Author: Ravious

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Промоакции для игроков не только в шутерах — воспользуйся промокодом Vavada от наших партнеров и получи бонусы, которые подарят азарт и атмосферу, сравнимую с игровыми победами.

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#GW2Fanday – Guild Wars Winds of Change

It’s a tough decision to decide what to write about first for the ArenaNet Community Open House (#GW2Fanday). My head is exploding with ideas and thoughts. I chose to start with Guild Wars for a couple reasons, one of which is that I have some neat screenshots to share (taken by the steady-handed Matthew Moore). Let me start with an anecdote.

Randy Price (Senior V.P. at ArenaNet) and I were chatting over food and libations to other times, now moot in memory, when the subject of John Stumme was brought up. Much to my surprise, Price raved about what Stumme had done with the Guild Wars Live Team for a couple minutes. It wasn’t surprising to me that Stumme and the Live Team deserved such praise. It was surprising to see one of the heads of ArenaNet so honestly and unabashedly talk about the meteoric rise of one of the employees. It wasn’t even humble (see also our libations), and I asked Price if I could quote him when he said he believed that the Live Team was so efficient and hard-working that they were producing on the level of a couple dozen-man development team.

“Absolutely.”

Continue reading #GW2Fanday – Guild Wars Winds of Change

The Truth About ArenaNet

I am extremely gracious for being invited to ArenaNet’s Community Open House. It was an amazing experience that I plan to share with everybody through a series of posts.* There will be one on our tour of the office, one on my demo play especially discussing underwater combat and dungeons (possibly split in to two), one on Guild Wars Winds of Change, and perhaps one on developer tidbits (although depending on length that might be included in the other posts).

There is a shocking truth though that I had to share. It’s actually not anything new, but I had to re-emphasize it. ArenaNet tries to share everything they can when it’s finished. They really are not keeping things under wraps for some nefarious reason. Now sure they want to release big items in a manner where it will have great effect, but from all appearances they want to share as soon as they can.

Continue reading The Truth About ArenaNet

[Rift] Valor Be My Shield!

Jaradcel writes up a guest post on the upcoming update for Rift. Enjoy! –Ravious

Rift is to have its third major update in 1.3 come June 22nd, and besides a new raid in Hamerknell, also features major revamps to warriors and mages. Of note however, was the originally planned overhaul to PvP as well, which was scrapped after a massive outcry from the forums. I’ll skip the first two, and look at the results and issues of the third since I happen to be PvPing alot lately.

As in other MMO’s, Rift has its own special stat for PvP players – Valor. The more you have the less damage you take from other players. There are six ranks to gain at level 50, called prestige ranks, which subsequently unlock better valor gear as players rank up.
Initially, patch 1.3 was slated to drastically readjust how Valor worked.

Continue reading [Rift] Valor Be My Shield!

Guild Wars 2 Fanday

A couple weeks ago ArenaNet contacted me and 14 other lucky fans for a huge event. We were all invited out to Seattle to visit the new ArenaNet office on June 24! For this humble blogger, this was seriously a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I was also extremely lucky because every other weekend in June had already been filled.

Thursday will be travel days for most of us, with the fans from Europe possibly starting earlier. That night we will have a meet’n’greet dinner with the Community Team. Friday, we head to the brand new studio! ArenaNet has filled the day with tons of activities, most of which they won’t tell us so as not to spoil any surprises. We will get to play a Guild Wars 2 demo (with no NDA, but no video), and developers are taking time out of their busy schedule to join in on the fun.

I will tweet and blog as much as possible, but expect most in-depth recaps the next week. The hashtag #GW2Fanday on Twitter will be our codeword for on-the-fly commentary. NeoNugget, from Guild Wars 2 Guru, has an updated list of the attendees with site and Twitter account listings.

I have plenty of questions, and on my 5 hour flight, I will probably come up with dozens more. Still, feel free to comment below on anything you would like me to ask or try and check out in the demo.

–Ravious

Too Much Stereo (and Spiral Knights)

For Father’s Day I cooked my family the best pork tenderloins I’ve ever had. Unsurprisingly, I’ve actually owned Weber’s Big Book of Grilling for years. I enjoyed the book, read through it once, enjoyed especially the stories about Weber’s history, and then tucked it in between all my other barbecue bibles. It wasn’t until a week ago that I saw the light when my Aunt made the disappearing tenderloin, which true to it’s name quickly disappeared. Without my Aunt pulling this recipe out of the book, which I owned, I would still be gunning for pork chops at the supermarket.

In the Information Age, we live in a world of noise. With Netflix and other cloud services becoming prevalent, we will be sitting on a treasure trove of great content without knowing about it. Not much different than a library in the concept of content accessibility, except for that instantaneous bit. Even partitioning out most media, games are released too quickly for even professional games journalists to delve in to each one. We are getting more First Impressions pieces and less thorough reviews on every game because, simply, who has time?

Continue reading Too Much Stereo (and Spiral Knights)

Tapped and Trackmania

My first post over at Tap-Repeatedly just dropped where I ruminate on the Trackmania series. I will be writing over there about non-MMOs that I play, and I will hopefully be reviewing some of the indie games I also play. Fear not, valiant reader, my gaming heart is still in MMOs and Kill Ten Rats. Tap-Repeatedly is just a high quality outlet so I don’t bore Bhagpuss to tears with my Team Fortress 2 tales.

–Ravious

[GW2] The Need for Ewoks

ArenaNet drops another great lore post written by the fantastical Jeff Grubb on one of the non-player character (“NPC”) races, the quaggans. Whereas the amphibian krait are an evil race where players should give them all kill-on-sight status, the equally amphibious quaggans are the polar opposites. On a purely hyperbolic course, the quaggans are the underwater ewoks of Guild Wars 2.

Continue reading [GW2] The Need for Ewoks

Go Quietly in to the Night

Tobold has an interesting post up mostly about Star Wars: The Old Republic fortune telling. I must say I did laugh at his response to the financial analyst not understanding the MMO genre because “MMORPG’s release date is independent of their state of readiness.” Tobold had another thought buried at the end, more about Rift:

Anecdotal evidence suggests that Rift is doing well, but not quite as spectacularly as the initial hype suggested. Bloggers like syncaine pulled a Keen and now post mostly critical things about Rift, or have just silently dropped the game.

I think that this is a two-part problem. First, the only reason Tobold seems to expect some announcement is because Rift, like many other MMOs, is a subscription game. It has an end point where a gamer can definitively say “I am no longer playing this game because I am not subscribed.” Compare that to any other game, which a gamer can have installed, and the line gets much more hazy. I have not played Guild Wars for a few weeks, but I feel I am still active with the game’s community and ready to jump back on anytime. I am definitely not going to write a good-bye post on a game I have played actively for 6 years!

Second, even though subscription games have this definitive line, I do not think it is a blogger’s duty to announce un-subscribing. I did not announce my unsubscription to Rift (as opposed to when I did for Warhammer Online) because I unsubscribed as a happy customer. I got what I came for. Now I have other games to play. It isn’t like Rift failed; it’s just not what I subjectively need right now. I am happy right now with Trackmania and Team Fortress 2, while I still dabble in some other MMOs.

Is it some evidence of MMO success when a blogger goes to other pastures? By all means if the crystal ball is already out, might as well go the distance. Rift, objectively, seems to be chugging along quite nicely even if it’s press honeymoon is now over.

–Ravious

[GW2] Nuts and Bolts and Beyond Interview at Tap

The guys over at Tap Repeatedly put up another great interview with ArenaNet developers Jon Peters and Jonathan Sharp. I interviewed Peters and Sharp at PAX East, and I had talked with Peters about skills and energy some time before. They are the nuts and bolts devs. Tap’s Lewis B does exactly the right thing by talking to them about the nuts and bolts instead of release dates, collector’s editions, and other stuff that will just get stonewalled. Lewis B goes for depth, and is rewarded handsomely. He also pulls in a few community questions, which I thought was a nice touch.

Continue reading [GW2] Nuts and Bolts and Beyond Interview at Tap

[GW2] Alpha Predators

Tyria. The dragons have always been here. Sleeping deep beneath the earth, beneath the sea. Waiting for the time to rise.

In this lore-saturated post, I will be looking at the Elder Dragons of Guild Wars 2. Note well, that even with ArenaNet so particular about capitalizing, the Elder Dragons retain their big letters. It’s an interesting tell, in a way, because it’s not really a classification of a fantasy species. It’s a title, similar to how we name hurricanes and earthquakes. Only in this case multiple [un]natural disasters are happening simultaneously in the Guild Wars 2 fantasy world.

Continue reading [GW2] Alpha Predators