Game Pieces
Game Pieces One_tags
Cross Server PuGs2010-03-25 00:00:00The
One and Only ArexLovesPie wrote:I forsee a huge all druid 5 man endeavor.
I'm thinking though this will end up be...
Just respect to MM - Weapon choice2010-03-06 00:00:00Painsaw for sonic spear, no way =) <br />It sounds like your base stats are pretty good... so I wouldn't change much. What may help is changing your shot rotation. Often times, that's what's holding you back from top DPS. The stickies at the top hav...
Hit Capped and Focus aim2010-02-25 00:00:00it went like this, I would say a and the pug'd hunter would argue until his last breath for b.
One of the important topics that came up was being hit capped vs. focus aim.
...
World of Warcraft UI Mods2010-02-20 00:00:00Then you wait for the next update to see if you have to do it all over again.
One of these days I’ll have to post a list o...
Devious As to yourolusions, I do agree2010-02-05 00:00:00Very interesting. Thanks for thoseaulations, Devious. As to yourolusions, I do agree that without Flurry (25% dps) e, Prot deals less notably lower dps. But given the ireased defenses, I find the trade suits me. While Ian't burst-dps adds, I do find myself with surprisingly high health after the dustlears and theorpses are piled up. Link to this Nov 20th 2007 8:57am : Logged Reply to this Wisedeathholar218 Good <br /><br />I always thought tanking was just taking as mh (All) of the ...
IGN Interview FFXI Producer2009-10-15 00:00:00Have there been any problems with people cheating online?
Yasu Kurosawa: It does happen and we think that we can prevent most of it because it's not fair to other players. There are a few ways to monitor that and prevent it.
One of course is 24/7 GM, the other is to keep changing the method of encryptions. Most of the important stats are on the servers so it's difficult to change it.
IGNPS2: Could you tell me more about the 24/7 GMs?
Yasu Kurosawa: These are the Game Masters, the in-game supporters. They will be invisible until they are required to show up. They're mostly invisible.
IGNPS2: Ho...
Player vs. Everything: Starting over2009-09-21 00:00:00a new game.
When you're considering starting an alt on a game you already play, it's not nearly as scary. You have access to your existing social network, your piles of gold, random items you've picked up, and the benefit of having a higher-level character to offer whatever assistance he can. Still, it's frustrating.
One big reason starting over sucks is the grind. When you're used to playing at max level, you generally want to get your new character back up there, and you're often playing through content you've already seen before. You get to do any faction work your game might have over again, and you'll probably be killing a lot of monsters that aren't ...
Puzzle Pirates Shows Indie Developers Can Succeed in the MMO Market2009-09-10 00:00:00With the video games industry becoming increasingly consolidated among a few large publishers, it's become harder and harder for small, independent developers to remain profitable without the help of one of these major publishing houses. In fact, it's virtually impossible to get your homegrown title distributed on a home console, no matter how well it stacks up to the titles the big boys are making.On the PC side, the situation for indie devs isn't quite so dire, thanks to electronic distribution of these smaller titles being a much more viable option. Companies such as PopCap and WildTangent have found great success selling their smaller titles for under $20. <br />The burgeoning MMO market has also become quite a boon for small dev houses. San Francisco-based Three Rings Design is perhaps the best example of this, with their quirky MMO Puzzle Pirates becoming a large success for the company, despite their small amount of development and marketing capital. With only three full-time employees working on the game during most of its development, Three Rings managed to successfully develop and launch Puzzle Pirates in December 2003. The game now has over 9,000 paying subscribers.Although the title falls into the MMO genre, you wouldn't know it at first glance. There are no levels to gain, no stat-boosting armor (or stats at all, for that matter), and no complex quests. Even combat has its own twist. As the name implies, Puzzle Pirates is all about the puzzles. Manning the bilge means matching up shapes in groups of 3 as fast as possible. Sword fighting becomes a head-to-head puzzle match up in the vein of multiplayer Tetris. Other puzzling tasks include sailing, and carpentry. As a crew, cooperation becomes necessary to survival.<br />We spoke with Three Rings CEO Daniel James about the story behind Puzzle Pirates, the future for indie developers, and where the MMO market is headed.GameDAILY BIZ: How large is the Three Rings team? What previous experience does it have? Daniel James: The crew numbers eight full-time mates and eight part-time contractors, mostly in customer support. My background is very much in MUDs; my CTO Michael and most of our engineers came from a web services and classic games background. Only a couple of us have worked in traditional games companies, and I sometimes think that this is an advantage. BIZ: How did Three Rings fund itself for the couple of years before PP launched? DJ: Founders, friends and family. We were lucky to have enough money to see the game through to a reasonable point of risk-reduction such that we could persuade some friends to invest. Thanks to them, we finished her!Note also that we kept costs very low during development, ramping up from 3 full-timers to 6 ...
Blizzard Reveals Item Drop Secrets2009-09-07 00:00:00Wondering why suddenly it doesn't seem so painful to farm a dozen wild boars for quest drops? It's because Blizzard changed World of Warcraft's item drop mechanics, but they haven't told anybody until now.<br />Any World of Warcraft player knows the fatigue of killing endless waves of generic creatures to farm items you need for a quest. When the items actually drop, it's only time-consuming and sometimes oddly satisfying in a rote, mindless way. When they don't drop, no matter how many you've killed, just because of bad luck? Well, that's when computer monitors start getting broken.<br />Blizzard has, in secret, been looking out for comput...
Player vs. Everything: Analyzing the Wrath of the Lich King news explosion2009-09-04 00:00:00Wow. Or more accurately, World of Warcraft. It's all over the internet today in a big way. Blizzard released a ridiculous amount of information about their next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, and some of the changes they've announced are pretty major. I thought I would use today's article to go over some of the most exciting announcements, discuss what makes them so interesting, and talk about what it means for the game (and for you). I'll be pointing out the links as I go along, but if you just want to go check out the articles, this post will send you everywhere you want to go and this post has a nice synopsis of all the available info in one easy place.Before I start digging in, I just wanted to mention that I would never, ever, want to compete with Blizzard as a game company. Those poor guys at Funcom... The Age of Conan release date was set for a month after Blizzard's big Sunwell patch -- it looked like they were in the clear, and they could ride people's boredom all the way to September and maybe even hold them. And then, Blizzard drops a bomb like this (ten days before AoC's release, which I'd bet my shirt was no coincidence). People will be talking about this stuff for months, it's going to be hard to get a word in edge-wise over the buzz, and the promise of a mystery patch that will let us spend our gold on "cool new items" will keep people happily grinding dailies for a while. That's got to sting. Anyway, without further ado, lets take a look at these announced features.The Death KnightThe Death Knight is the thing that's been on everyone's mind since the day they first announced them for WotLK. How would it work? What will it do to existing tanks? Where do they start, and at what level? Finally, we have answers for many of those questions. If you read the write-ups here and here, there's a plethora of information. I'll let you read the articles for the minute details, but here are the things that jumped out at me about the class: They start at level 55 at a new zone in or near Eastern Plaguelands and do quests there to learn their abilities and get starting equipment. They're an anti-mage tank in raids, are capable of tanking heroics and 5-mans, and they seem to work a lot like a druid (they get a 45% armor boost/25% threat boost aura instead of a shield). You can make a Death Knight on any server provided that you have at least a level 55 character on any server (you can make only one Death Knight per server). They can be any race.Lets tackle the issue that's probably the most pressing: Death Knight creation. It seems that they've removed the quest pre-requisite for making a DK and allowing anyone with a level 55 on their account to roll one on any server (see Chilton's comments in the TTH article). However, no one has said anything about PvP or PvE restrictions. As someone who has recently leveled to 70 on a PvP server, I can tell you that that's not really fair if people are going to be able to just start up their 55 Death Knight on the PvP servers and go around ganking the people trying to level their non-Death Knight classes on those same servers for the first time. You thought ganking was bad now? Just wait.There's another little problem this is going to create: Any number of people play on ...
