All Things Gaming
The 10 day Wildstar open beta ended recently to much fanfare created by the devs. I’ve yet to see such a massive end game event to sign off something as small as a beta test before, so it was pretty impressive to see. There were giant monsters, dev jokes, and an epic troll (they Rick Rolled the whole game by giving us a code to buff our players but it instead opened a browser with the music video). See below for some screen shots:
When Elder Scrolls: Skyrim first came out, I played the hell out of that game. While I had seen other ES games, Skyrim was my first. It was gorgeous, flexible, full of freedom and adventure. I remember thinking…”this would make a great MMO”. My dream for ESO was Skyrim with other players in it. In some ways, I got my dream, but it was all too shortsighted. (more…)
I’m not going to lie. My hopes for ESO are incredibly high. I love the MMO concept; the persistent, massive world; the social environment inside a game, but I’m running out of something to play. I’m a long time World of Warcraft player and it’s a great game, but… Oh, it’s such a but. The game is old. And I don’t just mean that the graphics engine is primarily 10 years old (which, honestly does get to me occasionally). The game is tired. It’s worn out. We’re on episode two hundred and whatever of Dragon Ball Z and while we keep getting new bosses it’s all the same. The interface and features are the best – there’s no arguing that. No other MMO out there matches the quality-of-game improvements that have happened over the years. But you can only polish the same gem so much. It’s still the same. This is where WoW finds itself, it’s the most polished MMO (excluding graphics) but it’s lacking something new to drive interest. So, what else to turn to? TERA looks great but the only unique part (live action combat) feels more gimmicky than a feature. The Secret World has basically the coolest premise out there, but the simple -fun- of game play is so much lower. A friend of mine described Knights of the Old Republic game play as exactly like WoW from 5 years ago. But look… on the horizon is a game that promises to exceed all of them. (more…)
So, I haven’t and probably won’t end up playing much WoW this weekend, because, well. Elder Scrolls Online beta!! Not only am I playing it a bit, but also trying to make some handy youtube videos. For your viewing pleasure (or displeasure, but you can view them regardless), here are some of ESO Beta footage I’ve recorded and posted.
Here’s a video on all the character customization options. WoW players take note of what (more…)
Okay. I know this is a WoW blog, but I’m really exciting about Elder Scrolls Online and today they opened up the pre-order for that game and showed us what we get for it. The pre-order bonuses are awesome. On top of that, while it may have already been out, this is the first I’ve seen the collector’s edition.
Pre-Order
Here’s some changes from one of the latest beta builds. Playing around with my holy spells a little bit and checking the tool-tips, these seem to be in place on the live servers as well. So what does this mean to you Holy Paladins? 30% increased base healing from all of your main heals. Read the changes and I’ll get to some explanations after.
Outside of large base healing buffs to FoL, HL, DL, and HS, there’s a handful of other small nerfs and important buffs. Small nerf to the range on Holy Radiance, though who really cares? We want big tank heals, not weakish AoE heals on CD. We also lose the mana return from Lay on Hands. While this is technically a nerf to the spell, the new glyph allows for the spell pretty much puts it right back in, so we’re sitting good still. The biggest news here is the buff to our mastery. Not only does it absorb more than before up to 10% of the healing done from 8, it lasts two seconds longer. Each point of mastery is 25% more effective as well, potentially making it pretty worthwhile to stack some mastery through reforging.
Although Holy gets some use out of the buff to exorcism should help rets dps out pretty well with about a large increase to its scaling and base stats. Hopefully I can take these and test them out, but I’ve been a little more focused on gearing my new resto shaman. Having a lot more fun there than his other spec, enhancement. Probably some updates on that tomorrow!