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Star Wars: The Old Republic answers questions on companions and modifications

Eliot Lefebvre — Fri, 11 May 2012 23:00:00 EST

Filed under: Sci-fi, Game mechanics, Previews, News items, Star Wars: The Old Republic

Companions are one of the main features of Star Wars: The Old Republic, but they're also sometimes very limiting. Depending on your class and spec, you can find yourself with only one or two companions with useful abilities. But that's partly by design; according to the latest community Q&A, the distinctiveness of companions is both a result of their abilities and their personalities. The team has no plans for making companions more interchangeable, at least for the moment.

If you were hoping for better news, don't fret, as the other answers are a fair bit more positive. The technical hurdles preventing some classes from having a modifiable offhand are being looked into, and the answers also delve into the details of adding a new augment slot to existing modifiable items. There's also a discussion of the different rates of gear acquisition for players on the PvE and PvP progress tracks, along with a variety of other answers for players of several stripes.

Star Wars: The Old Republic answers questions on companions and modifications originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 11 May 2012 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Waging WAR: Guide to addons

Greg Waller — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Warhammer Online, Opinion, Guides, Waging WAR

This week in WagingWAR Greg takes a look at the basic interface offered in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Well, he said he would take a look, but then he mumbled something about needing a blindfold first. Instead, he writes about all the great ways it can be changed via third-party add-ons and shows us why WAR's modding community really is just the bee's knees.

Let's be honest with ourselves right off the bat and agree that the WAR default interface, although functional, is lackluster in some respects. That's not to say that the developers of WAR made a disastrous UI for us to play with; in fact, the truth is quite the opposite. The standard UI is functional, genre-standard, and provides all the necessary information at a glance. It gets the job done. It also offers a layout editor that allows for simple, easy customization. But sometimes, someone else's idea for a UI element is simply better. Thankfully, WAR supports the Lua programming language and enjoys a strong and talented modding community.

Continue reading for the lowdown on what I consider to be the best of the best of what WAR's mod community has to offer as of patch 1.4.

Continue reading Waging WAR: Guide to addons

Waging WAR: Guide to addons originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 04 Dec 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fans dig out a hardware mouse in Final Fantasy XIV

Eliot Lefebvre — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: Betas, Fantasy, Patches, News items, Consoles, Final Fantasy XIV

One of the more regular complaints against Final Fantasy XIV's current open beta has been the lack of a hardware mouse. The currently implemented software mouse has certain issues, among them the fact that (like any software mouse) performance can vary wildly depending on your framerate within the game. Amidst all the clamoring of fans for an official fix, a fan looked into the code and realized that the game already has the support coded in... it's just not enabled.

The fan-written patch to address the issue notes up front that it's an entirely unsupported change, will be wiped out by each new patch to the beta (patches have been coming almost every day), and simply enables the existing code hidden within the game client. There's also no word from Square-Enix at this time as to how the company views this alteration, as it technically falls under the aegis of being a non-permitted modification to the client. Still, if you're in the Final Fantasy XIV open beta and have little hope Square will activate the code on its own, a fix is being made available.

[Thanks to Cliff and Amana for the tip!]

Fans dig out a hardware mouse in Final Fantasy XIV originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 06 Sep 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Daily Grind: What game would you like to see go open source?

Eliot Lefebvre — Sat, 08 May 2010 08:00:00 EST

Filed under: Game mechanics, Ryzom, Opinion, The Daily Grind

For a game long known for its emphasis on player-created content, mods, and even skills, the big Ryzom announcement perhaps should have been expected. But the revelation that the game was going into the murky waters of open source, albeit with a few omissions such as height maps and sound files, is a far-reaching one for almost any game not wholly built around user generation (a la Second Life).

And it naturally leads to the question: what other games would be nice to have access to from the source code up. It opens a huge number of doors, everything from private servers to full-on rewrites of the game as a single-player experience. For knowledgable coders, it turns every single patch and design decision into something that can be modified by the players. The breadth of options is almost overwhelming.

Of course, Ryzom is a niche title with a strong emphasis on these kinds of innovations, so in a way it's to be expected. But it's the closest we've seen to a mainstream game going this route -- so what would you like to see? An older game that could benefit from the publicity? A newer game you feel could be improved? Or a sadly-cancelled game whose source code could be used as a resurrection?

The Daily Grind: What game would you like to see go open source? originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 08 May 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Mog Log: A little more conversation

Eliot Lefebvre — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: Betas, Fantasy, Final Fantasy XI, Classes, Culture, Events, real-world, Opinion, Consoles, Final Fantasy XIV, The Mog Log

Well, gee, not much has happened since the last time we did a community spotlight in this column. Except maybe for that little VanaFest thing, and huge drops of new info on Final Fantasy XIV, and the beginning of the latter's beta testing. So, yeah, slow month all around. This should be a pretty short column, I might just start talking about my favorite beers toward the end.

All joking aside, a lot has been happening, and it has produced more than a few diverse opinions. The immediate response to the VanaFest announcements for Final Fantasy XI was covered a couple weeks ago, but there's still the specifics to be hammered out. After all, it's hard to take in server merges, level cap raises, massive content drops and new add-ons all in one go. Not to mention that we do still have another game coming in the not-so-distant future, one that's shaping up to have an interesting positional aspect to gameplay. So let's take a look at some of the noteworthy talk from Final Fantasy's webwide community.

Continue reading The Mog Log: A little more conversation

The Mog Log: A little more conversation originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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UC Irvine to compare WoW players from America, China

Samuel Axon — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 13:00:00 EST

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Culture, News items, Academic

The University of California at Irvine has been granted $100,000 to study the differences between Chinese and American World of Warcraft players, according to the Orange County Register. The study will mostly focus on explaining why American players are much more likely to employ modifications such as Cosmos than Chinese players are, but project lead Bonnie Nardi made some interesting observations outside the scope of this particular endeavor.

For example, she noted that Chinese players are for some reason more likely to talk about the aesthetic appearance of the game than are Americans. Whereas American players often play with their children, parents, or siblings, Chinese players are unlikely to do that. "The older generation dislikes video games," she said, and playing with siblings is obviously rare since most Chinese of the gaming generation have none.

"The vast majority of Chinese players are not gold farmers," she said. "They're ordinary players like anyone. The media has blown that story out of all proportion. Many people think Chinese play for a job. They play for fun." Enlightening stuff. We're looking forward to seeing what else comes out of her research.

[Via Ten Ton Hammer]

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UC Irvine to compare WoW players from America, China originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 13 Sep 2008 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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