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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.
WildStar, the MMO from Carbine studios could be going free to play this August. A recent post on Reddit from a user claiming to be a Carbine employee has posted several details about the game’s future. Apparently, the game will be going to a “Hybrid Free to Play model in August,”. While this won’t be pay to win, there will be the ability to use microtransactions for things like XP gains and buffs. What the exact nature of this system will be is, of course, not fully known.
Of further interest, WIldStar will apparently be coming to Steam as the Steam database now includes an entry for the game. Valve has also apparently visited the studio offices, according to the poster “God_of_EDM”.
Carbine and WildStar haven’t been in the best shape recently with World of Warcraft stealing a significant percentage of the WildStar playerbase back with the most recent expansion, and considerable turnover at Carbine studios. Maybe going f2p will work for WildStar, and maybe not. Only time will tell.
What do you think? If WildStar does go free to play, will you give it a shot? let us know!
Ever since Frontier announced that their popular game Elite: Dangerous was due to come to Steam, those people who backed the game on Kickstarter and have bought from Frontier’s own store having been asking the question: will we get Steam keys for the game too?
Originally Frontier wasn’t sure if that was going to be possible but due to high demand they seem to have managed to make it happen. Steam keys will now be offered to all PC players who either got their game access through the Frontier store or as a result of a Kickstarter backing. Result!
Thanks for your patience. We’ll soon offer Steam keys to anyone who bought Elite: Dangerous from our store. https://t.co/TjigCCcHlp
“Thanks for your patience.” said community manager Edward Lewis on the game’s forums. “We’ll soon be offering Steam keys to anyone who bought Elite: Dangerous from the EliteDangerous.com store who would like a key, and to anyone who buys the game from our store in the future. We always appreciate it when you buy direct from our store because it means we can put more into supporting and developing Elite: Dangerous, but we know a number of long-time players and backers like to play through Steam and we think it’s fair everyone has that option, not just new players.”
The earthquake that hit Nepal as well as its aftershocks have been devastating for the people living there, as lives and homes were destroyed. In its wake the community of EVE Online petitioned CCP to launch a PLEX for GOOD initiative to help, and CCP have delivered.
“Along with the EVE Online community, CCP have been following the devastating impact of these events, and we were extremely humbled to see support tickets start to flood in and requests begin to appear on the EVE forums and social media sites requesting that we launch a PLEX for GOOD initiative to assist those affected.”
Players can donate their PLEX to CCP if they want to help, and each PLEX donated means that CCP will donate $15 to the Icelandic Red Cross to help victims of the earthquake. The PLEX need to be contracted to a special PLEX for GOOD character on a 14-day exchange contract, and the contracts will be accepted within 24 hours. To thank players who donate, CCP will gift two virtual t-shirts for every PLEX donated. The designs haven’t been finalised yet but they will be given out during a future release.
The PLEX for GOOD initiative has been used before by EVE’s community and CCP to raise over $340,000 to help those affected by natural disasters across the world. This particular one will run until May 15th, so get donating if you want to help those in need.
