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Latest SWG Update Adds Epic Hoth Battles
Posted by Mike Fahey at 5:00 AM on November 21, 2008
Star Wars Galaxies players are are getting some hot snowspeeder versus AT-ST combat with Chapter 11: The Battle of Echo Base. Live today, the update adds what is essentially a giant battleground, with players on both sides of the Galactic Civil War taking on quests to help their side triumph, with the Empire on assault and the Rebel Alliance on run like hell duty. Of course no Hoth battle would be the same without giant walking vehicles being tripped by small flying vehicles. Groups of up to 8 players will be able to hop into the cockpits of Imperial walker or Rebel snowspeeders and do what comes natural. Hope they packed plenty of tow line.
Honestly I'm a bit surprised this wasn't already in the game. I thought the first thing developers did upon starting up a Star Wars project based on the original trilogy was get the Hoth battle out of the way. Odd. Hit the jump for some very white screenshots.
Do they really have to bring back Guk? I suppose there's no stopping them now, as Sony Online Entertainment launches the fifth expansion for EverQuest II, The Shadow Odyssey. The expansion pack introduces more than 20 new zones to the game, with some of the original game's most frustrating dungeons brought back to new, terrifying life. Befallen and the Ruins of Guk are just a few of the more than 18 goal-based dungeons, and I would have paid full price simply to keep Guk away from me. I still have nightmares about being lost and alone down there, separated from my guild, huddled in the corner crying...perhaps I share too much. 
Well now that was fast. World of Warcraft's latest expansion hasn't even been out for a full week, and already the three new 25-man raids have been soundly trounced. The nameless European super-guild formed by the union of Nihilum and SK Gaming completed Naxxramas, Eye of Eternity, and Obsidian Sanctum, all by Saturday. That's within three days of the expansion's launch. The raiders' concerns echo my own quite succinctly.
I know it's automated and probably pretty typical, but I was surprised to find an email from Blizzard sitting in my mailbox yesterday.
And like that, someone already hit 80. A mere 27 hours after World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King launches, the game apparently already has its first level 80: a warlock named Nymh that plays on a French server. "In real life I'm 21 and currently employed," says Nymh. "I took a few days of vacation for the release of the expansion." Dude's gonna need another vacation after this "vacation."
Way to go, US Jump Magazine. Here we were, all speculating and stuff, and you have to come along and get pages scanned showing that the 
Lionhead is teasing big news about their epic RPG Fable II next week, and quite frankly I find it in rather bad taste. Run the quote.
Wrath of the Lich King is out Friday. To mark the occasion, Blizzard have kicked off a series of in-game events to get players totally psyched for it. One of these is in the Orc capital Orgrimmar, which if you jump in right now is under continuous (ie it's one attack that loops every half hour) attack by Scourge forces. You excited yet, WoW tragics?
I'm pretty sure the Persona series wasn't the first JPRG to pair off dungeon crawling with high school - but whoever first had that idea deserves a freaking medal. High school is all about routines and drudgery; why shouldn't your RPG experience match that in length, anxiety, and tedium?
Atlus fans wary of Persona 4 for fear that they'll get FES'ed like they did with the previous installment of the PS2 RPG series can stop worrying now, as Atlus issues a press release announcing...nothing, basically.
With game publishers getting blasted over strict digital rights management solutions in their PC titles left and right these days, Ascaron and cdv Software Entertainment USA are taking a rather different approach. Rather than limit the number of times you can install the game on various machines, you'll be able to install Sacred 2: Fallen Angel on as many systems as you'd like as a sort of "Try Before You Buy" feature. Purchasers of retail or digital copies of the game can pass it around to friends, which lets them play the full version of the game for one calendar day before requiring they buy the title.
Sega drove a sketchy tank onto the rather barren field of PlayStation 3 RPGs with Valkyria Chronicles, the turn-based strategy affair that's been turning heads ever since the Japanese debut trailer 
How big are cell phones in Japan? If Final Fantasy IV The After is any indication, pretty damn big. An episode sequel to Final Fantasy IV, the cell phone title has been downloaded over 2 million times and is available for Japanese carrier DoCoMo's FOMA 903i and 703i series as well as for carrier AU's WIN BREW series. It was released earlier this year in February, and new "chapters" appear on a near monthly basis. 
Looks like
Michael Abbott of the Brainy Gamer has a nice reminder of why we play RPGs (well, those of us who play RPGs), based on some of his undergraduates' writings on their experiences in Fallout 1 and 2. Michael notes that the exercise — writing autobiographies of their characters — is often used in theatre, but it never occurred to him that it would be useful for his students in his RPG seminar, until "we began discussing the characters they had created .... The sense of ownership they clearly felt, and their remarkably vivid descriptions of their experiences in the games, made the assignment a no-brainer." Which goes to one of the reasons why people make the investment in RPGs:
Nintendo and Pokémon USA are planning a big Pokémon-related giveaway at Toys-R-Us stores across the United States and Puerto Rico that will dish out posters, discount vouchers and a buffed-up dragon Pokémon to download into your DS.
Fallout 3 began life under the loving care of Interplay's Black Isle Studios, creators of the first two Fallout titles. But before the game could be completed Interplay was struck by a financial apocalypse, selling the licence to create the game to Bethesda Softworks of The Elder Scrolls fame. Bethesda then scrapped what had come before and started fresh, promising fans of the series that they would do the property justice. With rabid fans breathing down their necks, the company polished up the Gamebryo engine used in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and went to town.
More Fallout 3 advertising dramas! First it was 
There have been numerous tips of glitches coming to our inbox, and it's hard to keep track of what's been reported and what hasn't, and then how serious the stuff is. But Lionhead is aware of them, and is responding. And the 
Courtesy of Famitsu. We're pretty sure most/all of them are new, but then, Square Enix have released so many shots of CGI segments featuring people with pretty hair it's getting really, really hard to be sure. We like this one, above, best, because if you ignore the pretty hair you can imagine some strange, parallel universe where the dude from Dead Space's pants are available as DLC.
One of these games shouldn't be sold to the public. No, it's not Viking: Battle for Asgard, but that's a very good guess! We're talking about Fallout 3, which, at least at some Wal-Marts just west of the Mississippi, is publicly available, even though it shouldn't be.
