All Entries Tagged With: "MMORPG"

Aika in Open Beta as the MMORPG Comes to USA

Good evening gamers. As you may or may not know, the beautifully rendered Massive Multiplayer experience Aika is heading to the United States soon. From the makers of Rappelz and Flyff, Aika will bring players into a whole new world sporting many innovative online features such as a unique Player vs Player system capable of up to 1,000 vs. 1,000 multiplayer battles, and an award-winning fantasy based storyline. Read on for details on the Open beta and when you can expect to see Aika release in full for the United States.

Purchasing FFXIII tomorrow? You Shall Be Rewarded!

No special, collectors or limited editions of FFXIII in North American makes me a sad panda. You know what partially makes up for it? This little tidbit of info from the FFXIV beta site: There is apparently a FFXIV beta invite code in retail copies of FFXIII. Howe Squeenix kept this quiet until the day before release is anyone’s guess, but hey, more power to them.  Hit the jump for the new details from the beta site, which also includes hints about the upcoming PS3 beta of the new MMO.

NCSoft Offers Ordering Bonus for Aion Digital Magazine

See, World of Warcraft isn’t the only MMO around that can have its own magazine!  NCSoft’s hit MMO Aion is also receiving its own magazine, well, sort of.  This is an all-digital magazine, but it still comes with a subscription price!  Luckily when you place a subscription you’ll get some bonus in-game items, depending on which subscription you want.

What is J!NX? DualShockers Interview Sean “Jinx” Gailey To Find out!

Did you ever wonder what or who is behind the clothing company that gamers know and love as J!NX?  I definitely wondered. I recently had the privilege to sit down with Sean “Jinx” Gailey, the Creative Overlord of J!NX, for a one on one interview. We discussed how J!NX came into existence, what their motivation is and what gamers can expect to see from upcoming lines (MLG and pro-gamer lines) and products. As Kyle  McCarthy (J!NX’s Deacon of Sales & Networking) refers to Sean “He’s kind of the face of the company.”

New WoW Raid: The Ruby Sanctum

Attention all raiders!   Today Blizzard announced a new raid dungeon that will be releasing in patch 3.3.5, The Ruby Sanctum!   And before you say it, yes we are still awaiting the content patch for 3.3.3, but I know all you raiders are twisting your hands anxiously, feeling the itch to slay another host of bosses.

Rumor: Final Fantasy XI Servers Shutting Down This Year

If the report on Gamegrep is to be believed, Square-Enix’s long-running MMO Final Fantasy XI will be closing its doors sometime this year.  FFXI has been up and running for eight years and, to this date, it’s still the only successful cross-platform MMO.  It started off in Japan on the PC, then moved to Western regions.  Eventually the PS2 version was released, being one of the only real uses for the hard drive attachment for that system.  Finally it was released on the Xbox 360.

We’ll file this solidly under the rumor department for now, but, in a way, it may make sense.  Their new effort, Final Fantasy XIV, will likely be taking over a lot of time and possibly development staff, and the resources being expended to keep FFXI afloat may be required elsewhere.  This is, for the most part, what was stated on the personal blog of a human resource employee at Square-Enix.  It has since been removed.  Confirmation?  No, but it is suspicious.

The entire game with its major expansions, sans the latest small mini-expansions, is available for under $20US at numerous retailers, something that, in and of itself, doesn’t necessarily spell doom and gloom for the title, but at least if you went out and bought it now, you will be secure in the knowledge that you didn’t spend a whole lot on it.  Remember, take this with a grain of salt, folks.  It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s true, however.

[VG247]

Lord of the Rings Online Epic New Screens!

Hello MMORPG fans, heads up!  Lord of the Rings Online has released some epic new screens of their new Volume 3: Allies of the King Book 1: Oath of Rangers content update as well as details on what to expect for game play additions.  There will be four different types of the all-new 12 person skirmish modes, each with their own theme and location.  You can also expect a couple intense sounding surprises in Depths of Nûrz Ghâshu, an extra skirmish mode in which you will be sent to rescue a fighter near meeting a fiery death.  You will also be able to craft items up to level 65 now as well as take part in Marshal Rangers for War!  For more details visit the official Oath of the Rangers game info page at LOTRO.com.  Screens below, enjoy!

WoW Armory To Allow Auction House Control

We’ve had a lot of World of Warcraft news lately.  It appears Blizzard is speeding up their time table for world domination.  In addition to releasing an armory Facebook app as a way to keep all your friends updated on your exploits in Azeroth and beyond, now comes confirmation that the WoW armory will soon be able to have some control over your in-game auctions.  This goes for both the official armory and the armory iPhone app [iTunes link].

World of Warcraft Invades Facebook

Today Blizzard launched their official armory app for Facebook users.  Now, as if people didn’t have enough ways to stalk your character(s),  they can see them on Facebook, too!  Hide your daughters!  You can apparently use the app to broadcast real-time data about up to five of your WoW characters to all your Facebook friends.

Trip to Azeroth Delayed

As I started to play World of Warcraft again something recently delayed my latest return this past evening and it went a little something like this:

Arthas is Full

Position in queue: 365

Estimated time: 15 min

To my regret my trip to Azeroth was indeed delayed by 364 players who were already in line to play WoW ahead of myself. Arthas is a High population PVP (player vs. player) server and at time of this log in attempt (10 P.M. EST) the server was apparently full. This is something I had forgotten about when taking my break from WoW. If I wanted to play a game on my Xbox 360 or PS3 my biggest delay typically was locating the game or waiting for an occasional patch, but never a fifteen minute line just to step into the game. This would be the equivalent of a line forming outside of my house and 300 people lining up to call next on my 360. Yes, I know it is a bit different than a console as WoW is a huge MMORPG and Blizzard is both trying to keep the lag to a minimum and keep the world and servers balanced, but it still did not get me into Azeroth any faster.

So on this night when my urge to play WoW was in full bloom it was dissipated by a queue from Hades. Has this happened to you before? Are you willing to accept the tedium just to play Blizzard;s masterpiece? Let me know your thoughts.

A Return To Azeroth

I had been off of Word of Warcraft for about a year and a half but suddenly thoughts of playing in Azeroth and a grand return started brewing in my mind. This is not the first time that I have quit for a year and started playing perhaps the greatest MMORPG ever made but what was different this time?

For me coming back to a game like World of Warcraft is a huge endeavor as many hours of time can be spent in just one sitting or dungeon. This time around I actually felt anxious as I discussed my return to WoW with Yaris. Sounds stupid as I have never felt anxious picking up an old game or classic, but WoW has that kind of power. I quickly downloaded a few patches and re-instated my account which went smoothly and found myself creating a new character with Yaris. As I loaded up into the world it was like riding a bike all over again, the rust was there but I quickly got back into the swing of things. We ran a few quests and jumped to level 5 in about 30 minutes but I definitely foresee a lot more Azeroth in my future.

Has the game changed enough to keep me interested in the last year or so? So far the answer is yes. The interface is very much streamlined and the accessibility to find and complete quests is much nicer than ever. Blizzard has made WoW into a more user friendly game and from the looks of my first trip to Ogrimmar, one of WoW’s capital cities,  it is nothing less than packed. Some things never change as the game is still littered with your classic wise guy jumping into the Horde side of the world and yelling “Long live the Alliance!!” well its good to be home and know that the neighborhood is still more or less the same.

Stay tuned for some new features from the DualShockers team as some of us get more into WoW and others like myself start playing again after a long break. If your interested in playing with the team just leave us a comment.

WoW Armory Updated, Now Easier Than Ever to Stalk Someone

This week Blizzard implemented several new features on the WoW Armory.  If you’re unfamiliar with it, you can basically find out everything you wanted to know about anyone’s character, their items, their guild and what not by just searching for their character name.  If you have an account, you can sign in and get even more goodies like a searchable item database (although Wowhead is still better), guild calendar viewing and all sorts of goodies.  You can keep track of your best friends or worst enemies…stalk them, even.

Now it is easier than ever to stalk whomever you want.  Check out these newly added features:

• Character Model Viewer: People can see exactly what your character looks like in-game.
• Activity Feeds: You can view a character’s most recent in-game actions, such as their latest achievements, boss kills and loot.  Yes, you can indeed export this to an RSS feed to be viewed with things such as Google Reader.
• Calendar Feeds: You can export in-game calendar data to other online calendars like Google Calendar and even set things up to auto-sync at various intervals.

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to stalk this hot tauren druid.  He’s the embodiment of sexy, don’t you think?  It’s pretty interesting that the activity feed tracks each individual step toward an achievement, as well.  I’ve been recently working to finish some achievements to obtain the Chef title, and one of them is Outland Gourmet, in which you have to eat various dishes introduced in The Burning Crusade expansion (yes, I’m slow).  It lists each dish that I cook individually, and what achievement performing that action belongs to.  Pretty nifty!