Tweet It seems everyone’s got an opinion about the new Neverwinter online RPG recently announced by Cryptic. Whether you’re a fan of the venerable Dungeons and Dragons franchise, a veteran of the classic single- and multi-player Neverwinter Nights titles, or just a fan of online games in general, you’ll want to check out Massively’s exclusive interview with Cryptic Studios COO Jack Emmert.
Our own Sera Brennan sat down to quiz the Cryptic mastermind about everything from the new title, to Cryptic’s evolving business model, to some candid insights into the making of both Champions Online and Star Trek Online.
Greetings everyone time to show this week's batch of wallpapers in the next installment of the Weekly Wallpaper. This time we have one official wallpaper and another from eXist this week from the StarCraft II Wallpaper gallery .
This week we start off with an official wallpaper featuring the people's hero Jim Raynor. A great face shot of him in his armor ready to go.
We end this week with another wallpaper by eXist called Wings of Liberty. A simple wallpaper showing the logo on top with jim raynor in the background.
Click the thumbnails to see larger versions of all these images.
Please also don't forget if you have any wallpapers you have made and want to share them. Go to the gallery upload and share away. Blog
Cataclysm Mounts – Drakes of the Wind, Stone Drakes, and Camels
Mounts didn’t get a lot of love on the front page since the beginning of the beta. A lot of stuff was implemented in-game during the latest beta update and we now have a decent idea of what to expect in-game. I tried to restrict it to the mounts that we will most likely see in-game, more recolors are available but they aren’t always linked to an item, etc … Let’s keep it simple for the moment.
This is not a complete list of all the mounts added to the game with Cataclysm, I’ll do that a little later when most of them are added to the game.
Camels
Last but not least, camels! Absolutely no idea where they are from, but they will most likely be linked to Uldum.
Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Crowd Control spells cast time increased to 2 sec
Pretty much. The crowd control spells were never designed around the existence of haste. Asking anyone to interrupt a 1.1 second Polymorph isn’t reasonable. Health pools are going to be a lot larger, so control is going to play a larger role than burst compared to the live environment. On the other hand, dispels are more expensive in Cataclysm and you can waste a dispel now if there is nothing there to dispel.
So I’m right in my sentiment that, instead of correcting haste affecting utility spells, we now all get to suffer even further exacerbated haste dominance?
I never follow this line of thinking. Yes, making it harder to have a [very fast] cast time requires more haste. But you have to make a big trade off for that haste, such as having a lower crit chance for your damage spells. That seems like a reasonable enough trade off that you’ll at least have to consider it.
You can argue that haste is over-valued in PvP because of the risk of interruption, which is much less of a big deal in PvE. Therefore making the cost per stat of haste higher in PvP seems perfectly reasonable. I wouldn’t call that "exacerbated dominance." I’d say it’s adjusting it to its actual value in PvP compared to other stats. (Source)
Buffs improvements in talents There is no difference between "talents that increase potency of buffs" and "talents that increase range of buffs". In both cases you must spend talent points to bring a buff up to par with something other classes offer. In both cases, the baseline buff has something about it that’s inferior. So if there’s some sort of difference that I’m missing here, please share with the class. No one else can see the difference either.
That’s not our definition. If you bring an 8% attack power buff and someone else brings a 10% attack power buff, then the other guy will generally be more desirable. If you have an 8% attack power buff but a talent that brings it up to 2% (and only that), then you have a talent you probably don’t want to spend and feel dumb spending whenever the 10% guy isn’t around. This is the case with many talents in Lich King, such as Improved Blessing of Might. These are the class of talents that we said we would remove (and then proceeded to do so).
Once you get beyond the buff itself, there are a variety of ways it is produced by a character. Sometimes it’s a base spell. Sometimes it’s a talent. Sometimes it’s a passive aura. Sometimes it’s a proc. Sometimes it goes away when the dude dies. Sometimes it lasts for a duration. We’re not interested in making all of these parameters identical, and we think the game would suffer from a pervasive sameness were we to do so. We also think most raiders are sensible enough not to disqualify someone because his buff isn’t produced in the absolute most convenient way possible. "Our dps would go up 2% if we had 10% attack power instead of 8% attack power" seems like a reasonable sentiment. "Our dps would go up if the range on this buff were longer" seems like you’re really down in the weeds of things to actually worry about. (Source)
Goblins & Worgens DK on Beta
Both goblin and worgen will be unable to finish the DK starting zone until we get back to it and add the goblin/worgen "Special Surprise" quests. Until then you’ll be stuck. (Source)
Hunter (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents) Rhumba removed from the game
We were sad to see this talent go, because we thought it was cool too. However, BM just had too many damage-oriented talents, which was preventing those hunters from being able to pick up the utility or fun talents, which in turn violated a major goal of the talent tree revamps. (Source)
Swapping pets If our pet dies, can we use Feign Death, drop combat, and instantly bring out one of our 5 different pets in that short window of being out of combat in an Arena Match?
No, because you have to dismiss a pet before you can summon a new one. You also need to rez a dead pet before you can dismiss it. It’s possible that allowing all of that in combat is fine since it would take so long to actually pull off and in the meantime you could just have rezzed your pet (or healed an injured one rather than dismissing it).
On the other hand, dismissal no longer affects happiness in any way since the new model is you can swap them more regularly. Your pets just have to learn not to get all emo about it. (Source)
Priest (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents) Lightwell How to make lightwell work: Change clicking range to 15y, Make clicking it not change target
As I have said previously, this is the plan. We just haven’t been able to test it yet, and the talent has enough baggage that it’s hard to get players to even try it. (Source)
Totemic Reach increases the range of Searing Totem. (Tier 2 Enhance, so available to all shaman.)
If you’re fighting a shaman with a bunch of Lightning orbs and you’re worried about damage, just go hit the shaman. That still removes the orbs.
Rolling Thunder is 2% mana return, not 1%.
[…] Yes, we have made further changes to the tree since the build that you have available now. They are predominantly talent changes and not gameplay changes. Earth Shock was the big one. (Source)
The MMO Report
It’s monday, and it’s time for my weekly answer to people who point out that this site can’t be called MMO-Champion if it only talks about WoW. Thank you MMO Report!
Around 4:30 AM (PDT) this morning, some EQII servers experienced outage and connection issues. The problems were resolved within an hour, and the team at SOE is looking deeper into the issue.
We apologize for the inconvenience. All servers appear to be running fine now.
This article has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com.
WoW’s evolution has changed the course of both MMO game design and the landscape of the MMO player base in dramatic ways. By exploring the road most traveled, WoW has led the way from the roots of tabletop pen-and-paper RPGs and early MMO tabletop simulations into MMOs as virtual RPG themeparks.
Despite WoW’s fantastic success on many fronts, in its evolution toward catering to the most common, casual style of play, it’s removed much of the human interaction that made early MMO experiences special. Today’s WoW is slick, seamless and streamlined. There is nothing one player can achieve that another player cannot also relatively easily achieve. Yet while players in today’s WoW maintain that this thinly clad, egalitarian experience is “best,” in reality, what we see is a continuous striving for distinction free from the confines of the game design itself. The ever-present GearScore sniff test has streamlined the need for player interaction to the point that interaction is barely needed at all.
In fact, it might be this very streamlining that has caused this MMO behemoth to slide away from the real magic of the early MMOs, to become a sanitized gaming experience that only barely acknowledges its need for virtual face-to-face gameplay. I miss the real interaction with my fellow players that speaks to the oldest traditions of what spawned MMOs: tabletop RPGs. I want player interactions to drive the game experience, from raiding to crafting to questing. The biggest villains and heroes of an MMO should be players, not pre-scripted heroes and playerless cut scenes. The next big MMO, I hope, can make this happen.
Paladins and death knights finally get their ‘Legendary’ t-shirt designs, there’s a couple of nice hoodie designs (I’m partial to the Horde one myself, looks more natural as a spray style) and much more. Go check it out. Heck, while you’re at it, you can always get an old favorite of mine.
The hunter class received handful of tweaks in last night’s Cataclysm beta build 12803, but by far the most significant among them is the removal of the minimum range (sometimes referred to as the dead zone) for hunter special shots. However Ghostcrawler, lead systems designer, was quick to jump into a thread to point out that it was only a bug.
Ghostcralwer – Lead Systems Designer
We did not remove the minimum range of hunter shots intentionally. If it’s happening, it’s a bug.
It’s as if a million voices all cried out in joy and then were extinguished. Read on after the cut for a full list of the hunter changes in the latest build. As if life were worth living while Blizzard toys with our hearts this way.
Players can now experience the dark and dangerous depths of Norrath without a subscription through the release of SOE’s new free adventure service, EverQuest II Extended! SOE has liberated portions of the critically acclaimed PC franchise, EverQuest II, including over five years worth of impressive, award-winning content, and made it available for free through the EQ2X service.
On Tuesday, August 24th, 2010, the live servers of Lineage II will welcome the latest game expansion: Freya! The new Freya client will be available for download on Monday. Log in on Tuesday to experience the exciting new content and take part in the Freya Celebration Event! Lineage II : The Chaotic Throne
Blizzard snuck in another beta build last night, and it was more than a little exciting for the balance druid side of the world. Although I wouldn’t say that druids or balance in particular were the “primary” focus of this build, as paladins have been in the past few builds while Blizzard fixes the new holy power mechanic, it certainly held quite a number of changes that we’ve been looking forward to for a long time. I’ve dawdled on long enough, though, so let’s just get right on with it.
Spell changes
Faerie Fire range increased to 35 yards, up from 30 yards
Insect Swarm range increased to 40 yards, up from 35 yards
Starfire range increased to 40 yards, up from 35 yards
Entangling Roots range increased to 35 yards, up from 30 yards
Moonfire range increased to 40 yards, up from 35 yards
Wrath range increased to 40 yards, up from 35 yards
Cyclone cast time increased to 2 seconds, up from 1.5 seconds
Thorns now lasts 20 seconds, down from 10 minutes; damage increased by 1,400%
Wild Mushroom is now limited to 3 mushrooms, down from 5
It occurred to us here at WoW.com that we hadn’t mentioned these lovely new achievements implemented for the archaeology profession. In addition to the standard “you have at least this many points” achievements, there are also three achievements with a bit more flavor to them.
I Had It in My Hand, which grants the player the illustrious title of Assistant Professor, is rewarded for finding a rare artifact.
Seven Scepters is granted for recovering, well, seven scepters. As you can see above, two are named, the rest are not — so your guess is as good as mine.
The Lost Thanes is one you earn by discovering the names of the Five Lost Dwarven Thanes, apparently by discovering items they once possessed.
There are most likely more achievements coming for the profession, which is as yet not fully implemented on the beta servers (there are trainers available, but they don’t actually train you yet) including, I can only hope, This Belongs in a Museum. Perhaps if I write on my eyelids.
Three new player screenshots have been added to the Player Screenshots page. Come and see the latest beauty shots of Julya, RavenStormrage, and ComeGetSome!
The Operations Team is going to be performing maintenance for the hardware for the Phoenix server to address the geodata and pathing issues which began after the hardware upgrade. Phoenix will be down for emergency maintenance Friday, August 20th at 12pm PDT / 2pm CDT / 3pm EDT / 8pm UTC/GMT. Estimated downtime is approximately 2 hours. Lineage II : The Chaotic Throne
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Massively Exclusive: Jack Emmert speaks (about Neverwinter and a whole bunch of other stuff) originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Hunter (
Priest (
Shaman (
Warlock (
Ghostcralwer – Lead Systems Designer
