Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes Enters Open Beta

Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes, an extraction of the player vs. player content out of 2008′s MMO in the same universe, enters open beta today.

A free-to-play version of the team-based combat found in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, Wrath of Heroes offers short, 15 minute matches, and a growing list of playable characters.

In the beta, you can purchase heroes, experience boosts, and other supplementary items with gems using real money. All characters and gems will carry over to the full game, according to the website.

BioWare have not announced an official release date for the game. It will be available on the PC.

You can begin downloading it here.

Source: EA

Syndicate Will Not Include an Online Pass

EA has decided to break its own tradition and not include an online pass in Syndicate later this month.

Speaking to Eurogamer, EA Partners executive officer Jeff Gamon said, “We want as little resistance or barriers to entry as possible.”

EA has a policy when it comes to Online Passes for its games, although it’s not strict when it comes to those under EA Partners like Portal 2 and Crysis 2 which did not include one. EA owns the Syndicate IP, causing it to fall under their discretion despite Starbreeze being independent.

“Under normal circumstances it would have had an online pass, but because it didn’t have competitive multiplayer and because we wanted as many people as possible to be playing co-op, we got away with it,” Gamon said.

Syndicate will have nine maps, offering up to six or seven hours of single-player content according to Gamon.

 

Via: Joystiq

Source: Eurogamer

 

 

38 Studios Head Curt Schilling Apologizes for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Online Pass

Curt Schilling, the vocal and honest founder of 38 Studios has made an effort to apologize for the misunderstanding, and to clear up Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning’s online pass offer. After an uproar from the community in response to a voucher included in the game said to provide “access to the House of Valor faction quest” – suggesting a very similar situation to the Catwoman sections in Batman: Arkham City that were already on the disc –  Schilling made a post on the 38 Studios forums.

Schilling made it clear the content is day one DLC, not simply a quest already on the disc. “You can argue the merits and effectiveness of it, but right now it’s how it’s done and as someone that’s as invested as I am in this company, I stand by what has happened,” he wrote.

He says he would have liked the situation to be handled with more care, and goes on to explain why the DLC method is beneficial to both his business and the player. ”We must make a profit to become what we want to become. The only way we do that is to make games you cannot wait to buy! If we do that, and you do that, we want to reward you with some cool free stuff as a thank you.”

Via: Joystiq

Source: 38 Studios Forums

Deciphering The Old Republic (24-ish hours in)

I’ve racked up about a day of playtime with Star Wars: The Old Republic. I’m a level 21 Bounty Hunter with little patience and a well-oiled trigger finger. When the opportunity arises, I’ll murder anyone, even the innocent. I’m ruthless in combat as well, never leaving without having slaughtered at least fifteen men, beast, or droid. My only mission is to eradicate the other hunters participating in the Great Hunt, and to eliminate their targets too. What I do from here can only get worse.

Here’s something that occurred to me today though.

During a recent interview Daniel Erickson, The Old Republic’s lead writer, spoke about the reaction from fans when introduced to the game’s emphasis on storytelling. Immediately they cried out that MMOs cannot have story, or at least ones as meaningful as the games that don’t try to incorporate thousands of players at a time. A large part of the convincing BioWare was forced to do was with the Beta. After seeing exactly how dialogue and cutscenes would live in what is an otherwise typical MMO, the same fans that thought story was impossible, realized their assumptions were based off of limitations other games have faced.

So, obviously the question is: did it work? Better yet, can it work? Largely the answer for both of those is yes, but given what an MMO was before The Old Republic came around, I’d go so far as to argue it isn’t an MMO. More specifically, the leveling experience is familiar to the wrong genre, the Flashpoints on the other hand don’t bother to make any significant enough changes. The Old Republic’s leveling experience is the reason why I’m not sure how a free-to-play model could apply, unless it’s capped out at a certain level. You’d rarely see someone plan to level to 85 in World of Warcraft and start a new character to do it all over again, yet I’ve seen multiple people claim they are going to use The Old Republic strictly for single-player needs. Whether or not they actually go through with it still shows there’s a desire to cut out the multiplayer in MMO (MSO?).

It’s surprising in itself that The Old Republic exists. Apart from the fact that it’s a hugely popular franchise with an devoted RPG developer behind it, The Old Republic has an identity crisis. It can’t do a lot of things that traditional RPGs can do, and it doesn’t do things traditional MMOs did. Is it trying to change our perceptions or is it just unique? Will the next batch of content be single-player or multiplayer focused? The more time spent thinking about the possibilities, the more interesting this whole thing gets.

15 hours with The Old Republic

I’ve had some time to sink into Star Wars: The Old Republic, probably not enough to assess it compared to my time with World of Warcraft, but enough to suss out some initial impressions. I have no say in its eventual success, nor do I have any say in if it’s “better” than WoW; I do feel confident enough to tell you it’s the best MMO out there that isn’t WoW.

“It isn’t WoW,” is kind of a tricky statement, because were it not for the cutscenes and dialogue wheels, playing SWTOR is a lot like playing WoW. Someone will demand you kill 10 bandits because they are interrupting military efforts, someone will want you to place bombs on enemy encampments, and someone will probably want you to deliver a message at some point, all of these things you will do without hesitation. Upon earning enough experience to gain a level, you will be rewarded with a talent point to invest into a talent tree. Over time you will create a rotation for yourself to go through during enemy encounters. It all sounds pretty standard, correct?

SWTOR does a few things that Blizzard either never came up with, or never found a way to implement. Apart from its ability to convey importance to what would otherwise be menial missions, SWTOR devotes its time holding the MMO behind its back while ushering you along your single-player storyline, almost as if it’s embarrassing or something. It’s really weird, but after a few hours I gave into its manipulation and went along for the ride. The smartest thing that comes out of SWTOR’s need to immerse you is the companions. From a mechanical standpoint, it introduces players to class interaction, which is important assuming a lot of new MMO players might not grasp the concepts of a healer or a tank. But to an experienced MMO player it removes the downtime during the leveling progress, especially when the game is already littered with cutscenes.

With all of SWTOR’s polish though, it’s easy to find things that may have been overlooked or skipped. For example: WoW’s incredibly useful visual cues. Sure, it was an add-on that Blizzard stole for a patch bullet point sometime during Wrath of the Lich King, but without it my eyes are forced to stare at the ability bar. For me specifically, as a Bounty Hunter I need to know when Rail Shot is available for use, a nice graphical cue that appears somewhere near my character on screen would be preferable.

Again, my time with SWTOR is extremely limited if you look at the time I spent with WoW, but then again, new MMOs need to bring a lot of finesse if they want to compete. Maybe if I hit max level the actual MMO features will start to unearth themselves, but for now SWTOR is the largest BioWare game with a promise of cooperation that so far, has ultimately felt in the way during the leveling experience.  Luckily, I believe BioWare and EA managed to launch a good, new MMO. It’ll be important to see how BioWare deals with balancing classes and adding content, because without support an MMO is nothing.

I’m not done yet; I’m still finishing missions and still leveling up. Look forward to more impressions as I continue my path to level 50.

Mass Effect 3 delayed, you should be relieved

Mass Effect 3 is now aiming for a release within the “first three months of 2012.”

But don’t fret! Think about your future for a second. Mass Effect 3 was set to release amongst a load of other fantastic looking games. For example: Uncharted 3 and Batman: Arkham City. Both of these are going to be occupying a large amount of your time–and don’t even get me started about Skyrim. What about Rage and Deus Ex? We haven’t even begun to tackle all of the games that are expected to be released later this year. Allotting the time and effort needed to complete the final step in your mission to defeat the Reapers and save the galaxy isn’t going to eat up anything less than a week. Let’s just assume you’re too busy.

Executive producter Casey Hudson brings us back to the present and assures us that our patience will be rewarded: “The development team is laser focused on making sure Mass Effect 3 is the biggest, boldest and best game in the series, ensuring that it exceeds everyone’s expectations.” Did you see that? He promises us that Mass Effect 3: Mass Harder will rock.

In an earnings call earlier today, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello said, “Essentially, step by step, [BioWare is] adjusting some of the gameplay mechanics and some of the features that you’ll see at E3 that can put this into a genre equivalent of shooter-meets-RPG, and essentially address a far larger market opportunity than Mass Effect 1 did and Mass Effect 2 began to approach.”

Action is not going to be in short-supply this holiday season, but early 2012 is looking to be just as explosive.

[via Joystiq]