Teljair and I have decided to put our efforts into creating a new media site called, “Rift Junkies” which will be a site for Rift: Planes of Telara.

And so it begins…

Rift Junkies is a fan site dedicated to the MMORPG Rift: Planes of Telara, formally Heroes of Telara, by Trion. This site has been created with the intent to support the Rift community as a whole. In doing so we hope to provide up-to-date coverage about anything going on with the game; this will include News, Media, Community Updates, Opinionated Blogs, and other events such as contests and polls. Additionally we have created our own forum that we invite everyone to discuss anything about Rift. This may include theory crafting, strategies, debating news topics and, or lore.

Rift Junkies was created by two partners, Teljair and Draegan. Both have been successful at creating fansites in the past such as WAAAGHHammer.com and AOCmmo.com. The most successful of all has been the all purpose MMORPG Media site, Rerollz.com. With the building excitement for Rift: Planes of Telara, both Draegan and Teljair have decided to create something new.

WWW.RIFTJUNKIES.COM

Damn the title to this article sucks. Very unwieldy. Anyway…

MMORPG.com interviewed Colin Johanson, Lead Creative of GW2, and got a few points clarified about his Dynamic Content blog post. It’s a great read and it explains a bit.

Update: More interviews at IGN and Eurogamer.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here are some new TERA screenshots that were posted on their site. Nothing special really, it’s just a bunch of animals. However apparently TERA uses Flickr to host their files. I guess they don’t have a budget to host them on their own site? Heh.

Linkage…

Looks like Eurogamer got an exclusive regarding class development in SWTOR. Apparently each of the eight classes breaks down into two classes. Each class will then have three talent trees, two specifically for the advanced class and one that is shared by the basic class; kind of like Age of Conan. According to Eurogamer the Sith splits up into a crazy dps class and a tank class.

Other than that the advanced classes exist, there isn’t much else to talk about. It’s a typical MMOG staple so you can’t say that you’re surprised. I’m still waiting on information on how the game works. It still looks like a very large co-op multiplayer online game. I guess we’ll have to stay tuned.

Alright, so we’ve had two expansions so far and we each expansion we’ve gotten a bigger and bigger gear reset. How many of you quit playing until the expansion after beating a few of the events? I know I’ve quit plenty of times thinking, “What the fuck is the point gearing up when my shit will be replaced within a few hours by a green quest item?”

Now the difference with me is that I was never a top end raider; I never had the time to commit to a raiding schedule. So I didn’t have Naxx gear the first time around to level with in Crusade, nor did I have Sunwell gear to carry me from 70 to 80. But in with each expansion the gear resets have been getting more and more severe. Top tier gear in 1.0 lasted until you raided in 2.0; and in 2.0 that gear last nearly into Naxx, but sometimes it was replaced fairly quick.

It’s going to be different with Cataclysm. The gear reset is going to be HARD. I mean hard like, “Why the fuck are you wielding Shadowmourne? Fucking noob.” If what I’ve seen and heard is accurate (4000 hps every time you ding, 400 dps 2H axes, etc.), we’re talking about top end gear being reset in the first twenty minutes. This is more severe than any time so far in the history of Warcraft because we’re talking about replacing hardmode epics here quickly. Another thing that’s different now is that everyone has decent gear now. With the advent of badges, everyone is decked out with decent item level shit. Warcraft is saturated with gear. There isn’t much of a gap these days in the haves and have-nots in terms of power compared to 4-5 years ago.

So why are you playing? If you’ve already killed Arthas, are you really interested in the dragon raid they’re putting up on the PTR? Is that really going to hold your attention?

On a side note, I wonder if purple will be the new blue and Warcraft will finally start doling out purples for quest rewards and then have raids start dumping legendaries all over the place and then introduce the red item, the artifact, for end tier bosses. That would be awesome.

Heads up for you guys following TERA. The website has been update and a few things posted. The first item is a recap of the Focus Group Test.

We’d like to share the results of FGT2 with you in a series of postmortem articles. We’ve separated the feedback into three very broad categories: gameplay, Westernization, and technology. This first piece covers gameplay.

For example…

The overwhelming majority of players felt that levels 1 to 11 were well-balanced and provided a good introduction to TERA and its lore. However, feedback on levels 12 and onward was a lot more diverse. Some liked the pacing at those levels while others felt it needed improvement. We agree that there’s room to improve in this area and plan to add new quests in more centralized hubs.

This worries me as an anti-fan of Korean games. Who are these people? Are they going to listen to a bunch of Lineage 2 fans who enjoy leveling for a few years on one toon till max level? Those people are assholes and should stop fucking up games.

More here.

Make sure you sign up for future tests in their new Tester Application.

And a news roundup called the Valika Guardian.