Gamescom might be long over, but today Bioware released a highlights video of the conference showing off a bit of gameplay, but mostly players reactions to Star Wars: The Old Republic. There’s nothing earth shattering in the video, no reveals or anything like that, but if you didn’t have a chance to go to Gamescom in Germany, this video will give you some idea of the mayhem that gamers experienced at the convention and at the SWTOR booth.

Props to the guy in the Darth Maul costume and the chick.

Check out the SWTOR GamesCom highlight video after the jump.

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And the Guild War 2 flood of information keeps coming out of Gamescom.  Today GWcom.de released an a video demoing the crafting system found in GW2 and providing some more information about how it works.

To start off there will be 8 total professions players can choose from with 2 professions being active at any one time. The twist is that players will be able to switch from one profession to another without losing their progress (level) in that profession, which basically means players will be able to master all 8 professions if they want to.

Now I’m going to assume there will be some restriction or cost to switching your profession otherwise limiting players to 2 active professions makes no sense.

In Guild Wars 2, there are two basic crafting mechanism, Discovery and Crafting. Discovery is the recipe system where players experiment with various materials to see what types of recipes can be created. Then once you have some recipes, you’re able to start crafting items. Guild Wars 2 takes the XP approach with crafting, so the more items you craft the more XP you get and eventually level in your profession.

Recipes also have level ranges, however it was not fully explained how it works in the video.  From what I can gather, by using the Discovery Recipe system, players can discover higher level recipes then their current crafting level, but whether or not you’ll be able to use those recipes at the lower level has yet to be answered.

Check out the full GW2 crafting demo below. Only the first 2 mins 30 sec have any commentary, the other 20 mins is just crafting.

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The guys at Joystiq recently had a chance to speak with the developers who are working on DUST 514 and revealed the launch price at “around $20″. CCP had previously announced that there would be an initial download fee for the game and that players would receive that payment back in the form of in-game currency, but didn’t give out a solid price until now.

CCP went on to re-confirm some already known information that the Eve Online and DUST 514 marketplaces would be completely integrated stating, “Bought currency items and non-currency items can be freely exchanged between the players“.

CCP also expects that some players won’t even bother with the actual FPS aspect of the game and concentrate solely on their virtual business.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we get quite a few EVE players that join Dust but actually don’t play Dust at all, they’re just on the market speculating … and they never go into a match,

I still wish DUST 514 was on PC, but who knows, maybe PS3s will be under $200 by then.

Some information about RIFT Patch 1.5 was released yesterday at Gamescom including a 25 min video showing off the Hammerknell raid as well as some unreleased content.

• RIFT patch 1.5 will go live at the end of Sept – beginning of October
• There will be “single-dungeons” as part of the “Chronicles of Telara”. These dungeons are for more casual players who don’t have the time to complete full raids. You can easily clear this dungeons with 1-2 players (depending on the equip) and the difficulty will not scale with the amount of players in the dungeon. Hammerknell will be the first “solo-dungeon” so that casual gamers are able to see that type of dungeon as well.
• There will be the “Master-Mode”. Which are more challenging and meant for gamers between full raiding and casual. Right now, Darkening Deeps and Deepstrike Mines are the first dungeons in testing phase. There will probably be more depending on which dungeons the community wants to see.
• The new “Hammerknell”- Warfront “Library of the Runemasters” will be released
• The first parts of the new “Planar Achievment System” will go live. From level 50 on players will receive points for earned EP from daily quests etc. These points can be spent in 6 extra bonus skilltrees to adjust the characters a little more and give them some finetuning.

other facts:

• The new 10-man-dungeon “Rise of the phoenix” won’t be released with 1.5 because they are focusing on other things (see above) and it is still in testing
• The new 10-man-dungeon will be as hard as Hammerknell just with 10 man!
• The new Zone won’t go live with 1.5
• But there will be new Raid-Rifts with the new zone (1.6 or later)
• The aspect “social-life” was discussed. Developers are planig some fancy features like a “barber-shop” whre you can change the face of your character.
• The “Warrior and leather” issue was discussed. They want to have every class have their own class equipement. So warriors won’t prefer leather instead of plate anymore in the future.

Check out the 25 min Gamescom RIFT gameplay video by continuing below.

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Carbine Studios is continuing to show off its newly announced MMORPG Wildstar, today releasing some gameplay footage.

When I first saw the trailer I was a little worried about Wildstar being targeted at a younger audience as a water-down MMO game, but after watching some gameplay footage, I think my worries have been laid to rest. The art design is impressive and it looks to have some solid gameplay mechanics, so I’ll looking forward to seeing and learning more about Wildstar.

Check out the Wildstar Gameplay video below by continuing below.

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Bioware just released a new video for Star Wars: The Old Republic showing off the PvP Warzone, Huttball.

The video begins with the Director of Production for Bioware explaining a little bit about what Huttball is. Basically players get a ball and try to run it into the other teams “endzone” to score, while trying not to get killed. After the brief intro there is about 2 mins worth of solid PvP gameplay footage of Huttball. Continue to below to see the video.

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A lot of information came out about Guild Wars 2 this past week at Gamescom, which was touted as the place where ArenaNet would finally release detailed information on its PvP system.  And while they did release a lot of info, it turns out it was all the information that I really didn’t care about.

What ArenaNet presented was a battle arena PvP system that is completely independent of the main persistence world. You don’t use your GW2 character, instead you select from a pre-made character that is already at the max level and you select where your skill points go. Once you exit, you go back to your PvE character. I mean you could literally rip out the PvP system shown at Gamescom and make a completely separate game out of it without effecting the current game.

Keen, at keenandgraev.com, seems to have the same worries I do.  Where is the World vs World vs World combat system?  Where is guild vs guild combat? I sure as hell hope those are not being cut or down-graded.  No persistent world PvP, no playie-playie.

What ArenaNet presented at Gamescom in regards to Guild Wars 2 PvP system is an outstanding addition to the game. I just hope it’s not the main PvP system. Hopefully we’ll get to see the real PvP system at PAX Prime next weekend.

While we couldn’t make it to to Germany for Gamescom this year, WarTower.de was and they’ve been uploading some great gameplay videos of Guild Wars 2 today.

Three new GW2 videos were released today, two short ones showing off character customization for the Sylvari and Asura races, plus the Charr cinematic cut-scene.  Then a third monster video showing off 40 mins of gameplay including PvP the Charr homelands, Asura gameplay and an epic boss fight against the dragon Tequatl the Sunless. The video also gives many insights about the skills and general gameplay mechanics.

You can check out all three videos after the jump.

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The debut trailer to WarGaming.net’s newest free-to-play MMO , World of Battleships has just been released.  World of Battleships is a  free-to-play naval action MMO based on epic sea battles of the 20th century which will completes Wargaming.net’s “World of” war trilogy.

Check out the World of Battleship trailer by continuing below.

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A ton of new information was revealed today at Gamescom about Guild Wars 2 PvP system. In fact two complete articles were posted up today, one from Jonathan Sharp, systems designer, and one from game designer, Jon Peters. Both articles cover a lot of the same points, so instead of regurgitating both, we’ve outlined some of the bigger points from each for your reading pleasure.  You can click either of the above links to read the full rundown if you don’t wan to miss anything.

Hot Join PvP

Guild Wars 2 will incorporating a server play list, called Hot Join, which you’ll be familiar with if you played any online FPS ever.  Players will receive a list of games, what map their on, the number of players currently in the game, then can join in.  Once a round is complete, a new map loads and the next match begins.  Player can join or leave a match at any time they wish.

Hot Join is split between pickup games and competitive.  Pickup games are casual and have no effect on your character as they are meant to get accustomed to maps, try out different builds or just for practice.

Competitive Hot Join tournaments are more structured and offer rewards.

Conquest PvP

Conquest PvP pits teams against each other as they compete over a certain amount of capture points on a map, which gives a team points. The team at the end with the most points wins.  GW2 is spicing up their conquest PvP system by adding secondary objectives to these maps.  These objectives can range from repair or destruction objectives, to fighting off a giant dragon that’s flying overhead. The goal being to add more strategy and to spice up the usual capture and hold system found in many other games.

Jonathan Sharps’ PvP articles goes into the Conquest PvP mode much more indepth if you want to find out more.

No PvP Leveling

When a player goes into the PvP system, they will have access to all the classes at the max level, all skills, items, etc. Players will then be able to pick whatever class they want and either use pre-made builds or come up with their own.  Once a player leaves PvP they go back to their normal PvE character.