Massive Quickies

You want quickies, I want to tell you about MMOGs. The Star Trek Online MMOG is moving forward with a new site for the Paramount online world. So far it is light on the details, but they assure us they'll have more in the near future. I probably don't need to tell you, but World of Warcraft rolled out a new patch earlier this week, adding in a high level raid dungeon and making it easier to get into the Battlegrounds. My guildies were having trouble getting past the first room in Blackwing's Lair last night, so my assumption is that Blizz has really come up with something special here. Speaking of fantasy MMOGs, the Everquest II Desert of Flames expansion pack is fast approaching, and both IGN and Gamespot have news and movies from the sandy, hot, new area. City of Villains will be opening up into Beta later this year, and to whet your appetite Voodoo Extreme has a bevy of CoV screens. Finally, Final Fantasy XI is adding in some interesting new stuff in the next couple of patches. A title selector, a summonable buddy, and changes to experience acquisition are all in the pipeline for the popular MMOG.

Re:Blackwing Lair

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Blizzard Damage Control [worldofwarcraft.com] that door isn't supposed to open.

We want to formally address player concerns regarding issues found in Blackwing Lair. Blackwing Lair is currently the highest tier raid dungeon in the game, designed to be a very challenging encounter for even the most powerful guilds to defeat. Since its launch, we have discovered some key issues which are making Blackwing encounters easier than intended. This applies to both Razorgore and Vaelastraz encounters. One related issue is also preventing the door to open after Vaelastrasz dies, not allowing players to advance beyond the Vaelastrasz the Corrupted encounter. While this is a bug, players currently should not be able to progress beyond the Vaelastraz encounter by any means, and anyone found in areas beyond the second door will be considered to be exploiting the game.

Gotta love damage control! "Working as intended."

Guild Wars?

[amarc]

It has also been updated in the last few hours - http://guildwars.com/news/gameupdates.html [guildwars.com]

Re:Blackwing Lair

[Incoherent07]

Read that again. Two points are made. First, the door does not open, which is a bug. Second, if you find a way to get through the door (I'm aware of a guild that used the fear effect of Deviate Delights to run a couple people through the door), you're exploiting. (The ostensible reason is that it would at a later date allow you to completely skip the encounter.)

Sigh no-one ever talks about EVE

[Pinkoir]

For what it's worth EVE [eve-online.com] just put out a new content patch as well. Added a metric fuck-ton of new content including new ship classes, new styles of PvE story-line encounters and some new Player Manufactured stations which will give the already amazing PvP system even more strategic (and yes I mean strategic) depth. The game just flat out owns. And I'm not afraid to say that since it's almost 14-year-old proof. People tired of meaningless arcade PvP in other massives should try out EVE, where your actions actually make a difference.

-Pinkoir

Re:Black Wing's Lair

[snuf23]

"Oh and for some reason they're telling people not to use custom UI mods... very weird."

I installed the updated CTMOD before connecting yesterday and haven't run into problems. I have seen problems noted with using mods that haven't been updated. In particular the popular Atlas mod supposedly has problems.
I don't really see any difference between this patch and any other when it comes to UI mods - disable them until your mod is updated or expect possible weirdness and crashiness.

CoV, sure, but Issue 5 also

[MattW]

Not only is City of Villains coming out (and I won a guaranteed beta slot in a contest! woot!), but so is City of Heroes Issue 5 [cityofheroes.com], the Forest of Dread.

It adds:

* 4 new villain groups
* New zone
* New task force
* 2 new "events" (in one, hellions are setting fire to a building and you have to stop them, and the other has something to do with trolls and superadine)
* 2 new power sets (Archery, and Sonic Blast)
* New debt system, new badges

Even cooler, a bunch of missions have been revamped with more complexity, like escort-the-NPC type missions and fighting off "waves of villains" (similar to the Terra Volta trial you go through to earn a respec).

Also, no waiting, because this got patched in today, you can now "auto exemplar" into a task force or trial, which means 8 level 50s can decide they want to do the Positron task force, and it will auto-exemp (lower) their effective level to 16 (the max for that task force) and lock them in; no more needing half the party to be in the real range, and no more getting booted from the TF team if someone drops link. Yay!