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Warframe is rolling out the Revenant Warframe this week

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You know how I know Warframe is kicking butt and taking names? Our tipsters are just nuts for this game, and the onslaught of updates just never ends. During this weekend’s devstream, for example, Digital Extremes announced that it’s angling to launch the new Revenant warframe this very week, complete with tie-in quest.

“We hope to release the Revenant next week! With him will come a mysterious mask. You will have to visit Nakak in Cetus to uncover it!” says the studio. “The Revenant Warframe will only be shipping with his shotgun. His melee weapon will follow soon after – it’s caught up with the Melee 3.0!”

Also on the DE’s plate? The hourly elite alert system, the major pass on melee combat, the release of the soundtrack, Nezha’s deluxe design, gore-based warframe Garuda, new customization for for K-Drive, new login rewards, the Nyx rework, and way more.

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Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV’s weekly caps and whether they’re useful

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One of the elements of Final Fantasy XIV that has remained remarkably uniform throughout the game’s history is how Allagan Tomestones work. Aside from a bump in the weekly cap from 300 to 450, it’s pretty consistently been handled the same; every other patch introduces a new sort that means trading up your old stuff, the high-end ones have a solid weekly cap, and you can get oodles of them from doing quick runs for a couple of days. At this point it’s almost stupidly easy to cap out; you could do so in a day or two if you ran everything and really wanted to do so, and that’s with minimal repeated content.

This isn’t just about the weekly tomes, though; it’s also about custom deliveries. And beast tribe quests. And the many, many elements of FFXIV that are gated in how much you can do per day and per week. No matter how many dungeons you run, you will never get more than 450 of the newest tomestone in a given week. If you already have that, you are strongly discouraged from doing any more dungeoneering until the limit resets on Tuesday.

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First impressions of World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, part 4: Conclusions

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As I worked my way up in levels and through more of the zone stories in World of Warcraft over the weekend, I realized something odd that summarizes just how different Battle for Azeroth feels from Legion. For some reason, I actively did not want any Azerite.

This struck me as wrong immediately. Azerite is quite literally powering the heart of this expansion. It grants you artifact power, which feeds directly into the Heart of Azeroth, which is also the actual leveling mechanic for this expansion (just like how your artifact was the real key to leveling in Legion). Why would I not want it? Why was I annoyed when a quest rewarded me a chunk of Azerite?

Then it struck me. It wasn’t that I didn’t want Artifact Power; it was that whenever that was my reward, it meant I was getting only that power, and it was boring. I would much rather have a piece of gear, or a new reputation unlock, or almost anything aside from a chunk of artifact power. It didn’t feel like a reward; it felt like a replacement for an actual reward. And if your main mechanic feels like it’s not actually a reward… boy, that’s an issue.

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EVE Evolved: Ship fittings for EVE Online’s Secrets of the Abyss event

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EVE Online‘s recent Into the Abyss expansion has been live now for several months, adding the first ever solo instanced PvE game mode in the form of procedurally generated Abyssal Deadspace dungeons. A turbulent underspace was discovered throughout the known universe, inhabited by a mysterious sub-race of humans known as the Triglavian Collective. You can use a new filament item to launch yourself in a cruiser into a stable pocket in this abyss, and then have 15 minutes to complete a three-room encounter with a random selection of enemies. The rewards can be very lucrative, but fail to complete the site within the time limit and the pocket will collapse and destroy your ship and escape pod.

Next week sees the start of the two week long Secrets of the Abyss event in which players will face a number of repeatable challenges relating to Abyssal Deadspace sites to earn Agency points. The rewards will include exclusive Singularity Storm Triglavian ship skins and valuable mutaplasmids that can enhance ancillary armor repairers and shield boosters. Now is the perfect time to dip your toe into Abyssal Deadspace if you haven’t tried it yet, but what kind of ship setups work in this new PvE mode and how accessible are they to newer players?

In this edition of EVE Evolved, I break down four cruiser fittings (one for each race) that can tackle low-tier Abyssal Deadspace sites, and give some advice on how to use them.

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A fluffy casual’s starting perspective on World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth

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Let me tell you a bit about me and how I play MMORPGs. Between two jobs and a family, my gaming time is relegated to the deep evening hours where peace descends upon our household. If it’s a good night, I can get in two full hours of adventuring through virtual worlds before I grow too tired to continue. Some nights it’s less.

It has been a long time since I was able to sprint alongside the pack when a new expansion or game launches, so you have to picture me as the slowpoke waaaay in the back who keeps getting distracted by small details, stops to read the quest text, and takes screenshots like I’m putting together an art book.

That’s me, the fluffy casual, and while plenty of folks have devoured vast swaths of World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth this week (including our own excellent Eliot), I’ve been rotating through my roster of characters and experiencing this engaging expansion at my own tempered pace. Does that mean that I lack a perspective or any observational details? Absolutely not! In fact, here are some things that I’ve been thinking about and looking at this week from the position at the far back of the pack.

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Elite Dangerous’ Beyond Chapter Three launches on August 28, players take on massive effort to salute community helpers

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The next phase of Elite Dangerous is en route – specifically, that’s chapter three of the Beyond rollout. In a brief tweet this afternoon, Frontier put a date on it – August 28 – and dropped a cryptic teaser video to boot.

Based on the game’s roadmap, we’re… actually still not entirely sure what’s in this episode because of how thin the copy is. Right now, new ships, missions, and scenarios are all that’s listed, as this is not expected to be a major update and Reddit seems anything but in hype mode.

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Hi-Rez’s Realm Royale playerbase and reviews are way down on Steam

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Yikes – Realm Royale is apparently struggling, proving once again just how hard it is to break into one of these new runaway subgenres. GitHyp (via GIbiz) has a report this week on the size of Hi-Rez’s battle royale playerbase after just two months of life.

“At the time, we thought Realm Royale could be PUBG‘s first serious competition on Steam with no other recent battle royale game coming close to 100k players,” GitHyp writes. But since then, the game’s activity level has apparently sunk to around 7000 concurrent players, which as the analytics firm notes is a loss of 93%. Streaming of the title is down too, aside from the ongoing $100K weekly tournaments. GitHyp attributes the downslide to Steam’s mixed reviews, which focus primarily on balance concerns.

Earlier this week, Hi-Rez reorganized into into three core studios, one apiece for SMITE, Paladins, and Realm Royale, as if to emphasize GitHyp’s assertion that the game isn’t dead yet and the company’s not giving up on it any time soon; it’s still in alpha on PC, and it has yet to launch on console.

Source: GitHyp via GIbiz

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MMO Skyforge is getting a battle royale mode, but it won’t utilize your MMO character

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So this is happening. Skyforge is getting a battle royale mode of its very own, following in the footsteps of other MMOs that have adopted the mode into their virtual worlds. The catch is that it looks like you’ll be playing one of a dozen premade toons, not your actual Skyforge character. In fact, you can jump in even if you don’t really play the MMO at all, and it’s boasting a “skill-based action game feel” that’s still “familiar for MMO players” but with less focus on auto-aim.

“Skyforge will soon launch an all-new free ‘Battle Royale’ mode providing its own massive multiplayer twist on the popular format. Skyforge takes its unique mix of sci-fi and fantasy setting to a vicious virtual reality arena, parting with the game’s normal concept of players being immortal. Out of all the participants that start the match, only one can stand victorious in this divine test and win the ultimate favor of the gods. Skyforge: Battle Royale can be launched from the start screen and requires no progress on any character in the MMO; players can dive into a brutal free-for-all right from the start!”

Launch is anticipated for August 28th on PC, with consoles trickling out later that same week. To tide you over until then, My.com is running a series of summer events too.

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In Conan Exiles’ upcoming pet patch, thralls ‘don’t poop, somehow’

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Conan Exiles’ parity patch has finally hit the Xbox One servers after a week’s delay. Funcom says it ought to mop up crash problems, although there’s apparently some fresh lag issues to deal with now. PS4 players, however, are still waiting, as apparently Sony rejected the PS4 patch for being too big, so the studio’s “working on reducing” it. There’s a crude joke in there somewhere. This is Conan we’re talking about.

That’s all in this week’s community newsletter, in addition to news about the first phase inbound pet system, which is due to launch on the test server this week. Here’s where the poop comes in.

“When we roll out the pet system we’ll also be rolling out new functionality for your thralls,” Funcom says. Yep, you’re going to have to feed them.

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MapleStory 2 is getting really close to launch, you guys

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With its second closed beta run and done, MapleStory 2 is turning its sights to something bigger. Something grander. Something… launch-ier.

Nexon said that it’s going to announce the launch date for this 3-D sequel to the hit MapleStory on August 21st. “Not only will we reveal the official release date, but our team will also discuss the future content schedule of the game,” the developer said.

In the meantime, players can start reserving their names and even create their first character so that they can hit the ground running when MapleStory 2 launches. You’ll need to buy a founder’s pack to access this perk, however. It’s probably a good thing that Nexon has made these packs available for purchase again!

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Jagex gets into games publishing while RuneScape crosses $1 billion earned

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Jagex isn’t content to be “just the RuneScape studio” these days. The company announced today that it is preparing to move into the publishing space with Jagex Partners, a “third-party publishing initiative for live games.”

Jagex Partners is hoping to attract all sorts of live games and will support them with a whole suite of tools and services that Jagex has used to keep RuneScape up and running over all these years. This new publishing arm has attracted former talent from NCsoft, EA, Trion Worlds, and CCP. We’ll be hearing more about this initiative next week at Gamescom.

“Jagex Partners is so much more than a go-to-market publishing experience,” said SVP Publishing John Burns in a press release. “It’s the entire toolkit to launch and run a game in live operations, backed by years of experience.”

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Sea of Thieves players push back against the ruthless PvP culture

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If there’s anything that Sea of Thieves is known for months after its spring launch, it’s for the culture of cutthroat PvP that wages nonstop in this pirate game. While Rare may be pleased with that, some players are sick and tired of the endless ganking — and they’re doing something about it.

Polygon reports that it is seeing an increased effort by various corners of the community to create player events that are fun, inclusive, and step outside of the PvP mechanics. These include brigantine races, scavenger hunts, and even a regular game show with prizes.

“We’d already had our share of PvP and just messing people and not being the nicest pirates around when we found people,” said the creators of the Loot and Lore show. “So, we felt like we weren’t really helping the game grow by doing a similar thing. So, instead we became advocates for good behavior and helping people and, you know, just getting people more involved.”

Source: Polygon

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World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth tackles launch issues, sees first level 120, and activates companion app

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All things considered, yesterday saw a fairly smooth global rollout for World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth.

But while many realms were up and players enjoying the seventh expansion for the MMO, some servers saw chronic issues that kept them offline for most of the night. As of this morning, seven game realms are down as Blizzard attempts to fix whatever ails them. There were also some smaller issues that players have reported, such as not being able to see the Heart of Azeroth in their inventory, although it is hard to tell how widespread this problem is.

One thing we do know for sure: The race to level 120 is already over. In fact, it was over four hours and 17 minutes after the expansion launch. Method’s Gingi accomplished the task with his Boomkin and a meticulously planned leveling strategy.

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