Expansions

Over at Lord of the Rings Online fansite A Casual Stroll to Mordor, Andang gives us a nifty walkthrough video of the incoming Wildermore region for Update 11. The 19-minute video shows off the snowy mountainous region near Dunfast down to the plains near Norcrofts.

Take note that this tour is done on the public test Bullroarer server, so things may change before the update is officially launched. Still, it's worth watching the whole video if you're a LotRO fan anticipating the new content.

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Lord of the Rings Online is one of those MMOs, at least for me. You know the ones I mean. They're great games for the most part, but for whatever reason you've quit and returned and quit and returned to them more times than you can count.

With yesterday's announcement of the forthcoming Helm's Deep expansion, I'm finding it harder than ever to keep to my pledge of staying away from Turbine's Middle-earth.

What about you, morning crew? Assuming you're a LotRO expatriate, will Helm's Deep bring you back?

Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!

Lord of the Rings Online's fifth expansion has been announced, and Middle-earth explorers will travel to Helm's Deep sometime in the Fall of 2013. Turbine is raising the game's level cap to 95, while the epic storyline will continue through the western plains of Rohan and allow players to directly participate in the battle at Helm's Deep.

Additionally, Turbine's press release mentions new skills and "completely updated class specializations," as well as locations including Edoras, Dunharrow, and the fortress of the Hornburg.

[Source: Turbine press release]

Jolan tru! This week I've had the pleasure of jumping onto the Tribble test server in Star Trek Online again. But this time it wasn't just to check out the new UI or the overhaul of Drozana Station. Nope, this week I was one of several hundred (if not a thousand or so) regular Tribble players offered the opportunity to test out the first several levels of the new Romulan faction!

So here's a big warning: Thar be a few spoilers ahead! If you don't want to know anything about the story of the Romulan Republic, then you might want to avoid looking past the jump, but if you're not bothered about seeing some of Star Trek Online's upcoming content before it's released, then press that big button right down there and let's get to it.

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About five years ago, on April 27th, 2008, I joined the Massively team and wrote the very first issue of the EVE Evolved column. Five years later, the column is still going strong and delivering its weekly dose of EVE Online to thousands of readers. I used to worry about running out of ideas to write about, but regular game updates and hilarious player shenanigans mean there's always something interesting going on in New Eden. When EVE hits its 10th anniversary in May, this column will have been running for just over half of the game's lifetime. In that time, I've written over 250 in-depth articles, guides, in-game stories and opinion pieces on EVE Online and a few on DUST 514.

As usual, I'll be celebrating this anniversary by rounding up this year's column highlights and giving away two 30-day Pilot's License Extensions to two lucky readers. To enter the competition, write a comment explaining which EVE Evolved articles from this year you liked best and what topics you'd like to see covered in the coming year. You will need an active EVE account to claim the prize, so be sure to include your character name in your comment if you want to be in with a chance. If you'd rather not give out your character name or don't have an EVE account but would like to give the game a go, you can sign up a new trial account and use the name of your new character.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I look back at the highlights from the column's fifth year!

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The Romulan faction in Star Trek Online's upcoming expansion does not play like mirrors of the Federation or the Klingons. The race's ships are less diverse in some ways, but its cloaking devices that allow for stealth even in combat make it clear that this is a race about subtle manipulation and careful subterfuge. A new development blog outlines the fine points of ship progression including refit ships, retrofit ships, and small craft for the faction.

In addition to the cloaking devices, all Romulan ships feature a powerful Singularity Core that allows access to a different tier of special abilities for each ship. As with other factions, refits and retrofits of lower-tier ships can be purchased from the game's cash shop, complete with new customizable skins and new consoles for these variants. Players interested in seeing the full details should take a look at the development blog and get ready to remind the galaxy why the phrase "warbird decloaking" is never a sign things are going well.

Star Wars: The Old Republic has finished up the last of eight dev diaries featuring changes to the game's classes following Rise of the Hutt Cartel's release. On the docket for today is the Sith Inquisitor and Jedi Consular, mirrored classes that have mirrored adjustments.

Both classes now have stronger heals (Dark Heal and Benevolence), cooldown-free shields (Static Barrier and Force Armor), and class-wide access to 10 seconds of faster casting and interrupt blocking (Polarity Shift and Mental Alacrity). Both classes also have been treated to a new skill, Force Barrier, which offers total protection for up to 10 seconds of channeling.

There are plenty of other detailed changes to the advanced classes and roles, so check these diaries out if you're in tune with the Force in a way that makes the rest of us jealous.

The dev diary march to cover all of the changes to Star Wars: The Old Republic's classes continues, with today's twin postings focusing on the Bounty Hunter and Trooper.

Bounty Hunters should have an easier go at it now, as BioWare's handing out Hydraulic Overrides and Chaff Flares to everyone. The team also redesigned the Kolto Overload skill to give the class a huge bump to survivability when it activates. Over on the Trooper side of things, the team's brought the class' resource mechanic in line with the Trooper's Bounty Hunter counterpart. All Troopers now get Hold the Line and Diversion skills, as well as a more survival-happy Adrenaline Rush.

The smaller but still significant tweaks to the advanced classes are worth reading carefully if you play one of these classes, as there are plenty to note.

One of the beauties of the MMO is that it's ever-changing. This means that the world expands, the community grows, and skills are always being re-balanced. Sometimes this comes in the form of a patch or update, and sometimes it comes in the form of a full-fledged expansion.

But when these changes affect the original game too much, it's inevitable that some players will not like what the devs see as improvements. In the case of the infamous Star Wars Galaxies NGE, players left in droves.

So I threw the question out to the Massively staff to see if anyone had been so turned off by a game update that he or she left for good. Read on to find out who left what and why Patrick might need to leave the country for a bit.

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Cryptic and Perfect World have released pricing info for Star Trek Online's Legacy of Romulus expansion Starter and Legacy Packs.

The former will net you a couple of exclusive ships, a Borg Reman officer, and a Survivor of Romulus title if you're willing to part with $19.99. The Legacy Pack will set you back a whopping $124.99 and gift you with the Starter Pack items as well as several additional ships, officers, and in-game items.

Full details are available on the official STO website.

EverQuest's Shadow of Fear just launched; it's the update and second part to the Rain of Fear expansion that released in November. Yes, you read that right: This is the old-school MMO's 19th expansion. If that's not impressive enough for, the list of content that comes with the patch should hold over vets for a long time. If you're level 100, you'll be able to enjoy new zones and content and brand-new mechanics.

The essence of fear is literally raining down in the form of crystalline shards. While players fight to restore balance, an ancient city has been resurrected with no explanation. Mysteries? New content? New spells, items, missions, raids quests, and storylines to discover? Yeah, we wanted in on that. We hung out with producer Thom Terrazas, lead designer Jonathan Caraker, assistant lead designer Julie Burness, and assistant lead game designer and Douglas Cronkhite for a video tour of the new update. Read on to hear what we thought and catch the brand-new trailer too.

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Muse Games has issued a press release celebrating the successful Kickstarter campaign for Guns of Icarus Online's new adventure mode. The update will add "large-scale PvE combat, player and ship progression, and much more" to the co-op airship title. Muse is breaking down its ambitious plans into a series of funding pillars, the first of which is the AI director that will enable co-op and solo PvE missions to go along with the game's existing PvP.

Next up is a world map with towns, trade routes, player factions, and a "fully dynamic resource economy." After that, Muse will focus on a set of world-building tools.

Guns of Icarus Online is a steampunk-flavored airship combat game with a buy-to-play business model. You can learn more about the adventure mode goals at the project's Kickstarter page and more about the current live game via Massively's hands-on.

[Source: Muse press release]

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The seventh installment of Star Trek Online's Legacy of Romulus dev blog is live. This time, the subject is character creation, and Cryptic has apparently revamped the system from the ground up to coincide with the introduction of the game's third faction.

The dev blog talks everything from design flow to thematic presentation to the UI to selection presets, and it's clear that the company put a lot of thought into STO's character creator 2.0. Read all about it on the game's official website.

With Rise of the Hutt Cartel finally open for business, the folks at BioWare are doing their best to educate players on the significant changes in Star Wars: The Old Republic's first expansion. Today sees not one but two class dev diaries itemizing the tweaks and upgrades to the Smuggler and the Imperial Agent.

As both classes mirror each other and use similar skills, the twin dev diaries cover mostly the same basic topics. Alacrity has been buffed to genuinely speed up attacks, DoTs are cheaper to throw down, shields now absorb any type of damage, and accuracy's importance has been raised when you're fighting elite and tougher mobs.

The diaries also cover changes to specific advanced classes and skill trees. BioWare says that it will be releasing similar diaries for the remaining six classes in the near future.