WildStar gameplay starts to give you an idea on some core mechanics.

If you’re looking for some WildStar gameplay you’ve come to the right place my friends! Today I finally get to share with you some Scientist and Settler path gameplay from Carbine Studios‘ upcoming MMORPG. As you’ve seen almost all day we’ve been posting tons of new information about WildStar that I gathered during a recent trip to visit with the team in San Francisco. This WildStar gameplay is just part of the images and info I got out of the West Coast carrying!

This WildStar gameplay video, while focused on the Scientist and Settler, starts to reveal quite a bit about the game. Questing, environment quests, core path mechanics, it’s all here. Now, being only closed beta and my VERY limited hands on time, please do NOT take this video as a review of the MMO. Having only a few hours of play I barely had time to register what I liked about the game let alone start finding things I didn’t like about WildStar.

Are you into collecting? Check out in the video how almost everything the Scientist scans starts to build collections. I can already see some of my friends that have 100+ mounts in other games going nuts with this type of massive collection scheme!

My WildStar gameplay also included the Settler, the path I am most interested in myself. Check it out as I work with a NPC gathering resources laying around in an attempt to polish off a massive structure that will add NPCs that give out quests for everyone to do.

As an added bonus, I’ve thrown some screen shots into the end of the video during the wrap up and even added the gallery below for you to see brand new images of both the Scientist and the Settler. 

Have questions about the the game? Feel free to ask below and I’ll answer it if it was part of my San Francisco WildStar gameplay hands on time!

The post WildStar Gameplay Video appeared first on Gamebreaker.tv.

Executive Producer Jeremy Gaffney sits down with Gamebreaker for a WildStar interview!

During my trip to San Francisco to get some hands on time with the Scientist and Settler paths in WildStar, I was fortunate enough to snag some time with Carbine Studios‘ Executive Producer Jeremy Gaffney and chat in this WildStar interview.

If you aren’t familiar with Jeremy, at the risk of putting him in the same category as many did when they described former President G.W. Bush, he is certainly the type of guy you would like to sit down and have a beer with. It is easy to see where WildStar is getting the sense of humor that it has after just spending a few hours with Gaffney and his team.

Gaffney has a long history with MMOs, as the WildStar interview details, and for those of you that have played some of the previous titles he’s been involved in you may see some earlier game systems more fleshed out in WildStar. Looking at the extensive list of titles under Gaffney’s belt is like looking at a “Who’s Who In MMOs” list.

In the interview, Gaffney and I chat about the two new path reveals, discuss how “easy” the telegraph system in WildStar is, and even get some additional details on housing dungeons. These random dungeons almost didn’t even make it into the release of WildStar but, as Gaffney describes, the sheer dedication of the team over at Carbine made SURE they got included.

Take a listen and let us know what you think about out WildStar interview. When you hear Gaffney’s answer about payment model, does it tip you off as to what WildStar will be doing? Could we see a “Buy to Play and a Cash Shop” a la Guild Wars 2 type model, or could Carbine have something else in store?

What do you think? 

Really, you still need a link for beta sign ups? Well…okay then, since we’re friends. You can sign up here!

The post WildStar Interview With Jeremy Gaffney appeared first on Gamebreaker.tv.

Recently I Traveled To San Francisco To Get Some WildStar Hands On Time. I Left With A Whole Lot More!

Like many of you I have had my eyes on WildStar, the upcoming MMORPG from Carbine Studios, for quite some time. I’ve been intrigued by many of the talking points that we’ve seen released. About two weeks ago I got the chance to head on out to the west coast and spend some time with Jeremy Gaffney, Executive Producer, and team and get some WildStar hands on time with both the Scientist and Settler paths. Not only that, but I gathered a ton of information from anyone willing to talk and want to share it with you to get your take on some of the directions in which WildStar is moving.

Until now, very little information has been released regarding the Scientist and Settler paths. We had a basic idea, one would collect and one would build, but we really didn’t have much more than that. In my WildStar hands on time I got to play with both classes. I have included screen shots of my gameplay for you as well! (Yes, we had permission from Carbine to do so )

Let’s Talk Science!

Scanning the local wildlife with my Scientist

The Scientist path caters to the more collection hungry among us. In Gaffney’s words the Scientist builds on that inherent human desire to make order out of chaos and complete various collections. Scientists roam the world of WildStar with a companion scanning bot that is used to seek out items of note in the environment. Items that are able to be scanned have an additional icon next to their nameplate for easy recognition. You won’t just be scanning rocks and things either. Some monsters can be scanned and if you scan enough of a certain type you’ll find advantages in combat coming your way.

For the more collection oriented, Scientists can scan various items of note in the environment and gather loot, details, or even open up puzzles to access new map locations that other players couldn’t reach. In the gameplay we watched before playing (which was a live demo, not a prefabricated video) Gaffney’s team stumbled upon an unusual looking huge disc on the ground. Once scanned by a Scientist, this disc generated a puzzle based on the four elements. Certain switches triggered different elements to light up and others to extinguish. The goal was to light all four elements at once. Players that do not choose the Scientist path could only take part in the puzzle if they were in a party with a Scientist that scanned the puzzle to “unlock” the ability to try and solve it, or happened to be nearby when a Scientist scanned the disc.

Once solved, a cave opened up that had a sort of “mini-dungeon” and boss inside for some extra special loot. Here’s the catch. Gaffney told us multiple times that the team at Carbine wants WildStar to be a game you could find a strategy guide for if you wanted, but walkthroughs for many things (like this puzzle) would be scarce. Why? It seems the puzzles in WildStar have a bit of a random element to them. Each puzzle has multiple versions. The puzzle you play may have a very different solution if you attempt it tomorrow.

Settle Down Now

Settler Getting Her Build On!

For my WildStar hands on time I was most eager to check out the Settler path. I wanted to see exactly how the whole “build and maintain” play style was going to work. As it turns out, from my limited WildStar hands on time, I think Settler is shaping up to be an experience unlike anything else in other MMORPGs. 

So here’s the gist, then we’ll get to some really cool mechanics. Those that choose the path of the Settler are charged with the learning, building, and maintaining of everything from torches in an existing town that need to be lit at nightfall, all the way to full blown outposts outside, for example, a raid instance. Settlers have the ability to repair broken down structures whenever they come across them and I found myself doing exactly that during my WildStar hands on time. I couldn’t leave any item unclicked. Even though they may have been worth very little path experience (yes that’s different from your character’s basic experience) I couldn’t walk past an unlit torch, a downed fence, or a barricade that was broken leaving NPC guards exposed. 

While these items may seem small in the grand scheme, the Settler really shines when building large structures. Building a jailhouse in a rundown outpost not only added a new structure but also added NPC quest givers that were available to everyone. Structures take maintenance, however, so other settlers can click on places you’ve built and add resources of their own to increase the amount of time before the structure collapses.

Not only can Settlers provide additional buildings, NPCs, quests, and vendors to other players, but they also play a huge role in your transportation. 

An example from Gaffney might shed some more light here. You have a typical zone and there is an existing city that serves as a gathering or staging point for a raid located on the far side of the zone. That’s quite a walk. Bring a bunch of Settlers with you! Once you get to some ruins outside the instance, Settlers can rebuild the outpost NPC guards and all.

Not only that, but Settlers have the ability to set up travel paths (read: flight path without the flight) between the outpost and the hub city. As if that wasn’t enough, Settlers also have the ability to build mount vendors who will be happy to sell you temporary mounts.

That’s Great, But What About When Paths Intersect?

Paths in parties provides a bit of a design challenge. Carbine doesn’t want raids and other elder game content to turn into an attendance roll call of certain paths but they do want to provide an incentive to have multiple paths involved in a group. Path experience plays a big part in this system. Not only do you gain path experience for performing tasks in your given path, but you also receive path experience when helping others with their paths. Team up with a Scientist and help them complete certain path objectives and you’ll be rewarded in your path for doing so. 

Interaction with items of your creation can even net you some path experience when you aren’t around. While I was not at high enough levels to get footage of this during my WildStar hands on time, Gaffney was happy to oblige with another example.

Settlers can make a campfire. This campfire gives buffs to those that use it. When used, the Settler that created the campfire receives path experience. The meta game this type of behavior opens up is one of “supply and demand.” In the first week, setting up a campfire outside a popular dungeon may net you a ton of path experience for your Settler as everyone who enters the dungeon uses your campfire. Once other Settlers see this though, the area could become covered with campfires. It’s up to you to find the next “golden” location for your campfire when this happens.

Path experience is important. As you level your path not only are you rewarded with additional path based abilities, but you can also receive both gear and housing items as rewards for your accomplishments.

What About That “More” You Mentioned?

Tracker In The Lower Right Tracks All Quest Types (Regular, Path, etc) Dynamic Events Track Below Your Mini-Map

While my WildStar hands-on time would have been enough for me, here’s a list of other interesting tidbits I managed to smuggle out of San Francisco. 

As of two weeks ago, Gaffney says that WildStar has about 220 hours of content already available in the game and more is being added before launch. When you think about some other recent MMORPG releases, this number seems staggering for where WildStar is in the beta process. Not only does the game contain that many hours of content, but Gaffney also says that your path only makes up about 20-25% of your overall gameplay experience. This leaves plenty of room for other content along the way.

On the idea of “content level”, Gaffney shared some of the results of beta phase 1. The obvious question was how the distribution of paths among players was progressing. Since you cannot currently change paths after you complete character creation, it is important that there are adequate numbers of each path to maintain consistent gameplay. Gaffney was pleasantly surprised by the path distribution so far and even said that the team at Carbine will continue to monitor how many players are rolling new characters simply to change paths to make a decision on if players should be allowed to change paths at any time.

Closed Beta Phase 1 also had a level cap of 22 (increased to 30 in Closed Beta Phase 2 and PvP options have been added) and Gaffney told me that the data shows it took players on average 44 hours to go from level 1 to level 22. What surprised me here is that Gaffney and the team at Carbine actually thought this was about 5% slower than the team expected it would take.

In my WildStar hands on time I also noticed that a quest or two seemed to be phased. Gaffney did say that the game utilizes a little bit of phasing but since they aren’t generally fans of this mechanic Carbine is looking for ways to remove as much of the phasing left as possible.

Finally, group content is a huge part of WildStar, and instances are challenging by design. Carbine doesn’t want them to be easy. As was mentioned on Gamebreaker before, instances can also be dynamic (even occurring as you dig out your plot of land in your personal house) in that a boss may have different mechanics or a different add compliment each week.

If your group can’t hang with a raid boss that has three healing adds, maybe next week you’ll fare better when the healers have been swapped for warriors. While this is just a very basic example of the concept of dynamic raids, it does make me a bit excited for the PvE leader boards that will be in WildStar. Each week guilds can try to tackle the leader boards for shortest kill time and each week every guild has another chance to claim those rewards since the instances change. That should keep elder game content a bit on the interesting side even after “farm” status is achieved.

So what do you think? All in all I felt good leaving San Francisco. While I certainly wouldn’t say I know everything about the game, my WildStar hands-on time did leave me wanting to play some more and excited about some of the features I was able to see in action.

What intrigues you the most about WildStar right now?

If you haven’t already, you can sign up for the WildStar beta here. They’ve got a stress test coming up and Closed Beta Test 2 participants will have access to a new zone, faction, dungeon, and PvP content.

The post WildStar Hands On Path Reveal And MORE! appeared first on Gamebreaker.tv.

Information Is Starting To Flow About WildStar Paths And How They Function

We’ve seen more and more information out of the team at Carbine Studios lately, and especially today. It seems the PR train for WildStar is starting to hit its stride and a detailed explanation of the WildStar paths is in order. In typical humorous fashion, the WildStar devs announce that “Class Is Dismissed” and show off the key traits for all WildStar Paths.

Here’s a breakdown of what to expect when you first create a character and choose a path in the upcoming MMORPG:

• Explorer – Examines vistas, lost tunnels, and engages in scavenger hunts all in an effort to be the first to claim “Been there, done that.”
• Soldier – Do you like to hit big things with big weapons? Kind of a no-brainer here then. Enjoy the large bosses this WildStar path is planning to send your way.
• Settler – Build your way to success. Whether it’s a large piece of infrastructure or something as simple as a campfire you’ll be paving the way for others around you.
• Scientist – This is the WildStar path for you completionists out there. Scan the environment, lost items, pieces of lore, or even monsters to build your knowledge and hopefully increase your chances for survival.

The latest WlidStar paths personality video showcases each path nicely and really starts to give hopeful players a solid foundation to make their choice. If this video didn’t make your decision for you have you checked out the WildStar Dev Speak on paths also released today yet?

Looks like it’s time to study up on WildStar paths as beta moves to phase two and phase three is only about 4 weeks away!

What did you think of the video? Still loving the comedy Carbine provides? Let us know!

Really? You STILL haven’t signed up for beta? Sure I’ll give you the link once again right here. If you want to see more WildStar videos check out their official YouTube channel here.

The post WildStar Paths Show Some Personality appeared first on Gamebreaker.tv.

FreeToPlay TV Is Part Of Gamebreaker’s Continuing Focus To Bring You News From All Gaming Sources

Hello Internet! I am very happy to announce that FreeToPlay TV is now live and ready for you! This new site is designed to give you the best content, information, and opinions from the world of Free-To-Play MMOs and Browser Games. (Yes, some Buy to Play may even be covered, but until there’s more of those we can’t really make one site for them )

While we are still getting ramped up, we’ll need your help along the way to continue to add to our line up of extensive game overview pages and don’t be surprised if you see some of our FreeTo Play TV writers doing a bit of streaming for the games they are currently working on. 

News stories are already flowing to the site and you can expect shows like “Dat Game” to make the transition over to FreeToPlay TV. We even have a few ideas in the works for other video content but, hey, I have to keep some secrets for now! We’ll keep you posted.

To celebrate the launch of the new site we already have 2 giveaways up and running so come check the site out, comment on the games we have up so far, and enter to win some Age of Wushu digital goodies or a GEFORCE GTX 670!

Remember, while our overviews will give you basic information for a game, it’s YOUR opinions in the comments that help gamers make a gaming decision so I would encourage you to share your opinions in constructive ways that help out your fellow gamers!

As Editor-in-Chief I look forward to expanding the site’s game line up and content line up as we continue to push content as fast as we can. I look forward to your feedback to help the site grow and become the best place for free to play gamers to hang out and talk about their favorite games. Being part of Gamebreaker and the fantastic community it has only gives everyone more opinions to draw from and I look forward to molding the site into something truly created by gamers for gamers!

Let’s get started! The official site is over at www.freetoplay.tv so spread the word!

The post FreeToPlay TV Is Now LIVE appeared first on Gamebreaker.tv.

Peace Offering To Players For Neverwinter’s Bumpy Road So Far

It doesn’t really matter if you call it open beta or full launch, the fact remains that the first few weeks of Neverwinter‘s existence have not passed without the free-to-play MMORPG seeing its fair share of problems.

With normal game launch bugs, connection issues, lag, hardware failures, and an Auction House exploit that brought servers down for an extended period over the weekend, the Neverwinter devs decided to give the players a little something for their troubles.

All characters created before 6am on Tuesday May 21st will receive the Caturday Survivor’s Pack in their in-game mail. The pack includes 2x XP Boosters, 5x Protector’s Enclave teleport scrolls, a Dwarven Facemask, a Stone of Health, and a Cape of Catastrophe. At least they managed to maintain a sense of humor about it all.

From the official announcement:

“What we did not expect, and should have, is how amazingly supportive and helpful our community would be during the brief snags that we might hit along the way.  We are sincerely overwhelmed by all of the positive comments and feedback that we’ve received from you over the past few weeks, and would like to express our deepest thanks for your ongoing support and willingness to help us make Neverwinter one of the best free-to-play MMORPGs around.”

Servers were rolled back following that Auction House exploit that came to light on Sunday morning, and many players lost progress from time played after 5:20 am PDT on Sunday. The auction house and Zen exchange were not accessible once the game was finally brought back online, although the Zen exchange should be available again now, and they are working on bringing back the auction house as soon as possible.

Cryptic has an official FAQ going on the Neverwinter forums that you can check out if you have questions regarding your character’s status following the rollbacks. 

What do you think of this gift from the Neverwinter devs? Does this help make up for the problems you’ve had so far. Leave a comment and let us know.

The post Neverwinter Gives Players Gift For Beta Troubles appeared first on Gamebreaker.tv.

Dawngate is a different kind of MOBA.

After accidentally sort–of, kind–of, not–really announcement of the EA MOBA Dawngate, Waystone Studios decided to get ahead of the media blitz and offer up some new details about the game. This new video outlines what exactly makes Dawngate different from other games in the genre. You can sign up for the beta, which launches May 24th.

Instead of focusing solely on the traditional creep killing and tower pushing, Dawngate is a combination of territory control and base racing. There are your typical towers, but unlike other MOBA games they act as inhibitors. Each one you destroy makes your creep wave more powerful. The towers also have the ability to respawn if you’re unable to take next in the lane. The ground works as a UI element, indicating how much time you have left until a tower respawns.

“We’re interested in some of the RTS roots of MOBAs,” Creative director Hunter Howe says. “In our game, we have economy nodes and territory-control gameplay that’s a little bit different to other MOBAs, while still trying to keep the core of what’s fun about a MOBA.”

Territory control works a lot like the Dominion map in League of Legends. There are some quirks, though. The territory nodes spawn workers that grab resources used to purchase items for the characters. These workers don’t require any micromanaging. They are the core of your team’s economy. These nodes can be taken by controlling the area for certain period of time.

I’m glad that someone’s finally trying to stray away from copying the tried-and-true formula of Dota. It’s about time someone made a new kind of game in the genre. The last attempt at something so drastically different – Demigod – was riddled with bugs and a poor user interface. I spent a good three months playing it though, and it was nice to have something that wasn’t so typical.

In the video they mention that esports isn’t the main course on the table during their design. They first and foremost want to focus on making a fun game, and if it turns into an esport, then that’s just icing on the cake. That’s probably a good idea, seeing as just about everyone is trying to turn their game into an esport.

[Wordpress and Youtube are acting up, here is a link to the dev video]

The post Dawngate Shows It’s A Different MOBA appeared first on Gamebreaker.tv.

Patch 5.3 is coming and Legendary is joined by Blizzard’s Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street and Brian Holinka for a live video interview!

Gary Gannon and Olivia Grace interview Blizzard’s Lead Systems Designer Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street as well as Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka on Blizzard’s first ever live video interview! As you’d expect, the conversation focuses around the upcoming patch, and we took full advantage of having the two main influences on WoW PvP to grill about the big upcoming changes. 

• We started off by chatting to the guys about the recent drop in subscription numbers, asking what they thought it might have been related to, and asking what they felt it meant for the future of WoW. 
• We then moved on into the more specific patch 5.3 discussion, first asking Brian to explain his mission with regard to patch 5.3, and as far as WoW PvP goes in general.
• We then talked about the huge gearing changes going into patch 5.3, as well as taking a look back over the previous changes he’d made, while also wondering if everything is changing too much for the less well-informed player. 
• PvE gear in PvP was next up, with the patch 5.3 change to give everyone 65% base resilience, there are concerns among the player base that PvE gear would be an equally good, even superior choice, and we discussed that with a specific view towards problem areas such as tanks, and world PvP, as well as just in general. 
• We had to talk about at least some PvE, so that took the form of Heroic Scenarios, and whether they were seen by the devs as a replacement for 5-mans.Greg clarified that no, they weren’t, and reassured us that we could indeed expect to see heroic 5-mans in the future. We also touched on the new Battlefield Barrens quests, 10 and 25-man raiding, and cleared up a response in an earlier interview where Greg implied that there might not be any Valor gear in future patches.
• Moving back into PvP, we had to take a look at class balance, discussing outliers and potential problems, as well as looking back at balance over the expansion. 
• Next up was the new Role Check system, where the Blizzard devs were keen to clarify that the way the system worked meant that the queue times would not be lengthened at all, and therefore players were extremely unlikely to risk the ire of their team-mates by queueing as a spec they had no intention of playing. 
• Lastly we hit up the changes to existing arena and battleground maps, as well as proposed changes to CC, instant cast heals, blanket silences and more. 

You can tune in to Legendary for more World of Warcraft discussion every Thursday night at 8pm Pacific! 

The post Patch 5.3: Blizzard’s First Ever Live Video Interview! appeared first on Gamebreaker.tv.

This Week On TWIMMO, You Asked For It So Here It Is! WILDSTAR, WILDSTAR, WILDSTAR! We Review The Details That Are Slowly Starting To Leak Out Of The WildStar Team Over At Carbine Studios, Talk About The Good And Bad Over At Trion Worlds, Speculate on FFXIV’s Release Date, And Throw A Brief Nod To DUST 514.

Telegraphs Aren’t For Newbs!

The post WildStar, Rift, Dust 514 appeared first on Gamebreaker.tv.

Auction House Exploit Brings Down Neverwinter Servers And Triggers Server Rollbacks

So for those of you that were hoping to get in some time with Neverwinter on a lazy Sunday, you probably noticed that all is not well in the D&D inspired Cryptic Studios MMORPG. Following the game’s social media outlets probably gave you a basic idea of exactly what was going on.

Without explaining the exploit in step by step detail, an exploit focused around being able to enter values in the auction house that really shouldn’t have been allowed was abused and thus astral diamonds were being duplicated. This quickly led to items being posted for absurd values so duplication could be completed on larger scales. Since Astral Diamonds can be exchanged for Zen (Perfect World’s Cash currency) in Neverwinter, this duplication had real life money implications in multiple ways.

In response to the exploit, Neverwinter disabled the in game auction house at around 11 A.M. PDT while the team at Cryptic starting investigating the reports. One hour later, Neverwinter stated on their Twitter account that the servers would be taken down totally so investigations could continue. The estimated down time was 1 hour.

Fast forward 12 hours later and the servers were still down.

At 11:13 PM Pacific Time, the Neverwinter team posted that they will in fact be performing a server rollback of 7 hours. All progress made between 5:20 AM Pacific Time and the time the servers were taken down would be reverted. Players are assured that all Zen purchases would remain in tact. Whenever the servers are actually brought back up, the Astral Diamonds exchange and the Auction house will be unavailable for an unknown time period.

Players will be receiving a free gift in recompense for the rollback and the full situation FAQ is available here, and for those interested parties, you can check out the full announcement here.

Cryptic has stated that they have isolated the accounts involved in the exploit and is planning on taking actions up to and including the banning of accounts but, as is usually the case with these sorts of things, innocent players may find themselves banned from the game erroneously. If this happens to you, Perfect World Entertainment (PWE) has advised you to file a support ticket.

There are a number of concerns that this brings up for the fledgling free to play title though. Numerous exploits have already been reported (such as Foundry and Boss Fight exploits) and the fixes for many have been slow in coming. Closed beta players are also chiming in on the twitter discussion and the forums to advise that this exact auction house bug, and many others, were reported in closed beta yet still made it to an open beta that PWE is making money on.

What impact this whole situation has on Neverwinter‘s ultimate success still has yet to be seen, but having your Cat market bubble burst like the housing bubble can’t be good in the long run.

Should Neverwinter just roll back their servers or is a complete beta wipe called for? What do you think?

The post Neverwinter’s Economic Meltdown appeared first on Gamebreaker.tv.