Planetside Sequal – Reliable Source

Our very own nalan alerted us this morning, via an email he received from a once very popular PlanetSide information source.

Most, but not all existing and previous planetside subscribers found this in their inbox, from SEO.

That’s right, you heard what we said! We plan to expand the PlanetSide universe with another game and we need your help with the design. After all, who knows the game better than you, our customers, the people who actually play it! Dont worry about the original PlanetSide, it isnt going anywhere.

We want to hear your opinion and to do so we have put together a short survey. The information you provide will play a critical role into helping guide the development and direction of the next hit Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter. As a loyal player and experienced shooter fan, we value your input and look forward to hearing what you have to say.

You just got the tingling sensation that we got, right? A new Planetside, one that we can help sculpt to succeed the favoured original. According to PSU (planetside universe) SEO have also acquired the domain name www.planetside2.com ready for future expansion.

They also managed to speak with the CEO of Sony Online, John Smedley who had this to say.

A new patch is coming. Were going to be fully Vista compliant among other things and bug fixes / anti-hacking work.

PlanetSide fans will be happy We have big things planned in the next 12 months. Were working on something new thats really cool.

Big things planned in the next 12 months? Well im not sure how quickly SEO can churn out games, but we can watch this space eagerly.

Planetside 2 Survey

If you missed it in the text above, here is the PlanetSide 2 survey. Make sure you fill it in and tell everyone who has ever even just glimpsed at PlanetSide to check it out as well.

Diablo 3

The big news about Diablo 3 was the unveiling of the fourth Diablo 3 character class – The monk!
The monk class is going to replace the paladin in terms of style. A religious, spiritual warrior on the side of good, he will use his martial arts and his staff as weapons and will have various charge up skills similar to the assassin from Diablo 2. What makes this class unique is that instead of using separate finisher moves all his charge up attacks are triggered in stages from one skill; you can then combo the stages of different skills to create unique chains of martial art abilities.

Check out the official site for the monk trailer and examples of some of his moves. Keep an eye out for the seven sided strike which apparently works like the sorceresses’ chain lightning, except you are the lightning!

http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/characters/monk.xml

The fifth and final Diablo 3 character class will not be announced until next year although apparently it will be a remake of an old character, look out for a ranger class then guys.

All the Blizzcon videos, gameplay footage, interviews and panels about Diablo can be found at this link.

http://www.diablofans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21313

World of Warcraft.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm/

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. This was the new expansion revealed for World of Warcraft this year and from what I can make out this feels less like an expansion and more like a sequel, the whole game is being reworked, and it feels like now Blizzard have the resources they are finally making the game how they originally intended it to be. Firstly let’s start with the big announcements.

Two New Playable Races: Adventure as one of two new races, the cursed worgen with the Alliance or the resourceful goblins with the Horde. Goblin racials will include:

Rocket Jump – Activate your rocket belt to jump up to 20 yards, every 2 min
Rocket Barrage – Fire your belt rockets at an enemy within 30 yards, every 2 min. (Shared cooldown with Rocket Jump)
Time is money – Cash in on a 1% increase to attack and casting speed.
Best Deals Anywhere – Best possible gold discount, regardless of reputation.
Pack Hobgoblin – Calls in your personal servant, allowing you bank access every 30 min.
Better Living Through Chemistry – Alchemy skill +15, your potions give more health / mana

And now the Worgen racials:

Darkflight – Activate your true form, increasing movement speed by 70% for 6 sec, every 3 min.
Viciousness – Increase damage by 1%.
Abberation – Reduced duration on Curses and Diseases used against you by 15%.
Flayer – Skinning skill +15, you skin creature fast, and you don’t even need a knife.

Because these new racials are so spectacular Blizzard announced the other racials are going to being revamped too, cant wait to see these, let us hope the alliance get some love.

Level Cap Increased to 85: Earn new abilities, tap into new talents, and progress through the path system, a new way for players to improve characters.

Classic Zones Remade: Familiar zones across the original continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms have been altered forever and updated with new content, from the devastated Badlands to the broken Barrens, which has been sundered in two.

7 New Zones will be Added: The new zones include The Twilight Highlands, Mount Hyjal, Deepholm, Uldum, Gilneas, The Lost Isles and The Sunken City of Vash’jir. The sunken city will be an underwater zone and was the home city of Lady Vashj before the original sundering; this will be a gateway to the Abyssal Maw.

More Raid and dungeon Content: The Firelands will be a new raid dungeon, it will let you go to the Elemental Plane of fire and visit Sulfuron’s Keep, Ragnaros will make his return! Uldum will feature two new dungeons, the Lost City of Tol’vir and the Halls of Origination (a titan city). Grim Batol will have a level-up dungeon and a raid instance. Skywall (Air Elemental Plane) will have a level-up dungeon and a raid instance. The Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep will be back in a brand new level 85 heroic version. Blackrock Caverns will be a new level-up dungeon located in Blackrock Spire. This is an entirely new dungeon, new art, new creatures, new everything.

New Race and Class Combinations: Explore Azeroth as a gnome priest, blood elf warrior, or one of the other never before available race and class combinations. Check out this link for all the new combinations.

Guild Advancement: Progress as a guild to earn guild levels and guild achievements. Guilds will now have their own talent tree to use as they level up, talents will include abilities such as lower repair costs, mass resurrection, less durability loss on wipes and the ability for one character to instantly summon the whole raid. Blizzard made it clear that these abilities will only make life easier, and will be nothing like increased damage or defence which would give certain guilds an unfair advantage. Levelling your guild will not just favour larger guilds either; your experience will come from your top 20 earners so potentially a guild of 20 could level just as fast as a guild of 1000.

New PvP Zone & Rated Battlegrounds: Take on PvP objectives and daily quests on
Tol Barad Island, a new Wintergrasp-like zone, and wage war in all-new rated Battlegrounds which will get you the same rewards as Arenas. New arena maps will also be added.

Flying Mounts in Azeroth: Explore Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms like never before, but don’t get too excited, you have to be 85 before you can fly again.

Cross Server LFG: This will let you PUG 5-man instances and search for groups through multiple servers. It will come with its own reward systems. If you’re the leader of a PUG and complete the dungeon successfully you will be rewarded.
It should be out for patch 3.3.0 and so far will only be within your battlegroup. If all goes well they will extend the servers and allow you to cross server raid too.

As if all that wasn’t enough Blizzard also plan on completely revamping stats and talents, this is what I mean when I say it will feel like a new game. Blizzards plans to streamline the statistics found on items, all unnecessary stats are being removed and all existing stats are going to be easy to understand and consequently more appealing.

MP5: This will be removed from items and replaced with Spirit. All healers will be given a meditation-like ability.
Spell Power: Spell Power is being removed from items and Intellect will be improved so that it provides mana and Spell Power.
Attack Power: Attack Power will go and they going to allow Agility to provide the necessary Attack Power for leather and mail wearers. Strength will provide the appropriate amount of Attack Power for plate wearers. This means leather and mail items will no longer be desirable for plate wearers.
Defence: The Defence statistic is also being removed from items so that players no longer have to worry about juggling around “the cap.” Tanks will receive the necessary anti-crit from talents, like Survival of the Fittest.
Armour Penetration: This ability is too confusing and “mathy.” It is being replaced with Mastery, a stat that makes you better at what you do.
Haste: Will also increase the rate at which you gain energy, runes, and focus. Retribution paladins and Enhancement shaman will have a talent that allows them to take advantage of this benefit.
Block: Block Value is being removed. Blocking will now always mitigate a percentage of damage.
Stamina: Players will notice more Stamina on gear as Defence, Spell Power, Attack Power and Armour Penetration are removed.

A few classes are being made more streamlined too.

Warlock
Soul Shards are no longer in your bags. The goal is to make them fun, not a hassle.
Soul Shards will be integrated to the user interface. (Just like Death Knight runes)

Hunter’s mana is gone
Hunters now use focus, they will no longer care about intellect or mana regen.
Focus regenerates continuously; steady shot improves the rate of getting focus back.

Personally I think these changes will be welcomed, especially for the casual players, many people however are worried the game is going to become too simplified and straightforward. Blizzard made it clear that there are changes in the works that will suit the hardcore players too, at the higher levels there are going to be many new ways of customisation.

The Path of the Titans: This will allow players to follow a path (not restricted to classes), this is a new talent system with new skills and passive abilities.

Archaeology: Archaeology is the new secondary profession that will be joining the ranks of cooking, fishing, and first aid in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Archaeology allows the player to unlock new abilities and rewards by discovering ancient treasures throughout the world. Each archaeologist uses the profession to uncover clues hidden in the world around them, such as troll relics or map fragments, and decipher their meaning, enabling the clever archaeologist to manipulate pieces of the past, learning the location of a treasure cache or valuable artefact. Such artefacts are highly sought after by the Archaeology Society, and they pay in gold and items for their return. Those who have mastered archaeology can find Titan artefacts, earning special currency used to unlock character paths and allowing the player to further customize their character.

Reforging: Reforging is another way to customise your gear. It will be relatively cheap and you will need a Blacksmith, Leatherworker, Tailor, Jewelcrafter or Engineer to do it. Each profession will get to reforge different types of items. It lets you reduce one stat for another. Some restrictions will apply for example you cannot put the extra stat on something that is already on the item.

These new systems alongside the already implanted gems, glyphs and enchants means spreadsheet and number crunching players will still have a lot on their plate to worry about.

As Blizzard always state their games will be out “when they are done” so everyone is unsure when this expansion will be officially released. The introduction of Arthas and the Icecrown Citadel will be the last of the patches for WOTLK and then all of their efforts will be focused on Cataclysm, Blizzard state that they do not want to take time away from working on the expansion to create new content for WOTLK. Playable versions of Cataclysm were available at Blizzcon and it seems a lot of the graphical content and artwork is further along than anticipated, but to implement all the other changes and to get it tested, balanced and working to high standards will take a long time. My guess would be a minimum of 5 months after Icecrown, however Blizzard realise that even if players start to leave once they have completed the woltk content -as soon as Cataclysm gets released EVERYONE will be back, so don’t be surprised if we have to wait as long as 2011 for this one.

Stracraft 2

Probably the least amount of info released out the three games but from what I saw the Starcraft 2 single player is going to be great. Tons of fun escort missions and missions where you battle the environment itself. One example was a charred planet full of slowly rising larva. On top of that the Starcraft 2 cinematics are amazing, looks like it’s really going to build the story. The actress who plays Six from Battlestar Galactica is new the voice for Kerrigan. Exciting stuff.

Battlenet 2.0

The new battlenet can be blamed for the lack of new content for Starcraft 2, this thing is going to be huge and you can’t have Starcraft without battlenet. They are going be creating a whole new friends feature similar to the Steam community, by adding someone to your BNet friends list, you can see what games they are playing. For example if your on WoW and your friends is on Starcraft 2 your be able to send him messages, see what server he’s on and even log out whatever game you’re in and jump in and join him. Will be interesting to be doing dailies on WoW then suddenly jump into a Starcraft skirmish in the matter of minutes.

Also for Battlnet there are launching a Starcraft 2 marketplace where you can search for custom maps in game, rate them and download them. The custom maps will be created through the Starcraft Map Editor which seems like an extremely powerful tool, it’s going to allow you to develop art assets to completely redesign the look and UI of the game. Expect to see a lot of really nice mods and total conversions for this, and I’m not talking just RTS. On the Starcraft 2 gameplay panel Blizzard showed examples of what can be done using this tool, we saw a 3rd person shooter including mouse aiming support and a top down shooter game similar to R-Type. They are also working on implementing a way for modders to be protected from people stealing their ideas changing one thing and calling it “version 2” there will also be a way for you to charge for your mod. Great incentives for the modding community to knuckle down and come up with some original ideas, it really feels like the sky is the limit for this. From Blizzards standpoint it means that SC2 will have longevity, and will run and run for years.

As you can see there is a lot to look forward to in the up and coming years if you are a fan of Blizzard games. This is not even including the super secret next gen MMO Blizzard has in the works. Let’s look forward to Blizzcon 2010 for information on that one! Will it be the WoW killer? Check back here next year to find out.

What’s the point of an update if there are no new weapons or achievements you say…  Despite this lack of the usual content which TF2 players have become used to receiving, the latest update is nothing to sniff at, and it’s a biggy!

King of the Hill

A brand new game mode has been introduced with several good looking maps. They don’t just look good however. I’ve given them a pretty thorough testing playing on public servers both solo and with clan mates and I had a lot of fun. The game mode looks very similar to the Arena mode in as much as there is only one central control point on each KotH map. This CP becomes ready to cap after a small amount of warm up time which gives both teams time to get themselves poised and ready to dive onto the control point and start capturing it (or dying depending on skill or suicidal tendency). Each team has 3 minutes on the clock at the top of the screen. This counts down to zero while a team owns the control point. This can seem to go very fast if the winning team puts up a good defence, however if the point is contested when the clock reaches zero, the game goes into Overtime. If the losing team caps the point during overtime it’s their turn to hold the point while the timer counts down to zero. It’s quite possible for the game to be a 3 minute washout or for the game to last well over 6 minutes, running well into Overtime.

The three official maps for KOTH that come with the update are:

KotH_Nucleus is a conversion of the Arena mode map of the same name. It is a very simple map and compact map. This is a good thing! Out of all the KotH maps I liked this one the best. The action is always intense and there are many angles and tactics from which to assault or defend the central point.

With its circular layout, this map offers few places to hide in order to snipe or watch the point without fear of spy pyro or scout attack. Each team’s spawn room has 3 exits which is just as well due to the fact that the map is so small that a sniper can hit players leaving the enemy spawn from their own. There are upper and lower levels which help to mix up the game play and give the defending team good options for sniping and spamming the central point. With four walkway leading to the point however, control of the point can be easily overturned by a determined team. During one game the team I was playing on managed to make two major comebacks one round after another, turning a disappointing score into a humiliating defeat for the other team by overturning the control of the point at the very last second and then holding it for one or two intense minutes to win the round.

KotH_Sawmill is another Arena mode conversion. It features some nice visuals including rain weather effects and moving saw blades which can chop a player up while they go for the health packs which are positioned temptingly in their path. It has a more natural layout than Nucleus with the spawn points further away from the capture point. This can lead to spawn camping by the winning team if the teams are not well matched.

Maps

cp_yukon - not the best gameplay

Arena_Offblast and CP_Yukon are two community made maps which have been added to TF2’s official line-up.

Yukon is a linear Capture Point map that’s not very linear. By this I mean the route from one control point to the next takes some interesting twists and turns and could take some getting used to. The visual style is generally very good, although the move from tight, single level, twisting canyon choke points at the outer control points into the wide open central point with its vertical game-play somehow doesn’t seem to fit.

I haven’t played this map properly yet so I won’t slate it too much in case I end up loving it later. Why not post your views on cp_yukon in response to this article?

arena_offblast - well thought out

Offblast is, in my opinion the better of the two new community created maps.  It looks great and has some interesting alternative routes to get to the top op the map by climbing spiral pathways around the mountain top to reach the maps natural vantage point (rather than using rocket jump or the stairs). There are plenty of places for a Pyro to drop down behind unsuspecting players and hit them with the Backburner.

If you like Arena mode then it’s definitely worth giving Offblast a go.

Gameplay Tweaks

These are some of the more interesting changes. The full list is very long and can be seen on the official update page.

The losing team now gets to view their character in third person camera angle while they run around helpless with an exaggerated fearful expression. This usually turns into a mini competition to see who can survive the longest. Some of the animations are hilarious, such as the scout who, when left alone will stand or crouch cowering, hugging himself and sucking his thumb.

The Pistol now fires at a fixed rate, not based on the speed at which you press the firing button. This is still pretty quick so it’s not going to affect most players (only those who try to exploit it).

Scoring in CTF now gives your team a Critical Boost

Capturing the intelligence in the CTF mode now grants the capturing team ten seconds of critical hits. This can bring sudden bursts of speed to slow CTF games where one or both teams gains several captures in quick succession and lots of people die.

Electro-Sappers attached to a teleporter automatically place another Sapper on the other end of the teleporter, if it exists. Conversely, Engineers wrenching a teleporter will repair the other end as well, and remove Sappers from both if they exist. This stops irritating Spies from sapping your teleporter entrances, forcing you to fall all the way back to spawn to re-build them. In play this has proven to remove some of the balance which the Spy class brought to the game. It also allows an Engineer to build a teleporter exit at a critical point such as the enemy flag room in CTF and then have one or more Engineers wrench the entrance repeatedly outside their spawn, making it very hard for the other team to destroy the teleporter with anything less than a host of sticky bombs.

Teammates no longer block friendly radius damage. This prevents nearby teammates causing rocket/grenade jumps to fail. Rocket and Grenade jumping is quickly becoming a required skill in TF2 and is immensely powerful when used well.

The Force of Nature has been re-worked to balance the game. It’s knockback effect now only works in close range and behaves more like the Pyro’s air blast, good for knocking nearby enemies off control points. It is no longer possible juggle enemies using the FaN. The self-knockback has also changed to respect the firer’s view angle. Looking up while shooting will no longer propel the enemy upwards. Knock-back is now scaled by damage done

The Sandman bat has also been adjusted – A Scout will receive 1 point for stunning an enemy and 2 points for a long range stun. Stunned players now take 75% of all incoming damage instead of 50%. Ubercharged players can no longer be stunned (the achievement for this has now been changed to ‘Stun Two Medics Who Are Ready To Deploy an Uber-charge’). This is slightly disappointing as I always found that stunning the Ubered Heavy was the only guaranteed way of defending your teams turrets from them. Heavies spinning their mini-guns will continue to spin when stunned (whether the left or right mouse button is pressed). The minimum distance to stun a target has been reduced which makes the scout even more dangerous in close range fights. The negative attribute has changed from “no double jump” to “-25 max health”. Starting with only 95 health points seems like bad idea, but works surprising well as the agility of the double jump allows the player to avoid getting hit while stunning enemies from a distance and generally harassing the opposing team.

You plug in an xbox 360 and play gears of war, what else?. I thought my samsung was good, to say this looks impressive would be the biggest understatement of all time. Gamers dream. My question is, with this set up.. do you use the stadium speakers, or would your favourite gaming headphones still be practical?

It would seem the EU rating system is going to replace the UK’s BBFC system.

The Government is turning its head to helping out British Publishers and Developers as part of its new initiative to push the UK into a new Digital Age.

With the old system as long as a game had a BBFC rating it could be released, but with the new system every game has to be reviewed under the PEGI system and it is going to be enforced by law. An advantage of this is that even though it is an EU system it only effects the UK so if a game is banned or rated higher in the UK it will not effect the rest of Europe or vice versa.

Quoted from Gamespot. PEGI has a history of rating games more conservatively than the BBFC. According to the VSC, since 2003, approximately 50 percent of PEGI 18+ games have received more lenient ratings from the BBFC. As of the end of last year, according to a PEGI statement at the time, 24 of 50 titles rated 18+ by PEGI had had their ratings reduced by the BBFC. Two of these–Mass Effect and PSP game SWAT – Target Liberty–were released in the UK with 12 ratings from the BBFC, but with a PEGI 18+ in the rest of Europe. The other 22 received 15 ratings in the UK–among them, big games, such as Resident Evil, Silent Hill 3, and the original God of War.

This still has to go through the government and be passed by law. But if it does, it could mean an end to certain people blaming the games industry for violent games that under 18’s are playing when it is clearly marked at a 18 rated game and should be played only by over 18’s.

Time will tell if this new system will benefit the selling of games or not is another story.

The game features both single-player and multi-player action. Go download it now and leave a comment to let us know what you think of it!

But lets face it, there’s more questions to it than just what headset to get…

• Which is the most comfortable
• Which headset will sound best
• Which headset has the best microphone
• 5.1 Surround Sound or stereo sound

The list could go on, but these days there is such a selection you could be questioning if you should even buy yourself a new headset for days…

Well do you have a sound card, is it a surround sound ..sound card? Do you even need one? With technology available now like USB sound cards which plug-in to your PC externally (taxing your CPU more?) and massive external processors for surround sound like…. the Astro mix amp, for example and their other products choosing headsets has become more taxing than what CPU fits your motherboard!

We’re monitoring a poll over on Total Oblivion’s new website about what headsets real gamers are using.

A few of our guys are using some of the classics, Steel Series 5Hv2, Sharkoon X-tactic and the always raved about Tritton AXPRO headsets.

Personally I’m a steel series kind of guy, but I base my choice on comfort primarily, then the audio stuff. My Microphone isn’t even built onto the headset, instead it comes with its own second separate wire which connects itself via clips up the headphone wire allowing you to position it where you want, and it’s not too bad you know.

My headset IS 5.1 surround sound (to my knowledge), and I’m using a Fatality 5.1 sound card, but I tend to just leave it to stereo sound, unless the games are even capable of producing 5.1 streams and will use the hardware I have, otherwise whats the point?

Maybe I’m missing the point, maybe you can school this misinformed gamer.

What are you using, and WHY are you using it?

You can see the client for the Xbox over here, which looks a lot like the Twitter theme, as you word expect but coupled with your gamer avatar trying to convince you to tweet with their magical little speech bubble.

Thanks to stumbleupon for this one, see social bookmarking can be fun!

Full story comes from here, which was nabbed by eagle eyed twitterers on our list. We’ve had alot of discussion on this game in the past, (as its been in development for nearly half the time Duke Nukem Forever was) watching it progress from the amazing MMOFPS they described only to see it being slimmed down to some kind of Quake arena playground, and now they’re removing even more features from it.

I see this as another Halo game building, nothing more, but you must have your own opinion right?

View the original story here.