New submitter lrsach01 writes “Wizards of the Coast has announced a ‘new iteration’ of their Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. Early information says the game will be more inclusive, with a basic rule set that ‘builds out.’ This Spring, WotC will be ‘conducting ongoing open playtests with the gaming community to gather feedback on the new iteration of the game as we develop it.’”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
danaris writes “On Friday, Rule of Cool gaming released Legend, a d20-derived tabletop roleplaying game system designed to be easy to learn, easy to play, and just really fun. As the names suggest, they recognize that people in an RPG frequently want to be playing epic characters with cool abilities, so they provide that — while making sure all such characters are reasonably well balanced against characters and monsters of the same level. For a nice overview of the system, there’s a review up on RPG.net by one of the playtesters, and another review by a moderator from Reddit’s RPG section. The game is initially being distributed as a pay-what-you-want benefit to the Child’s Play charity, with all proceeds (not just all profits) going to the charity.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Today marks the release of Skyrim, the fifth installment of Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls series. The game is set about 200 years after the events of Oblivion, at which point the province of Skyrim is embroiled in a civil war, and dragons roam the skies. Early reviews for the game have been largely complimentary — one at Rock, Paper, Shotgun artfully details all the things the reviewer hasn’t yet done, despite playing the game for over 30 hours. Quoting: “I seriously worried Skyrim would, for all its talk of lavishness, depth and dragons, continue the transformation into a trudging, consolified action game filled with clunky acting. It does not. It slams on the brakes then reverses at dangerous speed back into Morrowind territory. Some things are lost (e.g. Persuasion is a sadly watered-down, irregular affair now mostly to do with shopping), many things are changed (e.g. recharging magic items can be done anywhere) and it’s certainly not as weird (no flying or Siltstriders), but it truly reclaims that sense of being in another world, rather than a generic soft-focus, over-familiar fantasyscape.” An addendum goes into more detail on the specifics. If you’re curious how the game looks in action, Giant Bomb has posted a ~52-minute quick-look video with commentary.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Blizzcon 2011 kicked off today, and the biggest announcement from the opening ceremonies was the development of a new expansion for World of Warcraft. Titled Mists of Pandaria, the expansion will focus on the battle between the Horde and the Alliance instead of a traditional Big Bad Enemy. There will be both a new race — Pandaren — and a new class — Monk. The level cap will be raised to 90, there will be “challenge mode” dungeons, and they’re introducing a pet battle system. Blizzard also mentioned that people who buy a 12-month subscription to WoW will get a copy of Diablo 3 for free.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Just over a year ago, Square Enix released Final Fantasy XIV. It was not well received, and to atone for their mistake, the company removed the game’s subscription fee, replaced a bunch of the developers, and delayed the PS3 version. Now, they are confident enough in the updates they’ve brought to the game that they are re-instituting the subscription plan and working again on the PS3 version, though it’s still about a year away. They’ve also explained their roadmap for version 2.0 of the game, which will include a new UI, a new graphics engine, and a redesign of all current maps.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
For some time, players of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft have been able to purchase a small number of vanity in-game items for real money, but the items were restricted to the user’s own account. Now, Blizzard has announced they will be adding another such item, with a twist — it doesn’t become bound to a player’s account until they use it, so it can be traded or sold on the game’s auction house. In their announcement, they said, “While our goal is to offer players alternative ways to add a Pet Store pet to their collection, we’re ok with it if some players choose to use the Guardian Cub as a safe and secure way to try to acquire a little extra in-game gold without turning to third-party gold-selling services. … While some players might be able to acquire some extra gold by putting the Guardian Cub in the auction house, that’s preferable to players contributing to the gold-selling ‘black market’ and account theft.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
For some time, players of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft have been able to purchase a small number of vanity in-game items for real money, but the items were restricted to the user’s own account. Now, Blizzard has announced they will be adding another such item, with a twist — it doesn’t become bound to a player’s account until they use it, so it can be traded or sold on the game’s auction house. In their announcement, they said, “While our goal is to offer players alternative ways to add a Pet Store pet to their collection, we’re ok with it if some players choose to use the Guardian Cub as a safe and secure way to try to acquire a little extra in-game gold without turning to third-party gold-selling services. … While some players might be able to acquire some extra gold by putting the Guardian Cub in the auction house, that’s preferable to players contributing to the gold-selling ‘black market’ and account theft.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
For some time, players of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft have been able to purchase a small number of vanity in-game items for real money, but the items were restricted to the user’s own account. Now, Blizzard has announced they will be adding another such item, with a twist — it doesn’t become bound to a player’s account until they use it, so it can be traded or sold on the game’s auction house. In their announcement, they said, “While our goal is to offer players alternative ways to add a Pet Store pet to their collection, we’re ok with it if some players choose to use the Guardian Cub as a safe and secure way to try to acquire a little extra in-game gold without turning to third-party gold-selling services. … While some players might be able to acquire some extra gold by putting the Guardian Cub in the auction house, that’s preferable to players contributing to the gold-selling ‘black market’ and account theft.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
_xeno_ writes “It’s taken a year since Final Fantasy XIV launched to what can at best be called unfavorable reviews, but Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada is finally willing to admit that the (still subscription-free) MMO ‘greatly damaged’ the entire Final Fantasy brand. Despite this damage, Wada said Square Enix will continue to work on ‘reviving’ the game, with an upcoming patch promising to finally introduce such series staples as chocobos and airships. Even so, there’s still no word on the PS3 release, which was delayed until the game was ‘fixed,’ nor is there any sign that Square Enix feels the game will be worth a subscription fee any time soon.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
BioWare announced today that their upcoming MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, will launch on December 20 in North America, and December 22 in Europe. They’ve released a new trailer for the game, and reiterated that they’ll be throttling logins early on to prevent server instability. Gamasutra recently spoke with SW:TOR project lead James Ohlen about finishing up the game and preparing it for launch. He said, “We’re also focused on game balance for combat, for itemization, for the social systems. We’ve been running a lot of tests, we’re getting a lot of feedback on the game. And when we get that feedback, we use it to make tweaks and changes. We’re not making major changes now, we’re just making changes that we can.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.