I apologize for the terrible pun. It will be the last one this week, probably…
As I mentioned last week, the Mists of Pandaria beta started and shortly after I finished last week’s article, I got a key to join in on the beta. Murphy’s law in action right there, folks. There isn’t a whole lot of new content available right now. The mostly finished Pandaren starting zone is available for testing as is the monk class but all of the level 85+ content is presently closed off. Don’t be too sad though, there’s still plenty to talk about and I imagine there will be every week. Instead of just writing it all down for you I will be providing a brief video each week from the beta looking at some of the new features. This week I’m going to show off the new character creation screen, which is amazing. Enjoy the video.
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Near and dear to my heart is the tabletop role playing game Vampire: The Masquerade(V:tM). I played a lot of it in college and still enjoy it to this day. There has been talk for years of an MMO based on the old game setting for years but with last year’s layoffs from Developers CCP Games there was a certain level of understandable fear that the game would be severely delayed or cancelled outright. This past weekend at EVE Online Fanfest 2012, that was a mouthful, they let out a few snippets about the long in development game and even showed off some in-game footage. When the game releases, all of the original vampire clans will be available and the game will have some level of focus on fashion. Don’t worry if you had to reread that last bit, I did too. CCP Games, in attempt to appeal to the primarily female fanbase of V:tM, is making fashion a large focal point of the game. In my experience, I never noticed that the majority of fans of V:tM were female but who knows, maybe my experience was atypical. In addition to this, vampires will just be the first supernatural offering to the game with other supernatural creatures following sometime after release. Of note is the currency that players will be battling over, it’s blood. I have to wonder how that will transported and exchanged for goods. Maybe they’ll take a page from the Ferrengi book and seal it in gold bars like latinum. In other CCP Games news, Inferno, the next EVE Online expansion will be released on May 22, 2012 with the precursor patch going live on April 24.
Star Trek Online, the free to play MMO from Cryptic Studios, is relaunching in Europe with French and German language support right now. The Europeans aren’t the only ones getting in on the festivities though, everyone who plays between now and 1 PM EDT on Monday April 2 gets can talk to Q who is feeling particularly generous this time around by giving players a double xp buff. More information on the weekend promotion can be found here but I think it might be time that I give this game a try. To infinity and beyond as they say. Wait, that wasn’t right…
I think that’s about enough for this week. I’ll be back with more news from MMO’s Tavern next week, so until then keep them vorpal blades swinging but not in here. I don’t like fights in my tavern.
