nightfall

Blade and Soul crushes summer boredom with its Celestial Dawn patch

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Aww, don’t be sad, weird little old man with long pierced bunny rabbit ears! I know you’re feeling left without purpose, now that you’re in the summer months, but may we suggest a little Blade and Soul to inject a spark of direction in your life?

After so much build up you’d think this patch is an expansion, Blade and Soul’s Celestial Dawn arrived yesterday and gave the MMO’s players a whole lot to do for the next month or so. You’ve got a fight against the Grand Celestial Emporer with the final addition to the Nightfall Sanctuary raid, the start of two bonus events, the new augment feature, and plenty of system changes. You’re going to want to read up on the patch notes for this, seriously.

Before NCsoft lets go of its excitement for this patch, it had to indulge in a couple of videos to trumpet how awesome it is. “It” being the studio or the update, take your pick.

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Blade and Soul throws the kitchen sink into next week’s patch

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You know it’s a really good and meaty content patch when a studio can get more than two blog posts out of it. Blade and Soul’s Celestial Dawn fits that bill, because NCsoft is still talking about next week’s update, this time with a post on the big changes coming to various items and systems.

The Celestial Dawn update is goign to give players even more rewards from Nightfall Sanctuary’s hard difficulty bosses and improved the payouts from Celestial Basin activities. The crafting system got a balance and price pass and Zen Bean traders will be stocked with a “greater variety” of goods.

To help players tackle the bigger challenges of this patch, the legendary accessory augment system was born: “The new legendary accessory augment system allows you to tackle specific hard mode dungeons for a chance at Psyche items, which will allow you to further increase your legendary accessory power. Each dungeon has their own unique psyche related to the augment system, in addition to the battlefield traders having their own PvP-focused versions.”

Source: Blade and Soul

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Blade and Soul rounds out its Nightfall Sanctuary raid

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What MMORPG actually releases a fully-fleshed out raid in this day and age? You have to milk that content drip by drip, giving players just enough to be challenging but not enough so that the top raiding guilds blow through it in one evening.

Blade and Soul seems perfectly fine with the current model of chopping up raids, as it only delivered half of the Nightfall Sanctuary so far. The rest is coming on June 20th, when part two arrives with even more bosses, areas, and rewards for 12-player groups to tackle. It’s in this update that the final showdown against the Grand Celestial Emperor is going to take place, with appropriate legendary gear dropping for anyone who can dethrone this shiny jerk.

“Your raid will need to work in perfect harmony if you’re to have any chance against the Grand Celestial Emperor. More than a few will fall before him and his relentless pursuit of power,” said NCsoft.

Source: Blade and Soul

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Destiny 2 hints at fall expansion, wastes players’ time with glitched strike drops

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The future of Destiny 2 will be revealed next week, as Bungie takes the stage on June 5th at noon EST to talk about its second year roadmap.

Included in this reveal? The general consensus, backed up by Bungie’s recent blog post, is that the studio is going to lay out the details for the game’s fall expansion, which will include a completely new gameplay mode. Place your bets now what we’ll be seeing and where we’ll be going because there are bragging rights at stake!

What’s not at stake, however, are some of the major rewards of Destiny 2’s recent Nightfall strike. Players who had been grinding away at the strike in the hopes of attaining some of its most desirable pieces of gear were exasperated to learn that, yes, the instance is bugged and these exclusive rewards weren’t dropping. Bungie finally admitted this as player reports of the non-drops started to pile up, but the acknowledgement is poor consolation to those who spent large amounts of time on these wasted runs.

Source: Bungie blog, Polygon, #2. Thanks Pepperzine!

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Exit light, enter Blade & Soul’s Eternal Night update

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Today is May 9th. And that is a wonderful, marvelous day if you happen to be a Blade & Soul fan, because it’s the day when NCsoft is dropping its Eternal Night update for players to enjoy.

“The Blade and Soul Eternal Night update brings with it part one of your journey into the new Nightfall Sanctuary raid as you try to stop Chol Mugo from obtaining the Celestial Emperor’s ungodly power for himself. You’ll also descend into a new heroic six-player Dungeon deep in the sands of the Zasteri Badlands, obtain a new Legendary Soul Shield, and a whole lot more!”

In addition to the new group challenges, Blade & Soul is running raid events from now through June 20th. By going through certain quests and daily tasks, players can earn Pristine Astral Oil event tokens to help with your gear upgrades. The MMO also rebalanced its upgrade costs, added an option for simplified combat controls, and improved the level 50 character creation experience.
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Blade & Soul delays its Eternal Night update deeper into May

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Blade & Soul players are going to have to chew on a bit of a sour grape today, as NCsoft announced that it made the decision to push the upcoming Eternal Night patch back a week to May 9th.

The dev team said that it had “come across a number of issues that will require additional testing and preparation” and apologized for the one-week delay in the update’s rollout. There is a firm, sweet grape to eat with this news, however: NCsoft is going to extend its daily dash, login rewards, and the Automaton Assault event until the 9th to keep players busy and happy.

The Eternal Night update will throw players into a 12-person raid called Nightfall Sanctuary, a dungeon known as Sandstorm Temple, and allow for the acquisition of new legendary gear.

Source: Blade & Soul

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Destiny 2 team revises its update roadmap

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No development plan survives first contact with the community, and Bungie freely admits that its previous Destiny 2 roadmap was subject to change at any moment for any reason.

Hence, an updated and revised roadmap was published this week that takes players from next week’s Patch 1.1.3 through May’s Patch 1.2. A few features have been shuffled around, such as the delay of what would have been 1.1.3’s Nightfall Strike unique weapons to March’s Patch 1.1.4.

“We also have a big addition we’re eager to share,” Bungie said, “Rumble will be joining 6v6 Iron Banner and Mayhem in our new rotating weekly Crucible playlist in 1.1.4. We want to make sure players have a more diverse set of game modes available in both Crucible and Private Matches. Doubles is also planned to return, but we do not have an exact release date just yet.”

Take a gander at the latest development roadmap after the jump!

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Destiny 2 empowers players to set Nightfall strike challenge levels, prototypes raid features

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Destiny 2’s Nightfall strikes are in the wings, waiting for their turn to receive some love and adjustments. This should happen soon, as Bungie plans on getting rid of the pass-fail timer and replacing it with other criteria that will score varying degrees of success. Also, players can pick up challenge cards with handicaps that add a score multiplyer to their runs.

“Fireteams of any size should be able to participate, from organized clan groups to skilled solo players,” promised Game Director Christopher Barrett. “Players should be able to determine their own challenge level, by going slow and steady or fast and wild, with elective modifiers to test the most hardcore veterans.” Read more

ArenaNet donates $3500 to Guild Wars fan whose game copy survived a deadly housefire

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Howasabout another feel-good story? Let’s do it! This one comes from Kotaku, which covered a large donation Guild Wars 2 studio ArenaNet recently made to a fan.

According to the GoFundMe, which is still live and has surpassed its original $5000 goal, the family of Georgia resident Frances Hunsucker was devastated by a house fire; while all the humans escaped the blaze, two pets did not, and everything they owned was destroyed. Well, almost everything. Hunsucker uploaded a video of her classic Guild Wars Nightfall DVD case, which didn’t seem much affected by the flames.

“The local Game Stop people know me as the ‘crazy Guild Wars lady,'” she reportedly told Kotaku.

ArenaNet chipped in $3,595 toward the “crazy Guild Wars lady’s” fundraiser along with a swag bag, propelling the donations over the top and hopefully helping the fam through the first steps of rebuilding. Next time you say Thanks, ArenaNet, you should really, truly mean it.

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Jukebox Heroes: Guild Wars 2 Path of Fire’s soundtrack

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I feel comfortable in saying that I hold the Guild Wars franchise’s soundtrack in high regard. There’s excellent music across the board from a variety of composers, and in my opinion, it has only gotten better over time. The Guild Wars 2 Living World season 3 and Heart of Thorns scores knocked it out of the park, and I could not wait to listen through Path of Fire when it released earlier this year.

That is why, to continue using an awkward baseball metaphor, I was let down when this expansion’s score was a mere double instead of a home run. It’s not bad, mind you, but it’s certainly not as great as the previous expansion or what the team has been putting out in the meantime. Perhaps some of this stems from the desert theme, which I’ve always found to inspire somewhat stereotypical “desert music” that sounds samey and not that thrilling. Guild Wars: Nightfall was my least-liked score of the original game for this reason as well.

Again, I want to emphasize that I don’t hate Path of Fire’s score, I just don’t like it as much as what’s been done before. This time around, four composers put together the album: Maclaine Diemer, Wilbert Rogett, Brendon Williams, and Stan LePard. This team did produce several highlights that I prefer to mention rather than talk about what didn’t work, so let’s give those pieces a listen!

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Life is Feudal’s Nightfall trailer is properly creepy for Halloween

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We’re down to the wire on new Halloween celebrations in MMOs; indeed, some of them are already over thanks to patch schedules! But that’s not stopping a few last-minute stragglers, like Life is Feudal, which just posted up a themed trailer.

“When night falls across the land, scary things can happen in Life is Feudal: MMO – perhaps even sacrifices to dark, unimaginable beings! To celebrate Halloween, developer Bitbox has released a new video today, showing exactly how the game world changes at night – from a massive land of adventure and teamwork… to something much more sinister.”

Earlier this month, we reported that the buy-to-play MMO that spawned and survival sandbox and a strategy sim will finally soft launch into open beta on November 17th. The spooky video is down below!

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Global Chat: The MMO community’s Guild Wars 2 Path of Fire impressions

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It is kind of impossible to stroll around the MMO blogging community as of late and not trip and fall into a pool of Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire impressions and opinions. So why not dive in and see what lies under the surface of these experiences?

GamingSF suffered from technical issues that kept him from getting into the expansion initially, but when he did, he recognized that it had some “really nice features.” Why I Game concurs with this sentiment, noting that there are “a lot more nods to exploration this time around.”

“Story is okay, nothing amazing, some funny bits help, and I find it gets better as it progresses onward,” ECTmmo.com wrote. “The actual places you get to travel to and explore in this expansion are what makes it shine, well, that and the mounts.”

We’ve got even more Path of Fire impressions after the break, as well as a look at Star Trek Online, Elite Dangerous, and Ultima Online!

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Working As Intended: The best and worst of Guild Wars 2 Path of Fire (so far)

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I’ve spent a chunk of the last week moving through the first part of Guild Wars 2’s Path of Fire, finishing up the Crystal Oasis zone into which a character is deposited right off the airship. Obviously, it’s far too early to give a formal stamp of approval until I’m fully through it, but so far, I’m pleased with my purchase. Very pleased. I’m already pretty sure the expansion is update-of-the-year material for the genre. But it’ll take a few months to see how it fully meshes with the existing game, and while the same was true with Heart of Thorns, my urge to stop writing and go back into Elona for the next zone as I type this already tells me that PoF has delivered on at least its basic promises.

So while we let the community savor the game until a fully informed consensus is reached, I wanted to dash off some quick thoughts based on this first week of midcore casual play. Consider it a top 5, bottom 5 list as we dig into the very best additions to the game – and the things that still annoy me.

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