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PAX East saw a flood of exciting news this year. G4 was on the floor with their hands on every demo and preview they could cram in during their time in Boston. In case you missed any of the coverage, we’ve rounded up all the news, previews and reviews that focus on one of our favorite gaming genres, the MMO. Take a look at all of our coverage, and decide which multiplayer realm you're going to dive into.
Star Wars: The Old Republic was the title everyone was lining up to see and BioWare delivered with a fully playable flashpoint group instance. G4 was there to get their hands on the keyboard and test drive the Republic tank, healer, and two dps classes that were available. Leah Jackson felt the ranged damage and healer classes at her command were very similar in playstyle to World of Warcraft and the gameplay was solid, but uninspired. Nikole Zivalich took on the role of a gun-wielding tank and found it a good fit for someone with first or third person shoot experience. Eric Eckstein jumped in with a lightsaber-wielding dps class and was pleasantly surprised that the gameplay was easy to understand. He was especially impressed with the storytelling that kicked off the mission. SWTOR is in closed friends and family beta with no announced launch date other than “not April.”
Guild Wars 2 followed up its GDC unveiling of the thief class with a Q&A panel delving deeper into this upcoming MMOs innovative features. The devs talked about how, similar to RIFT, rewards for participating in dynamic world events will be scaled to the player’s involvement. Dungeons will have a story mode so the entire party experiences the same content and a repeatable mode that will allow you to explore different parts of the instance. PvP is not only the usual arenas, battlegrounds, and one-on-one dueling, but server vs. server in massive battles for bragging rights. Finally, they talked about the sidekick system that allows you to either temporarily drop your level to match a friend’s lower level or, alternately, bump up your buddies level to your own. If ArenaNet can pull that off, it will solve a long-running problem with MMOs: friends barred from playing together due to level differences. Guild Wars 2 is still in development with no announced launch date.
- PREVIEW: Guild Wars 2 PAX East Preview
Lord of the Rings Online previewed their latest major content update, Vol III, Book 3 Echoes of the Dead. This update continues the story of Middle-earth’s Rangers preparing the way for the Fellowship from Mirkwood on through Rohan. Four new instances and a new raid are introduced in Echoes, centered around Gaunt-lords striking out against the Free Peoples. Geared towards 3-person, 6-person, and 12-person teams, these instances take you back to familiar places such as the Shire, Forochell, and the Trollshaws. LotRO is currently free-to-play and the next announced expansion, Rise of Isengard, is currently slated for Fall.
Firefall is a team-based, action-shooter MMOFPS. Think Team Fortress 2 Online. At PAX East, the G4 squad played through the latest demo by choosing from a Recon, Assualt, or Medic class and jumping into a map with an objective to shoot it out. Gameplay is fast and furious, and there is also a single-player mode for leveling up as well as rankings for team play. Firefall is set to launch by the end of this year.
- PREVIEW: Firefall Hands-On Preview
Faxion is a new PvP-centric MMO that just went into open beta. Choose you class and your allegiance to Heaven or Hell then duke it out with other online players in Limbo. Zones are designed around the theme of the Seven Seadly Sins, and when one side takes over a zone, they get access to the vendors and other features as long as they can hold it. Players can skill up while offline similar to EVE Online and can even use a mobile app to manage the skill queue. The game uses the free-to-play model to lure players into this timeless struggle.
- PREVIEW: Faxion PAX East Preview
Also showing on the floor of Pax East was a number of other up-and-coming as well as released MMOs. Nexon showed off Dragon Nest’s non-stop instanced game play. The publisher also previewed the next big update for its hit action-MMO Vindictus with its new level cap, new town, and new advanced crafting professions with a promise of a new playable class soon. Turbine showed not only the LotRO content but also the upcoming Dungeons and Dragons Online horror-themed, Update 9. Superhero MMO City of Heroes got its own PAX East panel that explored the upcoming Issue 20 update with its new mid-level raid content, the expansion of the Incarnate abilities, and and the new teaming system for the Incarnate trials.
That’s it for this year’s PAX East MMO news. The new MMO titles are rolling out fast and furious these days. Which one has caught your eye?
Written by: Dan O'Halloran
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Comments
Displaying 1–12 of 12
cwbys21
I have a feeling Faxion will fail. A group of people left Arena Net a while ago for a pvp centric mmo and it failed pretty hard, I can't see this one doing anything different. Also, Guild Wars was fairly pvp orientated at first as well and they saw how much more people played the story mode and shifted their focus that way. Warhammer Online was pvp orientated as well and it is struggling, I think they only run four servers now and if it didn't have the Warhammer name attached it might be gone already.
Sniper_Dave
I prefer Firefall for the fact that it is free to play, and all of my money is going towards TERA as soon as it's released in the US.
ShaunBayview
Been doing much reading about GW2 as possible on their websites and various videos from PAX east. Quite interested in seeing how the live event system turns out. They made references to the centaurs attacking that village, as everyone probably saw. But the dev's also hinted at more in-depth A.I. actions. For example, enemy 'x' sends army out from main base, army 'x', with no opposition from heroes, takes over town 'y'. If heroes still don't challenge army 'x', they build their own fortifications, send out scouts, move supplies, and expand from there. They spoke about a 'living' world, not just hundreds of randomly named NPC's standing around doing nothing. THIS, is what caught my eye.
also; character specific background and bio/personality mission/quest/story-arc
RPG-fan
The more I read about SWTOR the more it feels like it's WOW in the Star Wars Universe. Still if it turns out to be awesome, I would buy it. Guild Wars 2 however, tries to break away from WOW, if it's any good I might buy that one as well, especially since there's no monthly subscription fees
Fleetfiend
Guild Wars 2 and Rift. 1) Because the first GW is amazing. 2) Because Rift looks to me like a slightly less redundant version of WOW with more realistic graphics. Don't hate. :3
crocodilius
does every good game have to incorporate "war" into the title?
Avalanche33
Rift is awesome=)
dr_clocker
SW and GW for sure. I have tried Lotro but it plays like crap on my system, which is way above the minimum requirements. So it is a no go for me.
MasterKevlar
yeah 6 hrs just to play a 40 min demo of the game was no bueno. but worth it. so swotor is a def
also played firefall that came looks pretty cool. thats also on my radar
Snuggums
In the second to last paragraph, you confused City of Heroes for Champions Online. CoH is getting the major update.
TheMilkMonster
"Which one has caught your eye?"
Firefall, because the whole time I played Borderlands I was thinking "this would make a hell of an MMO". Can't wait to hear more on it.
The other MMO that has my attention (besides GW2) is The Secret World. It seems like an ambitious, unique project, I'm really rooting for it.
Rurik1547
Just would just like to point out that "SWTOR is in closed friends and family beta with no announced launch date other than not April" is incorrect. They are well past the friends and family stage of game testing, have had over 10,000 people test the game to date, and currently have roughly 2000 people currently game testing. Also, the current window, as stated by Stephen Reid, is any time between April 1st, 2011 to December 31st, 2011. Though if people are to go with what the CFO said a week or so ago, which was his guess based on financial projections, the newer window is anytime between July 1st to December 31st.
Displaying 1–12 of 12