Episode 2: Species War is the latest content update to hit Black Prophecy and introduced PvP Warzones. Over the last week or so I strapped myself back into my fighters pilot seat to see just how much Black Prophecy has changed since the launch of Episode 2.

Getting right to it, the biggest issue I found with the Warzones is that they’re always empty. The largest group of players I’ve seen in the last week was four, including myself, which is pretty sad. I’m not sure if this is due to a lack of players, interest in warzones or incentive to participate, but it’s clear it’s a problem.

I don’t believe it’s a lack of interest, one of Black Prophecy’s early issues was a lack of content and the new Warzones greatly help to fix that issue, so I really think it’s a problem with player incentives. Currently players have two incentives to fly into a warzone, Honor Points and faction rewards.

Each of the six warzones has it’s own reward, something like an XP boost, cheaper items from vendors, things of that nature and everyone in the controlling faction receives it. This gives players an general incentive to take over a zone so everyone in their faction receives the reward, but lets be honest, people are greedy and want personal rewards.

This is where Honor Points come in. Each time you kill an enemy pilot or take over a sector in a warzone, you receive honor points. However the problem is that Honer Vendors have astronomical prices, some items costing 500,000 points.  Even the lowest level items cost a minimum of 50,000 points. Couple that with the fact that you’re restricted to only one warzone at a time because of level restrictiosn and you can see that the process becomes even slower.

The currently rewards system leads to honor points grinding. What Black Prophecy needs to do is offer better personal rewards so players have additional incentive other than to grind honor points. Something as simple as a kill board would fit the bill. I think once the incentives have been readjusted and players get a real reason to participate, the Warzones will become a hot spot.

Aside from the emptiness of it, the Warzones are actually really fun even with a few people in them. They just need to figure out how to get them filled.

Below is a brief video intro to Warzones as I try to take one over solo. Enjoy.

Continued…

Speaking to IndustryGamers, BioWare heads Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk, stated that the possibility of a Mass Effect MMO game is very much alive. Dr. Zeschuk said the following when asked about a Mass Effect MMO,

You never know.  I think once The Old Republic is done, we’ll take a fresh look at the market. And we’ll have learned a lot. While making it, you learn an enormous amount. It’s one of the nice things about having these properties in our back pocket… If we want to use something we own as a source for a game, it’s easy to do. So yeah, you never know. We’ve got this giant product to launch, but once that’s done we’ll consider next steps.

Muzyka added,

We’re focused very much on The Old Republic, Mass Effect 3 and [our free-to-play game] Wrath of Heroes, and all the other things we’ve announced, and haven’t announced, but we also have the opportunity to look at our franchises in a way we haven’t ever before. There are lots of new platforms and lots of new business models.

It seems BioWare is taking the wait and see approach with Star Wars: The Old Republic to see how it does before making any decisions about another MMO game. But if the hype surrounding SWTOR is any indication of its success, I’m sure BioWare will jump at the chance to create another MMORPG out of a beloved series like Mass Effect.

Blizzard is rolling out their newest feature, the Raid Finder, similar to their Dungeon Finder, that will allow players to quickly organize pick-up raids. When the Raid Finder launches with patch 4.3, it will only be available to use on the Dragon Soul raid (25 players) where players will battle against Deathwing. However I’m sure in the future this will be expanded to including more and more raids in the future.

The Raid Finder will introduce a new difficulty level, which is easier than normal or Heroic and will reward players with lesser drops and rewards. In fact, players will not be able to use the Raid Finder to access the higher difficulty tiers so those will still need to be manually organized with friends or guildmates.

Since the announcement I’ve read some negative posts in the MMO blogosphere about how the new Raid Finder feature is making World of Warcraft less social or how it won’t be very useful, but I can’t say I agree with either author. If anything the Raid Finder will make players more social, joining in on raids they normally wouldn’t have if they happen to be a solo player or in a small guild.

As for not being useful, the Raid Finder’s greatest benefit is that it will allow players to practice Raids much more often in pick-up groups. Then when they run the Raid in normal or Heroic with their friends or guild, they’ll already know what they should be doing. Half the problem with running raids is people don’t know what to because they’ve never ran it before. So this will give players a lot more practice, plus there is no instance lock when using Raid Finder, so you can really run it as often as you like.

I personally love this feature and think every MMO should implement a Raid finder. I’ve always been a solo player or part of a small guild where it was difficult to get enough people to run raids, but with the Raid Finder this solves those problems and still allows Raiding guilds to keep their higher level items and rewards. Kudos to Blizzard on a stellar idea and implementation.

Recently I had to opprotunity to interview one of Allods Online’s Game Masters about some of the upcoming changes coming with the Undaunted update. Undaunted is the fourth major update and is set to be released on October 11th, which will include a new zone for high-level players and introduce the first open-world PvP zone for players at level 45 or above.

In the interview we get some new info about the Kingdom of Elements zone and about the Mausoleum of Sparks. We talk about Astral ship customization, the revamped leveling curve for new players and learn about the two new classes coming to Allods Online, the Xadaganian specialists and Elven oracles.

Continue below for the full Allods Online: Undaunted interview and as a bonus, we have few new exclusive screenshots including the first ever look at the Xadaganian specialist (last pic).

Continued…

Since Blizzard announced that Diablo 3 would allow real-money-trading, allowing players to buy and sell in-game items for real-world money, the controversy surrounding RMT has been reignited. I came out of the closet so to speak in favor of RMT as I never really believed selling your account or items to someone else was wrong regardless of what the games terms were.

It seems companies themselves are also torn over the issue, Sony Online Entertainment allows Everquest and EQ2 players to buy and sell entire accounts and items to each other through their Exchange marketplace, but don’t allow it for other MMO games. Blizzard now joins SOE saying RMT is alright for D3, but not for World of Warcraft.

Aside from gold farmers, who have a direct impact on the game though spam, farming locations and ruining the game’s economy by flooding it with in-game currency

There are obvious other issues with RMT such as account hacking and theft. However these people are criminals and should not be considered, that would be like telling Ebay to shutdown because scammers can take advantage of their members. Thieves and criminals will always be around if they think they can make a quick buck, so the effort should be made to prevent them from doing so and not banning the entire enterprise of RMT.

So for those against RMT, my question to you would be, if it became possible to allow safe and secure RMT, would you still consider it wrong? And if so, why?

Fans of Blizzard who had hoped to learn more about Blizzard’s unannounced MMO, Titan, will be disappointed as a Blizzard representative today announced that Titan would not be present at the convention.

Titan is the codename for Blizzard’s unannounced MMO game which was leaked a year ago via a product release schedule. Set to be released in the fourth quarter of 2014, it seems it’s still to early to reveal just what Titan is. After all with all the hype surrounding GW2, SWTOR and it’s own Diablo 3, Blizzard might be worried the announcement might not get as much attention as it deserves.

Looks like we’ll have to wait for next years Blizzcon for the big reveal.

The latest game from Perfect World Entertainment was announced last night called War of the Immortals, which is an action MMORPG in similar style to the Diablo series. The game announcement was coupled with the closed beta announcement and signup’s which are currently on going.

The closed beta signup’s seems to have more in common with open beta as it seems there are currently an unlimited amount of keys available. Simply register an PW account and request your CB key. Closed beta testing will then begin on October 25th.

Below is some information already released about the game and after the jump we have a gameplay trailer for you to enjoy.

• 8 Heroes- Choose from eight classes including Berzerker, Champion, Heretic, Magus, Slayer, Duelist, Ranger and Enchantress.
• Unique Soul Gear - Specifically tailored to each class, these powerful sets of animated gear will grow and change in appearance as players progress through the game.
• Guild Housing- Set up housing for members, plan upcoming raids, trade crafting materials and pick up new recruits to expand your guild.
• Territory Wars – Fight against others for territories and resources as you take your guild to new heights and notoriety.
• Pet Soul System - Further customize your pets through the new Pet Soul system, as well as capture virtually any monster in the game.
• Interactive Environments – Powered by Perfect World’s proprietary Cube graphics engine, dungeons come alive with destructible environments.

Continued…

To celebrate the Rise of Isengard, the new expansion for the Lord of the Rings Online, Zam has joined together with Turbine to offer a great giveaway. Win a pair of new Tritton headsets to use when playing your game of choice, plus 20,000 Turbine points, and 2 keys for lifetime memberships to LoTRO! Sign up here.

If that’s not enough, Turbine is also offering periodic contests for pre-order Isengard keys as well as Turbine points on their Twitter page today, simply follow @lotro on Twitter for chances to win. Isengard has already gone live, so this is now the only way to gain the preorder bonuses that came with Isengard. See the forum announcement, on the official forums, and follow them here.

On September 16th the developers working on Planetside 2 held a Twitter Q&A to answer fans questions about their upcoming MMOFPS. Last night Planetside Universe was kind enough to gather all the questions and answers and posted the full transcript on their site.

The QA session was pretty long so if you don’t want to read through the whole thing, I took the privilege of listing all the details below. Even so, the list is also very long, so I bolded some of the more important answers if you’re just interested in the juiciest details.

Continued…

At a Tokyo press conference today, Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada gave a few very candid statements about FFXIV stating, “The Final Fantasy brand has been greatly damaged.“, adding “We’ll continue with our reform work, which basically amounts to fully redoing the game, and hope to revive the FFXIV that should have been released.”

Wada of course was referring to the horrible release of FFXIV when it launched last year back in September chock full of bugs, crashes and game-play issues. The one month trial offer has been extended indefinitely, making FFXIV in essence a free-to-play title for the time being as Square Enix continues to completely revamp the game. Then of course there’s the PS3 version which has also been delayed until further notice.

However I don’t agree with Wada’ statement about FFXIV greatly damaging the Final Fantasy series, if anything the damage was done to Square Enix itself. Launching a title prematurely, especially a MMORPG title, is no way to win fans over and make players think twice before buying another MMORPG developed by Square Enix.