MMORPGLand 6: Alpha, Ultima, and so on

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MMORPGLand 6: Alpha, Ultima, and so on

By Heath | April 8, 2010 at 7:49 pm

Here we go with another MMORPG update, with tidbits on World of Warcraft class updates, Aika becoming something of an exclusive club, new Final Fantasy XIV screenshots, a new Ultima game, and more.

World of Warcraft Priest Change Preview
Blizzard has posted a preview of the upcoming changes to the Priest class in World of Warcraft. There are new, high level abilities to come to the class with Cataclysm, such as Leap of Faith, which allows Priests to rescue players who have gotten in over there heads, be it by aggro, PvP targeting, or whatever.

Aika Online Blocks Non-North American Users
After Allods Online continuously gave me a corrupt file, I considered giving Aika Online a run, but dang, now it’s come out that gPotato and Gala-Net are looking towards blocking non-North American IPs from the game. It’s only due to licensing issues, not the company being tools or anything, but as a gamer in Japan, it’s a bummer. I am having the worst luck lately.

Darkfall Adds Teleportation
Favorite MMORPG of infamous RPG Land forum member Idin Leis, Darkfall is going through some big updates, among which are the addition of Portal Chambers. The patch notes on this one are actually pretty friggin’ huge. There are mixed reactions going on in the community forums though, with some complaining about the changes throwing off the game too much and others staying calm and awaiting some minor tweaks.

Champions Online Game-Changer
Many have been dissatisfied with their experiences in melee combat in Champions Online. Now, though, Cryptic is on record revealing plans for changes to players who choose close quarters combat. The new dev diary says:

One of the issues that came up time and time again in playtests was the frustration with charge powers. We took several steps to alleviate these frustrations:

* Any melee charge power that locked your character down no longer does so. Freedom!
* Shortened some of the longer max charge times.
* The melee range increase, as mentioned before, will help you connect your charge attacks.

And last but not least, deserving of its own set up of bullet points:

* A “missed” charge attack will no longer cost you energy or trigger cooldowns.

Twelve Sky Shutting Down
Twelve Sky, also known as 12Sky, is going the way that seemingly all MMORPGs must some day eventually go. Oddly enough, the prime reason given isn’t the “lack-of-community” reason that most MMORPG closures can be chalked up to. Host Aeria games has pointed at the development team in this one, blaming “a severe lack of commitment from the developers to fix critical issues and continue developing quality content.” The item shop will close on the 13th of this month, and the servers will shut down on the 30th. The sequel, Twelve Sky 2, is obviously the bigger focus right now, though if I were a loyal player of a recently canned game, I feel like I’d be a little shy about hopping on the sequel.

Ultima Lives On
EA and Phenomic recently maunched the open beta for Lord of Ultima, a browser-based strategy game. Not an MMORPG, but it’s related to the Ultima franchise which, aside from Ultima Online (still alive and still awesome), doesn’t have much going on these days. Its release is expected on April 20.

Patch Notes: Short Stories and Links
*Dungeons and Dragons Online has launched Update 4.
*The Final Fantasy XIV official site has been updated to catch up with its Japanese counterpart.
*Tales of Pirates II will be in alpha testing April 15 though 22.

We’ll close with some in-game screenshots from Final Fantasy XIV‘s alpha testing. Thanks for reading the column. Give any feedback you want by emailing pr@rpgland.com, or visiting our Facebook or Twittthing. Seeya~