Monthly Archives: April 2014

Hazard Ops: Closed Beta Starts This May

Hazard Ops

Infernum will send their first squad out into the world to fight off hordes of monsters and as such, announce the closed beta for Hazard Ops. Those who want to prove themselves in this brutal third-person shooter should keep a sharp eye on the official website www.hazardops.com and sign up quickly for the adrenalin fuelled game. Amongst all the applications we will receive during closed beta, ten will receive Early Access packages via raffle and given to the selected candidates. Thus skillful action fans secure the unique opportunity to dish out the pain to the first zombie mummies, killer robots and WTF bosses before anyone else.

For first impressions and information on Hazard Ops, visit the official website: www.hazardops.com

SMITE Reveals Night Prowler Bastet Patch

SMITE Bastet_CatBurglar_Card

HiRez Studios offers up a surprise mini-patch this week for SMITE, their third person free to play MOBA focused on pantheon battles between gods! The big story this week? Long time goddess Artemis has received a visual overhaul to bring her model and animations on par with the recent quality standards of the game. Bastet, fresh off her rework, is also receiving an epic skin based off Cat Woman, complete with a compatible voice pack.

SMITE Artemis Rework

Various issue fixes along with a change to how CC immunity works are also a part of this patch. Those following the competitive scene will be interested in a new 6-ban conquest draft that is set to replace the 4 ban draft used in current tournaments. Catch the full patch on SMITE’s reddit now.

 

eSports Web Channel Announces League of Legends Edition

League Fight Night

Web-based eSports channel ESGNTV today announced the debut of League of Legends, the highly popular multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game from Riot Games, to the “Fight Night” competitive gaming online broadcast series. Starting on April 24 and in addition to the existing programs, the League of Legends Edition will be shown every Thursday and Friday at noon PDT / 9:00 p.m. CET.

 

“Fight Night” – League of Legends Edition will combine the MOBA action that over 67 million monthly League of Legends players have grown to demand with the edge-of-your-seat reputation “Fight Night” and ESGN have built among the eSports community. Along with the competition itself, the new League of Legends Edition will showcase the talents of five popular streamers — including “PhantomL0rd”, “Chaox”, “Dinglederper”, “Maximus Black” and “The Rain Man” — and a selection of fans as they trade blows in front of the world and vie for the title of “Fight Night” champion.

 

The first two episodes will show gripping 2 vs. 2 matches, giving the streamers and their fans the opportunity to face each other in a Best Of 3 series. The two most successful streamers will then assemble their team of five to take on their opponents and various challenges in another Best Of 3 mode. Additionally, ESGNTV‘s notorious Wheel of Fortune will influence the course of the game, punishing those who fail to succeed.

League Fight Night 2

League of Legends is one of the most popular games in the world with 27 million daily players,” said Morgan Stone, Chief Production Officer at ESGNTV. “Given its eSports audience success and intense addictive matches, League of Legends was a natural fit for the ‘Fight Night’ series. We know LoL fans will be tuning in to watch these bouts.”

 

ESGNTV and “Fight Night” have continued to grow their presence throughout 2014 across the global eSports community, garnering 60,000 channel subscribers to date and over 2,500,000 views per month on all their platforms.

 

All previous episodes of “Fight Night” are rerun on a regular basis and are also available on demand on esgntv.com as well as on the ESGNTV channel on YouTube following their first rerun.

Rise of Incarnates

Rise of Incarnates is a F2P beat ’em up/fighting game published by Namco Bandai. Developed by the same teams behind Tekken, SoulCalibur and Gundam Extreme VS, players will take the role of “Incarnates”, humans that command untold mythical powers as they fight to avoid tragedy and reshape the course of their world.

Features:

Groundbreaking 2-on-2 combat: Employ sharp reflexes, mental resolve, and strategic insight as they run, jump, and fly through 3D arenas, engaging in both close-quarters combat and long-range assaults.

Multitude of characters and roles: Diverse character types and roles are available, each with unique skills and powers, appealing to a variety of play-styles while accommodating expansive team dynamics and strategy.

Breathtaking locations: Battle throughout shattered yet accurately rendered real-world cityscapes including New York and London.

H1Z1 – What we know so far!

By Remko Molenaar (Proxzor)

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With long delays and broken promises stretching the expansive of indie companies pushing into the DayZ zombie survival bandwagon, it’s no surprise that more established companies have had time to develop a competitive alternative. The first to market seems undoubtedly to be SOE, developers of one of the most successful online free shooters (Planetside 2), is set to convert their engine into a zombie simulation.  H1Z1 offers all the free open world goodness we expect from the genre, and promises to push the genre into new unexplored territory.

h1z1_2

Even though this game has only been public for a few weeks, information has been flowing as freely as a bloody wound. And even longtime supporters of the indie zombie titles are closely watching the development to see what SOE is bringing to the table. It’s not hard to compare a successful zombie game to any other zombie game. There are only so many minor tweaks that can be made after all before you’re reaching outside the narrow borders of this niche market. What is clear so far is Sony intends this to be a zombie apocalypse simulator, but that realism won’t be forced on the player so heavily that it costs potential fun factor. Just like Dean Hall from DayZ once said, the core game needs to be challenging enough to prevent an open world death match between players who have no concrete initiative to cooperate.

Last Thursday there was an hour long stream from the developers showing off their game. During this stream people were able to ask about the game and check out the progress already made in H1Z1. First of all I want to dive into the most important thing about H1Z1, the business model. SOE has dabbled plenty in subscription models in the past, but has taken a strong turn towards free to play in recent years. H1Z1 will follow suit by modeling itself after Planetside 2’s model. The game will be free to play, but will have some sort of a cash shop where you can spend your money on items that do not influence the game whatsoever.

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Now let’s talk about the gameplay. The game world will feature and resemble America, and the story takes place fifteen years after the zombie apocalypse began. The game will be hosted on official SOE servers rather than private player servers, meaning servers will be larger and always up to date with the latest patches compared to past zombie titles. This should also prevent repeated server restarts and lessen the likelihood of game crashes. Loot will also respawn normally when required and the whole game will act more as a MMORPG rather than a dedicated server shooter game. The game can be played in a first person or third person point of view with a day and night cycle that looks really amazing.

Another key design decision was revealed when the devs sped up the time progression to show a working day/night cycle. You do not want to wander around in the dark, because it will be pitch black and you will need some sort of a light source to navigate your way around. And the zombies will be a lot scarier in the dark as well, as sound will be your primary defense in preparation for a coming assault. The zombies on the other hand seem more capable of fast movement in the dark, making the danger twice as real.

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During the night they were running around with the torch to showcase how beautiful their engine is graphically with special lighting effects. Yet the real story was just how dangerous fire is in this game. Not only are you able to set zombies on fire, you can also set actual players on fire, making them freak out trying to put the fire out. Seeing this I imagine burning down settlements is also possible, since this is also one of the goals that they are aiming for. The zombies are scary, but the Player versus Player will be the core of the game. They want you to be able to take over towns, or start your own settlements somewhere in the middle of nowhere in preparation for an extended war with opposing groups. We haven’t seen a lot of crafting but it is definitely in there and I can already tell you that it looks a lot like the system Rust uses. You can gather resources like wood, and you will find useable assets everywhere. With the use of a menu that looks a lot similar to the one in Rust, you can carefully place buildings to your exact specifications. In the hour long stream they made a little shed and I think they really want to make you feel like you are a resident in that world, the zombie invaded America.

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While they were showing off the world, they also took a joyride in a vehicle. It resembled an old Jeep model, and there are more promised vehicles in the works. Possibly in the future there will also be an aircraft but they are still planning out all the possibilities and how each will impact balance. There will be no skills or levels that you can obtain. When you die you simply lose everything. You can always run back to your body, but the world is intended to be massive and you never know where you might respawn, so it’s an unlikely occurrence. They also think that there will be a larger playercount compared to Planetside 2 and that you will be roaming the map with thousands of players at the same time. Besides vehicles you can also get yourself a horse as a way of transportation. But since there is also a form of hunting in this game, I think it will be a challenge keeping your horse alive during your adventures. Non-mountable pets are also being considered; I will definitely not be getting one since I already hate to see a dog dying in the movies.

Now some technical details about the game itself. If you can run Planetside 2, then you will be able to run this game without a problem as well. The order of magnitude is larger than Planetside 2 and thus it seems quite promising to anyone that likes to travel. I myself cannot wait to get a vehicle and just drive around the world, surviving and hoping to come across a friendly group of survivors that I can live with until the end of my character’s life. With a built in voice chat, and absolutely amazing graphics, I am sure that H1Z1 will have a successful launch and development life.

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There is already a lot of information about H1Z1, I am really astonished as to how open Sony has been with the public over the past few weeks. This also shows me that they are trying to do what Dean Hall did, be as open as possible about the game and hope for the best. Since they have introduced a ton of features and promise us the scale of the world will be insanely huge compared to other zombie survival games, I personally cannot wait to get my hands on this game. Luckily they are planning to let everyone buy into the alpha of the game alongside the Steam launch. If all goes according to plan, this alpha is set to launch a little beyond a month from now, so buckle up people because this is going to be an amazing ride.

STO Season 9 Launches

Star Trek Online Season 9 Land

Star Trek Online‘s Season 9: A New Accord is now available! In this latest season, Captains will face off against the looming Undine threat. Players can join Tuvok (from Star Trek: Voyager) at the Jenolan Dyson sphere to help negotiate a coordinated response to the Undine.

In addition, Earth Spacedock has been remodeled, Borg and Undine missions have been revamped with art and gameplay improvements, new queued events are available, all PvP maps have been enabled for cross-faction play, and there is a new space battlezone in the Solanae Dyson Sphere. There is also a new 8472 Counter-Command Reputation, a new system for Kits, and Trait and Reputation powers have been updated. Other notable features include:

  • New Feature Episode – “Surface Tension” starring Tim Russ
  • Redesigned Undine Ground and Space art designs
  • Redesigned Kit System with all new customization options
  • New Heads and Complexions tailor options for increased player customization

Full details can be found at the official site.

WildStar Announces Bonus Weekend, Level 25 Cap

Does waiting until May 2 for WildStar’s next beta weekend have you feeling down? Well we have a surprise for you — WildStar is holding a BONUS BETA WEEKEND Friday, April 25 at 7am PT to Sunday, April 27 at 11:59pm PT! In addition to being able to explore Nexus this weekend, the level cap has been raised from 20 to 25.

There are two ways for fans to gain access to beta this weekend. First, pre-ordering WildStar will give automatic access to this weekend (and upcoming beta weekends — if you’ve already pre-ordered, you’re all set!). Second, if you’ve previously signed up for beta through Carbine Studios a code will be emailed to you this week.

WildStar Hoverboard

With the level cap extension comes new features to look forward to:

New Adventure – Northern Wilds Adventure is a MOBA style group content experience for you and four of your buddies. Take over the whole map and destroy the enemy base to win, but watch out for the defending faction… they’ll viciously fight to win so come prepared to kick ass.

Whitevale – The Dominion version of Alcatraz, Invading Alien scientists (…that dissect anything that moves), and a sunken ship filled with treasure hungry Marauders are waiting for your arrival. Oh… and a nuclear teraformer explosion has unleashed brain controlling squid on the Exile and Dominion military forces. No big deal.

Hoverboards – Like hoverboarding? Duh. Of course you do. Get your hoverboard at a mount vendor in the capital city!

Abilities and AMPs – Get new abilities to put in your Limited Action Set so you can continue to customize the way you destroy baddies, and unlock more perks in our AMP system.

Unlock more clues to the history of the Eldan – Where did this hyper-advanced race go? What kind of technology and secrets are out there? Where can you get a solid space fish taco on Nexus? Get out there and find out, Spanky.

 

WildStar Surprise Beta Weekend

Finally, each day players log into the game between now and launch (during pre-order weekends as well as Open Beta), accounts will receive 3 Boom Boxes at launch. These boxes can be used once per day to receive a random assortment of possible goodies, including XP buffs, unique runes, weapons, housing items, unique costumes, mounts and more! More info here.