The latest update to Skyforge is live. Titled Crucible of the Gods, the patch includes a plethora of new content for players to enjoy. After the announcement of the closed beta, we have continued to bring you news about Skyforge, from development studio Allods. Some of the most notable changes in this update include the Divine Atlas, the ability to ascend to a demi-god, new world events, and brand new raids.
Ascension to a Demi-God
The price to convert into a divine form is quite expensive, priced at 30,500 prestige points, it is clear that not every single common mortal will have the opportunity to convert into their Divine Form and walk the earth as a god. The 30,500 prestige points will grant you access to a quest called New God, which will send players on a journey to become a deity. Upon converting to the Divine Form, they will have access to abilities far beyond those of a normal character and also to the Divine Atlas, which is an entirely new set of skills and stats.
As players progress through the Divine Atlas, they get access to unique nodes that provide improvements to the divine form such as health, damage, and increased abilities.
New Invasions
The alien invaders tirelessly attempt to bring death and destruction to Aelion, and it’s the job of the players and their new Divine forms to stop them. Have a look at the invasion trailer below for more information.
Skyforge is available free-to-play on PC.
Source: Official Website, Press Release
In early June, the studio behind WildStar announced that their MMORPG would change its business model and become free-to-play. How exactly the transition would go ahead was yet to be revealed. As part of the gamescom 2015, NCSoft finally gave some information on WildStar’s transition from a subscription model to a free-to-play model. As it turns out, players can delve into the free version of the roleplaying game starting today. Hold your horses before you get too excited. As with every major release, things have to be tested first. NCSoft announced that the free-to-play version of WildStar would start its closed beta today.
While many beta keys have already been sent out, players are still encouraged to sign up for an invitation on the official game homepage. Naturally, current subscribers to the MMORPG are able to delve into the closed beta without waiting for a beta key. The testing phase is particularly necessary for the studio to balance the title’s new monetization, as well as test its biggest content update ever.
Instead of focusing only on the transition into its new business model, the developers have also been working on new content and features. The revamped Arkship and arrival sequence welcome newcomers to the roleplaying game; the Alpha Sanctum is a new instance that introduces players to the title’s storyline earlier than ever; the Loyalty Program rewards anyone who has ever invested money into WildStar with additional gear, items, pets, and more by distributing reward points.
Additionally, the studio has worked hard to guarantee that players of all backgrounds will have a smooth and rewarding gaming experience. Sounds promising to us!
Source: Press release
Perfect World Entertainment and Cryptic studios are adding even more content to their MMORPG Star Trek Online. The patch brings Season 11, called New Dawn. The content in this update brings the sprawling Iconian War story arc to an epic conclusion, with the underlying theme of the latest season being that of hope and rebuilding.
The update brings a number of additions to the game. Most notably, there is an entire new unknown civilization to uncover and a brand new game mechanic.
Brand New Gameplay Mechanic
The new Admiralty System brings a whole host of new gameplay options. Players will have the ability to take command of their inactive starships and get them to automatically complete dangerous missions and assignments to gather rewards. Within the new Admiralty System, starships are assigned special traits and stats that are vital to completing assignments successfully. You need to plan which ships to send on any given assignment so that you can choose the right ship for the job, and offset and dangers that might stand in the way.
With the new content comes the return of a character from the huge catalog of Start Trek franchise actors. Chase Masterson, known to most as Mirror Leeta from the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes, returns to play her role in the New Dawn update.
Perfect World has promised more news to come about this update, so watch this space and we’ll keep you informed.
Source: Official Website, Press Release
Lara Croft is at it again on smartphones and tablets – but this time, there will be less running and more strategic thinking! At this year’s E3 in Los Angeles, Square Enix announced the next game in their “Go” series – Lara Croft Go, and now, in the wake of gamescom 2015, we finally know when the app will be released! On August 27th, players will be able to slip into the role of the iconic archeologist and explore temples and solve ancient mysteries.
The title will follow in Hitman Go’s footsteps and focus on the quieter aspects of the Tomb Raider franchise. Instead of running from monsters and jumping over chasms, Lara Croft solves riddles and makes her way through various temples. That is not to say that Lara Croft Go won’t feature an iconic enemy here and there. The graphics will be similarly as stylized as the gameplay, focusing on atmospheric and striking visuals rather than detailed realism! The puzzle game also features an isometric perspective allowing players to see the entire map at once. In turn based gameplay, players will solve riddles by using their mobile device’s touchscreen controls.
At gamescom, Square Enix was not yet able to tell us whether there will be any expansions for the title in the future. The studio is currently devoting their entire attention to the release at the end of the month. Everything else will be seen afterwards.
Lara Croft Go will be launched for Android and iOS devices. There has been no word on a Windows Phone or tablet version of the game. We will keep you posted!
Source: gamescom
There’s something liberating about the new MMORPG from Trion Worlds. It’s not often that a “sandbox” game feels like you can truly do anything, but Trove gives players enough freedom, while giving them a shove in the right direction every now and again. It’s a nice mix of some iconic aspects of a range of different genres and popular games. After playing for just a short amount of time, I was quickly able to tell that this game owes some pretty hefty debts to games like Minecraft, and to a lesser extent every other MMORPG in existence. Trove is the sort of game that pulls you in with its simplicity, and you stay for the compelling content, intelligent design, and all round blocky mayhem.
The sense that some of the aspects of the game have been done before doesn’t take too much away from the whole experience, as the gameplay is so unique, and everything just works well together. The art style and the gameplay are both very simplistic, but also extremely charming. Simplistic is a word that I’ll be using a lot when talking about this game, but you have to remember that simplistic doesn’t necessarily mean bad.
Diverse Classes & Massive Biomes
After diving into the game, I was faced with the option of choosing from a range of different classes, so I naturally picked the one that turns into a dragon and breathes fire. From then on out, it was straight into the adventure after the tiniest of tutorials. Even the briefest of glimpses at the game will have the word “Minecraft” crossing the lips of even the most casual of gamers. The landscape is indeed voxel based, with exploration and crafting at the core of the game, but this only adds to the freedom that I experienced while playing. The never-ending randomly generated landscapes stretch into the distance and biomes of different themes and colors pop up everywhere. These random biomes and sense of a truly untouched world differentiate Trove from pretty much every other MMO.
The biomes are very diverse. There are more traditional and stereotypical worlds like a Tundra with yetis, deserts with cacti, forests with castles, but there are also crazy biomes that look like something from a Tron movie, or a land made entirely out of candy.
After I had burnt my way through the first few dungeons, everything started to become very intuitive. The controls are extremely simple and the dungeons are easy to navigate, yet can also be quite complex
Community Based Gameplay
One of the coolest aspects of the game is the creativity from my fellow players. I’d frequently be bouncing around on my bouncy ball mount when I would come across another player’s home (called a cornerstone) that had been beautifully put together. These cornerstones were often well thought out and designed. One of my personal favorites was a player that had recreated the house from the Pixar movie Up. The house was sitting off the ground, and even had balloons attached to the top, appearing to be holding the whole thing up.
The best aspect of community involvement, however, was that almost every single piece of armor and weaponry in the game has been designed by a player. If you hover over an item that you think looks cool, you can see the name of the player that made it. I started investigating a little further into this, and found that there are resources for you to design your own items and put the designs forward to the developers to seek their approval. There is not only a very active subreddit on reddit devoted to this, but also a page on the official forums.
One thing I noticed about the community and player base is that it seems to be a very mixed bag. You have your casual players, your hardcore MMO min-maxers, your world creators, your “I want to blow this up” guys, and the people that just love hacking their way through a dungeon. The best part is that all of these play styles are possible, and none of them interfere with each other in the slightest.
It seems like Trion Worlds has made a conscious effort to remove the most annoying parts of an MMO experience in Trove. For example, we’ve all experienced the frustration when some loot drops and there’s always the “mind if I roll need?” guy. That problem is completely removed in Trove, as all loot that drops is accessible for all players, so everybody in the nearby area gets the same loot. I found this out the hard way while going through dungeons with a casual group of players. I was leaving about half of everything that dropped on the floor, just to make sure that everyone got their fair share, but that turned out to be completely counterproductive, and ended with me going all the way back through the dungeon to collect those precious internet pixels.
There are clever mechanics in place to deal with pretty much everything. There is no griefing (outside of the obligatory global chat trolls), no stealing from other players, no problems over land ownership, and a whole host of fair ways to deal with most of the normal gripes with MMOs.
Well made? Definitely. Flawless? Certainly not!
While I have definitely given an overwhelmingly positive review of the game, possibly because of my affinity to brightly colored objects and a sense of nostalgia from my World of Warcraft days, Trove is not without its flaws.
There are a number of different things in the game that are left completely unexplained. Most of the hotkeys, for example. It took me 30 minutes to work out I even HAD a mount, let alone how to summon it (Z key, for those coming from Google). Some of the in-game items and attributes don’t immediately make much sense (What is Glim? Flux? Shapestone Ore? What’s a mastery point and how do I get one? Who is Diggsly and why does everyone want to buy him?). All of these things are not clearly explained from the get-go, so it might seem overwhelming to less determined players. After a while of guessing and wasting time and resources, I had to look for a video guide to understand quite a bit of the content.
Too Much Grinding?
Another aspect of Trove that could deter new players is the same pitfall that many other MMOs are famous for - the “endless grind." The quests that send you on your way to kill a certain amount of enemies, or that one quest that asks you to craft something, which would be easy if you didn't have to collect that hard-to-find item 500 times first. Trove includes a few of these, and some players have complained that the end game can sometimes feel monotonous, and like a never ending circle. The complaint is that players have to collect loot, in order to fight a boss to get better loot, in order to fight another boss to get better loot. This continues ad nauseam, until you gather enough resources to move on to the next quest. To be honest, I think I agree with them. Right now there is no definite end-game. There is no iconic bad-guy that needs defeating, princess to save, or 100 stars to collect. It’s almost TOO sandboxy, and while at first the feeling of freedom is infectious, you tend to head towards an inevitable existential crisis when you’re standing on top of the umpteenth dead bad guy and you think to yourself “what’s the point?”
Our Verdict
Overall, I personally enjoyed the game. It’s not a game that I could play the same way as other MMORPGs I have played in the past. I wouldn’t find myself logging in every day and playing for hours, but I don’t think it’s really designed for that. I would, however, happily play a few times a week to see what's news and have a little adventure. It fills its niche very well. It’s a game that builds bridges between the casual market and an MMO, which is something that hasn’t traditionally been possible. Despite its flaws, I still think that it's a very enjoyable game that most people will get along with.
Trove is available free-to-play on PC.