Our live radio broadcasts are currently on hiatus while we work on improvements to Sanitarium.FM's core services. For further information, visit our Discord.
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.
A public beta for an all-new player vs. player (PvP) mode will soon be available to all Guild Wars 2 players in North America and Europe.
Called Stronghold, the mode takes place in the Battle of Champion’s Dusk map and allows teams to play as pirates and knights while working to overthrow the opposing team’s lord. NCSOFT and ArenaNet hope to introduce new strategy elements to the mode by including NPCs that can be hired (sounding somewhat like Heroes from Guild Wars 1’s Nightfall campaign) to help fight enemy resistance and giving players options and new “strategic opportunities” to keep each player engaged.
This public beta will be accessible through Guild Wars 2’s Unranked Arena. The developer notes that classic PvP mode Conquest will still be available through the Ranked Arena. ArenaNet invites those interested to visit their official website to learn more. But, to get started in Stronghold, you’ll need to head to the Heart of the Mists, which can be accessed through the main portal in Lion’s Arch or through the PvP panel icon located at the top of your screen. Once you’re ready, queue for an Unranked Arena match. You’ll see Battle of Champion’s Dusk as the featured map; vote for it, hit “Accept” when your queue pops, and enjoy the battle! Conquest matches can still be played in Ranked.
Stronghold will be included in Guild Wars 2’s upcoming expansion Heart of Thorns and the beta will be available for 24 hours and will take place on Tuesday, April 14.
Those who choose to participate may use the character currently tied to their account.
To celebrate this huge moment for Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, ArenaNet will also be streaming live for 23 hours nonstop, from 1 p.m. Pacific Time on Tuesday to noon Pacific Time on Wednesday. The stream will feature some of your favorite Guild Wars 2 livestreamers and shoutcasters, as well as appearances by ArenaNet developers! (Well, all except me of course)
Today, they’re worth quite a bit less. The tokens are in-game items which can be purchased for $20 and exchanged for gold or game time, with their value in gold determined by the market. Blizzard said last month that it would set an initial value and then let it fluctuate based on supply and demand. And fluctuate it has, with the Token shedding a full quarter of its worth in gold in a single day.
At launch, a $20 Token was initially valued at 30,000 gold, and actually pushed beyond that in the first few hours after release. But then it started to go down, down, steadily down, and now, according to wowtoken.info, your $20 Token now equates to 22,405 gold, more than a quarter less than the starting price.
The slump is not entirely surprising. As VentureBeat points out, the great likelihood is that players rushed to buy Tokens as soon as they were launched, then dumped them on the auction house to turn around some quick gold. And it’s not as though 22k is an inconsequential sum, either.
The potentially interesting part is what happens next: If the gold value continues to fall, players could be tempted to forgo their $15 monthly subscription fees in favor of Tokens, tradeable for 30 days of game time, purchased with gold. Will Blizzard take action to stabilize the market? My guess is that they’ll eventually settle into a sub-30k stability, but given how the Diablo 3 real money auction house turned out, a small part of me wonders if maybe WoW Tokens could have unforeseen effects on the way the in-game economy is balanced.
For more info on the WoW token system, follow this link!
Ok, EGX Rezzed 2015 kicked off today and teh press were invited to check out ArenaNet’s 40 minute demo of the new Heart of Thorns expansion that’s coming soon
The first thing that jumped out at me was how the game honestly feels like nothing has changed… at all…
So rather than roll a new character and try the new Revenant class, I decided to basically make my main lvl 80 necromancer that has served me well since day one of the Guild Wars 2 release. And again, nothing new. apart from having to bind the controls slightly based on how I’ve played the game from release, the game felt exactly as it has the whole time.
The demo kicked off with a quite nice intro sequence in typical Guild Wars 2 style, but you very quickly realise that this is mid campaign, as you have no idea WHY they are doing what they are doing and what for, and this lack of info drops you squarely into what appears to be a Destiny’s Edge/Pact team up against a new jungle dragon, which quickly goes HORRIBLY wrong, leaving you and a few survivors to make your way through the jungle to save other survivors and find out what happened to Destiny’s Edge and the rest of the very quickly destroyed fleet.
What DOES happen very quickly is the learning of your first Mastery Point, this leading to learning how to glide for short distances. I must admit, I used this only once, to jump between a platform for a boss event that you stumble on pretty much straight away. This was interesting, albeit typical GW2 style, everyone is in it for themselves, 99% of people won’t help you if you are downed and the rest only for the extra experience for helping you back up, not for team work at all
This was a fun boss fight though, much more movement from the boss, a Wyvern instead of a dragon this time, on a roundish platform, although his rotation of moves got memorised very quickly and his fire breath attack is reasonably easy to evade. It was still enjoyable though, but I can see it getting boring quickly if too many people did it regularly, but then this is the problem with all the GW2 world boss fights
Now, some reading this will ask why I didn’t try the new Revenant class and there are two reasons… 1, I plan to make one and live stream it on release. and 2, I had to wait in the que to play this for nearly two hours. I watched every other person play one, apart from the odd veterans like me that wanted to see if our main class had changed.
Now the Revenant looks interesting, and I’m sure I will enjoy it when I play it, but really? If I wasn’t going to get it to stream, I’d wait a while after release and get it at discount.
I must say on a personal note though, the day was made all the more fun by the awesome Gaile Gray, the Guild Wars 1 community manager that always had time for us idiots in GW1, even the super opinionated ones like me and the PVP community, and although I very much doubt this gets read by anyone at ANet, I highly recommend the devs listen to the Lady Gray and bring back Lions Arch and International Districts, the game needs more conga lines and Froggy
Now you can get drunk with you favorite Dwarf and sing along with the songs you heard in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Bioware created a place on its website where you can download the tavern songs for free.
The songs include “I Am The One,” “Grey Warden,” and “Empress of Fire” among others, and you have until February 9th to download the MP3s.
