News

As part of our ongoing coverage of PAX, we caught up with Aaron Campbell, producer for Lord of the Rings Online, and interrogated him for over an hour about the latest goings-on in LOTRO.

We're not sure why, but the SoE Development Team keep pushing large content updates as hotfixes to the current game update rather than an update of their own, this means that some significant game changes can get lost in the flurry of patches. 

Here's the latest one which comes with added "Bonus Everything Weekend" where almost all achievements in game count as double!  Game Update 17.6 features the Galactic Civil War Leaderboard system which tracks players, guilds and cities GCW point gain in PvP, PvE, crafting and entertaining and rewards them with some travel perks, badges and titles.

Factional combat in SWG has really picked up recently.  City Invasions where Rebels and Imperials battle each other for control of Bestine, Dearic and Keren occur every hour.  Each invasion features a crafting phase to build defensive and offensive troops, vehicles and structures and then a combat phase with not just factional PvE but also factional PvP spilling out into the open world.  Throw in PvP Battlefields, the Hoth Heroic Instance and the good old Restuss PvP zone and you have a tasty recipe for engaging factional warfare that should appeal to most Star Wars fans palette.

The Development Team also stealth patched two new factional helmets, the Imperial Gunner Helmet and Rebel Trooper Helmet which are available via Restuss Commendation Tokens.

Also featured in 17.6 are some much needed improvements to the Beast Master Pet Levelling system, read on for more information...

Star Wars Galaxies: Galactic Leaders - Game Update 17.6 - Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Highlights

• GCW Leaderboard – Access the GCW Leaderboard from the War Terminal / War Intel Pad / War Table. It displays the top scores of the Galactic Civil War. Characters contribute to the character GCW Leaderboard by contributing to the GCW score as individuals or as members of a guild or citizens of a city.
• Guild Waypoint Registry – Guilds with at least ten members now have access to a Guild Waypoint Registry. With this registry guild leaders can upload waypoints for the guild members to download.
• City Waypoint Registry – The City Waypoint Registry is a new window that allows mayors of player cities to upload waypoints for the citizens of that city to download.
• Star Wars Galaxies 7th Year Anniversary - The Year 5 gift is now available to claim!
• Bonus Everything Weekend - Bonus Everything Weekend is returning this Labor Day holiday! Stock up on food and drinks, grab your favorite chair and get ready for double the action! During the Bonus Everything Weekend, everyone logged in will earn Double XP, Double GCW Points, Double Heroic Tokens, Double GCW Tokens from Battlefields and City Invasions, Double Pet XP and Loyalty, Double Chronicles XP, Double Chronicles Silver Tokens and an increased chance to earn Gold Chronicles Tokens! The bonus period starts on Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 4am PDT and ends Tuesday, September 7, 2010 at 4am PDT.

TGN Stratics brings you the very first in-game Final Fantasy XIV videos from the open beta!

See the FFXIV wiki for more.

FFXIV Character creation

First minute in Final Fantasy XIV

FFXIV open beta is accepting members right now!

Get your free beta key at the FFXIV wiki while they last.

Final Fantasy XIV is one of the most anticipated games of all time and the Square Enix web servers crashed from the surge of users trying to get into the open beta.

The Final Fantasy XIV wiki is exploding with content as the FFXIV players are frantically adding in-game content and videos from the beta.

Square Enix just announced the critical bugs have been fixed and the FFXIV open beta will start in 6 hours!

This is great news for all Final Fantasy XIV fans.

See the FFXIV wiki for more.

Fists of Fu is a side-scrolling MMORPG that reminds us of Super Mario Brothers, but with thousands of players!

An inside source at Outspark just confirmed to TGN Stratics that the new Fists of Fu open beta is launching Sep 9 2010.

Fu is free-to-play and published by Outspark, who brought you Divine Souls and Fiesta, two other great free-to-play games.

See the Fists of Fu video wiki for more.

It has been announced that the start of open beta as well as the download for the client are going to be postponed for FFXIV due to a critical bug in the game system. No further details have been released as to when Open Beta will be launched.

See the official site for more information
http://entry.ffxiv.com/na/ 

It has been confirmed that the open beta for Final Fantasy XIV will begin August 31st at 19:00 PDT. Amongst uproar about the "fatigue" system, which still has yet to be clarified by the FFXIV team, this is positive news for people wishing to test out the game before buying it.

Details are still sketchy about exactly how the fatigue system is going to work and while an official announcement was posted on the beta forums (see below), there is a promise that they are going to review and potentially make changes to how this system works. Many people across the worldwide fan base have shown high displeasure with this addition to the game play. 

Podcast 93 features chats about Fan Faire, SOE's Gamer of the Month and Dragon*Con! You can also hear an interview with Dave Kish, one of the EQII team Programmers. As usual, Jason "Pex" Ryan reports news of all the latest updates on SOE titles.

Your host for this cast is Aimee “Ashlanne” Rekoske and Co-hosting is Linda “Brasse” Carlson.

Tune in by going to the Official SOE Podcast site. Once you get there, click on your preferred bandwidth.

YG is releasing the complete FFXIV database with every Final Fantasy XIV item, quest, NPC (and more secret sauce to be revealed at launch) the moment the Square Enix NDA lifts.

Yellow Gremlin assigned their best researchers and programmers to work on the FFXIV database, placing a large amount of time and effort into crafting a reliable resource site for all Final Fantasy XIV players. The database is at http://ffxiv.yg.com/

Brian Higby, the YG CTO, shared his thoughts: "As a company that aims to provide online gamers with the information and tools they need to enhance their gameplay, we knew we had to come up with a great resource site for FFXIV. We are looking forward to releasing the database as soon as possible and contributing what we can to the growing FFXIV community."

"EverQuest II launched on the same day as World of Warcraft in 2004, but EQ2 opened free-to-play servers first!" - George Vanous

This is the first look at the new EverQuest 2 Extended, free-to-play. Yes, EQ2 is now 100% free on their new servers.

See the EverQuest 2 video wiki for more.

TGN Stratics is building the EverQuest 2 video wiki community around this popular game. To become an editor, email editors@everquest2-wiki.com.

    

Aug 20, 2010 — TGN Stratics and Gala-Net announce their new partnership today to jointly promote and improve the free-to-play MMO games Allods Online, Aika and Rappelz, and soon all of Gala-Net's game catalog.

George Vanous, CEO of TGN, shared his thoughts on the partnership:

"Gala-Net has an amazing line-up of fun, friendly and most important, free-to-play-for-life MMOs that everyone can enjoy right now. As a long-time Rappelz player myself, I am very excited to partner with Gala-Net and bring their high-quality MMOs to the TGN communities like Stratics, starting with the Allods Online video wiki!"

See
www.allodsonline-wiki.com

About Gala-Net
Founded in 2004, Gala-Net Inc. is a leading free-to-play online game publisher in the Western market. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Gala-Net's diverse game portfolio includes Rappelz, Flyff, Tales Runner, Luna, Aika, and Allods Online. Through the gPotato Game Portal at gpotato.com, Gala-Net’s 8 million users can play any of Gala-Net's games for free, as well as buy in-game currency and virtual items. More information on the company can be found at www.gala-net.com.

About TGN
Founded in 2009, TGN has grown to a global MMO gamer's network with communities around 125 games! Headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, TGN works closely with Gala-Net, Frogster, IGG and a growing list of top game companies in North America, Europe and China to bring official content to game players. TGN launched the world's first video wiki for Blizzard's World of Warcraft: Cataclysm at wowcataclysm-wiki.com and is staging a series of global video wiki launches for other top MMOs, like Allods at allodsonline-wiki.com. More information on TGN can be found at www.thegamenet.com.

– Ends –

"Tera is breathtaking in scope and vision" - George Vanous

Tera released their latest trailer that details the origins and background of the world of Tera at GamesCom 2010.

When the gods turned away to make war on one another, the six mortal races were left to make their own way through the war-torn world that remained. Now the splintered peoples of Tera — humans, castanics, poporis, amani, barakas, and even the elves — must unite and take aim, take control and take action to preserve the last glimmer of hope against the growing darkness.

See the Tera video wiki for more.

TGN Stratics is building the Tera video wiki community around this highly-anticipated game.

"This is a movie-quality epic trailer" - George Vanous

Today BioWare announced Dragon Age 2 will officially launch on Mar 8, 2011 and released the amazing Destiny trailer.

TGN Stratics is building the Dragon Age 2 video wiki and community around this highly-anticipated game.

See
dragonage2-wiki.com

SWG Galactic Civil War and Player City Statistics - 16th of August 2010

Among SWG communities, there are regular heated discussions occurring every day regarding combat profession balance, GCW participation levels and server populations.

To aid these discussions, I put together some graphs and charts using stats available from the Galactic Civil War: Officer's Salute! which shows statistics of all characters in SWG that are ranked higher than Lieutenant rank in the Galactic Civil War.  This small sub-section of the SWG player base tends to be PvP players, although Pilots and PvE players are also able to appear on these statistics.

I also take statistics from the official Star Wars Galaxies - Player Cities page.  With these stats I was able to calculate the Minimum number of characters declaring residence in servers cities to support current city rankings.  This is put together based on Rank 2 cities requiring 10 characters declaring residence, Rank 3 = 15, Rank 4 = 30 and Rank 5 = 40.  I then add up the total and create a chart on these numbers.

You will also find information on weekly PvP kills per server, this is thanks to my very helpful friend over at the Star Wars Galaxies: GCW Points Calculator website who hosts these statistics.

I'd like to stress that as these statistics are drawn from the limited information that SoE makes public about the game, they can only be used to identify specific trends.  They do not give any accurate data on subscriber numbers or subscriber retention.

The previous charts can be found here.  If you'd like to discuss these statistics further, you can post about it in the following thread Discussion Thread - Galactic Civil War and Player City Statistics or join the Stratics IRC channel #starwars.

Please Note: All dates in the charts are in DD/MM/YYYY format.

Thousands to giveaway for an early sneak preview of the much awaited MMO from T3fun

Seoul, Korea- (August 11, 2010) – The greatest of all epic battles to be staged online will soon be experienced by a chosen few globally! T3 Entertainment and Hanbitsoft Inc. together with Redbana Philippines are pleased to announce that applications for CBT are now open in our website http://aika.t3fun.com. We are only giving away thousands to a lucky few so hurry now!

See in-game footage of what Vindictus looks like on the new TGN Stratics Vindictus YouTube channel.

For Vindictus guides and information, see the Vindictus wiki at
vindictus-wiki.com

"You get to BE the Hulk!" - Jason Robar

"We drew on the 5000 Marvel Universe characters in making the Marvel Super Hero Squad Online MMO!" - Jay Minn

Creative director Jay Minn and VP / studio manager Jason Robar tell TGN Stratics all about Marvel Super Hero Squad Online, the new MMO based on the Marvel comics universe.

Jason said it best: "You get to actually be IronMan, and not only just IronMan, but IronMan Mark 5 with the Hulk-buster armor!"

"First five minutes playing the new WoW Cataclysm Worgen is unique!" - George Vanous

World of Warcraft Cataclysm introduces two new player races: Goblins and Worgen.

TGN Stratics presents the first five minute of in-game footage playing the Worgen Druid!

See
WoW Cataclysm video wiki