I’ll just come out and say it: I hate DLC.

Once upon a time, developers and publishers would laud an upcoming game on its merits alone, highlighting the work done on a compelling story or new gameplay mechanic. We’d buy into the hype after a couple of screenshots, an interview or even a video if we were lucky. But now we’re lucky to hear an announcement or see a trailer that doesn’t mention the bundle of pre-order extras or day one DLC that’s available. Extra guns? $5. Extra missions? $10. Feel like recruiting that master assassin into your ranks? Well, that’s $7, or part of the package if you sign up for the MasterEliteUltraPass that guarantees you all* of the extras for one low, low price of half the initial game’s cost, again.

I don’t tend to buy into some of the hyperbolic statements made by a lot of (mostly YouTube) commentators… but I can honestly state that I think DLC is right up there with DRM as one of the true scourges of our gaming pastime.

Before the days of season passes and costume packs, teaser trailers for new maps and controversial horse armour, developers actually felt the need to justify extra content. It was the early nineties, and expansion packs were introduced in order to bridge the gap between sequels. In most cases, expansions weren’t even considered until after the original development period had completed; developers would gauge reactions to the game, take feedback as to what content players wanted more of, and decided whether they could complement the existing title with an additional update. Arguably, Blizzard were behind most of the memorable, well crafted expansion packs, that enabled them to keep initial teams running on their IP (many of which are still there today, as opposed to many studios that let teams go after each game), and continue the stories of the title’s canon without creating an entirely new experience.

StarCraft’s Brood War expansion pack is still, hands down, not only one of the best updates to a game in recent memory, but a fantastic game on its own. Unlike the long, meandering tale of development delays that is StarCraft 2, Brood War came out less than a year after its predecessor. It included not only an enormous campaign mode, featuring all 3 races, but arguably featured a fundamentally more interesting story than the original alongside a stack of new cutscenes. It also added seven new units that fundamentally changed how multiplayer functioned and drastically increased AI difficulty and intelligence. It went on to be one of the best selling expansion packs in history, sitting at 96% on GameRankings and still sold in retail boxes for almost a decade after its release.

The killer? It cost half the price of the title it was upgrading, was DRM free and included a “spawn” mode for people to test multiplayer out before they bought it.

This still stands out, in my mind, as the pinnacle of what a development studio should do when they want to extend the life, world and canon of their titles. The thought that went into Brood War showed that Blizzard truly wanted to create an experience that allowed players to continue deeper into StarCraft and discover more complex situations and difficulty. It also made them a bucket of money from what was effectively a pretty cheap investment – almost all of the assets were taken from the original, outside the work done on the new areas and units. Unfortunately for modern gamers, much of this ethos — that is, crafting an experience that complements the game without overwhelming the wallets and expectations of their customer base — is well and truly dead in 2013.

EA created a behemoth at the turn of the century with The Sims, and they quickly released that in a virtual world that emulated our own, they could charge anyone for pretty much anything. How about a pack that introduced shopping malls? Halloween? Pets? University? Dating? The possibilities were endless. It worked, too — many of the expansions for The Sims sat at the top of sales charts for weeks, surpassing many AAA releases. By the time the sequel arrived, pre-order benefits had arrived on the scene, and The Sims was ripe for it. By the time the 3rd iteration had rolled around, it was basically stripped down to the bone – but EA and Maxis were ready to offer an absolutely ridiculous eighteen expansion and “stuff” packs. The “stuff: packs, most importantly, did not effect gameplay at all, consisting largely of crap to fill your house or dress your Sims. In addition, there was also a store available for people to buy almost anything else they could think of — all for cold hard cash of course.

Other publishers saw the success of The Sims franchise, but not in terms of its innovative gameplay or mechanics, but in its manner of vomiting money like a drunk after a lamb kebab. Before long, everyone was on the DLC drug, offering everything from overpowered weapons to the infamous equestrian protection we’re all so fond of. But there were titles that didn’t have things like weapons that could easily be sold. How could games like RPGs get in on the play? Simple — offer in-game cash as an option in the store, or how about 1,000 extra costumes for characters? Introduction screens for games now didn’t just invite you to start a new game, they practically begged you to get into the store and buy something, anything. Cardboard inserts offered an extra map or some other useless trinket to get you hooked, hopefully leading to an extra $10 or $20 purchase.

The problem here wasn’t that these extras were being offered per se, but more that they were of such poor quality. Most of these extra weapons or armour packs didn’t give you much of an advantage, and in most cases tended to be outclassed quite early on by a standard item. Multiplayer benefits began to skew communities, creating two or more tiers of “haves” and “have nots”, arbitrarily reducing the player base well and truly before the game had been out three months — plus you could tell many of the maps were rushed as well. Then there were the extra missions. Then there is the Civilization 5 route, where a host of existing features are ripped out and sold to us piece by piece later on, with the reason being that “so much had changed, we didn’t think players could handle it”. Uh-huh.

Mass Effect is, in this writers’ humble opinion, one of the best game trilogies of the past decade — but the DLC content was, with a few exceptions, completely forgettable. First, there was the controversy of important story arcs being locked, day one, behind a paywall. Then, extra squad members. But after we decided to take the plunge anyway, because hey, it’s Mass Effect, what we were left with was a sour taste on our tongues after dropping an extra $40 to unlock (most) of the extra missions, weapons and squadmates. So, publishers, why aren’t we just provided with this content with the (not so insignificant cost) of the original game?

Because, well, we’ve already demonstrated that we’re more than happy to pay for it. For all of the complaints about day one DLC, we’re all desperate for more of the same that we buy everything on offer, rolling the dice, in the hope that what we get complements the existing experience. But, it doesn’t. Everything feels tacked on, overpriced and lazy. Not only that, but it feels like that much of this content could have been easily integrated into the original title, creating a more cohesive link, rather than dropped abruptly onto the end.

It’s not just Mass Effect either. How about Fallout 3? Dead Island? Borderlands? All of these titles would later deliver”full featured”, story-based DLC that promised to introduce an extra avenue of plot and character development to their stories. The developers don’t lie in this respect – DLC is usually always an afterthought, but there lies the detriment to the final product. If what we’re paying top dollar for, on top of the original purchase price, isn’t as good as the original product, because it wasn’t designed to be part of it, then why are we being offered it in the first place? There are exceptions to the rule of course – most of the GTA DLC has been great, especially The Ballad of Gay Tony, but it still doesn’t escape the overall bastion of poor development decisions.

I don’t buy DLC because I don’t like the direction I see it taking our industry. Most of what I have played or items I have purchased do not feel like worthwhile products, especially when I can usually find a fantastic, all inclusive, indie experience for the same price I’m paying for a substandard add-on. If you hate DLC, then follow my example and just stop buying it. The only way publishers and developers will stop trying to cash in on our enthusiasm is when we stop buying the snake oil every single time.

Skyforge is an MMO in development by Allods Team, the same people who made the aptly-named Allods Online — and at the recent Russian Game Developer’s Conference, they announced that they’ve brought Obsidian on board to assist in development.

We haven’t heard anything about the game since its announcement in 2012, and even that flew under many people’s radars. The involvement of Obsidian may act to counteract that however, with the high-profile RPG developer known for their successes in storytelling.

“Skyforge is very interesting and promising project, claimed Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart in a statement. “I am glad that Obsidian Entertainment is involved in working on this game.”

“I am confident that the cooperation with the Allods Team will be a great experience for all of us.”

The only known Skyforge trailer was released last year, and can be seen here. It is expected to launch in 2014.

EA’s attempt to join the MOBA scene with new title Dawngate comes at an odd time, with League of Legends currently generating enough concurrent players to populate a small nation, and DotA 2 ripping up the Steam charts. But nevertheless, launch it they will — and here’s what it looks like (courtesy of Machinima).

According to the team, there are territorial control points on each map, including ones that deliver economic boosts to your team by spawning workers to harvest resources. Your towers serve as your bases like normal, but the creatures which guard them can be set loose to roam the map, and the energy flowing down lanes can be redirected. Interesting stuff.

If you’re keen on trying it out, beta testing will begin on Friday May 24. Sign up here.

With the news that Path of Exile were launching a gateway to bring down the lag for players in Australia and New Zealand, we called Grinding Gear Games’ Chris Wilson to get the low-down on where the F2P-ARPG is at, why now is the right time for a low-ping gateway, and their plans for the future.

If you’d like to play Path of Exile, you can download the beta client free from our file library here (quota-free for iiNet group customers).

GON: Chris, you’ve been in open beta for a little while now, since January in fact — can you tell us a little bit about how everything’s progressing?

Chris: So we’re now at 2.46 million registered users. So we had a large surge of people who became interested in the game, and who have joined our community, which has exceeded our expectations. Most of the game’s performance so far has exceeded our expectations, and this has raised some issues with how do we handle all these users, but thankfully the tests we’ve done prior to open beta were very optimistic in terms of user numbers so we were (barely) able to handle the amount of people that flooded our servers. And it did cause a few weeks of instability while we dealt with issues that only manifest when you have more than 50,000 people playing at once. But we we have those under control now.

GON: So what is your peak concurrent player count?

Chris: We’ve hit 70,000 in the first week of release. We’re very pleased with that. There was an awful lot of stuff combining at the same time with the game being very new and a lot of people talking about it which caused us to really strain the servers, but thankfully it’s dropped a bit to a more maintainable rate at the moment.

GON: Have you identified any issues in the beta that you’ll need to address going forward before launch?

Chris: We have found a lot of things based on player feedback and our own analytics that we can improve. There are various systems that we’ve been working on with the players to find better solutions to. For example loot allocation in the game, a lot of players would like it to be a bit more forgiving and less free-for-all, so we’ve been looking into a variety of options which will hopefully launch by the end of the month.

GON: When we last spoke you anticipated the third act being the final before launch. How do you feel about that now?

Chris: We added most of the third act in beta release, missing off about the last third of that act. And we are expecting that we will have that as the major content added at launch. It basically finishes off the story, adds a much more climactic boss encounter, and a lot of new areas. And we’re also working on the fourth act of the game which isn’t going to be ready for launch at the end of this year, but it will come maybe 9-12 months after that.

GON: So you’re still anticipating a launch in October-December?

Chris: Yeah, at the moment we’re targeting very late September or early October.

GON: And 9-12 months after that, the fourth act?

Chris: Yes, although that will depend a lot on support from the players. If they continue being generous with their support then we’ll be able to do it quickly, and if they’re not then I guess it will take longer. We have to use their money to develop it, and the rate of support dictates how many staff we have working on it.

GON: How many staff do you have now? Have you scaled up since beta?

Chris: We’re up to 39 now, including our customer support department, and that’s the department that’s grown the most.

GON: That’s really good! That must make you… the third biggest developer in New Zealand now?

Chris: Something around there. I’m not sure of the exact studio numbers. After we last spoke, everyone came down on me for misquoting the relative sizes of the NZ game development industry. So I’ll check my figures before I actually comment!

GON: Fair enough! So you’ve activated the in-game cash shop?

Chris: Yeah, when open beta started we stopped selling access to it and so it became public, and we allowed people to use the credit that they’d purchased during closed beta and also to purchase new credit that they can use to buy microtransactions. That’s been very popular. We’re constantly adding new ones, trying to get a few in every week, and people have been letting us know what they’re interested in seeing next.

GON: Have you been seeing a lot of people willing to pay out for new stuff?

Chris: It’s been very good, looking at the rates of support from the users and we’ve been finding it helps to run specials so that people can get some of the more premium things at a discount occasionally if they’re patient.

GON: So you’ve just activated the AU/NZ gateway for a week or so now. Can you tell us about how the ping has gone down since then and what feedback you’ve been seeing from affected players?

Chris: Sure. So we added it to the realm toward the end of last week but in a way that the public couldn’t see, but as of yesterday we’ve made it so the public can log in to it, so we’ve got one day of feedback from the public plus one more of testing from ourselves. For people who are used to playing on a 200-250ms connection to America, they say it’s like a different game because they’re playing in Australia with sometimes less than 30 ping. From NZ we get about 50 ping. There are some issues with the server that we’re working on resolving with the host, some initial configuration issues, and we suspect it’s just a matter of replacing that physical machine with one with different hardware. But from a networking point of view as far as we’re concerned it’s working extremely well, and it validates a lot of what we were hoping we would get. It’s a strange case because we’re running the realm internationally through different server hosts.

The thing about Path of Exile is that players can play together regardless of which server they’re playing on, so if you have a friend in Europe you can play with them and trade items, even though their server is located in another continent. So normally we do this because the data centers we use are linked together, they have really good connections, but in the case of the Australian one it’s with a different company so it’s our first case of actually going through ‘the wild internet’ as it were, to connect between them.

GON: So where is your gateway located physically? And what did you have to do to get it set up?

Chris: I have no idea what city in Australia it’s located in. Which in a way shows that this kind of stuff is handled transparently (laughs). In order to set it up, the first challenge was finding a server host that was able to do it. And the difficulty there is the cost of international bandwidth. It’s prohibitively expensive, but we have a good deal on that with this server, and it was just a matter of soliciting a test server to see how well it performs and then once we were happy with that we can order a lot more and scale it up to support a larger Australian population on there.

GON: Do you have a lot of AU/NZ players? Can you give us a rough estimate of how many there are?

Chris: It’s difficult to know exactly, but my estimate is somewhere in the region of about 4%.

GON: So 4% of your 2.4 million?

Chris: Yeah I would say it’s somewhere in the region of about 100,000 game accounts signed up through Australia and New Zealand.

GON: You said that the cost of international bandwidth is prohibitively expensive. Is this something you’re finding worse in Australia than any other country?

Chris: In New Zealand and Australia it’s SUPER expensive compared to the rest of the world. In some cases, one hundred times as expensive. So that is prohibitive. Except now that we have a good deal arranged with the server, it should be sustainable.

GON: Now one of the most common reactions to the gateway news was “But these are NZ devs, why did they take so long to make a gateway for themselves”. Can you explain to our readers the realities of game development and why it took this long to make this decision?

Chris: Well I guess there are a few things in play here, and the first one is that although we’re based in New Zealand, our customers generally aren’t. We’d love to be able to support them, the New Zealanders, especially because we’re based there, but the priority has to be the other 98% of players who we have to make sure come first. Because of that, launching an international realm was the first goal in getting that sorted out. And now we’re in that stage of open beta where we’re not encountering stability issues of the core game, you know, everyone else is playing happily overseas, that’s about the time we can look into supporting other territories. In addition of course New Zealand and Australia are very hard to target because of the cost of bandwidth.

We’ve received quotes in the order of multiple dollars per gigabyte of data, you know, like domestic internet rates or worse in some cases because it’s reliable co-located rates. So we’ve received quotes that… there is no way our company could afford the quantity of bandwidth that would be required to run servers there if it was that bad per gigabyte value. Thankfully you can get better rates if you organise larger bulk deals and tie them into server hosting. So we have eventually been able to get one sorted out but it’s not an exaggeration to say that this is literally the sixteenth or seventeenth server hosting company we’ve spoken to.

GON: How do you feel when you see New Zealanders or Australians complaining about this? It’s obviously very difficult for you to be in this position, since you obviously have to deal with the business realities but also you want to support your home team at the same time?

Chris: I would love to give the New Zealanders and Australians a place to play, I mean, if they were playing locally, it’d be easier for us to be greedy and to go and do that at the cost of everyone else, but we decided it’d be best to put most of the players first despite that fact it actually inconveniences us. Another thing is: having the game from New Zealand run at 200-250 milliseconds of ping has encouraged us to make sure the game works acceptably at that latency.

There are a lot of games like Vindictus for example, which is an Asian action-MMO, that game limits it so you can’t connect if your latency is over a certain amount, and they did this because they have quite a fast visceral experience but it requires the latency to be low. Whereas in our case we know that some people are connecting from… like we had connections from the middle of Africa. I don’t know how they’re getting internet, but they’re playing our game and it’s important that the game is playable with a lot of ping. We do an awful lot of action-prediction and stuff like that. When you click to attack it starts the animation going straight away even if it’s going to be a full second before the data gets back to you with the result. And while you certainly suffer playing under conditions like that, it still feels relatively immediate to do so.

GON: I guess this must have made you a stronger developer to have to work under these conditions, but did it provide any difficulties in testing? Were you able to really test the game properly?

Chris: We have our internal servers in our office and we also had the servers in the states so to some extent the experience that we were missing was the experience between these two. The ones in the office have less than a millisecond of latency, and the ones in the states maybe 200 ms away. So we were missing the experience of trying it at any less than 200 ms but thankfully, that’s what our giant army of beta testers was for and they gave us plenty of feedback on that.

GON: When you look to the future you’ve got the fourth act coming and before that, the public launch, but what’s the next step for Path of Exile beyond more acts and more content. Do you have plans for maybe a foundry-style mod toolkit, or any sort of player creation tools? Just spitballing — what have you got in the works?

Chris: We’ve looked into the idea of community content and there are definitely some opportunities there. One of the things to note is that because it’s an online game with a secure economy, you can’t let the players literally decide “this is the exact layout of the dungeon and we’ll put the monsters where we want” because they could make it too easy. So there has to be a degree of challenge that’s maintained. We have quite an interesting plan for the future of Path of Exile which involves both continuing forward with the core game, new acts and so on, but also taking advantage of the league system where we can run — think of it as new servers of the game that have a fresh economy and new rulesets.

We’ve been running race events that last between say, one and eight hours, using the system for quite a while now, I mean there’s several running a day now, six today for example. It’s like a fresh start in the game and you get the chance to race other players. It’s unique in action RPGs because it lets you see who’s better at the game rather than who has spent the most time accumulating items. We have some interesting twists on that in the future that we believe will be very addictive, and our goal is that alongside having a strong normal action-RPG we’d like there to be a lot of repeatable content in these interesting events.

GON: Do you have any plans to introduce a real cash economy into these events? Betting on peoples’ performance for example?

Chris: We are very interested in catering towards the more meta e-sports style stuff. With regards to wagering, I mean we’ve discussed wagering from in-game items all the way up to real money and… of course there a lot of legal implications of real-money wagering, and similar kind of abuse issues that can happen with in-game wagering. I mean people will happily throw matches and stuff to get a better sword, if needed. It does have some interesting points but we really value our streaming community and the people who take the events seriously as a pseudo e-sport, and we have better streaming integration coming in the future for example.

GON: I’ve been playing Neverwinter, and a lot of people are using their Foundry tool to create maps that are basically just easy mob grinds and experience farms. Is this the sort of thing you’d have to worry about with player-authoring tools as well?

Chris: Right. One of the things we are planning on selling is the ability for people to customise the parameters of one of these league events, but in a way that can only make it harder. That way you get bragging rights for completing a very difficult event, rather than the ability to just set it to be too easy and make a lot of progress.

GON: Making it too easy does sound pointless, but… I guess if they’re willing to pay you money?

Chris: It should be interesting. Though it really depends. As long as we can keep it safe for the other users. You’ve probably seen with the design of our microtransactions the goal is that people with money can’t get any kind of advantage over other people in terms of actual progress.

GON: And that seems to be working out quite well for you — there’s a lot of MMOs which are struggling with microtransactions because people know it’s pay-to-win, and so they avoid the whole game like the plague.

Chris: Yeah. It’s difficult as a player to commit yourself to playing something where you know that someone can just trump all of your work by spending twenty bucks.

GON: Chris, thanks a lot for your chat and it’s been really good to talk to you!

Chris: Thank you for your time!

Zeboyd Games have announced that Episode 3 of Penny Arcade’s On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness is free for a short time today, to celebrate the announcement of a release date for Episode 4.

For today only, you can head over to the official site and grab a Steam key for Episode 3 completely free — check that out here.

Episode 4 is now schedule for release on June 7, and is to be the final game in the series — “which everyone here agrees is easily our best game to date,” says Zeboyd. Excellent stuff.

Source: Blue’s News

Warner Bros. have released the full trailer for which they so teasingly teased us last week, and it’s unfortunately not straight gameplay footage but it’s nice and pretty anyway. Here, then, are nearly five minutes of Batman kicking the snot out of various thugs, as well as some iconic enemies.

The press release sent over by Warner Bros. also reveals that Deathstroke will actually be a playable character in Arkham Origins, but only in the challenge modes. If you pre-order the game, you’ll apparently receive exclusive early access to this Deathstroke content.

To update our story from yesterday, it seems that Kevin Conroy will actually not be voicing Batman in Arkham Origins at all. When he spoke at Dallas Comic-Con he was referring to another unannounced Arkham game at Rocksteady — he clarified the position on Twitter, before immediately deleting the tweet (which basically is the same as saying “whoops, I wasn’t supposed to tell you that yet”).

The news that Kevin Conroy would not be voicing Batman in the upcoming Arkham Origins seemed to come out of nowhere, and — though it couldn’t be verified — was still enough to upset many fans. But never fear! Kevin Conroy will be returning in Arkham Origins — although whether or not he’ll be actually voicing Batman remains unconfirmed.

At the recent Dallas Comic-Con, Conroy revealed that “I can talk about it now. We’ve been working for about 9 or 10 months on the next Arkham.”

“We were all signing these contracts that we weren’t allowed to talk about it – you know the studio likes to completely control the roll out of any product, so they don’t like any of us to talk about anything.”

Although this being widely reported as confirmation, Conroy actually stops short of saying “I will be voicing Batman”. It’s hard to imagine what else he’d be doing, but considering this is a prequel, there’s every possibility he may be perhaps providing a voiceover from the perspective of an older Batman, along with a newer actor. Stay tuned!

Source: GameArena

Late last week, we sat down with Blizzard’s lead encounter designer, Ion Hazzikostas. Aside from having an awesome superhero-style name, Ion also manages the raids, scenarios, and other encounters that make up Mists of Pandaria’s patch 5.3.  Read on for all the details of the new scenarios, why Blizzard are cutting the XP required for the final five levels, and how he feels about WoW’s recent drop in subscriber numbers.

GON: I spoke to Dave Kosak recently about 5.2, and he said that Blizzard were hoping to pull the camera out a little with 5.3 and show what’s going on with the rest of the world, rather than just Pandaria’s local problems. Can you talk about how you’ve achieved that and give us a quick summary of how the overall global storyline in 5.3?

Ion: There’s definitely a strong focus on Horde and Alliance storylines, much as we saw back in 5.1, where we had a focus on the developments there. What we’re seeing really is the Alliance coming together, and the Horde falling apart. There are a lot of tensions among the factions that comprise the Horde, after the events seen in the Dagger in the Dark scenario. Vol’jin is clearly not happy with Garrosh’s direction and the way that’s going, the trolls in the Echo Isles are in open rebellion, and so players are going to see this story unfold through new scenarios in 5.3 and the outdoor world.

We have scenarios that focus on what Garrosh has been up to, and some of the questionable things that he’s been doing, and we also also have some outdoor content, some quests for Alliance players to go behind the lines of the Horde as spies working with the Alliance spy groups, to see the fortifications that Garrosh has been building up and some of the sketchy activities he’s up to. There’s also a bunch of outdoor quest and event content in the Northern Barrens, which is quickly turning into a battleground with Garrosh’s Kor’kron in open conflict with the other forces that are there.

GON: Now you’ve got an impressive four new scenarios in 5.3, as well as the Heroic modes for existing scenarios. Out of all of the four new scenarios, which is your favourite and can you tell us a bit about how it was designed?

Ion: One notable feature in 5.3 is that back in Pandaria there is an excavation happening, in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. Garrosh and his forces have drained one of the lakes in the vale and been mining, deep beneath the surface. He’s hired a bunch of goblin mercenaries to dig in search of the secret rumoured to be kept down there. This scenario basically takes players alongside a goblin member of this expeditions, running into various horrors down there that make it very clear there’s some dark force that is being unearthed — coagulated dark oozes, things along those lines. And it turns out that at the depths of the mine this excavation has stumbled upon a sealed titan chamber that predates most of Pandaria’s history. And inside they find a box, and the not-necessarily-wise member of the goblin expedition that you’re with in this scenario opens the box.

GON: Of course.

Ion: Right, and so a very dark power is released, and players will see the events that unfold there. It’s doing a lot to set up what is going to be the continuing story arc of Mists of Pandaria going ahead into patch 5.4, and it’s cool to let players play through the story so that they really experience it, and understand what’s happening, and feel like a part of it.

GON: So that’s your favourite out of the four scenarios?

Ion: I think so, yes. I mean it’s hard to pick a favourite, they all have very strong story and gameplay elements, but that’s definitely a particularly interesting one.

GON: What’s the process for creating a heroic mode for existing scenarios, and what balance concerns do you have to address?

Ion: It’s not a huge deal, but it definitely involves a lot of playtesting. There are two main differences. First off is simply the gear level to which they’re tuned. Our regular scenarios which have been updated to heroic modes were originally designed for fresh level 90 players who may be wearing item level 430 or so gear. And they needed to complete it by groups in that gear so that they could gear up. Obviously players right now are literally twice as strong. So the old scenarios, the normal scenarios, really don’t offer any challenge, and that makes them potentially less interesting than they otherwise could be. The simple part of it is just cranking up the numbers accordingly.

But then, one of the big differences, and one of the things that is exciting about heroic scenarios, is that we know there’s going to be some environment of communication and cooperation among members of the group, whereas regular scenarios randomly assemble individually queuing players into a party of three, so you don’t really know the people that you’re playing with. You have to queue for a heroic scenario with a pre-formed group of three, so we can assume there’s going to be a bit more in the way of coordination, maybe some crowd control, pitching in to help each other out — which basically lets us have mechanics that call for those responses, and hopefully create more interesting gameplay. Since really, that sort of cooperative gameplay is the essence of MMOs, and what makes them fun.

GON: Have you had a good response to these new scenarios on the PTR?

Ion: So far yes — people seem really excited about them and to be enjoying them. We’re looking forward to people giving them a shot on live. They also give a very large amount of valor points, so players looking to get their valor points to upgrade their items using the new upgrade vendors that are returning in 5.3, will find that heroic scenarios are a really great way to do that.

GON: I was going to ask, because I’ve seen some players express concerns — well, players are always yelling about everything — some concerns about the amount of time it takes to get sufficient valor points to gear up with vendor epics. Now you’ve just said these heroic modes are a great way to get valor points, how do you feel about the current valor situation, and do you feel adding more heroic scenarios is going to soothe these concerns?

Ion: I think that we definitely look at the rate of valor, it’s something that we’ve increased since 5.0. We found that at the start of the expansion, where many players were doing dungeons to get gear, and daily quests to get their reputations on a regular basis, valor was just kind of coming in incidentally and it wasn’t something players really had to worry about actively, which kind of masked some issues with the ratios at which different activities were awarding valor. The intent was always that you should be able to pick the activities you enjoy most, you can play with your friends, and you can get valor playing solo, in a group, in a large raid, whatever you prefer.

So over the course of the last couple of patches, we’ve increased the amount of valor awarded by various activities and that’s going even further in 5.3. Valor from heroic scenarios, and then we’re actually DRASTICALLY increasing the amount of valor awarded from challenge modes, such that doing a challenge mode dungeon, even if you don’t get a stellar time, just bronze or even no medal at all, will still give you in excess of 100 valor for one dungeon clear. So players who are just looking to try out new types of content with their friends should have more options than ever before. We don’t want to make something that feels like a chore, but clearly if we get the numbers wrong it could veer into that territory, and that’s when we have to make an adjustment.

GON: I’ll come back to that in a second — for now can I ask about the 5.3 world event. What’s going on there?

Ion: It’s a lot of dynamic, outdoor quests and event-driven content. It’s a slightly different type of outdoor content than we’ve had before, it should have a more event-driven feel, where there are random things happening — there could be a caravan crossing the Barrens that comes under attack, and any players nearby could go and defend it, and if they successfully defend it, everyone nearby will share in the reward. So it’ll have a slightly different feel to regular WoW quests, where you go and talk to an NPC and they ask you to go and perform a specific task, and you go do it, and return, and the hope is that it’ll create a place for players to adventure and, on our PVP servers, to come into conflict with one another.

GON: It’s only available for a limited time this event, with the story set to continue in 5.4, is that correct?

Ion: Yes.

GON: So how long to players have to complete it?

Ion: Until 5.4. Obviously we haven’t announced the date for that, but there should be a fair amount of time for players who are interested.

GON: As an encounter designer, are there timed events like that where you’ve made, and you feel sad that they’re going away — you’ve spent time on them and now they have to be shelved and nobody will ever play them again?

Ion: A little bit! But I think on the flip side it’s actually one of the cooler parts of a massively multiplayer online game like this, it’s a reminder that the world can actually evolve and change, and we’re always a little bit sad as designers to lock our work away and not have people experience it in the future, but the flip side of that is that the world is actually going to be different tomorrow to how it is today. Which is a really good reason to check it out today, but also a reminder that there’s an evolving story, that the player’s role is actually changing the world around them.

GON: If we can jump again to pet battles — they’re being tweaked in 5.3. Can you explain why Blizzard is tweaking the stats behind pet battles, and how player responses have been in general to this feature since the introduction?

Ion: I think the pet battle feature is one that we view as a huge success. A lot of players from a broad spectrum of previous game playing styles, from casual solo questers to hardcore raiders to high-end arena players have had a lot of fun just doing pet battles, and collecting and using that to fill their time as they explore Pandaria. We’re not viewing it with as fine a balance as… we’re not trying to balance it the same way we do our PVP or our classes, but we are keeping an eye on the evolving metagame, pets that seem overpowered, some that are dominating the high-end matchups, and we will make adjustments accordingly to make sure that people feel their pets can be competitive. It’s something that a lot of players spend a good amount of time doing, and care a lot about.

GON: Do you have any plans to expand the pet battle system in any meaningful way — tournaments, something along those lines?

Ion: No concrete plans for any kind of massive expansion, I think we see ourselves continuing to incrementally add new content. All options are on the table for different directions we could take it in, we’re very happy to have a popular and exciting system like this, but there are a lot of cool places it could go for sure.

GON: Earlier you said you didn’t want to have any content that felt like a chore. Now I guess that ties in nicely to a big change in 5.3 where you’ve reduced the experience required on the final five levels by a fairly impressive 33%. What’s the rationale behind this?

Ion: Ultimately it’s to make it easier to level alts. There’s a certain pacing to the game as a whole, particularly when the expansion is new, there’s a lot of things to see, to do, to explore, and once you get to max level there’s a whole new process that begins there and a whole power curve, beginning back then with scenarios and dungeons, because things like Looking For Raid weren’t open at the time. So there was just a very different overall pacing to the content, whereas at this point many if not most of players playing Mists have at least one max level character, and they’d like to get multiple alts caught up so they can also experience that content, and we’d just like to make it easier to do that.

GON: In a broader MMO sense, comparing WoW now to how it used to be at vanilla launch for example, how do you feel the ‘value’ of experience points have changed? A lot of old, old-school WoW players who have complain the game is too easy now, but a lot of new players are definitely enjoying it and a lot of established players are enjoying, as you say, the ability to rapidly bring up an alt.

Ion: I think we’re continuing the direction that has been the case for years and years now. We initially began adjusting the levelling curves from one to 70 in the Wrath of the Lich King timetable. Originally in vanilla WoW I think it took me something like 13 or 14 days play to get my character up to 60, and that while effective at the time, also created a tremendous barrier to entry for players who are coming to the game anew or returning after time off and want to play with their friends that are max level. And one of the values that’s important to us is that there shouldn’t be too many barriers to getting back in and playing with their friends. Reducing the max experience required is just one of the steps we can take towards that end.

GON: Do you have any plans to address the people who are clamouring for new customisation options, hairstyles, etc? You don’t have to look far into a WoW patch notes thread to see somebody angry about the lack of new haircuts available… what’s Blizzard’s timeframe on this? I know you’ve been working on redesigned character models.

Ion: Nothing concrete to announce at this point, but we’re definitely aware that players love the ability to customise their character, as an expression of themselves and their aesthetics. The transmogrification feature is one that’s been extremely popular and we’re well aware this is something that players want, and it’s something we hope to be able to offer, but nothing solid to announce just yet.

GON: In terms of actual workload and resources, is developing new hairstyles and that sort of a thing a big deal, is it something you could work on but you just don’t have the manpower at the moment?

Ion: I think the reality is that it’s a question of prioritisation. We would like to do that, but there are players who also, for example, want new models for the dungeon bosses and raid bosses that they fight, and don’t want to see just a reskin of an old model. And it’s the same team of character artists that are doing all of these things, so it’s just a question of what’s more important. It doesn’t mean that we don’t care about it, or that we don’t want to do it, it’s just a question of what has to come first. And so the core features, such as new creatures and things along those lines have to take priority.

GON: We saw recently that WoW subscribers had dropped to 8.3 million. Now that’s obviously still the biggest subscription MMO by a long shot, but what I want to ask is — in your day-to-day job, do you have to consider subscription number fluctuations like this? Are you or the studio ever given direction to change the content in accordance with these numbers, in order to maybe recapture them or aggressively grow them?

Ion: It’s not about the numbers per se. I mean clearly we want to make content that as many players as possible will enjoy. And we pay far more attention to our forums, our fansites, to what our players are saying to us directly, and to what we ourselves are experiencing as we play the game, than we do to abstract numbers. Because that gives us more guidance to be gained from direct feedback. Ultimately we just want to make the best game possible and the game that is the most fun possible to play, and we’re confident that if we meet those objectives, subscriber numbers will follow.

GON: And you have no concerns about the majority of the loss being in the Asian market?

Ion: I think there are certainly business considerations. As an encounter designer, I have no reason to believe that players in Asia have a different definition of a fun dungeon or a raid boss than players in North America or Europe, and in fact the feedback comes back very similarly. So our focus is just on creating fun experiences, epic encounters, and that’s what we try to stay focused on.

GON: Thanks very much Ion for your time.

Ion: No worries, my pleasure!

Patch 5.3 releases tomorrow.

The BBC is reporting that one of the hackers self-identifying as Lulzsec has been slapped with a 32-month jail sentence for their involvement in the hacking attacks against EA, Sony, Nintendo, and others. 32 months is reportedly the longest sentence ever handed out for hacking in the UK.

One additional member received 30 months, while another who acted as the main publicist received 24 months in a young offender institution. An 18-year old member who was sitting his exams at the time received a 20-month suspended sentence and 300 hours of community service.

Unfortunately for these four offenders, that’s not the worst of it — they now face possible extradition to the US for additional charges under the US legal system.

A 24-year old Australian man has also been arrested.

Source: VG247

Epic Games’ co-founded and president Mark Rein has used Twitter to lambast processor-manufacturing giant Intel for holding back PC innovation.

“For years we tried to convince Intel to fix their graphics but their data said they were good enough,” claimed Rein. “PC innovation suffered for it.”

“Intel still owned the lions’ share of the graphics market with integrated,” he continued. “That’s why their data said it was good enough.”

Rein doesn’t provide an idea of when they attempted to convince Intel to fix their graphics, but it’s an interesting perspective nonetheless — although many modern games sadly no longer push the boundaries of PC gaming, with multiplatform releases meaning a lower-end hardware requirement. Who knows what might have been?

Source: Kotaku

The game formerly known as Alien Fear is now Alien Rage, and to celebrate their emotional turnaround they’ve released a teaser trailer showing some of the game below. It’s not clear how much is in-engine and how much is cutscene, but their tried-and-true premise of “you are a badass space marine who must kill thousands of aliens” means you’re probably in for a good time anyway.

Take a look below and let us know what you think.

When I played Anomaly: Warzone Earth a couple of years ago, it was a refreshingly different take on the tower defense genre, but one that seemed almost more like a proof-of-concept. Now, with Anomaly 2, this reverse-tower-defense concept has been polished up and expanded into a well-developed new iteration that offers a number of neat new twists on the idea. This includes a multiplayer mode that is the real selling-point of the sequel, but which might struggle to find a stable player-base.

Anomaly 2’s single-player campaign is a marked improvement on that of the first game, even if the story remains somewhat perfunctory and almost superfluous. It’s well-structured for teaching you all about the game’s approach to tower defense, and mixes in the new elements so you won’t be bored if you’ve played the first game. The most prominent of these new elements is that almost every unit can transform, switching between two modes with different characteristics and functions.

This is what you’ll devote most of your attention to during the campaign, making sure your convoy of units is appropriately configured for the threats it faces, i.e. switching long-range units with a narrow arc of fire to shorter-ranged modes that can cover every angle. This focus on configuration extends to a much greater emphasis on the marching order of your convoy than the first game’s campaign had. New enemies necessitate switching fast-firing units to the back of your convoy, to let the slow-firing heavy-hitters pound away at them, or vice-versa.

Selecting your route through the alien-infested levels was the meat of the first game — but in Anomaly 2, it’s just the basic level of tactical gameplay. It all adds up to a very satisfying and engrossing tactical experience, but it’s not without its flaws.

For example, certain missions punish sub-optimal route selection more harshly than others, and some require a very specific mix of units and mode-selection for success. This obviously reduces opportunities for players to take their own approach, rather than searching for the one correct way to tackle a situation.

Multiplayer is where Anomaly 2 really shines, and where its innovation is strongest. This is asymmetric multiplayer, with one player placing turrets that the other must deal with as their convoy travels to their goal. It’s a really compelling multiplayer experience, but it’s also a bit complicated to pick up, even if both players have finished the singleplayer campaign. Given that multiplayer games live and die on the size of their player-base, this complexity barrier might make it hard for Anomaly 2 to maintain enough players to provide a satisfying and well-developed multiplayer scene. This would be a shame, because it’s a game that’s really worth learning.

Anomaly 2 is definitely worth picking up if you enjoyed the first game. If you missed the first game, or found it lacking in complexity, Anomaly 2 might hit the sweet spot for you. And if you can get together with some mates, then you’re in for a great time with the multiplayer.

Good:

• Expands the original’s mechanics
• Well-structured singleplayer campaign
• Excellent and innovative multiplayer

Bad:

• Limited range of choices in certain campaign missions
• Multiplayer takes a little work to get into

Anomaly 2 is available for $14.99 on Steam. If you already own Anomaly: Warzone Earth, you’ll get 10% off the purchase price before May 31st.

This review copy was supplied by the developer.

At the Maker Faire event currently running in the San Francisco Bay Area, a pair of former Valve engineeers have been demonstrating their CastAR augmented reality glasses, to great acclaim.

The current prototypes, which are extremely rough with bare circuitboards, solder and wires, contain a pair of miniature projectors mounted on the glasses and attached by wi-fi to a PC. A special reflective screen is set up, while infra-red LEDs around the edge of the screen track the position of your head, allowing the glasses to shutter left-and-right at 120 frames per second to create the 3D effect.

According to a hands-on report from The Verge, it’s an incredibly promising piece of technology, with players even being hooked together in multiplayer to share the same 3D space but receive their own virtual images.

The makers are calling themselves Technical Illusions, and they revealed that there was an internal struggle at Valve between supporters of augmented reality and supporters of virtual reality — and the virtual reality supporters won. However, Valve were apparently keen to make sure that the pair kept all their hard work and were allowed to develop it on their own when they left.

“Gabe was completely behind it,” said Jeri Ellsworth. “I talked to Gabe, and he talked to the lawyers, and he’s like, ‘It’s theirs, make it happen,’ because he could see we were passionate about it.”

Source: The Verge (thanks Stefan)

If you’re trying to play Neverwinter at the moment, you’re out of luck — the game is completely offline at the moment due to a massive bug in the auction house that saw players receiving free money simply by bidding negative amounts.

Last night, some clever chap found that if you bid negative amounts on your auctions the game freaked out and handed you not only the item you were bidding for, but all of the money you bid as well. So if you slammed down negative two million Astral Diamonds on an item, you’d not only end up with the item, but with a further two million Astral Diamonds on top. Nice!

Then players discovered that you could take those Astral Diamonds to the Zen market, where players were offering real life currency in exchange for Astral Diamonds, and… well, needless to say, Cryptic immediately shut the game down.

They’re now working overtime to investigate who exploited the economy, and are currently promising a “high likelihood of character-specific rollbacks” and are “investigating the possibility of a shard-wide rollback” — something which would make the hundreds of thousands of completely innocent players pretty unhappy, as this 100-page thread on the official forums shows.

Neverwinter‘s official Twitter account claims the game should be back online within the next hour.

Source: Neverwinter Forums (thanks, Nemesis_22!)

Speaking to GamesIndustry, Former THQ president Danny Bilson, who was ousted before the publisher’s collapse, has said the company had financial issues the whole time he was there. The one-time executive said this was due in part to an ongoing tendency to rely on licenses, which had served THQ so well from 1991 to 2007, and weren’t shucked fast enough.

“We were shutting studios the whole time, and I was the guy going out there and giving the bad news,” he said. “It’s like the worst thing that… it’s the worst. I’ll stop right there. Awful.

“When I left a year ago, we didn’t see what eventually happened on the horizon. I’m not kidding, okay: we knew we were in trouble, but we knew we had a good line-up, and I thought we had enough money put away to support that stuff, finish it, and market it properly. We had a plan to live another day.

“And this is honest, honest, honest: I do not know what happened after I left. No idea. I’m not privy to what went on in there and I didn’t try to find out. I needed to move forward. I really wasn’t engaged at all, and then the news came in December.

“This was happening to my friends. I felt terrible. I just felt terrible.”

Bilson has never made any comment on his exit from THQ ahead of the appointment of former Naughty Dog lead Jason Rubin as president, and said he has to count on influential figures in the industry and press knowing the truth.

“Do I take responsibility for being involved in the decline of a company? Absolutely. Will I tell you candidly that it was the hardest job I’ve every had in my life? Well, it was. But I gave it my best, and I didn’t see the end result coming at all,” he said.

“On my watch, we, meaning my team, took [THQ] from one place and got it to another. We made a lot of improvements, but obviously it wasn’t enough; it wasn’t fast enough and it wasn’t good enough. I take responsibility for that. I’m proud of the portfolio my team built under duress. My team helped to raise the quality bar at a company that was built on something else entirely.”

Source: GamesIndustry

I am sorry, friends, but it is time to let go. After eight years and a successful sequel, ArenaNet has announced it will cease development of new content for Guild Wars. Take heart, through; the game will not be shuttered any time soon, and the team hopes to continue supporting loyal players via an automated system.

“Our focus has shifted to updates that not only help maintain Guild Wars but help the game maintain itself. With this focus in mind, we’ll no longer be releasing any new content for the live game except in support of automation,” ArenaNet said.

“Our goal is to get the game to a place where it can continue to run and be available to all of our fans. We have a lot of love for Guild Wars—it’s the game that made us what we are today—and we want to continue sharing it with everyone!”

The Live Team will remain on hand to address critical crashes and the like, but the tournament system will be fully automated; events will run over the course of a week rather than a weekend; and festival tokens and birthday presents will allow you to pick up older unique items missing from your collection.

For more information, check out the May 16 developer post on the subject.

Source: Guild Wars – News Updates

Team Fortress 2: Robotic Booglaoo is the first major Team Fortress 2 update crafted entirely by community members – and ladies and gentlemen, it is a doozy. Admire the trailer below; check out this amazing gallery of artwork; read both pages of back story; and marvel in the fact that it even comes with a comic. A full list of all the contributors is available if you’d like to send some mad props.

Following on from cuts to the Rift team in December, Defiance developer Trion Worlds has made another round of lay-offs.

“To best position Trion in a rapidly changing industry, we have reorganized our teams and are expanding our free to play offering,” the company said in a statement.

“With Defiance, we delivered a great game that more than one million gamers registered to play and continue to enjoy. As we progress from launch to ongoing development of the game, we are adjusting our staffing levels to deliver new content and improved features. RIFT, and our other titles in development, were unaffected by these changes.

“We are very much looking forward to the free to play release of RIFT and are excited by the other new titles currently in development.”

There were some pretty furious rumours flying around about the lay-offs, including that up to 80% of staff had been affected; that staff were escorted from the building; and that senior employees would not receive due severance packages. Trion Worlds has said that the 80% figure is exaggerated – without providing a new one – and that the other claims are completely false.

However, the developer has not yet denied IGN‘s claim that all studios were affected, but the Defiance team and generic support groups were the hardest hit.

Defiance is expected to spawn five major expansions in the next year, so it’s hard to believe the MMO’s development team has been gutted.

Source: IGN

The glory of the legions and/or the screaming hordes they march against is proving highly attractive, with Sega announcing that Total War: Rome II has already collected six times as many pre-orders as Shogun 2 did, months out from its September 3 release.

As such, Rome II has set a franchise record for the most and fastest pre-orders – maybe the pre-order bonus of The Greek States Culture Pack explains why?

Sega said that the Collector’s Edition has been quite popular, with half of all copies slated for the US spoken for already.

While it was having a bit of a gloat, Sega noted that the Total War series managed two million sales last year, despite the lack of a major release.

Source: VG247

I’ve had a good run, writing for an all PC website, but Konami has ruined all that. The spell-check hostile Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (it actually is a real word) is headed to PC.

Hideo Kojima revealed the news on his Hideoblog, and it was later confirmed in English on Twitter by Platinum Games creative producer Jean Pierre Kellams.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance released on consoles in February this year. It was developed by the action specialists at Platinum Games – the team behind Bayonetta and Vanquish – with management by Kojima Productions. In fact, it began life as a Kojipro game, but halfway through the team realised their core mechanic of “you can cut anything” made for a pretty ridiculous final game and handed it over before it exploded.

No details regarding the PC port have surfaced as yet, but we may hear more at Konami’s E3 2013 presentation. It’l be interesting to see who develops it; Platinum Games has never produced a PC game, although it is a young studio with some very experienced veterans of other developers.

Source: Hideoblog via Joystiq

There is so much stuff in The Elder Scrolls Online. As well as all the usual stuff you’d expect to find on your adventures – plants, minerals and animal products – you’ll have access to stuff right off the bat in the first town, where you can able to rifle through people’s possessions and nick all their stuff, like food, drink and ingredients. You can then craft all this stuff into other, better stuff. And that’s not the end of the stuff! The world is full of stuff to collect, for quests, to improve your skills, or just because you can. Learn about all of this stuff in the video below.

In response to former THQ president Jason Rubin’s eye-opening account of working conditions at Metro: Last Light developer 4A Games, creative director Andrew Prokhorov has stoutly refused the suggestion that the team deserved a better critical response as a result.

“We deserve the ratings we get. After all, the final consumer doesn’t care about our conditions. And this is right. We need no indulgence,” he said in a comment on the article – as Rubin predicted he would.

“It is a fact that our work conditions are worse than those of other developers outside Ukraine. I don’t think anyone can doubt that – yes, it’s true that American and most of European developers operate in a country far more comfortable than Ukraine. And yes, the publishers pay them more. This is clear: the more ‘reasonable’ the country the less the risks. And we don’t want to be all dramatic about that – after all, better conditions are earned, and we strive to do this as soon as possible.”

Prokhorov thanked Rubin for his article, noting that in the ten year the former S.TA.L.K.E.R. team had worked with THQ, he was the only executive to visit and observe the team’s working conditions. He noted that Rubin didn’t have enough time to try and fix the situation – but also asked him to be less harsh towards Deep Silver, which 4A Games believes did the best it could in a bad situation.

The developer even said that 4A Games was itself keen to make a multiplayer mode, but admitted that it ended up wasting a lot of time and resources before cancelling it.

Source: GamesIndustry via VG247

Ubisoft has finally dropped a little bit of information about the multiplayer side of Watch Dogs, its upcoming surveillance state and hacking open-world epic.

Although you’ll always be playing in an individual session, creative director Jonathan Morin told the PlayStation Blog that these sessions can temporarily overlap according to Ubisoft’s “pacing”. Once the encounter is over, you’ll go back to playing entirely alone.

Morin admitted that players don’t necessarily want somebody else in their game, potentially ruining everything – but said Ubisoft has been working on this problem in a pretty interesting-sounding way.

“When we watch people play together in Watch Dogs, most of the time they don’t even realise that it was another player. There are no signs. There is a great thing there that someone can be in the experience and naturally enter a situation. They become part of the story. ‘That was another player? No way! That’s awesome!’ They didn’t notice. That’s spectacular!

“As a developer, I can immediately tell when it’s another player in a game – jeez, that guy doesn’t walk like an AI, that’s a player. But in Watch_Dogs, players won’t notice that immediately. It’s a new form of emotion and it fits perfectly in the Watch_Dogs universe where everybody watches everyone else.”

Naturally I’m a little bit dubious as in my experience multiplayer gamers tend to be fairly obvious – it’s the teabagging that gives it away – but the Assassin’s Creed series has created a whole new genre of “pretending to be an NPC” in its multiplayer modes, so let’s see what Ubisoft can pull out of its bag of tricks.

Source: PlayStation Blog EU

Ubisoft recently filed its fourth quarter and year end reports for fiscal 2013, reporting total sales of €1.26 billion for the year ($1.66 billion), an 18.4% increase on FY2012, and €175 million for the quarter ($230 million), an 8.7% year-on-year increase.

Far Cry 3 was one of the major movers and shakers behind this bounty, having shipped 6 million units, but The Settlers Online and Just Dance were also major performers, with Ubisoft highlighting the performance of free-to-play and casual games. The publisher noted that Assassin’s Creed and Just Dance had joined the ranks of the 20 best-selling franchies in the industry during the year.

It also revealed that the tepidly-received Assassin’s Creed III managed to ship 12.5 million units, including digital sales. During a post-release call to investors, Ubisoft said that it isn’t banking on Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag to do the same.

“In our numbers we expect less than last year,” CEO Yves Guillemot said.

“We are actually pushing to achieve more than last year because we think the pirate segment is a great segment that can generate a lot more on a worldwide basis than what was achieved last year. But we wanted to be prudent on our expectations so that it can probably be a bonus if it comes.”

Other reveals from the call include word of the shelving of Patrice Desiléts’s 1666.

Source: Ubisoft IR via Blue’s News

If I’ve learned anything from the decade of my life I’ve poured into Sid Meier’s magnum opus, it’s that life is never easy if you’re hell bent on guiding your nation through a peaceful course of prosperity, science and trade.

The Mayans were one of the first ancient civilizations that focused much of their efforts on developing a society that rewarded intellectual, artistic and economic development. Throughout the initial few thousand years of their existence, significant inroads were made into equalisation of labor, educating the masses and building a strong trade system that allowed for infrastructure development and growth. The benefits of this ground work peaked during the “Classic” period in the early AD’s, where the Mayans were leaders in perfecting some of the most important technologies of the era; in particular the foundations of writing, the modern calendar and astronomy.

But at some point during the 8th and 9th century, Maya experienced an almost systematic collapse of the entire state, to the point where the entire population disappeared and the facilitation of construction, art and inscriptions ceased immediately. Because the extent, speed and enormity of this event was so severe,  there is still no universally agreed rationale to explain what actually occurred during that 100-year downfall. Theories range from the attack and subsequent displacement of the population by the Spanish, the hand of whom the Mayans had suffered almost constant harassment and attempts at colonization for decades. An alternate thought was that due to overpopulation and lack of available land, the Mayans could no longer support themselves and fell due to their own successes.

History lessons aside, the story of the Mayans and the mystery of their disappearance from the world is a circumstance I’ve always wanted to replicate, but have been unable to within the existing framework of Civilization… until now. Firaxis have blessed me with a restricted (Single Player, Fixed Nation, Fixed Map Size) preview of their promising new Civ 5 expansion, Brave New World, which finally returns focus to three of the most undervalued elements of the game – culture, trade and science. Overhauling trade, adding a set of new policies and widening culture based victory avenues are just a few of the new additions to the game.

At first, not too much seems to be different. Two years of patches have smoothed out much of the bugs and glitches, tidying up the interface and providing more information to what’s happening during turns. A new tutorial system pops up at various points during the match, alerting the player to new features and functions (as well as, annoyingly, some old features that most players are already well and truly aware of) and offering information on how to effectively utilize them. Experienced players will notice the new Ideology tab on the Social Policies screen, which comes into play during the late game and provides a secular form of pressure via cultural influence, in the same way religion did in Gods and Kings.  It doesn’t take too long, however, before we’re introduced to the Caravan, Brave New World‘s most attractive new feature.

Caravans, and eventually, Cargo Ships, offer the ability to effectively generate “free” wealth for both of the civs involved, as well as shifting trade items like horses and iron. Each route lasts for roughly 30 turns before it can be re-evaluated and changed, all the while being boosted via scientific advancement and bonuses. Essentially, they work in the same manner as workers – you set and forget them. One of their better functions is the ability to traffic food from one of your cities to the other, effectively saving part of your populace from starvation and facilitating growth in desert or ice cities that may not usually do well on their own (Las Vegas, anyone?).

On their own, trade routes don’t really become essential parts of a burgeoning superpower until you meet all of your neighbours; once other nations grow jealous of your growth and wealth, it becomes imperative that your relations with them (and city states) are managed effectively. War is still not good for business.

Improvements aside, it can still feel a little difficult to avoid conflict with other countries without simply bribing them, although the AI has drastically improved since the atrocious algorithms that created sociopathic warmongers out of almost all of your opponents. The new World Congress (precursor to the UN) helps quell (or exasperate, if you prefer) a lot of the heat, allowing you (if you’re leading it) to force civilizations into treaties and regulations that disallow them from accessing tech or over-militarising to a point that threatens your existence. Spies can also now be turned into Diplomats, who can lobby and bribe parts of the “world vote” into your direction.

The creation and use of Great People and Great Works have also drastically expanded, via new buildings and research points, in turn making their spawns much less random and generally more strategic, especially if you wish to win the respect and cultural reputation that allows for victory. Works, such a famous works or art or poetry, developed by these units feeds into a new “Tourism” element, forming a type of “offensive culture”, that is physically stored within your cities’ various cultural buildings. Tourism points flow into the overall pool, ballooning your territorial influence.

During my recent interview with Civ 5 lead Dennis Shirk, we discussed how the original “static” cultural victory left players turtling inside their territory, pooling culture until the count ticked over. His promises to overhaul this have borne some element of fruit – while balancing the various options that “Great People” provide (speeding up development or boosting influence) is certainly more interesting, it doesn’t truly dull the war drum inside, with the game practically begging you to build a little self defense if you refuse to.  “Come on man”, your military adviser beckons, his eyes shifting to the side like the evil genius that he is, “what’s the harm in setting up a little nuclear deterrent?”

Has Firaxis succeeded in letting us recreate the mysterious rise and fall of Mayan history? Well, it’s come pretty damn close. The improvements to trade and culture significantly raise their in-game status and strategic power to the point where they can no longer be ignored or exploited via military means alone. A strong, focused and commercially minded pacifist could easily push influence across a wide area of the map, if left unchecked. The World Congress throws a odd shaped spanner in the works and looks like it could be a hell of a lot of fun in multiplayer, although that particular element was not included in the preview. Keep an eye out for our review closer to the expansion’s launch.