C’mon, no Whammies, no Whammies, STOP! Argh, I got a swirly thing and some squigglies. That means I, uh… won two bars of gold-pressed latinum? I wish the Dabo girl would stop flirting with that Klingon — I have no Bajorly clue what I’m doing.
Hiya, readers! Pull up a barstool and get comfy. This week’s Captain’s Log, your Thursday fix of Star Trek Online news and views, is all about minigames. With the recent release of Season 2: Ancient Enemies, the folks at Cryptic Studios introduced a pair of minigames to STO, and they say they have more in the works. I thought it might be fun to check out the new diversions and maybe suggest a few of our own for future updates.
Dragon*Con is just a few days away and SOE will once again be a part of the MMO Track! Here’s all you need to know about SOE’s Who, What, When, Where and Why at this event – we hope you'll join us for the fun!
We recently uncovered a security risk with a piece of software on the site. While we do not believe users had their passwords compromised we still do not take matters like this without caution. To make sure everyone is safe we immediately worked with the software company and fixed the security problem in a matter of hours.
To also make sure no ones account was compromised we did a password reset for a few select members. If your account was compromised you can easily find out because we sent you an email stating your password was changed. All you need to do is a quick password recovery HERE. You will then be emailed your new password and you can change it as you see fit.
Keep in mind we want to reiterate we do not believe members accounts where compromised but we still felt that its always better safe than sorry.
AMD released ATI Catalyst 10.8 drivers for their line of graphic cards. One of the features of this driver is Anti-Aliasing Support for Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty and OpenGL ES 2.0 support.
You can find the drivers here.
Let us know if you found issues with this new driver or if it did wonders for your gameplay experience.
Make sure to set a System Restore Point or previous stable driver installer in case things go bad. Blog
New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in theWoW Rookie Guide.
Spoiler alert: Today’s WoW Rookie is nothing but one big spoiler of the changes Cataclysm will bring to existing Alliance newbie zones. If you’re aiming to hit the expansion spoiler-free with fresh, unsullied eyes, you’ll want to re-join us two weeks from now (since next week’s WoW Rookie will look at Cataclysm newbie zones Horde-side).
But for those of you who are itching for a glimpse into what’s in store for newly created Alliance characters in the expansion, we’ve got brief highlights and screenshot gallery samplers of the gnome, dwarf, night elf and human starting experiences. There’s not much new to report for draenei in the Exodar, save that their flight point has been moved inside the city. And as for the new Alliance race, the worgen, we’ve given them their own detailed gallery and write-up, and you can head over to our YouTube channel to watch video of several worgen gameplay segments. Come back next week for a similar look ahead at the newbie zone revamps for Horde races.
And now, screenshot galleries (one last spoiler alert for the road — Cataclysm spoilers abound!) of each starting area plus written highlights, after the break.
While One Shots is normally all about the stories that can be told in just one picture, every so often we like to mix it up a bit because a particular two-picture series will convey a story far better than only one image could. Such is the case with today’s Star Trek Online screenshot that’s come to us from Andrew (also known as Pojoh). Since this is a one-two punch of pictoral peculiarity, we’re going to turn the rest of today’s column over to him. Remember if you’d like to show off what’s going on in your world, just email your screenshots to us at oneshots@massively.com along with your name, the name of the game, and a description. And now, a Star Trekkin’ day in the life of Andrew, which continues beyond the break:
“The scene: My Ferengi Captain, Pojoh, beamed onto a Federation ship that was worse for wear. In fact the only things holding it together were the containment fields. I wanted to test the containment field — in this case open space was on both sides of a doorway. I jumped through….“
Baradin Hold Preview
Baradin Hold is the new PvP Raid Instance in Tol Barad. Just like the Vault of Archavon in Wintergrasp, the instance will only be available to the faction controlling the zone and according to the current layout of the map, Blizzard will most likely add more wings over time.
Delve into the mysteries of Azshara with game designers Craig Amai and Dave Kosak, who talked with us about the Horde’s northward expansion and the rise of the Bilgewater Cartel as part of our ongoing coverage of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Adventure, conflict, and, of course, profit await those who enter the newly re-imagined Azshara!
Q. What was the original concept for the zone?
A. Azshara has always been somewhat barren in terms of content, so our original plan was simply to fill in most of the unused space and then take some of the quests that spanned multiple zones and move them completely over to Azshara. The zone itself was a bit of a blank slate, so this approach seemed obvious from the very beginning.
While discussing our goals for the overall flow for Kalimdor, we started to heavily consider when, where, and how goblins would be introduced to questing on the continent. We realized that we were in sort of a dilemma because, at that point, four out of six Horde races were being routed through the same 10–20 leveling experience in the Northern Barrens. It was only then that we decided to retrofit Azshara as an alternative zone for level 10 through 20 Horde characters and make it a goblin hub.
Naturally, once goblins got involved, things sort of exploded.
Q. Who will be using this zone (what levels/factions)?
A. Azshara is designed for level 10 through 20 Horde characters. Goblins will be encouraged to level in this particular zone because it expands on their story and sheds some additional light on already established characters. Orcs, trolls, and tauren will be able to choose between Azshara and the Northern Barrens, based on their personal preference. (Hint: Pick Azshara!)
Q. Without giving up any spoilers, what’s the general storyline for this zone? How has it changed from the original design?
A. Having recently gained the mantle of warchief, Garrosh Hellscream is preparing for war to claim all of Kalimdor for the Horde. The goblins of the Bilgewater Cartel, headquartered in Bilgewater Harbor, are playing their part by building war machines, constructing weapons, and establishing a massive naval harbor within sight of Orgrimmar. Meanwhile, the night elves aren’t content to sit idly by; they fully intend to challenge this unwelcome occupation in Azshara and hopefully stymie a conflict that would otherwise be carried deep into their forests.
Amid all this tension, the Bilgewater Cartel is also out to make a name for itself in true goblin fashion. What is the best way to show solidarity? Reshape the Bay of Storms into a giant Horde symbol! From there, a secret lab, an extensive rocketway, and a "pleasure palace" with its own golf course are just natural leaps in goblin logic.
Overall, players will find that very little remains of the Azshara of old. The Hydraxian Warlords have departed. Azuregos is missing. Xylem’s tower still stands, but Xylem himself seems to have stumbled upon something that has quickly driven him insane. And while clumsy explorers continue to be eaten by the local giant-life, the goblins have developed a method to make such an unfortunate circumstance practical and, yes, profitable.
Q. How has Orgrimmar’s relentless expansion altered the lands of Azshara?
A. Orgrimmar now has a massive gate leading north into Azshara, and the canyon that winds into this gate will give players a brief look at the war machines being wrought from goblin ingenuity and technology. The rest of the zone expands further on this promise of destruction. The middle of Azshara includes the new Bilgewater Harbor, which acts as a naval port for the entire Orgrimmar fleet, launching boats and zeppelins to carry out Garrosh’s vision for the future of Kalimdor and beyond.
Q. What have the goblins of the Bilgewater Cartel, now aligned with the Horde, done to reshape Azshara in their (or Trade Prince Gallywix’s) image?
A. A quick glance at recent cartographical surveys of the region will show that the goblin commitment to the Horde cause is strong. Azshara is now the largest terraforming project on Azeroth! Whether it’s sculpting the terrain to promote Horde propaganda, moving an entire mountain to pillage the minerals underneath, or slapping the face of the trade prince on a nearby crag, there’s no question who wears the pants in Azshara these days.
Q. What do you think is the most exciting new addition to the zone?
A. Well, there are super-intelligent raptors, a haunted bulldozer, a crack squad of goblin commandos, a hunt for Azuregos, an insane mage with countless apprentices, rat riding, parachuting from an exploding tower…
What if we just say that the most exciting new addition to Azshara is the entire zone?
Q. You mentioned earlier that Azuregos is missing, but now he’s being hunted. What’s going on there?
A. Strangely, Azuregos has disappeared, and no one seems to know where he flew off to. After that last group of bloodthirsty adventurers came through on some sort of quest to make a now-useless quiver, he’s just been… well, he’s gone, and there have been whisperings of someone in Bilgewater Harbor who will pay handsomely for information on his whereabouts.
Q. What goes into redesigning a zone like this?
A. We wanted to maintain the original color palette and fall-foliage theme for Azshara, but beyond that, it was a complete rework from the ground up. Artists began the process by creating some incredible landmarks, including a giant cannon centerpiece for the new city and an entire "pleasure palace" complete with the goblin equivalent of Mount Rushmore, which just oozed goblin flavor. Level designers then reshaped the environment, literally moving mountains, parting waters, and erecting a colossal, zone-encompassing rocket freeway. We then worked to complement the new scenery by adding a bizarre array of quests befitting the unique and crazy capitalistic culture of the Bilgewater Cartel.
Q. What was the most challenging aspect about implementing all of these changes?
A. Not using our new terrain phasing technology to blow up everything. Self-restraint doesn’t come easy.
Q. What should players do or go see first?
A. Players should ideally start at the beginning, near the rear gate of Orgrimmar, and then follow the quest series from there; it’ll lead you on a nice, smooth ride of awesome. Or, if you’re the impatient type, head straight to Bilgewater Harbor, take a stroll through town, and grab some lunch at the local crustacean shack.
Q. So, last question. Bilgewater Harbor: great port town or the greatest port town?
A. From its roots as a humble "city-in-a-box" to the bustling metropolis it is today, Bilgewater Harbor straddles the line between myth and legend. At least, that’s what the brochure says.
The orc commanders might argue differently, though. It isn’t exactly easy to maintain discipline in an otherwise lawless city where every vice you can imagine is available for just a handful of silver and debauchery is half off.
Thank you, Craig and Dave, for taking the time to sit down and speak with us about the work you’ve done to revitalize Azshara as an epic leveling zone in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm!
As usual, here is a bunch of screenshots from the current build of the beta!
Did you miss out on the Cataclysm beta guild contest, simply because you lived in an Oceanic area? Still want in on the Cataclysm beta? Fear not — there is now a contest open just for you. Unlike your US counterparts, this time there are no essays involved — screenshots are the name of the game. Today Community Manager Zarhym announced the Oceanic Guild Screenshot Beta contest which, much like the version for US servers, will award each winner with 10 beta keys for their guild members to use.
Zarhym
We’re proud to announce a brand new contest open exclusively to residents of Australia and New Zealand. We’re looking for some tightly knit guilds who are ready to rumble their way into our World of Warcraft: Cataclysm beta test.
We want you to share screenshots of your guild’s greatest triumphs and proudest achievements with us. Whether you and your mates just took down the Twilight Destroyer or you’ve crushed Kel’thuzad for the first time, we want to witness the milestones of your success. Each guild master who submits a winning screenshot will win 10 invitations to the World of Warcraft Cataclysm beta test for their guild. The contest will be on for five weeks and each guild is limited to just one submission. We’ll pick five winners each week for a total of 25 winning submissions from eligible participants, starting August 27, 2010.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW.com’s Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW’s third expansion, from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.
It’s Wednesday night, so it’s time for another live episode of Choose My Adventure, Cataclysm beta edition. Tonight I am streaming Robinka the dwarf shaman. As usual, I will be chatting with everyone in the chat room and taking requests from there. The stream is above and the chat is after the break.
On Wednesday, August 25th, 2010, at 2:00 AM PDT, some of the SOE services will be undergoing maintenance. This will include the EQII voice chat system, on all servers.
The expected duration of this maintenance is 5 hours.
For those still looking to transfer, the next round will start tomorrow as stated in the announcement below.
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Signups for the next round of Character Transfers will begin on Thursday, August 26 at 1:00 p.m. PST | 9:00 p.m GMT. The maximum transfer caps have been readjusted to limit the amount of transfers possible. If you miss this round, though, don’t worry. You’ll have another opportunity next week.
Fly high, Daevas!
-The Aion Community Team
There was also some video and such from Gamescom 2010 (many thanks to our community members who’ve been posting the videos separately to Aion Discussion) that is all in a single post from the NCWest folks. It’s more condensed for those who may not have been following Gamescom at all.
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505 exhibitors fought for the attention of over 250,000 visitors in this year’s iteration of gamescom, the world’s largest game exhibition. NCsoft and ArenaNet attended in full force and unleashed a schedule packed with cool activities onto the unsuspecting show visitors.
Our cameras ran hot throughout the show, and the NCsoft West flickr album exists to somewhat prove this theorem. We capture several snapshots from the NCsoft cosplay contest held on Sunday, where an impressive Guilds Wars 2 Asura walked away as winner. The contributions were awesome though, and we’d like it to be known, simply in order to spice things up with a cliché, that if we could have given everyone a first prize, we would have!
The NCsoft West YouTube channel is an excellent resource for event coverage. We had a live stream running throughout the entire show where you could catch everything we did online. Just in case you missed the stream, we made sure to upload high definition copies of our intense schedule’s most notable events. Head on over right away and have a look at the on-stage interviews with Aion Producer Chris Hager, or Jiho Lee and Seungwuk Baek from the Korean development team. You might also want to have a look at our cool summary video manifesting the incredible atmosphere we lived and breathed during the week.
News coverage was posted throughout the event on our comprehensive gamescom 2010 event page. We’ll continue this tradition during future events to ensure that you have one single place to go to for relevant updates.
All in all, we had a smashing time. Seeing the ocean of hands wave in the air is a majestic sight forceful enough to put anyone in awe. The hall our booth was located in is known for being one of the loudest halls, a battlefield of noise, a no-man’s-land where the weakest fade into oblivion and the strongest echo towards the horizon. To that end, our entire team has now been isolated in soothing underground cocoons for sound rehabilitation.
We can’t wait for the next show and chance to meet you all in person!
__________________
Fly High Daevas,
Tamat ~ Andrew Beegle
Community Manager
Throne of the Four Winds – Skywall Raid Instance
Let’s post something new today! The Throne of the Four Winds is the raid instance in Skywall, the elemental plane of Air. It will feature 2 encounters:
A fight against the "Conclave of Wind", a Djinn council. (The Djinn model in the game files is the one used by Siamat)
A fight against Al’akir, the Elemental Lord of Air. (No models yet)
The instance looks similar to the Vortex Pinnacle, the 5-man dungeon of Skywall and players will move between platforms with their flying mounts.
We think Multi-Shot is a more interesting ability and can fill the hunter AE niche (along with Explosive Trap). We’ll have to change Multi-Shot from the current version to get it there. I’m very sorry if for some unusual reason Volley was your favorite spell as a hunter. We’ve been trying to consolidate abilities and free up some bar space and having multiple AEs that competed with each other seems like a good area to hit up. The Volley and Multi-Shot niches were very similar, which resulted in the latter being dead. We wanted to pick one and we though Multi-Shot felt more huntery and less "clunky" (to use a favorite Wow forums term).
Do consider that you won’t be AE’ing yourselves through Cataclysm content the way you do currently. When you do need to AE, hunters will have the tools to do so. In situations where you do have to AE, you are probably not also trying to CC. When you’re back to the level of trivializing lower level content, nobody is going to say "Don’t bring a hunter. Their AE spam isn’t spammy enough." We don’t consider easily breaking rogues out of stealth a good reason to keep Volley around.
I think that hits most of the reasonable concerns. I care much less about addressing the unreasonable ones. 🙂
As always, those of you whose sole contribution is to post very inane or derogatory things will be banned.
Man, have we come a long way from "AE is only for trash." (Source)
Paladin (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents) One Man Army
Yes. Many of the problems we’ve had with Ret are of the "one man army" category, where a paladin can do a lot of damage, then go defensive and heal themselves up. We love the kit of the paladin who can heal as well as do damage, but it needs to be tightly controlled. Word of Glory gives us that control. We have the room to make the spell really powerful because we know its on a tight cooldown and you sacrifice dps to use it. We can’t do that today with say Flash of Light, because once you can cast one strong FoL, you can cast a bunch of them until you go OOM (at which point you Judge or Divine Plea, and you’re going again). Similarly, we can make Selfless Healer nearly overpowered because you can’t use it on yourself and because even with it you’re not going to out compete a Holy paladin in healing. If you can occasionally contribute to group healing in tight spots, then that’s great. That’s some utility you can provide. (Note: Don’t oversell this as "I’ll get brought to raids because of my healing.") (Source)
Class balance and RNG
That’s the wrong view to take though. The equivalent would be "I’m balanced around getting a crit every swing, so when that doesn’t happen, RNG screws me." You get a Templar’s Verdict every 3 Crusader Strikes. Sometimes you get lucky and need fewer. You of course need to pay attention for when that happens and be able to react to it and alter your immediate plans. That right there is the element we think is most missing from today’s Ret paladin. (Source)
Words of Glory The amount it heals is most definitely balanced around how good it will be for Holy.
Those numbers don’t have to be the same though. The new talent tree design affords us a lot more flexibility in that regard. Part of the reason Word of Glory is so useful to Holy is because it costs no mana. Ret doesn’t really care about mana, because it comes and goes easily, but a Ret generally won’t be able to sit there and queue up several Holy Lights in a row. They will be able to sometimes use a Word of Glory though. (Source)
New World of Warcraft Fan Wallpaper
The World of Warcraft Fan Wallpapers have been updated with a new wallpaper titled "Cataclysm" by Kenvd.
According to Blizzard Entertainment, all BlizzCon attendees and BlizzCon Virtual Ticket viewers will receive an exclusive set of in-game items for World of Warcraft and Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty.
A new murloc companion named Deathy will be redeemed by World of Warcraft players by entering the scratch code in their BlizzCon card. Starcraft II players may redeem a Murloc Marine character portrait in their profile, and a terran, protoss or zerg deep-sea decals that can be placed on your multiplayer units.
BlizzCon 2010 takes place on October 22 and 23 at the Anaheim Convention Center. For further details or to order the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket, visit www.BlizzCon.com Blog
Site and Contents Copyright 2003-2010 All Rights Reserved All information is for intellectual information and taultunleashed is a news source sharing the latest and greatest. Taultunleashed is not affiliated with any gaming company. If you are associated with any gaming company directly or indirectlys please leave now.
Captain’s Log: Say hello to my minigames originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
We recently uncovered a security risk with a piece of software on the site. While we do not believe users had their passwords compromised we still do not take matters like this without caution. To make sure everyone is safe we immediately worked with the software company and fixed the security problem in a matter of hours.
Zarhym
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In 
Hunter (
Paladin (
