All Posts by Stradden

MEN AND WOMEN WANTED for Perilous Duty. Unpaid, harrowing delays, long months of grueling work, chance of setbacks extreme. Glory and fame upon success. – Qeirias Noll, Ill Omen part 2

We are pleased to announce that The Chronicles of Spellborn has opened up International Closed Beta Test applications. The application can be reached via our main site: www.tcos.com . We will be moving into the Beta testing with a limited number of applicants, and growing our testing base smoothly over time. In Q1 2006 we plan to hold a large-scale Open/Stress period in which the majority of applicants will be able to take part in testing. In the meantime, individuals not selected as beta participants can increase their chances (and help out the development team) by taking active part in our official www.tcos.com forums.

In designing the settings for D&D Online, the first thing we did was ask ourselves: what is Eberron? What is it about the world of Eberron that makes it such an exciting place to be and the perfect setting for a Dungeons and Dragons campaign? To answer this question from a visual standpoint, I had to get my pencils moving. After getting initial direction from my Art Director and the D&D Art Director from Wizards of the Coast, I began sketching out ideas for the main parts of the city with the help of Todd Rueping, one of our other concept artists.

Eberron was not your typical fantasy setting; it wasn't a medieval-European place. It had to have its own architectural sensibilities, patterns and thematic elements that were unique but also familiar. So we started by researching many different cultures from our own planet: Japanese, Mongolian, American Indian, Aztec, Mayan, Middle-Eastern, African, and Indian. Then, using what we had learned, we began creating patterns, elements and visual themes that were inspired by these various cultures, but not specifically representing any one of them.

The city of Stormreach was described as a huge frontier-town built amongst the ruins of an ancient society of Giants that had fallen from grace thousands of years ago. To achieve this affect, I decided to take inspiration from things I had observed while living in New York City. New York is constantly being built and rebuilt, so you will often see a newer, modern building built atop or amongst the foundations of older buildings, creating an interesting juxtaposition of architectural styles and giving the city a feeling of being composed of multiple layers.

Stormreach itself was originally built by pirates looking for a good hiding place. Eventually it became populated by individuals from all over Eberron looking to make their fortunes on the continent of Xen'Drik, a place that holds the promise of glory, wealth and fame to the strongest survivors. While the city was supposed to feel wild and dangerous, it also had to have its opulent and civilized places where bankers, politicians and important families would feel comfortable going about their daily business. Sort of a mix between Tombstone and Paris...

Another Peak Concurrent User Record for EVE This evening at 19:53 UTC, EVE players raised their own Peak Concurrent User record to 16.399.

This record is the latest in a string of PCU records following EVE's latest expansion - EVE Online: Cold War Edition.

To our knowledge this represents a world record for the largest number of users sharing a persistent virtual world, where no sharding or instancing is used.

What is the Guild Wars team’s philosophy on in-game farming?

In Guild Wars as in any other online roleplaying game, we think that maintaining a robust player-driven economy is important and adds a lot of fun to the game. It’s true that Guild Wars is a competitive game and therefore focuses much more on player skill than on item acquisition. But PvM-oriented players still look for rare items that they can use to distinguish their characters, as well as long term goals that they can work towards acquiring. In order to allow the game’s economy to be an important and fun factor in PvM-oriented play but not create unfair imbalances in PvP-oriented play, we often make rare items easier to acquire for PvP use than for PvM use, or make rare items differ from common items only by their appearance. In general we try to make it much easier in Guild Wars than in most games for average players to acquire almost-the-best of everything, and to compete on a level playing field, while still giving the more hard-core players ways to differentiate their characters.

It’s theoretically possible to create an online roleplaying game without a player-driven economy. For example, you could make every variant of every item in the game available for purchase from NPC vendors. But that would take away a lot of the feeling of accomplishment of finding a rare item. Even that might not be enough, because if certain vendors were difficult to find or travel to, then players would still trade amongst themselves at above-vendor prices. More broadly, you could simply disable the ability of players to trade items or to drop them on the ground. None of this sounds particularly fun, and given that Guild Wars uses randomly generated loot, placing every variant of every item in the game on an NPC vendor is certainly not an option for Guild Wars.

BlizzCon, Blizzard's inaugural gaming convention, will feature a king-of-the-hill tournament on World of Warcraft's newest battleground: the Arathi Basin.

Players can join as part of a full pre-chosen team, as a small group, or as an individual in a pickup team. After each match, the players on the winning team will keep their seats while the losing team members give up their bank of computers to the next challengers.

In all, there will be three concurrent matches of Arathi Basin going on all day during both days of the convention. The team that retains its status as Kings of the Basin for the most consecutive wins will face the ultimate challenge on each day of the show: a battle against a team of World of Warcraft developers. In addition, there will be other prizes for teams that win multiple consecutive matches.

Can you perfectly mimic a whelp's squeal? Are you a dead ringer for the male Gnome's voice? Then you just might be a winner in the BlizzCon Character and Monster Sound-Alike Contest! This latest BlizzCon contest is sponsored by Games for Windows and Alienware, and the prizes are out of this world! Five lucky winners will receive Alienware Gaming Notebooks -- perfect for playing World of Warcraft on the go! So, if you sound like you belong in Azeroth, let us hear it! Contestants can signup at the show; check the BlizzCon information booth for more details at the event.

Q: Can CS clear a quest for me? I don't want to do this old one, I want to do these champion quests!

A: I know regular Herald readers already know this, so if you all could please spread the word and tell them to check the story I posted here: http://www.camelotherald.com/more/2223.shtml, I'd surely appreciate it.

Q: Do AE dots, from shaman and bonedancer for example, stack with the AE dots from champion levels? And the same question for singletarget dots.

A: The Code Warrior looked it up, logged in to double check, and replied "The single target DoTs from the Seer champion level line is treated as a spec-line single target DoT for purposes of stacking, so bonedancers could use their base DoT and the champion level DoT, but Bone Army spec bonedancers would be better suited to using their spec line DoT.

"The area effect DoT from the Seer champion level line does in fact stack with the Bone Army spec area effect DoT."

Q: Friar staff damage is 100% dexterity based. Is caster staff damage 100% dexterity as well? If so am I correct in assuming then that it affects the damage from champion line styles?

A: CW again: "Correct, champion caster staves are treated as a weapon of the Staff class, which is set to use Dexterity as their skill for purposes of damage calculation. However since a caster will have a specialization of 0 in staves, the variance involved in calculating damage will make it difficult to see any benefit."

Antharas the Earth Dragon is dead! The fearsome dragon was defeated for the first time in North America on Friday, October 14, 2005 on the Gustin server. The alliances Heaven, LaCosaNostra, and Malevolence banded together to attack and overcome Antharas. Two hundred players worked together to kill the dragon after an amazing hour of intense battle. Congratulations to these alliances and the Gustin server for this incredible achievement!

IRTH ONLINE PRE-LAUNCH SPECIAL OFFER ANNOUNCED

DEDHAM, MA – OCTOBER 14, 2005 – Magic Hat Software, creators of MMORPG Irth Online which launches on November 1, 2005, has announced a Pre-Launch Special Offer effective October 15 through October 31, 2005.

The Pre-Launch Special Offer allows gamers to purchase Irth Online for $19.95, a 33% discount off the at-launch price of $29.95. The pre-order subscription fee will be $9.95 per month for the first six months, representing a 30% savings over the at-launch fee of $13.95 per month. Pre-Launch Special Offer orders may be placed online only at www.irthonline.com which explains the ordering procedure and payment options.

“Gamers who pre-order save $10 on the purchase price and $4 on the monthly subscription fee,” says Alan Chipura, Lead Game Designer.

If those who pre-order Irth Online choose the option of paying in advance for three months of subscription fees, they will receive an additional, fourth month for free. This offer will not be available after Irth Online is launched.

Magic Hat Software will offer both digital distribution and physical distribution options. Gamers with a high speed Internet connection may purchase an Irth Online access key to play the game online, and gamers using a dial-up connection may purchase the game either on CD-ROM (two disc set) or on a DVD (disc versions will not be sold at retail stores and may be purchased only on the Irth Online official game site). Each of the three purchase options – online, CD-ROM, or DVD – is priced at $19.95 as part of the Pre-Launch Special Offer. After the game is launched, the same three purchase options will be available at $29.95 each.

Pre-orders must be placed online after 12:01 AM (EDT) on Saturday, October 15, and before 11:59 PM (EST) on October 31, 2005, the day before the launch. The Pre-Launch Special Offer allows customers to access the full game at 3:00 PM (EDT) on Sunday, October 30, 2005, two days before the official launch.

Once Irth Online is released on November 1, 2005, all pre-launch offers cease, and the title will be available only at the $29.95 price, and the monthly subscription fee will be $13.95.

Live Version 3.9.6 (October 13, 2005)

Update Highlights:

Combat Engineer Window: We added a Combat Engineer window for viewing deployables. You can toggle the C.E. window by pressing Alt-E by default (remappable in the global keymap list of the Options page). This window shows how many mines, boomers, motion sensors, and spitfire turrets the player has deployed, along with the deploy limits. Project Rabbit Changes:

• Added Rabbit sound preferences on the Sound Options page to allow players to disable the Rabbit ball drop, pickup, and reset sounds.
• Changed it so Rabbit ball carriers that are in vehicles that are destroyed by friendly fire are bailed unharmed from the vehicles instead of killed in the explosions.
• Made the Rabbit status window a bit transparent

Hello folks,

A lot has happened since my last journal. We've had several updates which added a number of features and improvements to the game. We've managed to cross a few of the items from my previous journal off the list, with Pandora's Box and anytime-use consumables out. We also implemented support for SOE Chat.

Though my previous disclaimer still stands, I am happy to say that our team is still driving forward with everything I touched on in the last journal. Today's journal will give you some insight into what it took to get Pandora's Box into the game, a few notes on combat revision, melee free-fire, and a look at a couple of new features.

Pandora's Box

You've all had some time to play with Pandora's Box and by all accounts the feature is a success. Thousands of box activations have occurred since we launched the feature in August. Pandora's Box was a challenging feature to design and implement, and we had to overcome a lot of hurdles to get it to you, the players.

Pandora's Box started as a bare-bones idea in a design meeting shortly after launch. The initial idea centered on spawning challenging encounters in exterior areas. The scope was small and not really all that involved, but it didn't stay that way for long.

Shortly after the initial design, I had second thoughts about the scope. I felt that by just adding the encounters the content would come off as being thin. I convinced my producer to push out the deadline so that we could concentrate on turning Pandora's Box into a fuller feature which would combine the best aspects of our existing game systems to present content in a new and interesting way...

EverQuest II PvP Poll

“In the near future a new PVP system will be added to the already exciting world of EverQuest II. We would like to know whether you, the EQ II Community and players, would prefer…”

In the past, we’ve made some of our files available on CD, completely free except for the cost of shipping and handling. We’ve decided to make the Darkness Rising client available in this manner. The only cost to the player will be shipping and handling to have it sent to you. (Remember, of course, that activating these files has a 19.99 cost payable through your account information screen.) This is NOT a website of Mythic's, but a third party we have hired to take care of this need:

https://www.plimus.com/jsp/buynow.jsp?contractId=1651617

And can I just TELL you, this has been in the works for days now, and I've been dying to drop hints the entire time. Couldn't, of course, in case it fell through, but every single email and post requesting this very thing has had me gnawing my fingernails to stubs!

The winner of the Come To My Town contest was Oklahoma City. If you live around there, mark 1/20/06 on your calendars, because Mythic is coming to your town bearing t-shirts, prizes, and more - for free! Keep an eye on the Roundtable link to your left (bottom of the column) for details as we get them.

While the BlizzCon goody bag will have a little something for everyone to take home, attendees might still want some loot to share with friends and guildmates who couldn't make it to the show. With that in mind, we've created a variety of limited-edition items that will make their debut at BlizzCon. Please visit the BlizzCon Merchandise page to check out some of this epic BlizzCon gear. These items will all be produced in limited quantities, so be sure to stop by the BlizzCon Store as early as you can at the show...before someone ninja loots everything out from under you!

We are pleased to announce that the Dungeons & Dragons® Online: Stormreach" community has seen two very important milestones this week. In the past six months, DDO.COM forum registrations have increased more than any other upcoming Massively Multiplayer Game! Over 100,000 gamers have registered on the official forums. In addition to this, over 150,000 gamers have applied to participate in the game's Alpha program and upcoming Beta Preview program.

We at Turbine would like to thank our community members for their participation in this growth and for their anticipation for our game. We are looking forward to opening the dungeons to the world in 2006!

The Alpha is progressing very well and there's still time to sign up for your chance to join the upcoming Beta Preview program! Be sure to sign up for the DDO.COM forums and then sign up for the Beta Preview. DDO.COM forum registration will increase your chances to get into the Beta Preview. If you have already applied for Alpha, your application will also be considered for the Beta Preview.

Event Details

This event is scheduled to commence at Oct. 20, 2005 17:00 (PDT) and will last until Nov. 1, 2005 0:00 (PST).

How to Play

Trade a treat to a disguised NPC walking in Bastok, San d'Oria, or Windurst.

The NPC will only accept certain treats.

Players might be disguised as beastmen or monsters for a certain period of time after trading a treat to an NPC. Magic or items cannot be used while disguised. Costumed players also cannot perform actions that require a target, such as talking to NPCs or opening doors.

The effects of the monster costume may be canceled by changing to a new area or:

1. Windows version: Press the [+] key on the numeric keypad twice. PlayStation 2 version: Press the triangle button twice.
2. Line up the selection box with the status icon entitled "Costume."
3. Windows version: Press the [Enter] key. PlayStation 2 version: Press the X button.

Talk to an event moogle during the festival to find out more. Perhaps a surprise awaits...

Mythic Entertainment Attributes its 2,690 Percent Revenue Growth to Continued World Wide Success of Dark Age of Camelot (R)

FAIRFAX, VA – October 13, 2005 - Mythic Entertainment, developer and publisher of the massively-multiplayer online role-playing game Dark Age of Camelot, today announced that it ranked Number Six on Deloitte’s prestigious 2005 Technology Fast 50 for Virginia, a ranking of the 50 fastest growing technology companies in the area by Deloitte & Touche LLP, one of the nation’s leading professional services organizations. Rankings are based on percentage revenue growth over five years from 2000-2004. This is the 4th consecutive year in which Mythic has been named to the Technology Fast 50.

Mythic Entertainment’s CEO, Mark Jacobs, credits the continued world wide success of Dark Age of Camelot and company’s focus on developing new content to continually expand its virtual world with the 2,690 percent revenue growth from 2000–2004. He said, “At Mythic Entertainment, we remain dedicated to the growth and prosperity of our flagship title. We take pride in being a world wide leader in online gaming and strive to provide our fantastic fan base with new and challenging experiences within Dark Age of Camelot.”

Mythic Entertainment previously ranked sixth on Deloitte’s 2004 Technology Fast 50 for the area. The average increase in revenues among companies who