Filed under: Fantasy

If you were among the players put out because Diablo III seems too pretty to be hardcore, you'll be happy to know that Blizzard hopes to re-earn your love, not with art but with gameplay. The company has released a video in which key DIII devs talk up the game's nightmare, hell, and inferno difficulty modes. They promise a veritable ass-kicking complete with hours of wiping and mounting repair costs. Quoth the devs:

"Normal mode was pretty casual. It's very fun -- you're one-clicking and you're having laughs. Once you get into Nightmare mode, it starts turning into all business. [...] The game really starts [...] at Nightmare. [...] The way the game is tuned right now, people have no idea what they're getting themselves into."

Perhaps not coincidentally, the Battle.net World of Warcraft blog is now daring gamers to join a community-driven Iron Man WoW Challenge. Participants eschew luxuries like buffs, talents, and grouping and charge into the world to see just how high they can level. Death, of course, means game over for the hardest of the hardcore.

The Diablo III vid is embedded just behind the break!

Final Fantasy XIV's foods and medicines have always been a major part of the game -- after all, both Culinarians and Alchemists focus on producing precisely those items. Unfortunately, the items have been awkward to make, unwieldy to use, and frequently unclear in their effects. That's why the game's next major patch is bringing along a major overhaul to the system, giving the two categories of item clear roles and more transparent effects.

While the full list of item changes is not unveiled in the preview, the general philosophy is laid out in detail. Food items provide long-term buffs (including a small experience gain) with lesser overall values and a very short cooldown between uses. Medicines, on the other hand, provide a short-term buff with a long cooldown, but the buff is significantly larger. These changes will also tie into a revamp of several recipes to account for ingredient locations and overall synthesis difficulty. It's something to look forward to in the game's next major patch, and it promises to make your character's eating habits much easier to manage.

Aventurine continues its trek toward Darkfall's game revamp, aka Darkfall 2.0, and in a new producer letter, Tasos Flambouras drops a few interesting info nuggets to tide loyal players over until the job is done.

He states that the team is retuning each of the game's eight schools of magic so that each one feels more unique and focused. For example, air magic will be specialized to do more damage in close quarters against fewer targets, while fire magic will excel at long-distance AoE attacks.

The team also thinks it has figured out this pesky "death" problem by coming up with a more interesting limbo system. The way it works is that when players are taken down, they have a choice between either respawning back at a bind stone or waiting for a timer to count down to zero and initiate a respawn on the spot. If players opt to endure the limbo period, they can re-equip their characters from their bank boxes.

Aventurine continues to hire on new team members for the project, including a designer who will facilitate communication between devs and the community.

Deep under the soil of Middle-earth are riches galore, and only the Dwarves know where to dig. Fortunately for players, the Dwarves are totally fine with interlopers coming along to try their luck at finding a bit of buried treasure -- and they've even made an event out of it.

While we previously saw a test run of the Buried Treasure event in Lord of the Rings Online, Turbine's put forth a dev diary that indicates we should be seeing more of it fairly soon. The event challenges players to flock to a treasure field, grab some picks, and get diggin' for booty. There's a strategy behind it that utilizes trained animals and dowsing sticks to find the best goods, although treasure hunters can just start digging randomly as well.

The treasure will vary in size and quality, ranging from special mounts and cosmetic gear to more picks and barter tokens. While players can earn picks in-game through a repeatable quest, Turbine will also be selling them through the LotRO store for those who want to speed up their winnings.

The dev diary posted several pictures of the nifty rewards that can be mined and states that the event is "seasonally agnostic," coming and going at various times during the year.

Last week I started working with Dave Toulouse, indie developer of Golemizer and Star Corsairs, to build our very own mobile MMO. For the sake of completing the project within the month of February, we kept our game designs simple and easy for anyone to play. The idea was not to create a state-of-the-art video game but instead to build a working framework that illustrated some of the basics of MMO design.

Ironically, my first column on the subject was received rather coolly when I consider my normal column response, but last week's responses taught me a valuable lesson about design: Players often want to talk about what is not possible rather than what is. Dave told me how his players often told him what they wished his games would achieve, without ever considering just how difficult it is to make a game.

Still, there were several great ideas in the comments section. I'm going to use those ideas to break down this week's update.

If you haven't made any MMO-centric plans for Valentine's Day, consider the offerings from free-to-play giant Perfect World Entertainment. The company is playing cupid in several of its online titles, and players can acquire "wedding fashions, romantic items, spectacular mounts, mystery boxes, and more."

Jade Dynasty features a wedding event and items for marriage-minded avatars, while Perfect World International GMs will be interacting with players and giving out a rare mount. Rusty Hearts is putting on an art contest, and the prize is Roselle Vegerius (the game's latest premium character).

Forsaken World players will receive a Valentine's Day card and random items, while War of the Immortals fans can collect chocolate and trade it for additional XP. Finally, Ether Saga Odyssey players can enter a screenshot contest to win XP and bonus items, as well as bid for rare pets and send custom broadcast messages.

[Source: Perfect World Entertainment press release]

Looking for a definitive release date for Diablo III? So are we, and unfortunately Blizzard isn't cooperating. The best the company can come up with is Q2 2012, according to Rock, Paper Shotgun.

The site reports on Blizzard's recent investors call, during which Mike Morhaime stated the obvious before alluding to the launch window. "Given the popularity of the action RPG genre, and the keen interest in Diablo III, we expect this launch to be a big opportunity for Blizzard. We can also confirm that we are targeting a Q2 launch for Diablo III. We expect to announce more details about the release schedule in the coming weeks," he said.

But hey, at least he didn't say "when it's ready."

[Source: Activision investor call]

Hello, sandbox faithful, and welcome to a special interview edition of Some Assembly Required. We recently had a chance to pitch some questions to the team behind Seatribe's upcoming Salem title, and creative director Björn Johannessen was kind enough to answer them.

Salem is being advertised by publisher Paradox as "the crafting MMO," but it's also rife with throw-back mechanics including a huge amount of player freedom and a permadeath/punishment system similar to the one in Johannessen's Haven & Hearth.

TERA has hit a few snags of late, including some woes with the whole system of getting pre-order beta access for appropriately pre-ordered customers. Luckily for some fans of the game, it looks like things are moving forward for players hoping to get into beta testing this weekend. An official announcement on the forums earlier today confirmed that GameStop has received valid beta codes and should be distributing said codes to customers via receipt or via phone.

Any players who preordered from Amazon or Best Buy and still haven't received a code are asked to send in a letter to the customer service staff before 9:00 a.m. PST on February 10th. Players are all warned that the game's download is currently clocking in at 17 GB, which means that you'll need plenty of time to get the client installed on your computer. A lengthy download is preferable to ambiguity as to whether or not you'll even get your beta access, though.

Are you more into looking good in Lord of the Rings Online than defeating the very heart of evil? Then Turbine's got a special week planned just for you. Starting today and going through the 16th, Fashion Week will be blazing through LotRO.

LotRO's cosmetic system allows players to assemble their own outfit looks independent of slotted gear and has become a popular feature in the game ever since its inception. Through Fashion Week, Turbine will call on the best-dressed to strut their stuff in the hopes that in-game CMs will see them and award special titles.

Also included in the week will be fashion-themed lotteries and a screenshot contest in which the best entries will be voted upon by the community. To give players inspiration, Turbine links to three game outfit blogs -- Lotro Fashion, Lotro Stylist, and Cosmetic Lotro -- and has given each of the blogs special codes to hand out for free in-game dyes.

Thanks to our sister blog WoW Insider, we've got the scoop on today's Activision-Blizzard investor call. The results? Turns out World of Warcraft isn't dying, but it's certainly seen better days in its record-breaking run. Blizzard's flagship MMO now boasts "only" 10.2 million subscribers worldwide (10.3 million were reported during the call in November). The company believes the success of the 4.3 patch contributed to subscriber retention, as did the success of the annual pass; in fact, a million players took Blizzard up on a deal to purchase a year's worth of WoW in return for a free copy of Diablo III.

Blizzard also confirmed plans to launch at least two titles this year, including Diablo III in Q2. Mists of Pandaria, WoW's much-maligned upcoming expansion, might be the other, though Titan, Blizzard DOTA, and a new StarCraft II campaign are also in the works. The company's expected revenue for 2012 is $4.5 billion US.

Funcom has penned a new dev diary at MMORPG.com, and the piece reveals three new skill decks from the firm's The Secret World title.

What's a skill deck?

It's The Secret World's answer to the how-do-you-make-a-level-free-MMORPG question, and it allows players to select from 500 abilities to create "exactly the type of character they want." Funcom thinks the system will seem daunting to players used to simpler class-based mechanics in competing MMOs, and as such the firm is adding a few deck templates to offer players a helping hand.

Three of these are profiled in the new diary, including one from each of the game's factions. The Witch Hunter focuses on big damage spikes and represents the Templars, the Warlord is your basic swordfighter from the Dragon faction, and the Thaumaturgist is the Illuminati's answer to the gunmage archetype.

[Thanks to fallwind for the tip!]

Greetings, summoners, and welcome to the first installment of the Summoner's Guidebook! For a new player, the Guidebook is a one-stop-shop to gaining familiarity with the various elements of League of Legends. For the more advanced players, we'll also be covering ways to improve on weak areas of your play and how to deal with the toughest of matchups.

I was a new player once, and I remember being extremely daunted by the number of things I needed to learn to be competitive in LoL. Although the journey from newbie to expert was long and difficult, I learned a lot about common mistakes and how to reduce them. If you're looking to step up your game or if you're just getting into the League, the Summoner's Guidebook is the place for you to learn without being treated like you're a noob.

This week, we're going to cover the community resources available to you. There are a lot of websites dedicated to League of Legends, and it would be foolish to assume that this column is the only place to get advice on the game. If there's something I haven't covered yet or there's a topic I'm unfamiliar with, you can be sure that one of these places will have the info you're looking for. This article can't possibly cover all the League fansites on the internet (there are probably hundreds), but I can focus on the ones with the best information.

Ready for another TERA Europe beta test? You're in luck because Frogster is hosting one later today (at 2:00 p.m. EST, to be exact). The Velika server is being stress-tested, and Frogster is raising the player cap in order to see what happens when large numbers of people attempt to log in at once.

TERA Europe community manager Raven says that "you might experience lag or other issues" and that "this test is not intended to offer you a normal gameplay experience." If you're OK with that -- and you feel like volunteering your time -- head to the official forums to learn more (and set your alarms accordingly).

If you're wondering about TERA's American client, En Masse Entertainment sent word that last night's pre-test dress rehearsal "went swimmingly."

How big is RIFT? Big enough to attract one of China's heavyweight MMO houses, apparently. Trion has announced a partnership with publishing giant Shanda that will bring RIFT to the Chinese gaming market, and CEO Lars Buttler tells Gamasutra that expanding the game's global reach is only the beginning.

"We do a lot right, but we think there's so much to learn from Asia, and a company like Shanda that has been in the market so long, and has innovated in so many ways, is a great partner to work with and learn from," Buttler says.

Trion is flexing its muscles -- and broadening its horizons -- on the strength of a banner year that included a hefty influx of investment capital as well as RIFT's $100 million revenue windfall. Trion is also developing an MMORTS called End of Nations and an MMO shooter called Defiance. Additionally, the firm is fleshing out its Red Door program, which will outsource its development platform and distribution channels to third-parties.