The Elder Scrolls Online offers a peak into one of the more challenging and rewarding PvE zones in the game, Craglorn, including an overview of the Trials system.
Monthly Archives: April 2014
Celtic Heroes Launches for Android
Independent Glasgow based studio One Thumb Mobile today announced the launch of its free to play MMORPG, Celtic Heroes, on Android. Published via the innovative cross platform engine, Unity, the game offers users an incredible 3D MMO experience to rival browser and desktop games.
Set in the mythical land of Dal Riata, Celtic Heroes challenges hundreds of thousands of online players to compete, collaborate and battle fearsome enemies.
Warriors have been summoned from across the Celtic lands to fight back the spreading darkness of the villainous god Crom with steel and magic: Warriors in their battle armour; Druids commanding the powers of nature; Rangers who can slay their foes from afar; Mages wielding elemental fire; and Rogues who can strike from the shadows.
To protect their peaceful homeland, players and must adventure far beyond its borders to save it: a land invaded by a mighty army from across the sea, a realm overtaken by a faerie queen and her minions, and a parallel world of magic ruled over by a mighty dragon are just some of the places you must venture on their quest to triumph over Crom and restore peace to the Celtic lands.
Paul Simon, Executive Producer at One Thumb Mobile, explains: “Our team has created something very special with the launch of our new cross-platform engine. We look forward to massively expanding Celtic Heroes and providing the biggest, most social gaming experience on mobile.”
Celtic Heroes is available now for free from Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onethumbmobile.celticheroes
Shining Empire: Coming to Xbox 360 / Xbox One
After a roller coaster start to 2014, Shining Empire is back on track and now headed to Xbox 360 and Xbox One. The game began as the spiritual successor to the Shining Force series (after Sega gave the axe to Shining Force Online last December 24th), but now it’s turned into a massive 1,000 hour plus RPG which steps way beyond the boundaries that Shining Force set. Now, Arcade County is ready to announce Xbox versions (360 and one) to accompany the original PC/Mac title.
“The trick was taking something that was designed for a mouse and getting it to work properly with a controller”, notes lead developer R. Mulvany. “Remember those Sim City 2000 console ports? We definitely don’t want to end up like that, so a lot of time was spent going through every possible way you could play with a controller. If we didn’t find the perfect scheme we would have just kept it on PC and Mac. Fortunately, what we have now is a lot of fun and feels perfect. Regardless of whether you use a mouse (on PC) or a controller (on Xbox) it’s going to feel as though the game was built specifically for that system.”
Mulvany has also revealed the size of the overworld map, and has compared it to other games. He’s careful to note that, despite it being massive, a large world doesn’t necessarily mean a great game.
“You could fit all of Skyrim and Cyrodiil (Oblivion) inside our world and still have room. It is a little ridiculous how massive it is. It doesn’t really matter, though. Cyrodiil was bigger than Skyrim yet the latter feels more dense to me. There’s a lot more to discover. We can’t just have massive fields of nothingness. We’ve got to pack in tens of thousands of landmarks and make sure the scenery is diverse. The player has to experience something new every time they play the game. Constant reward. The feeling of becoming powerful by the minute. That’s what compliments a large world. The worst thing you can do is spend all that time making something massive and it turns out to bore everyone.”
Despite surprisingly high demand, Mulvany says that there are no plans of releasing a Playstation 4 version, though he doesn’t rule out the possibility down the road.
“I’ve gotten a lot of inquiries, but right now it seems unlikely. It’s a pretty daunting task to develop for so many systems, so as of now I’m just focused on those that I’m most familiar with.”
Shining Empire is set to release later this year for PC, Mac, Xbox 360 and Xbox One (with a free iOS companion app which allows you to monitor your game remotely). The game will be available digitally for all platforms and a boxed version will be released for PC/Mac as well.
You can get more information about Shining Empire at www.shiningempire.com
Legends of Aria
Legends of Aria (previously Shards Online) is a sandbox MMORPG in development by Citadel Studios, with a universe that constantly expands with deep lore and dynamic environments. Players can fully customize their experience, with expansive modding capabilities that grant you the ability to run your own MMO and set your own rules.
Citadel Studios
Citadel Studios
SOE Live 2014 Registration Now Open
Let the countdown begin! Registration for SOE Live 2014 is now open. Passes are now available for Sony Online Entertainment’s 14th annual community fan event – SOE Live, which will take place at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas August 14-17, 2014.
SOE Live is the ultimate gathering for the SOE community, providing players an opportunity to celebrate their favorite free-to-play SOE games, including: DC Universe™ Online, Dragon’s Prophet™, EverQuest®, EverQuest II, PlanetSide®2, and the highly anticipated Landmark and EverQuest Next.
In addition to a slew of social events, SOE will also host developer panel discussions and game-themed live events, giving attendees a chance to voice their opinions of current and upcoming game content. SOE Live will also feature new announcements and access to beta programs, tournaments, premium swag and more. Additional information will be announced in the upcoming months.
Mega Update to Game Features for Guild Wars 2
ArenaNet, developer of the acclaimed Guild Wars franchise, today announced its biggest discount ever for Guild Wars 2® and revealed details about a major new feature in the game’s upcoming “Feature Pack” release. The worldwide sale offering unprecedented prices on the award-winning MMO launches today and runs through April 13, with a 50 percent discount on both Digital Heroic and Digital Deluxe editions in all territories where the game is available. Guild Wars 2 is a subscription-free MMO where players have enjoyed a constant stream of new content. Since launching in August 2012, the game has seen two dozen major releases expanding on its living world with new storylines and adding numerous features to the game, all of it free of charge to players. Later this month, Guild Wars 2 will be getting one of its biggest updates yet with the “April 2014 Feature Pack,” the first release focused entirely on enhancing features and game play systems.
As part of the buildup to the pack’s release, ArenaNet has been releasing details about each new feature coming to the game. Over the course of the last two weeks, the game’s official blog has revealed how the “April 2014 Feature Pack” will introduce a new Wardrobe System, new PvP reward tracks, trait changes, social play improvements and other enhancements.
This week, the studio announced one of the most major enhancements coming in the pack, introducing a megaserver system for Guild Wars 2. The megaserver makes nearly everything easier when it comes to playing with friends and guild mates, eliminating the need to separate players into different copies of the same map based on the world they selected on character creation.
In the Feature Pack blog, ArenaNet game director Colin Johanson and server programmer Samuel Loretan write that with the megaserver system, “[Players] will simply arrive in a map and be assigned to the version of that map that makes the most sense,” adding, “This new system takes your party, guild, language, home world, and other factors into account to match you to a version of the map you’re entering. This will increase the odds that you’ll see the same people more often and play with people of similar interests.”
While players will see the megaserver deliver immediate improvements to the way they play Guild Wars 2 with their friends, some of the most exciting changes are on the horizon as the system expands. ArenaNet has released a second megaserver blog detailing how the system will eventually affect guilds, even making the dream of ‘one guild’ a reality.
“With the new megaserver system, you’ll find it infinitely easier to play with all of your guild mates—and better yet, someday you’ll simply have one guild,” writes Johanson. “Because worlds no longer separate players, we’ll eventually make sure that guilds are no longer separated either, that every guild member will be contributing to and benefitting from the same unified guild chapter.”
The megaserver’s launch with the “April 2014 Feature Pack” activates the system for level 1-15 maps, main cities and the PvP lobby. It will then be activated across the rest of the game with additional updates coming later this year.
For more info, visit www.guildwars2.com
Transformers Universe Catapult Reveal
Catapult moves in the shadows with the strut of a notorious gunslinger and reads cross-winds like a circling hawk. Place Catapult at long ranges with her Phase Chamber primed, sniper rifle cocked and license-to-terminate activated; she’ll drop her mark grill-down in the dirt for keeps. A mysterious loner, the only trace this Autobot leaves is a tag scratched into every ‘Con she dispatches to the scrapyard.
Duelyst Kickstarter Interview Recap – Keith Lee
By W.B. Wemyss (Tagspeech)

Recently I had the pleasure of sitting down with Keith Lee, the mastermind behind the now funded Duelyst campaign on Kickstarter. Duelyst, for the uninitiated, is a vivid, turn-based strategy game built in the image of golden-age classics like Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, and Suikoden. The nostalgia may be strong for some with those titles – for others, they might mean nothing. Whatever your familiarity with the history of turn-based strategy in gaming, I can assure you that the Duelyst’s design is drawn from a fine pedigree.
One of the first things I noticed when talking to Keith was how professional and cordial he was. This is something I value in people, and over the course of our conversation I came to understand that he was leading the development of Diablo 3 back in the ancient era of 2006, when the game was still very young and Blizzard North still existed. Upon Blizzard’s consolidation of that satellite studio, Keith left the company and worked on mobile games for years. It wasn’t until recently, with the founding of a new company in the bay area and the development of Duelyst, that he’s begun a serious foray back into the realm of AAA titles.

His intentions are to bring players a high-quality multiplayer experience, with smooth matchmaking services built into the platform. What sets Duelyst apart from games of its kind is that Duelyst is not yet another soulless digital trading card game – it’s made in the image of story-driven strategy RPGs, and hosts a rich setting crafted by a diverse, cosmopolitan team of developers. It has vivid art direction (that teal and magenta title on the kickstarter page is hard to miss), and the game’s art director is actually a native of Brazil. If there’s one nation that knows color and spectacle, it’s Brazil.
The two-dimensional art direction may seem like a step backwards to some, but the decision to stick with high-quality, two-dimensional sprite art was just as much an artistic decision as it was a logistical one. Sprite art frees the creative team from the restraints of rigging and animation 3D models, some of which can become incredibly complex when designing exotic and fantastic creatures and units. The fields of Duelyst are ripe with a variety of unique beasts and soldiers, with three factions that are more than just alternate color schemes. They look positively alien to one another.

Gameplay takes place on a square, flat grid. There are no varying elevations or complex maps in terms of terrain, though there are various zones and tile bonuses on the map in order to reward tactical positioning. The decision to avoid elevation variation was primarily made so that the game could stick to its “thirty minute session” vision when it comes to multiplayer matches. This is a game designed to be all-terrain and accessible from the ground-up, with a range of platform compatibility – Mac/PC/Linux/Browser – and an out-of-the-box endorsement to sneak in sessions during downtime at work. A moving mind is a working mind!
For players that prefer to hone their form alone, there is a method of setting up virtual sessions in a limited single-player mode, allowing the player to unlock units and perfect their strategy without the pressure of ladders or competition – did I mention the game uses a ladder system? Ranking, rewards, and prestige await the most dedicated and skilled players, so there will be plenty of incentive to put time and thought into your playing of the game with your favorite faction and unit builds. The game is a fine balance of old-school mechanics and modern multiplayer.

What really sets the Kickstarter efforts of Duelyst apart from others is that the development team behind the game has designed a widget that allows backers to use the new “Dogecoin” for contributions. For the uninitiated, dogecoin is an alternative to bitcoin that was made only very recently, but is rapidly gaining in popularity as a digital currency – the name stems from the “Doge” meme. Wow. Such innovation. Very currency.
Duelyst is shaping up to be an interesting ride. It’s already reached the initial goals of development funding via kickstarter, but meeting stretch goals will allow them to expand upon the game’s single-player campaign and storytelling – something they fully intend to visit in the future, sooner rather than later, if it can be helped. As someone who loved the story-driven tactical RPGs of yesteryear, I just might be contributing a bit of cash myself to the project.
If you value tightly designed, fleshed-out strategy games with solid multiplayer, and would be happy to support the efforts of an experienced, storied team of industry veterans in the face of expanding corporate clone-games, then I would encourage you to give Duelyst’s kickstarter page a look. A game with a clear vision and responsible creators is rarer than you’d think, these days.
Tagspeech is the alias of author W.B. Wemyss, who was responsible for the bizarre cyberpunk fever dream called Children of Athena.
Transformers Universe Shellshock Reveal
Transformers Universe prepares to spray the town lead with a new offensive juggernaut, Shellshock.



