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Just as it might be true that for smartphones, if you can imagine it, “there’s an app for that”, when it comes to modern videogames, often if you can imagine it, “there’s a mod for that” – be it from flooding the majority of the world in Grand Theft Auto 5, to making Thomas the Tank Engine rain from the sky in Skyrim. World of Warcraft is no exception – but perhaps the most interesting mod yet is not an actual game mod, but one modder’s interpretation of a new look for the game.
Recently, a modder named Daniel Luchau decided to give one of the game’s most famous environments – and the hometown of newly created Human characters – a visual facelift through the use of Unreal Engine 4. In order to recreate The Elwynn Forest, Luchau took standard assets as seen in Unreal Engine 4 Tech Demos and combine them with actual models imported from World of Warcraft, though some of the latter’s textures were retouched for better visual splendour. While Luchau is keen to express that his video of the work so far is “an early build” – this only touches the surface of what Unreal Engine 4 can offer and many details and textures still look rough – there are many impressive moments even in the two short minutes of this preview. Outside of Elwynn Forest, players will recognize Goldshire, the second quest town in the area; as well as Westbrook Garrison, with the infamous wanted poster for Hogger outside…
Enough talk, take a look for yourself:
Feel free to head on over to the Forum to let us know what you think 🙂
Guild Wars 2 players get a chance to head into the Heart of Thorns this evening—that is, if they’ve already got a key to enter into the jungle expansion’s closed beta. The test consists of three two-hour sessions staggered throughout the day. Players who found a rare portal during last month’s Dry Top and Silverwastes events will be able to create a new beta character to test out a small portion of the new expansion.
“Participants will be able to use a revenant—or any of the existing eight professions—to play a small amount of expansion story content, followed by two beta versions of outposts and their corresponding adventures in part of the Verdant Brink map,” explains a news post on the Guild Wars 2 site. “An early, partially completed version of the day/night cycle meta-event experience from Verdant Brink will also be available.”
ArenaNet says they’ll be adding additional participants, picked from email addresses subscribed to the expansion’s newsletter.
Here are the times of the closed beta tests:
– 11:30 am – 1:30 pm PDT / 8:30 pm – 10:30 pm CEST / 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm BST
– 3:30 pm – 5:30 pm PDT / 12:30 am – 2:30 am CEST / 11:30 pm – 1:30 am BST
– 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm PDT / 4:30 am – 6:30 am CEST / 3:30 am – 5:30 am BST
For those without access, the test isn’t under any NDA restrictions. That means you can expect the beta to be streamed by players during each test window.
MMOs are finding a home on console, and Neverwinter is seeing success over on the Xbox.
The MMO world is currently in a bit of a lull, but Neverwinter is reporting quite a bit of success following its launch on Xbox One.
According to the official site, over 1.6 million players have downloaded the game, creating some 2.3 million characters, and slaying over 1 billion enemies. They even put together an infographic to show it all off.
Okay, he didn’t exactly say that – but close enough!
Mighty No.9, often seen as Keiji Inafune’s spiritual successor to Mega Man – a franchise he originally created, but no longer controls as a result of leaving Capcom – was a phenomenal success on Kickstarter, smashing its original $900,000 target fourfold; and funding campaigns outside Kickstarter have only put more cash into the kitty. As a result of the huge fan base, the game has quickly grown from its original concept, growing from six to eight stages in the main story mode, introducing Japanese and French voiceovers, extra subtitle languages, an extra level, boss and playable character – not to mention it’s now planned to hit almost every current and previous-gen console under the sun!
With the game growing to such a massive extent, Keiji’s team, Comcept, have now teamed up with a secondary publisher, Deep Silver — the publisher behind Saints Row, Homefront and Dead Island – to get the game released on to all the supported platforms as quickly as possible. However, in order to allow all the cool stuff to be added, Comcept have been forced to admit – via a Kickstarter update – that they will miss the original planned launch window of “Spring 2015”; and instead, will be delaying the game’s release until September.
“Before you despair, please, hear us out first!” Comcept writes. “The reason for the delay, and the reason we are so excited about this new partnership in the first place, is all the cool stuff it will allow us to add to the game.” The deal with Deep Silver will not impact any Kickstarter backer rewards, Comcept says.
We’ll leave you with the promotional imagery they published to excite you while you wait:
