Aventurine released another sneak peek video today of Darkfall 2.0 this time previewing some bonescale armor and revealing the Necroguardian, a new golum creature based on the old obsidian golem. The Necroguardian will inhabit undead areas of Darkfall 2.0.

The new bone armor will be high end medium armor which will require special components to craft it.

Check out the preview video after the jump.

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A new update was posted on the DUST 514 website recently detailing some of the communication features that players will have to communicate between Eve Online and DUST 514.

One of the main features will be Eve Gate, which will act as the communications hub between the two games both in-game and out. Players will be able to setup contact lists, check in-game mail, post on forums, and setup calendars with events amongst other things.

Corporations play a major role in Eve Online and will as well in DUST 514, which will be seamlessly integrated together, allowing corporations to recruit players from both games.

The idea is that a corporation staffed with members from both EVE and DUST 514 should be able to access all available functions. Common functionality includes creating corporations, managing membership, managing finances, and joining alliances.

There will be of course both voice and text chat available to players to communicate with each other from both games.

DUST 514 players also get their own War Room, where they can go to view vehicle and character specs, stock up on items from the marketplace or corp inventory.  The War Room can hold up to 32 players at a time, so players will be able to chat with fellow corp members or hires and strategize about their gameplan.

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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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.

I’m back for the conclusion of my Dragon Nest beta preview! The meat of my review was in Part 1, but there were a few things I didn’t have room to discuss, and a few thoughts I wanted to add.

Quests, quests, quests…

I’ve played a lot of MMOs over the years. Free to play, pay to play, large ones, small ones, pvp focused, pve focused; you name it, I’ve either played it or something similar. When it comes to earning XP, I tend to dislike story/quest-focused progression. I know a lot of people like to gain their XP from quests, but I prefer to go out into the wilds of a game, find myself a quiet little spot, and kill, kill, and kill some more for my xp. I like getting to know my class,  I like the random encounters with people that occur when the world is a large open place, and I like leveling to be something you earn. I like Dragon Nest, but it isn’t that sort of game. Everything outside of the towns is instanced. You get your quest, go to the dungeon, and cut your way through to the boss at the end.

But the quest writing for Dragon Nest is actually good. It’s the same old kill X number of Y monster, collect X number of drops from Y monster, go beat up the boss type questing that is seen everywhere else, but I actually find myself laughing as I talk to the NPCs and fulfill their weird whims. From the loincloth obsessed scholar, to the invisible peeping Tom thief and to the storage keeper who hates what people keep in his vault, the game is filled with colorful NPCs and their humor-tinged requests. It’s easily the best written game I’ve come across to date, and I look forward to reading each new quest as it’s handed to me. There’s one large blot on my enjoyment of the quests, however – the main storyline. The excellent writing is overshadowed by a questline that turns you from hero to zero; rather than feeling accomplished as I run through the game’s story, I feel like a trumped up member of the audience, here for nothing more than to watch the amazing NPCs show off their cool moves. Each step of the way is marred by cut scenes depicting me being one-shot knocked out, or simply brushed aside as another NPC runs up to defeat the boss I was just fighting. That can be a nice tool if used in moderation, but so far, there’s only been one fight that I’ve actually won myself. I know there are lots of fans of the Dragon Nest storyline, but I am not one of them.

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I find myself puzzled as I sit down to write this; my method of writing a review or preview is to list out the pros and cons of a game and then begin the writing, and my list of cons for Dragon Nest is easily three times as long as my list of pros. This is puzzling because I’m enjoying the hell out of this game. I meant to have this up days ago, but I’ve been playing Dragon Nest so much I’ve been putting it off and off to get just one more level… one more dungeon… sorry guys! But, here it is. Perhaps as I’m writing this I’ll figure out why I have so many cons despite my complete enjoyment of the game. I’d actually intended to write a comparison between Dragon Nest and Rusty Hearts, but Rusty Hearts gives me eyestrain if I play it more than 10-15 minutes at a time, so I’m sticking with Dragon Nest. I have lots to say about it though!

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Turbine just announced that Update 11, the next big update for Dungeons & Dragons Online, will be launching sometime in September. Update 11, called Secrets of the Artificers, will bring in a new Artificer class, a new high-level quest hub, new crafting levels and more.

The full rundown of features for Update 11: Secrets of the Artificers, is posted below.

New Artificer Class

A blend of Rogue and Arcane classes, the Artificer uses specially created weapons and mechanical pets to challenge their foes

New House Cannith Enclave

Home of the Artificers, House Cannith is a new high level quest hub where magic and mechanics converge.

New Content

Born in war, forged in fury, Stormreach faces its most terrible foe yet.

New Crafting Levels

Craft all the way to level 150. Plus, craft Draconic Runestones, a new magical weapon available to all classes.

The Secrets of the Artificers Premium Adventure Pack will be available in the DDO Store and Free to VIPs, and includes:

• Two new high level Raids
• New wilderness area
• 3 new dungeons

After the jump we have some concept art for some of the new weapons and places that Update 11 will introduce.

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Today Aventurine released another sneak peak video of Darkfall 2.0, this time of the city of Sandbrook. The city has been completely redesigned, so much so that players won’t be able to recognize it as well as optimized so everything is easier to locate.

Sandbrook will also no longer be a starting location, instead it will become a faction city where players can complete new training quests.

Below you can checkout the preview video for Sandbrook as it guides you through the remodel city.

A new video was released today previewing the upcoming Yssam dungeon in Darkfall 2.0.  While the dungeon and lighting systems have already been seen in previous screenshots, the video shows a new monster and some shiny new, actually not so shiny, armor.

The video is pretty short, a bit over a minute long, so it won’t waste too much of your time.

Last week a video of ArcheAge’s PvP Battlegrounds was uploaded to Youtube that didn’t get much attention, so I thought it would be nice to share it here for those of you who haven’t seen it.  The video is from the Korean CBT phasing and is just under 13 mins long.  For some reason there’s no video for the first minute, so just fast forward until you see something.

From the video, ArcheAge’s combat looks pretty fast and furious, it doesn’t take long to kill someone as you’ll notice the player in the video dying about 50 times.  The video has decent music too