Events (In-Game)

Are you ready to start leveling in Star Wars: The Old Republic? More to the point, would you like to level a whole lot faster? That's good, because you're going to have the chance to do just that starting this weekend. Double experience weekends are back for the next three weekends, including an extra-long version during the fourth of July, so that all of your characters can enjoy the freedom to scream up in levels and possibly skip some of the more tedious planets.

The first weekend starts on June 21st at 2:00 p.m. EDT and runs until 3:00 a.m. EDT on June 24th, while the second weekend runs at the same hours from June 28th to July 1st. The third and final weekend starts at 7:00 a.m. EDT on July 4th and runs all the way until July 8th at 3:00 a.m. EDT, which should give you ample time over the holiday to buff up your levels.

Amidst the critiques and patch reviews, the reasons I stick with Star Wars: The Old Republic sometimes get lost in the shuffle. Despite being irritated by the way BioWare handled specific parts of this Star Wars MMORPG, I still find the setting and the storytelling to be superb. These interwoven tales of adventure and chaos provide an incredible platform for my favorite thing to do in an MMO: roleplay.

I've covered several topics about roleplay in this column. From breaking into the community to an RP wishlist to resolving RP-related conflicts, I've might have covered everything except for one of the most basic of roleplay elements: How do you host a roleplay event in SWTOR? Although Star Wars: The Old Republic varies in its presentation and tools, the types of events you can throw are pretty similar to the ones you can throw in any other MMOs. The tiny details vary, but the three basic type of events can be narrowed down to social, PvE, and PvP.

Continue Reading

All this week from June 19 to 26, MapleStory is holding a special World Transfer event where anyone who wants to move characters over to a new world can do so for only one meso. But the best part is the free stuff! For any new players that sign up for a MapleStory account through June 30, a Blue Dragon Adventure Pack is waiting in the game.

This adventure pack includes customization coupons for face, hair, eye color, and style, as well as a set of Maple items that boosts your character's stats. Pet accessories are also included, as well as the coveted Blue Dragon pet.

Check out the videos and run-down of the Blue Dragon Pack features after the cut for more information.

[Source: Nexon press release]

Continue Reading

Last week the unstoppable Jasmine Hruschak was one member of Massively's crack team who braved the traffic of Los Angeles to take in the sights, sounds, hawking, yelling, and craziness that was the Electronic Entertainment Expo. While she was there, she interviewed Star Trek Online's Executive Producer, Daniel Stahl, and put forth a few questions from the Massively team.

Stahl was able to drop a few hints about the future of Star Trek Online in his responses, so join me past the jump as I deliver the highlights from their conversation!

Continue Reading

ArenaNet has not one, not two, but three website updates that should scratch your stuck-at-work-on-a-Friday-but-thinking-about-Guild-Wars-2 itch.

The first is a Dragon Bash video featuring the dev team doing its best Schuster family pinata-destroying imitation. Next we have another video blurb, this time chronicling Dragon Bash shenanigans at Cologne, Germany's RPC 2013 event. The third and final update concerns the Dragon Bash climax coming your way on June 18th. The festival will conclude with a single-player instance called Memories on the Pyre, which you can read about via the source link below. You can see the two videos behind the break.

Continue Reading

The "It's only in beta" catchphrase is going to become obsolete for Neverwinter come June 20th. At that time, open beta will go quietly into the night as launch takes its place. Did we say quietly? We mean with the loud crashing sounds of Valindra's army at its heels!

Starting today at 3:00 p.m. EDT, three phases of events will herald the coming of the official launch. Players will enjoy double the rewards of enchantments and runestones until the 17th in the first phase. In the second, lasting the 17th through the 20th, players will have to guardProtector's Enclave from attack by Valindra's army. More dangerous and deadly creatures then join the fray during the third phase running the 19th and concluding at 12:00 p.m. EDT on the 20th.

Successfully defending Neverwinter through the final two phases can net participants unique rewards, including scrolls, a companion, and more. For full details and exact times, check out the official announcement. Then prepare yourself for war.

[Source: Perfect World press release]

If you decided to take advantage of RIFT's new free-to-play status yesterday, you were probably met with a big fat server queue message that may have ruined your entire life (according to the RIFT forums). While this is certainly bad for anyone wanting to play the game, it's an ironically good problem to have for Trion Worlds and the two-year-old MMO.

The team at Trion monitored the situation throughout the day and night, raising server caps and converting the EU Icewatch server to a Trial Only Shard, but commented that opening new clusters today might be a necessity for North American shards.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

I wasn't sure what to expect from Solstice Arena when I walked into Zynga/A Bit Lucky's meeting room. I'd heard about the whole "speed MOBA" thing, but I love playing as Nasus in League of Legends, so having no mobs was a bit conflicting. The game's also only being released on the iPhone and iPad, and I use an Android smartphone and a tablet running on Windows 8. But I wasn't worried. Fredrick Descamps and Jordan Maynard, co-founders (and former Trion members) of A Bit Lucky , were on hand to share their vision, but truthfully, the hands-on time won me over.

Continue Reading

Every time I listen to the BioWare developers talk about Star Wars: The Old Republic, I am impressed with how passionate they are about the game. When Producer Bruce Maclean, Executive Producer Jeff Hickman, and Community Manager Eric Musco spoke to us yesterday, they sat on the edge of their seats because of how excited they were about telling us about the next updates coming to their game. Despite the game being a year and a half old, these three appeared to be riding the same hype-train the game launched with.

Although these three BioWare employees suggested that the majority of the conversation on the livestream would feature discussion about Game Update 2.2, they ended up highlighting features and events taking place beyond the next patch. The questions they answered, filtered from the forum, Twitter, Facebook and the chatroom, jumped all over the place, but I believe they can be narrowed down to three major categories of concern: events, PvP changes, and the valued subscriber.

Continue Reading

Need a new pair of boots? If so, you'll probably want to take part in The Secret World's upcoming Black Weekend. The event, which begins on Friday, June 14th, at 9 a.m. EDT and concludes on Monday, June 17, at 9 a.m. EDT, brings a few special bonuses, including a rugged pair of Black Heavy Buckled Boots.

Log in during the Black Weekend event and you will be able to claim a free potion from the item store that doubles XP gains from monster kills for eight hours. One account may claim one new potion every 24 hours. Additionally, any activity that normally rewards Black Bullion will award one extra Black Bullion during the weekend, so get to farming that black gold.

There's one more bonus to current The Secret World players: For every player you recruit between now and the end of Black Weekend, you'll receive a free month of premium membership.

So apparently some of you have operatives who have successfully infiltrated the Massively secret lair because someone has gotten a peek at my master plan... I mean, to-do list... and jumped ahead to this week's topic without me! I know we've talked before about how the real-world setting of The Secret World makes it ideal for blurring lines between game and reality, but I wasn't expecting this. Well, no matter. You cannot thwart the master plan; it has already begun. *maniacal laugh*

This stage of my brilliant scheme involves taking a closer look at another little nugget found in the May Game Director's Letter. On the surface we see that The Secret World will be getting even filthier at the conclusion of Issue #7 as the nefarious filth will actually break through the Tokyo gate and begin to infect Agartha itself. But more than that, we are witnessing the implementation of a long-term event that will continue to give new content as it progresses. Could this be the harbinger of dynamic events to come that will breathe more life into the world? We can certainly hope!

Continue Reading

ArenaNet's content train for Guild Wars 2 continues to chug along at full speed, and the next stop is the Dragon Bash festival. Unlike the Dragon Festival of the original Guild Wars, this festival won't find anyone revering dragons. The Elder Dragons put a kibosh on any warm sentiments that the humanoids of Tyria might have had for them in the past. Dragon Bash is all about unifying the races in celebration during these dark and terrifying times by distracting them with fireworks, gambling, and candy-filled dragon piñatas!

The celebrations officially kick off tomorrow, but we have a video preview of the Dragon Bash celebrations to whet your appetite.

Continue Reading

Are you so excited to get tossed into a superpowered battle to the death that you can hardly contain your enthusiasm? That's... actually a little creepy. But if you're a Champions Online fan, there's plenty of reason to be excited about the Forum Malvanum, so it's all right. And you can see what went into the construction of the arena in the game's newest development blog, which walks players from the concept stage through to the finished version of the structure.

Seems like the developers read your mind? They might have. They did just redesign the Telepathy set, after all. You can also read all about that on the official site, detailing the new powers and their interplay. The new Telepathy set is meant to provide plenty of control and damage options for new or existing characters, so if your characters tend to be fond of mind games you'll want to take a look at the changes.

If you participated in WildStar's first stress test, aka The Stressening, or hope to jump in with its sequel, The Stress Continues, then this week's WildStar Wednesday is for you. Carbine Studios community director Troy Hewitt, live producer Craig Turner, and senior community manager David Bass penned the latest blog entry to discuss how the stress tests are going and what, exactly, the team managed to break this go-round, starting with instances capping improperly and names being distorted. (This last bit is probably a blessing for those testers running around named Legolas and Tyrion Lannister. You know I'm right.)

Bass specifically addresses the challenges of herding gamers who are "used to the usual 'STRESS TEST WEEKEND WOOOOOO!' hype," which is, you know, pretty much all of us. "The problem," he wrote, "was that we needed to do an actual stress test... one where we kept adding more and more players until something broke so that we could see where our weaknesses were." Like Bass, we're sure the "promise of a future beta invite" soothed any grumpiness.

Starting today, warriors in Allods Online's guild versus guild territory battles will have new mechanics at their disposal. These new battle mechanics include the ability to set a battle time to improve the organization and coordination of military campaigns as well as a new tournament-based league for sectors. Additionally, a new matchmaking system aims to keep things balanced and fair by using an improved battle points calculation that allows guilds to challenge others with similar power and skill levels.

On top of those changes, players with their own allod can now create a dungeon to hide their treasures in a customizable maze that plunderers will have to successfully navigate.

Need another reason to log in and check things out? How about this: Allods Online is offering a special event called A Gift a Day. Starting today, each day a player logs in, s/he will receive a gift. Prizes can include exclusive new costumes and a brand-new wolf mount. If you need any more coaxing, check out new images in the gallery below and the update's trailer after the cut.

[Source: Webzen press release]

Continue Reading