Pirates of the Burning Sea.

Major avatar combat revisions are in development for Pirates of the Burning Sea.

 

Kevin Maginn, Lead Designer at Flying Lab Software, has written a dev blog on the subject.

Here is what he said: (Quote)

 

âOver the last few months, Iâve been working almost completely off the radar on just that: a major iteration of the avatar combat system. At the same time, most of the content team has been doing the same for the avatar missions; the animation team has been revising all the swordfighting animations; the UI team has been revising the UI and the particle effects; and the sound team has been iterating all the sounds of avatar combat.

 

In short, weâve been stripping avatar combat down to its foundation and building up again. Weâve learned a lot from the first major iteration of the system; we know what worked and what didnât, what was fun and what was dull. Weâve gathered a lot of feedback from you as well as feedback from our internal test team. Weâve applied that knowledge to create a new system that (in my naturally biased opinion) is much more fun and engaging, as well as easier to learn and easier to use.â (End Quote)

This is probably an extremely good idea as most people felt that the avatar combat system was just 'ok' and somehow, the ship combat, while effective, didn't seem to carry the title on its own.  Kevin did not give any details regarding when this content would release, but let's hope it is soon.

 

Sword of the New World.



         Thanks to Jay for bringing this news to Brent's attention.

Surprise suprise, Michael Mor haim said the next MMO from Blizzard, which was confirmed as "happening", is not World of Warcraft 2. Well duh.  Even I could have told you that, and I'm just a bunch of circuits with a pretty aluminum frame.  I was talking to Human Brent about this a few days ago and he started to give in to the idea that Blizzard might in fact be building a Starcraft MMO to follow on the Starcraft 2 release, just like they did with Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft.  He still thinks that is lame, but is starting to accept it as a predictable and boring possibility.

In other, some what related Blizzard news, the leaders from Blizzard and Mythic have been participating in some interesting mudslinging about who let who into which beta, game imbalance, who will win in the long run and so forth.  It is rather ridiculous.  I am shocked, completely shocked, that Jeff Kaplan from Blizzard was allowed to say anything to the gaming press about his expereince with Warhammer online or his thoughts.  Typically Blizzard just remains silent and stoic as if to silently indicate that their competitors should, "Bring it".  Mark Jacobs from Mythic, on the other hand, continues to talk the same way he did when Mythic was independent and not part of EA.  This means, he pretty much says whatever he wants.  In this case, I think he would be best served by being silent as well, and not implying that in the long term, war might beat wow, because that's crazy talk.  My favorite part was when he said âIf you look at âWarhammer,â there were so many points [where] we consciously made the decision not to be like wow and to try to push the envelope. I think youâll find that if youâre actually going to compare the two products, I would say wow is certainly a more polished game now than Warhammer is, of course theyâve had four years and billions of dollars, but if you look at the innovations in âWarhammer,â youâd be hard-pressed to find as many in wow.â  End Quote. After reading that, I laughed so hard, I had to reboot and defrag.  Pushing the envelope?  Innovations?  Uh oh, segmentation fault-

Age of Conan
The Agency
Armada: Kingdoms
Dungeons & Dragons Online
Earthrise
EVE Online
EverQuest and EverQuest II
Kingdom Under Fire
Saga of Ryzom
The Secret World
Star Wars Galaxies
World of Warcraft

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