The Funeral of WoW Gold

Shoot, kill, collect loot. June 3, 2009 - Well this game looks pretty cool. Gearbox is basically buildingBorderlands as an open world loot game mixed with a first-person shooter. Like in loot-heavy role-playing games you’ll walk around, accept quests from NPCs and kill creatures roaming around, get experience for draining their life bars, then pick up the loot they drop after death. Gearbox is claiming there are tons of different varieties of weapons to pick up and use in the game, which should make for some pretty interesting pickups. Gearbox says the game was first built as a first-person shooter, then had RPG elements layered on top. We didn’t get to play, but we were treated to an extended demo showing off a few quests as well as the character development system. Before starting out you’ll need to pick a character class, of which there are four. The demo focused on the Brick class, which is basically the tanking type. Each class gets a few different branches for its skill trees, which you can power up with points earned by leveling up. So for instance with Brick you can choose to focus on his melee skill set, earning special abilities like an adrenaline rush that allows him to run around like a madman pummeling enemies with fists. When selecting a class you’ll also have the opportunity to customize the appearance to a degree, as well as slapping on a custom name, so not everyone who picks Brick is going to appear to be the same, and they’ll be further differentiated depending on what skill branch you decide to follow. The game can be played co-operative with up to four players, and it lets you utilize your character you’ve been building in any game. This means if you’re playing solo and want to join up with a friend who’s further into the game, you can do that and jump in with all your skills and items already earned. If you happen to pick up something really cool while playing with the friend you’ll be able to hold onto and bring it with you afterwards into other games. Joining other people’s games will see the enemies scale in power and number, so the challenge level will be dynamic based on who’s playing and what level they’re at. While out in the world questing you’ll get objectives like kill X number of Y enemies and boss characters, and you’ll find loot sprays off your kills like in Diablo-style action-RPGs. UI windows will pop up when you approach the loot, letting you know the approximate value, special effects (electrical, fire, acid damage, etc), type of weapon (shotgun, sniper rifle, assault rifle, and many more), as well as rarity, indicated by a Blizzard-esque item color coding system. Weapons are generated by the game based on a number of presets, so you might find something like a fiery sniper rifles with a rotating chamber of three high caliber bullets. A number of enemy types, from monsters to human bandits, are walking around the game’s large open world, and similar to World of Warcraft’s elites, you can find some enemies of a higher power level, referred to in the game as ‘badass’ enemies. These things are harder to kill but also yield better rewards, and while killing anything you’ll be working toward upgrading your proficiency with certain weapon types as well as amassing experience and items. Combat can also take place while in vehicles, which you can outfit and jump into at special stations around the world to allow for easier travel across the terrain as well as some added firepower. Like in action-RPGs or MMOs the game also assaults you with statistics as you fight, with damage totals floating up over enemies’ heads as they get shot, and a ‘critical’ notice popping up after a particularly damaging hit. Console players who have no interest in playing online should be happy to hear that you can, if you want, play offline in split-screen co-op. Hopefully everything goes well for Gearbox’s Borderlands, as it’s certainly looking really good right now. It’s expected to be released this holiday season for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC.

The Final Fantasy series has maintained consistent popularity for years — but many are probably not aware that Final Fantasy XI, the MMO edition of the game, has been extremely profitable for Square Enix for years, and continues to boast a global subscription base in the hundreds of thousands — and players play together on PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 2, making it the only successful cross-platform MMO ever. It’s unsurprising, then, that the company would announce thatFinal Fantasy XIV, set to debut simultaneously for PC and PlayStation 3 in 2010 globally — and in four languages (Japanese, English, German, and French, with other languages to come later if demand is ascertained by Square Enix marketing research). Square Enix held a press conference at E3 to discuss the title with fans — as with every event at E3, it was populated primarily by the enthusiast and fan press. However, some details about the game’s design philosophy and market strategy did flow out around the edges. Director Nobuaki Komoto, senior vice president Shinji Hashimoto, and producer and original Square Soft founder Hiromichi Tanaka were on hand to go into detail on Square Enix’s strategy. Hashimoto began the press conference by discussing the apparent confusion around the game’s exclusivity to the PlayStation 3 platform — it was announced by Jack Tretton at Sony’s press conference. Even so, it appears now to be in even more doubt than it was yesterday. Said Hashimoto, “Some folks interpreted the announcement as being an exclusive, but we wanted to make sure that the announcement was that the game is coming to the PS3 and PC, and in terms of Microsoft products and all other hardware we are considering all options at this time.” This was the only statement — question and answers started immediately. Building, Expanding, Maintaining — A Tough Task The company clearly hopes to run both of its MMOs concurrently. Still supported, expanded, patched and played, FFXI is an important revenue source for Square Enix. Said Tanaka, “The development ideas for FFXIV started appearing four or five years ago, and we just started getting into full gear in the past few years… this has been going on at the same time of FFXI. We have no plans to stop the development of FFXI.” Of course, two games will be running at the same time — and industry observers have seen fromEverQuest II that MMO sequels are a difficult proposition. Tanaka was adamant that the new game is in a new world and will feature new characters — but the new game also retains the same races and similar art direction to the original to ease fans of XI into the new world of XIV. But will players play both? “It’s up to the community themselves,” said Tanaka. “We hope the community will get on and play XI one day, and then the next, play XIV.” So why even make a new game when FFXI is still popular, asked one journalist? Again, Tanaka: “We’ve been asked that question by a lot of people. It comes down to — FFXI was originally designed for the PlayStation 2… a lot of people have asked for a port of it to current generation machines. Porting that would take too much time to convert it to the new technology. Rather than doing that… we decided to use that time to make something new.” So — can players port their XI characters? Tanaka said, “The game system and world are completely different, and the progression system is completely different, so you can’t port your character. But the character designs are similar so you create a similar character you’ve been playing. However, the friend lists you have, we hopefully will be moving over.” Walking the fine line between getting the old community to support the new game, and building a game that innovates while attracting longtime fans will be a big challenge. While characteristically tight-lipped about the “how”, Square Enix seems to be pondering the challenge with some seriousness. But What of WoW? Of course, the 800 pound gorilla reared its head quickly, in the form of a question from IGN’s Jeremy Dunham. What lessons has the team learned from the genre’s clear leader? The director, Komoto, responded, “As with World of Warcraft, and how they’ve aimed with casual users, we do want to put some of that in FFXIV as well — however, we don’t want to make a copy of World of Warcraft and we want to have things that are unique in our game.” In a follow-up, the evolving design of FFXI game over the past seven years since its 2002 Japanese release was discussed. The game was originally party-focused, but solo play features were later added. This accumulated design evolution will flow into FFXIV. Though details were scarce, the Square Enix team alluded to improvements to the genre that will help the game stand out. But what are they? Said Komoto — at the top level — “Our vision withFinal Fantasy XIV was to make the best possible Final Fantasy game available. We thought about how we could do that, and we decided to do that through the MMO genre.” Tanaka added, “We’re trying to implement a lot of [gameplay] systems that MMOs haven’t seen in the past that we hope are revolutionary.” Of course, tight-lipped initial announcements don’t allow room to begin to suggest what these might be. A questioner asked why a beginning MMO player would choose FFXIV over the competition. Komoto answered, “We believe that players will fall in love with the world that we have created, and the story that we have to offer, and that’s probably our biggest thing.” Unlike many MMOs, and like most of Square Enix’s games, Final Fantasy XI offers a very strong story; it seems assured thatFFXIV will continue in this vein. And What of The Game Itself? A question came from Famitsu Xbox 360 — whether or not the trailer released online represents realtime game graphics. Said Komoto, “There were parts that were prerendered and those that ran on the realtime engine.” The part of the trailer that is running in realtime is the battle scene with the large bestial Galka character battling, according to Tanaka. The team plans to maintain that quality, in large and small battles, in the final product. Another Japanese journalist asked for Komoto and Tanaka’s opinion on what’s important about the game — and what they’d like to highlight. “For Final Fantasy XIV, the keyword we’ve been using is ‘growth’ of the character. We’d like to expand on the in-game systems, and through these new types of systems, the player will grow and develop in a natural way.” Tanaka added, again, that flexibility for solo and party and big and small time commitment gameplay styles will be supported — showing recognition of the changing MMO marketplace since FFXI’s 2002 Japanese launch.