular choices being Lineage 3 and Aion 2. It is expected that these projects could take up to 3 years to complete with a budget of $92.3 million each!

 

 

Star Trek Online’s New Special Project

A new special project has been announced in the latest STO dev blog. The next special project is called “Majestic Construction” and begins today! After the project is complete your starbase will look a whole lot different inside. But, be sure to get started before the project ends on February 28th.

 

 

Australian Games Retail Down, But Mobile Games Up

A new report from the Interactive Games & Entertainment Association (iGEA) shows retail sales of games down 23% in 2012. This includes software, accessories, and hardware sold through traditional retail, so not online. But mobile games, virtual items, and game subscriptions are up 18%. These trends are quite similar to those seen around the world.

 

 

Trading Card MMO HeroDex Heads to Closed Beta

Zero Separation has announced it’s Trading Card MMO HeroDex is now in closed beta. Registration for keys is as easy as filling out a form on the official website and hoping you get chosen. Keys are released every day so there is a very good chance for you to get in. Right now HeroDex is only available on Linux and Windows but a Mac version is in the works.

 

 

 

Camelot Unchained Dev Diary: Choice Matters

The fourth part of the dev diary series that is focusing on foundational principals in City State Entertainment is all about choice. What kind of choices? Well those in Camelot Unchained that will help you have a unique experience, the experience you want. They outline seven examples which range from stat allocation at character customization to strength requirements to use certain weapons. You can read about these and all the others in the Camelot Unchained dev diary.

 

 

Renaissance Heroes Release Date Announced

Eagerly awaiting the day you can get your hands on Renaissance Heroes? Well on February 19th you’ll get that chance. It is the first 16th century focused FPS which has gone through very successful closed and open betas. Players can download the game now on GameFuse and are encouraged to join the Facebook community for the latest updates, event announcements, and more.

 

 

 

State of Decay Character Customization Revealed

Looking to survive in the zombie apocalypse? Well State of Decay is the place for you. The latest dev diary highlights the ways you can customize your character to make them like you….or not like you at all. The diary goes through skills like Wits or Leadership, traits that lead to personal skills like Construction or ….Sexting? They even go through a few examples of characters which could be created in the game. When it all comes down to it though, it’s a matter of choice.

 

 

Old School RuneScape? Hello 2007!

Fans of RuneScape have been feeling a bit of nostalgia recently which gave the Jagex folks the idea of running an old school server. After a period of voting it was decided that 2007 was a very fine year. But, they’re asking for input yet again. Before they fully dedicate themselves to the project they’re trying to gauge exactly how much interest there is. Voting starts on the website tomorrow and will run for two weeks. And how many votes are received will decide if players will have to pay extra for access or if new content will be added. So don’t forget to vote!

Marvel Heroes – Gazillion Reveals Beta UI, Crafting, and Content Updates

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Marvel Heroes – Gazillion Reveals Beta UI, Crafting, and Content Updates

By Darren Henderson (DizzyPW), OnRPG Editor-in-Chief

 

 

Marvel Heroes is a title that seems to be on the edge of every gamers mind the last few weeks. Heck I can’t even get an answer from my company’s accountant without him asking me if I have any news on Marvel Heroes these days. Well thankfully my writers will likely be getting paid on time this month because I had the pleasure of sitting in on a limited invite event with some members of Gazillion’s marketing team yesterday afternoon to see what major changes the team has been working on. And much of what they are offering up seems to be steps in the right direction to increase the game’s longevity and reduce a few of the headaches our writing team had in the press beta last month.

 

 

UI Overhaul

This is the biggest deal in my mind. Everything from color coding the rarity of items to a nicely built third person perspective mini-map are being pushed into the beta phase. The game looks a lot sleeker overall and a cool Skyrim style event tracker (i.e. quests, public events, and more. Also color coded because who doesn’t love colors?) makes navigating the world to your objective a much simpler endeavor. If you mouse over the highlighted area on your mini-map you will also see a text display of what’s going on there, preventing you from having to navigate menus and slow the game’s pacing. Also once you get in close proximity to any specific event, an on-screen tracking arrow will pop-up to give you compass directions on where to go from there. And if it clutters your mini-map you can toggle it off in the heat of battle to adjust things to your liking. This along with a social menu is finally putting Marvel Heroes on par with the features a game like this needs to have prior to launch. The only real complaint I and other members of the press have currently is the lack of user customization of their UI menu placement but this is in the works as well, all but on more of a coming soonTM schedule.

 

 

Attributes and Talents

Next we were introduced to the attribute system, something now officially sponsored by Marvel! Each hero’s starting stats are based on the hero’s actual performance in lore. This adds a much needed layer of customization as you choose to push your character’s specialization or balance their weaknesses in the areas of durability, strength, fighting skill, speed, energy, and intelligence. A simple step to be sure but one I imagine is widely important to real Marvel enthusiasts out there. What’s more, they are taking a less is more approach to the RPG element of this game by making the attribute points incredibly difficult to raise, but offering vast rewards for each point you gain in each stat. For instance that extra point in strength might be the difference between being able to throw a mailbox or car at your foes. That extra point in intelligence might be needed to adorn an amulet that unlocks new psionic powers. These are some general examples but they should be enough to give you an idea. I’m excited to learn more when this is more fleshed out and see if they add any hero specific stat bonuses to the system. The talent trees as well are also being tweaked and rebalanced constantly so if you’re in beta keep an eye out as your hero’s build might change without warning.

 

 

Crafting

For those unaware, Gazillion has some big shots on the team from the original Diablo 2 dev group, and they are more than happy to implement their influence on Marvel Heroes. As they explained, more advanced recipes are being added and crafting is receiving some big changes. For one crafting actually requires real time to complete now. And by real time I’m talking around 24 hours for the truly potent stuff. Thankfully you won’t have to stand over an alchemist table for hours on end but you will have to initiate the item construction and then return a while later to pick up the result. Elements of randomness are also in place to make sure this game’s system doesn’t become World of Clone Crafts. But during questioning we did squeeze from the devs that they are looking at ways to curve the RNG in your favor once you acquire more advanced recipes, such as making the bonuses lean towards defensive power or other areas of specialization.

 

 

The part that made me take note was the method of acquiring said higher level recipes though. Rather than having to bash baddies till they hand over their cook book in tears, you instead have the option to donate  your hard earned loot to NPCs rather than sell it. As you donate your goods the venders will eventually rank up and begin offering better items. In the current phase of development the venders have three ranks but as more recipes and items are finished they are looking to up this number to many more ranks.

 

 

New Content

There isn’t a whole lot to tease here but they revealed two bits of information that dedicated fans will want to know. Once is they are adding new heroes to the game that should be a big deal. We’re talking Cyclops, Colossus, Spiderman, and Thor. And while they were tight lipped when I grilled the devs on what each hero brings to the table, I did get them to mention that Spiderman will play like an agile dps character, jumping in and out of combat and using a large ground-covering web to slow enemies to keep them one step behind. Cyclops will fight with optic blasts of course but he has a wide range of different types to suit just about any situation and enemy formation. And Thor can throw his hammer as well as fly. I was not expecting the flying part but sounds like a blast to me! Now as long as Colossus turns out a bit like he did in the X-Men arcade game I’ll be able to sleep easy at night.

 

 

Also if you ever wanted to have a superhero death match with dinosaurs (who am I to judge?) then they even have something for you. The iconic Antarctic based Savage Land is coming to get your heroes out of the urban streets and into some humid jungle action against some of the most vicious dinosaurs ever thrown into an online title. Now let’s all cross our fingers and hope we get some sexy Savage Land themed hero skins to go with it.

 

That’s what I’m talking about. Hot loincloth girl on dino action!

 

Oh and if all this feature teasing and lack of pics is driving you nuts. Good news came at the end of the meeting when the Leo the VP of Marketing stepped out of the shadows and said weekend stress tests are in our near future. Here’s to testing out these improvements for ourselves!

SMITE Reveals New God – Neith – Along with Major Patch

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SMITE Reveals New God – Neith – Along with Major Patch

 

Today Hi-Rez revealed SMITE‘s latest God, Neith, along with her kit and a large number of tweaks and improvements to come with her in a huge patch. Check out her kit below and don’t miss the total patch details at their official site.

 

 

PASSIVE – Broken Weave

A Broken Weave appears at the last location that each enemy god dies. The Broken Weaves give Neith minimap visibility and her abilities have secondary effects when used on the Broken Weaves. These weaves last for 2 minutes.

Spirit Arrow

Neith fires a shot through the world weave that passes through everything, dealing 80/140/200/260/320 (+80% of your physical power) physical damage and rooting the first target for 1.2/1.4/1.6/1.8/2 seconds. Successive enemies hit take 75% of the damage and root duration. If it hits a Broken Weave, the Weave detonates, dealing an additional 100% of the damage and applying the root to all enemies in the area. Cost – 60/65/70/75/80 mana. Cooldown – 15s.

Unravel

Neith neatly unravels the world weaves, damaging all enemies in the target area for 70/100/130/160/190 (+80% of your physical power), reducing their attack speed by 30% for 2s, and healing Neith 20/40/60/80/100 for each enemy hit, up to 3. Any Broken Weaves in the area are removed, healing Neith an additional 60/80/100/120/140. Cost – 70 mana. Cooldown – 15s.

Back Flip

Neith back flips through the air, creating a Broken Weave as she leaps while damaging enemies in a narrow cone in front of her for 60/100/140/180/220 (+80% of your physical power), slowing them by 25% for 2.5/3/3.5/4/4.5s. Cost – 70/75/80/85/90 mana. Cooldown – 10s.

World Weaver

Neith charges up and fires an arrow across the entire world, seeking its target and passing through all obstacles. Enemy gods are hit for 230/295/360/425/490 (+120% of your physical power) and are stunned for 1.1/1.2/1.3/1.4/1.5s where Broken Weaves that are hit will apply the same effects to everyone in the area. The arrow can be fired quicker for diminished results. Cost – 80/90/100/110/120 mana. Cooldown – 90s.