artifact

The MOP Up: Enter the Phantom Halls — if you dare! (March 18, 2018)

March 18, 2018 Justin Olivetti Leave a comment

The MMO industry moves along at the speed of information, and sometimes we’re deluged with so much news here at Massively Overpowered that some of it gets backlogged. That’s why there’s The MOP Up: a weekly compilation of smaller MMO stories and videos that you won’t want to miss. Seen any good MMO news? Hit us up through our tips line!

Maybe you’ll discover a new game in this space — or be reminded of an old favorite! This week we have stories and videos from Mu Ignition, Lineage 2 Revolution, Revelation Online, Earthfall, Legacy of Atlantis, DC Unchained, Soul Ark, Battle Carnival, World of Warcraft, Old School RuneScape, Aion, War Thunder, Artifact, Pokemon Go, The Black Death, Astroneer, EVE Online, Phantom Halls, MU Online, and Heroes of Newerth, all waiting for you after the break!

WoW Factor: Examining World of Warcraft’s 7.2 update

February 10, 2017 Eliot Lefebvre 5 comments

Patch 7.2 is the first real content patch that we’ve gotten for World of Warcraft post-Legion. Obviously, 7.1 wasn’t devoid of content, but it was far more a patch about nudging in the things that just barely missed launch… and frankly, Karazhan (which was the centerpiece of the patch) didn’t really have a whole lot of staying power. It felt thin.

Mind you, 7.1 is still more of a content patch than 6.1 was, so I’m arguing more that it wasn’t substantial enough to really sell itself rather than dredging up some truly awful comparisons. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.

Regardless, 7.2 is a meaty update with a whole lot of stuff going on all at once, including a whole bunch of storyline content bringing us into the actual war against the Legion proper. I haven’t been testing a great deal of it myself because I tend to prefer putting most of my effort into stuff that’s not getting wiped so that I’ll have to do it all again, but let’s take a look at what we already know is out there.

First impressions of World of Warcraft: Legion, part two

August 31, 2016 Eliot Lefebvre Leave a comment

When last we left off, the world was screwed. World of Warcraft: Legion doesn’t tell you that you’re facing a huge threat, it just shows up, kicks in the door, ruins things around you, and then stands back and laugh. “Fight back, if you want to. Or don’t. You’re going to lose no matter what you do. We are the Legion, and we conquer everything.”

This is novel. In previous expansions, we’ve marched in to fix problems and confront a new threat; here, we’re marching in to confront an old threat only to have that threat knock us around and send us home as failures. We didn’t even get our foots in the door. No outposts established, no base of operations, just raw, crushing defeat. It’s clear, immediately, that we’re going to have to take a radically different approach to this war if we want to avoid extinction.

Thus do class orders and artifacts get into the mix. And the way that they’re handled is, again, at once novel and familiar, taking some of the best instincts of WoW‘s history and giving us something new.

World of Warcraft offers up an introductory course on artifact weapons

August 24, 2016 Justin Olivetti Leave a comment

Artifact weapons are no doubt one of the tentpole features of World of Warcraft: Legion, yet as a new system, there’s bound to be confusion and uncertainty about how they work. To help educate the unwashed hordes of adventurers, Blizzard created a pair of videos that provide a primer course of the new system.

Blizzard also elaborated on why it made artifact power scaling on rewards and why players should use such items as soon as they get them instead of waiting for their knowledge to increase. “Just get artifact power when you find it, as you find it,” the studio advised. “Enjoy the rewards and the immediate benefit, and you aren’t hurting yourself in the long run.”

Enroll in Artifacts 101 after the break and be ready for a quiz in the comments section.

WoW Factor: The view from outside the Legion alpha test

January 1, 2016 Eliot Lefebvre 64 comments

I’ve been paying rapt attention to the ongoing-though-paused World of Warcraft Legion alpha tests because said tests are looking good. That’s a positive. Whilst the actual decisions being made about testing and the state of the live game don’t earn a lot of praise from me, what we’ve seen of the expansion that Legion is becoming makes me feel very positive. There’s only a thin slice available, but it’s enough to make things interesting.

Let’s talk about that today, starting with the obvious bit of the Artifact weapons.