Paradox Interactive today revealed and added a new character class to War of the Vikings, the Viking Age close-quarter combat game from Fatshark. The Berserker, a dual-wielding class focused entirely on offensive capabilities and intimidating appearances, joins War of the Vikings today as part of a free update to the game. This update also includes three new in-game maps to allow the Berserker a variety of terrain to charge across, as well as a new game mode, “Domination,” to provide veteran Vikings with a novel challenge.
The Berserker sacrifices armor, ranged weaponry, and weapon pick-ups in exchange for pure adrenaline-powered attacks, possessing the ability to dual-wield weapons. Players taking the role of Berserker will no longer charge up their swings, instead focusing on special attacks and a new combo system to keep their blades flying. Combos can be created with queued attacks, dodges, and different move sets depending on whether a warrior wields two swords, two axes, or one of each. In addition, the Berserker will be visually distinct on the battlefield, clad in bear pelts, fierce tattoos, and the blood of their enemies.
What’s more, a Berserker will not die easily: when struck by a fatal blow, the character is granted 10 seconds of ‘blood rage,’ which will allow them to continue the fight if they can claim a kill before that adrenaline runs out!
Berserkers will make their debut alongside three new maps and a new fast-paced game mode called Domination. In Domination, the Vikings and Saxons must compete for control of only a few flags – and holding the majority will cause the enemy to start losing respawn tickets, as will slaughtering their warriors. The last team with tickets remaining is the victor!
Today Robot Entertainment announced the first details and opening date for the upcoming ORCS MUST DIE! UNCHAINED™ closed beta. Beginning on Friday, June 27th fans will have the opportunity to dive into ORCS MUST DIE! UNCHAINED and join in the orc gib-fest first-hand with access to the official closed beta. The beta kicks off with an all-new map, and three never-before-seen heroes in addition to the ten powerful Order and Unchained heroes already live and playable in the alpha. Players will also get to experience the brand new deck editing system in the game so that they use the best combination of traps, minions and more to take out their opponents. To celebrate the start of the closed beta, free-to-play hero rotations will be introduced and players will be able to get their hands on one of the new heroes each weekend throughout late June and early July. Time to sign-up, whip out the traps and pile up the bodies as you defend your rift with your friends.
To gain access to the ORCS MUST DIE! UNCHAINED closed beta, players will need a special access key. Players can visit http://www.OrcsMustDie.com and register for their chance to obtain an exclusive closed beta access key, while those who participated in the alpha will be automatically granted access to the closed beta. Fans who want to play immediately can purchase a Founder’s Club Pack and gain instant access to the closed beta and exclusive in-game rewards.
Players can now get an early look at Supergirl, the latest champion from Infinite Crisis, the free-to-play MOBA from Turbine based in the DC Universe! On Wednesday, July 2, players can make the world a better place – one punch at a time.
Like her cousin Superman, Kara Zor-El survived the destruction of Krypton by escaping in a spacecraft of her father’s design.
Placed into a state of suspended animation, Kara’s craft followed the course set by her then-infant cousin. But instead of Kara’s trip taking a matter of seconds, like it had for her cousin, it took decades.
When she crash-landed on Earth, Kara awoke to her powers immediately manifesting. While wrestling with these powers, she was astonished to meet her cousin, now a grown man. The worst shock, though, came last when Kal-El told her they were the only survivors of Krypton.
Overwhelmed by despair, feeling anger toward the alien world where she felt trapped, Kara discovered a resilience she didn’t know she possessed. She now deals with her grief while discovering a love of her new home world, Earth.
Fast, strong, and always willing to pick a fight, Supergirl is a bruiser who loves getting up-close and personal.
Today, Nexon Europe is thrilled to announce the arrival of a brand new, playable character to the enormously popular, visceral RPG, Vindictus.
Lynn, Princess of the Lost Kingdom, is a striking-yet-deadly warrior who wields a spear with the graceful force of a dancer, and possesses powerful stamina to help her perform a wide range of unique attacks. Her damage skills are known as “Swift Assassin” and “Five Fingered Death”, both capable of causing massive damage to enemies and boss figures alike.
Lynn’s attack dodge skill is known as Rat, allowing her to dodge enemy advances and maneuver behind the attacker. Jade Fox is an active skill that allows Lynn to use other various active skills in a row, without significantly decreasing SP.
Lynn’s spectacular appearance can be altered to fit the player’s preferences, with a variety of looks and styles to complement the discerning Vindictorian.
“We’re very excited to have another excellent character for our European players to choose from,” said Marcel Kim, Product Manager at Nexon Europe. “Vindictorians everywhere can rest assured that we’ll continue to bring them unique new content that will excite them and keep them involved in the action.”
Lynn’s arrival sees the return of Vindictus Golden Time – a special event that lets players win special awards at a certain time of the day, including Unlimited Resurrection, Raid +2, Core +2, Exp x2, AP x2, 50% cost reduction, and, if you’re online on Saturday and Sunday, win a number of special items and gifts.
There will also be a Bonus Charge + 10% Event, in which paying users of Vindictus will receive a 10% bonus on purchased Nexon Cash (NX), distributed on the following maintenance dates: 2nd and 9th July. On top of this, a lucky ten users will be selected from all of those online between 25th June and 9th July to receive a special reward – a brand new keyboard and mouse.
It’s not terribly often that major coverage at E3 is offered and then sealed up under embargo to a later time. Talk about a tease walking around the gaming town of Santa Monica for a week with your lips zipped. Or playing WildStar in my free time (just kidding.. no gaming press has free time the week following E3) without being able to say a peep about the horrors lurking in the shadows of Nexus. But I assure you, the horrors are real. And in just thirteen days, the face of Nexus will never be the same.
If you’ve been playing WildStar in any seriousness since launch, you’re going to have seen hints in the evolving story that a few Eldan weren’t considered moral and just in their research attempts of the past. In fact their uncontrolled experimentation on biological tissue may be a driving cause of their sudden disappearance, as well as many of the tougher foes you have faced in your journeys.
Well with the Strain Megadrop, you will come one step closer to discovering the truth sealed deep under the crust of the planet in a new zone called Blighthaven. And as much as I wish I could describe this zone in reference to popular expansions in other titles for an easy reference, there’s just nothing quite like it to my knowledge. I suppose you could point at Zerg terrain from Starcraft, but even that feels pretty tame in comparison to what we’re dealing with here. Blighthaven is the closest thing to being inside the belly of the beast, as the entire environment feels like the inner workings of a horrific alien creature. From cliff faces that heave like exhaling lungs to giant living Globellum bubbles, one has to wonder just what Carbine was smoking when they decided to strike out so far from the MMORPG norm with their first post-launch content update.
Plot Time
While only 0.9% of the playerbase is actually far enough into the game to have experienced the full story, and let’s be honest, few people that got to end game this fast have had time to experience the full story, I’ll do my best to recap the plot in a way that’s not too spoileriffic.
Along the way you have discovered that there’s two branches of the Eldan that are quite at odds with each other. On the one hand you have Drusera, aka the blue girl from the launch trailer, who wants to rid the plagues of the Eldan mistakes. On the other hand you have The Entity, who would love nothing better than to see these mistakes take on a more intergalactic role in politics. Well Blighthaven is smack in the middle of The Entity’s paradise where just about every creature you have faced on Nexus is now some sort of mutated super version of themselves, meaning you can expect ridiculously challenging telegraph attacks from standard mobs. You ain’t a cupcake no more, cupcake, so it’s time to put your big boy britches on and not let your guard down for an instant.
Challenge Begins
On top of this, the environmental challenges are going to keep you on your toes as well. And you can expect plenty of new challenges to put you right in the middle of the danger. I had a chance to witness two particularly awesome ones involving the large living gastrointestinal water bubbles. The first has you getting fired out of a cannon smack into the middle of one, forcing you to maneuver in mid-air to snag a series of rings, starting the challenge. Once you’re inside you will have to find the most optimal way to navigate the equivalent of an above ground floating lake to acquire more rings without drowning or falling victim to the mutated sea-life swimming around within. But you will quickly come to realize that there’s no way to swim fast enough to collect the number of rings required for the challenge. Just when all hope seems lost, the blob gets agitated and launches you into the air like a bad case of indigestion, and you’re again free falling to claim as many rings as possible!
Another challenge related to the Globellum has you whizzing around the upper lengths of Blighthaven in what appeared to be the equivalent of a flying Visine machine. Players must dodge flying Phoenix birds and other hazards while dropping Clear Eyes into the top of various Globellum to keep their destructive indigestion to a minimum. With how absolutely massive the new zone is, I’m sure this is just the icing on the cake of what players can expect to discover in their exploration.
Going Underground… in the Underground
The Strain update will also progress the story through a particularly epic open world dungeon featuring numerous elemental themed boss rooms leading up to one of the first encounters with an actual living (if you can call this living) corrupted Eldan known as Elyona the Mad. If your vision of end-game dungeon crawling involved sexy alien women corrupted by an evil super-power inducing virus and a touch of megalomania, rest assured like-minded developers have your back at Carbine Studios.
As you might have guessed, the Caretaker has his hand involved in the matter as usual, aiding you (IN YOUR DESTRUCTION) as you delve between the twisted reality of Blighthaven and tranquil serene cyberspace more often then Neo. Players will be able to explore multiple paths to conquer elemental themed bosses in elemental themed rooms, including a tornado ally wind miniboss and even a fire boss that will keep your feet warm with a lava-based floor that’s constantly in transition. While these minibosses aren’t required to deal with before going after Elyona to acquire mad loot, they will hinder her overall power by removing some of her tricks temporarily after defeating each elemental. And if you want to bring her down with anything less than a fully geared Raid party, you will take the time to tour the full dungeon first.
While we only witnessed a few fleeting moments of her weakened state, I’ll share what I can in the hopes it spares the lives of the first wave of pathfinders hoping to bring her down. As large as Elyona is, her battleground still offers tons of area to maneuver. And players will likely need to spread out to counter her shielding mechanic in which she summons adepts that protect her from damage until they can be brought down. These adepts are quite far apart from each other, and having separate groups assigned to take them down while the core tank and spank group keeps her distracted is probably the way to go about it. Your squishy backline is also going to need to stay on their toes as a barrage of minions packing tons of CC and some pretty nasty wide AoE strikes will relentlessly pound away at your damage dealers. While she’s certainly not as tricky as some of the raid bosses I’ve witnessed at previous press events, Elyona certainly is setting a new standard for MMORPG world bosses in the genre.
Content for the Plebeians
You say you’re not part of the 0.9% of players at end-game? Really? I had E3 to work. Hope you have a similarly awesome excuse! Well no worries, as the ripple effects of the Strain will be felt all across Nexus when the content update launches at the end of June. For starters, many regions are getting a facelift ranging from the slight to the significant, with the Northern Wilds getting a total name change to reflect the serious eruption of Strain to the surface.
Part of the new zone is also crafted for us slow leveling guys in the level 20 range, rather condescendingly titled The Nursery. Contrary to the zerg-like terrain infesting the planet, this zone is Drusera’s last stand holy Protoss meets Empyrian styled refuge. Which of course is a giant Yggdrasil tree. But it’s the content and not the location that should raise eyebrows because we’re getting a new epic Plants vs Zombies public quest!
That’s right, the Guardians of the Grove level 20 public quest will give lowbie players their first taste of The Entity’s power by forcing players to band together to plant tower defense style plants in order to hold off a 360 degree assault of corrupted Strain creatures of all sizes and variety. By utilizing speed and damage boosts, players will be able to zoom around the tree collecting materials to plant assault trees to hold off the hordes, CC trees to slow down the super tanks, and if you’re feeling particularly ballsy, loot trees to up the reward brackets should you succeed.
The tree is set up as a staircase with a route to the central tree on all four cardinal directions. There’s two tiers of elevation leading up to the tree, and the designers made sure to be assholes by including plenty of enemy skills with knockback to try to send you tumbling down the steep edges to punish defenders via wasting their time rather than flat out killing them. And in signature WildStar status, should Dresura’s tree become corrupted, you won’t immediately lose.
Instead the entire tower defense situation will be turned on its head, with the monsters and tree stations fighting to keep you away while a time-limit ticks down. Should you be fast enough to succeed in tunneling to the tree’s roots and cleansing it, your can push back the Strain to gain another shot at finishing the public quest on time. Should you fail, a massive AoE shockwave will strike almost every spot in the entire region, sending all would-be defenders flailing through the air as they watch the corrupted tree disappear over the horizon. I call it a hard reset.
The Loot!
While we don’t have too much info on what the loot will be exactly, there’s promise of plenty of freaky Strain themed items on the horizon. A new tier of armor and weapons will be available including a wild new /strain emote that Jeremy Gaffney promises was put into the game so veteran players can fly back to the starting zone and scare the bejebus out of noobs.
There will also be costumes and skin overlays for showcasing your end-game status by decking out your mount with eyeballs and entrails. And while I wasn’t privy to what exactly is planned, there are housing themed Strain items on the way as well. Though I imagine they will only appeal to people that hope to keep visitors away, as I think I’d start to feel ill if even my private residence was overrun by this gunk.
Carbine will be fleshing out the ooze of the Strain over the next few weeks. Test servers will also be coming online shortly to offer the beta fanatics a chance to get their hands dirty a little early. Be sure to follow the official Strain subpage of WildStar to keep up with all the details as they become available. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to bleach my eyes and forget about the horrors of Blghthaven.
Enjoy your last few weeks of peace on Nexus my Dominion brothers. And please Exile players try to at least put up enough of a fight to distract these mutants. No one wants to spend half a year liberating a bunch of podunk hippie space colonies from the Strain.
I had a chance to drop into InnoGames’ private meeting room to get the first ever gameplay demo of Rising Generals, an upcoming multi-platform mobile title set in the typical InnoGames vein of strategy empire builders. This one in particular though is pushing the genre into the next level of quality and doing so in a setting InnoGames typically avoids, a modern military one.
The first engineering feat that sets Rising Generals apart is the massive scope they are aiming for. We’re talking persistent game worlds up for grabs with 40,000 players on a single server taking part in the battles. Each player has ownership of a single hex on the grid known as a Battle Site. Beyond these 40,000 Battlesites are other hexes owned by NPC factions that can be conquered to add to your empire, bolstering resource production and offering new bases of operation in the process. Players can then team up with Battlegroups, the Rising Generals clan system, to work towards a goal of owning a majority of the Battle Sites in a District to gain control. Own the majority of Districts in a Region and suddenly your clan is a world power that’s setting the rules of your server by their might alone.
The Base Building
But perhaps I’m jumping ahead of myself a bit. Let’s look at the basics first. You start off, like most empire building games, with a simple Command Center and a list of quests that will help expedite your rise to power. Your actions are limited by Command Points as well as resources, and of course you’re going to need to spend CP in order to acquire and improve buildings to gain resources faster in the early days. Should you wish to be a more active player, you can spend your excess resources to upgrade your Command Center and gain a larger CP pool.
Now there’s two pieces of Rising General’s base building that immediately set it apart from the competition. First off, everything is animated to both reflect activity and building status. This means when you tell a factory to build a tank, you will be able to see the inter-workings of your factory putting that tank together, piece by piece. Pretty advanced for the genre I’d say. Secondly, the further you upgrade a building, the more advanced these animations will become. While the graphics are simplistic, they still offer a nice sense of accomplishment seeing your single production line expanding into a variety of store houses, cranes, and tons of workers after a few upgrade sessions.
And while that’s all well and good for aesthetics, the second piece of the puzzle actually impacts your gameplay experience. When you build a unit, or initiate an upgrade in Rising Generals, it’s constructed and ready for use in the war immediately. Rather than force ever growing countdown timers on the player, this allows you to jump in the game, unleash hell, and then have a set countdown timer letting you know when the soonest time is that you can return and do it all over again. Simple concept, awesome results. Definitely a boon for player retention.
The Combat
The combat is the second element that makes me think of Rising Generals as the next level up in the empire building genre. While combat is still automated like most others of its kind, Rising Generals has one slick difference. You get to actually watch the battle results in real-time 3D battles. But that’s not to say that there isn’t any strategy or tactics involved with these fights. As Sun Tzu put so well, “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”
Rising Generals offers a massive variety of units, each with strengths and weaknesses, to give a veteran player an advantage over their foes. If they know how to use them that is. Stacks of doom typically do the job but if you can play smarter, you can accomplish plenty more with less resources wasted. See part of the modern setting involves slapping fuel costs on the player. Although you can conquer territories that aren’t directly connected to your Command Center on the world map, the further your units have to travel to get from their launch point to the Battle Site, the more costly the fuel price. Thus keeping your squads small and optimized will save you not only on production cost but also unit cost.
The next step to winning the war before actually fighting is proper intelligence. Spies can be sent out to rival territory to get an idea of what buildings are present in their territory. Logic dictates that a more advanced base will likely have a much stronger defense present to protect a player’s investment. However if you need to make sure of it, you can risk your spy in a more dangerous second level of infiltration, that if successful, will offer you a report of the exact troop numbers and types present. With this information you can build your attacking army to appropriately counter their units in the coming battle.
Taking new land can also be a risky endeavor as war always carries the consequence of retaliation. If you spread your territory too quickly, you will be a sitting duck should your enemies seek vengeance. This is where the Battlegroups come into play, as allies can send units to support a friendly base and bolster its defenses should the enemy strike back. As you will be sharing a portion of your resources and success with everyone else in your Battlegroup, it only makes sense for them to do so to keep hold of strategy locations on the map.
The End-Game
Although it’s a challenging feat to accomplish, you can eventually hit an expansion limit on your empire. At this point you wil be forced to be a bit more creative with your actions and actually complete quests to earn Supremacy Points. As your SP grows, you will level up and unlock the capability of holding more territory in your empire. But as you can imagine, each level will take longer and longer to accomplish. What’s a maxed out empire ruler to do?
Well if you absolutely need to keep your war machine churning beyond your capacity, you can engage in Raid missions. This is essentially the same as attacking another Battle Site, except you don’t capture the location. Instead you gain bonus resources from the assault to do as you will. Just be cautious with building your empire beyond your means via the spoils of war, as if your economy takes a downturn, your units will begin to desert you if you can’t pay the bills.
And if things are going particularly well, why not join together with two of your friends and start up a Battlegroup of your own? You can design your own flag with plenty of icons and color options and start raking in even more resources as your group slowly conquers the world.
Final Thoughts
The UI and visuals of Rising Generals are stellar. Would be rulers are going to love the empirewide stat screens that allow you to quickly queue mass production and monitor your resource expenditures at a glance. The monetization system surprisingly seems quite unintrusive as well, with InnoGames going for an unusual pay scheme thus far that doesn’t directly sell power to players. Major resources like fuel aren’t purchasable at all to limit the expansion of major cash shoppers to a fair and balanced rate. While I can’t comment yet on the balance or how well the economy all plays out without spending some time in-game, I have a feeling that there will be a huge community waiting to populate these mega-servers when Rising Generals launches later this year.
Perfect World Entertainment Inc. is pleased to announce that Swordsman has entered closed beta and will be running until June 27, 2014. In addition to access to the closed beta, players will unlock exclusive items for use in this highly anticipated free-to-play martial arts and wuxia-inspired MMORPG. Swordsman is a free-to-play martial arts and wuxia-inspired MMORPG, set in the rich universe based on the immensely popular wuxia novels of award-winning novelist Louis Cha, who has sold over 100 million books worldwide. As a disciple of one of Swordsman’s ten class-defining martial art schools, players begin their journey to master legendary fighting skills by engaging in fierce action-packed combat with members of rival schools and the powerful Ming government.
