Video Games Daily News Digest

You might be beginning to think we’re a bunch of Blizzard fanboys over here at TVGB and while that may be true to some level, we promise that we report what we find. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending if you’re on team Blizzard or not, there are a lot of people doing a lot of digging on Blizzard’s games, therefore the rate of information regarding World of Warcraft is fairly constant. Not only that but the rate of which Blizzard updates their MMO is also a factor into why there is so much news surround the game. So in advance we apologize as we will be talking about World of Warcraft yet again, but if you’re not a fan of the Blizzard MMO, do check out some of the other news lower down in this update.

How much information can be relayed through a 140 character limit? Apparently the answer to that question is a crapload, as Blizzard tweeted its brains out yesterday during a Twitter Q&A session with fans answering questions about WoW. The question was asked if the starting areas for the races would be updated with Cataclysm to be as “epic” as the new Worgen and Goblin starter areas.

“Not quite at the Goblin / Worgen level, but we are looking at all the original start zones, especially for two races who feel a little disenfranchised at the moment. We have big plans in store for both the trolls and the gnomes in regards to their starting experience but you probably already know that. We are also planning to spice up the starting zones for all of the other races as well. You can expect gameplay changes to the actual zones, as well as improved quest flows and all new items to match.”

Blizzard also confirmed that the two events to recapture Gnomeregan and Echo Islands for the Gnome and Troll races respectively will be coming in a patch prior to the release of Cataclysm.

“Something leaked in the patch? That never happens! The plan is for these events to go live sometime before Cataclysm ships. We don’t have an exact time yet, but we would like players to have a good month or two to play through these events to help build the back story for what is going to happen in Cataclysm.”

Aside from the Cataclysm questions, Blizzard received a fair amount of questions digging into how they felt about how some ideas and implementations played out. One question asking about the hard-mode only boss Algalon from Ulduar and how they thought that worked out brought some interesting insight beyond the doors at Blizzard, “We were actually really happy with the way that Algalon played out. We designed him with a very specific sort of raider in mind and those that got a chance to fight him really enjoyed the fight. Encounters like Algalon will not be in every raid zone, but we would like to do something like this again for sure.”

If you’ve played WoW for a long time then you might remember how aggro used to be something you really had to watch and manage during raids. From sensitive aggro tables to un-tauntable bosses, aggro management was a major factor in how a tank, tanked, and brought up the question if whether aggro would ever play as a big of a role as it used to.

“Not sure. This is something we discuss a lot. I even had a meeting on it this week! On the one hand, some tanks really felt like the way to distinguish themselves was to generate maximum threat per second. On the other hand, threat is a pretty invisible part of the game (it’s limited to the UI at best), and I know when I tank that I always feel pretty emasculated when someone actually pulls off of me. It’s challenging, but is it really fun? This is the kind of thing we’d love to get more feedback on.”

Unfortunately if we were to go through the entire Q&A session here it might end up being several pages long, so in the interest of covering more than just WoW we’re going to cut you off here. However if you want to check out the entire session, check that out over at MMO-Champion.

Global Agenda hasn’t been out for very long but already issues are being addressed and the game’s first patch hit the test servers this past week. The patch is due to hit the live servers next week and while it doesn’t add any content it does implement and tweak some important features. The patch adds in the much needed friends/ignore list, overhauls the crafting and blueprint system to make upgrades much easier on players and fixes some of the queuing problems. The patch also has a list of bug fixes, but obviously that wouldn’t be too helpful to list here.

Hi-Rez Studios is addressing one very major issue that I’m sure a lot of legit players aren’t happy about. Apparently a very good aim-bot hack is available for the MMOFPS and it’s raining on a lot of players’ fun. Hi-Rez isn’t taking this sitting down however and are dedicated to cleaning up Global Agenda. “Cheating is relatively rare within Global Agenda, however, as within any competitive shooter, some players are trying to cheat their way to success,” explains executive producer Todd Harris. “Fortunately, since we run centrally managed servers, we can identify and react quickly compared to other online shooters that rely on community managed servers such that a cheater could simply hop to a new server. With our monitoring and stat collection we detect cheaters and reward them with a lifetime ban. We’ve already implemented an initial batch of bans and we’ll continue to have a zero tolerance policy for cheating.”

In other MMO news:

• New Issue 17 details for City of Heroes emerge.
• SOE trademarks the name The Agency Covert Ops, what it means, we’ll have to wait and see.
• Latest patch for Lineage went live this week, horray!
• Free is an attractive thing for MMOs as proven by the 1 million new Dungeon & Dragon Online players.
• Say what now, pay for a trial? The trial for Darkfall costs you a whole dollar, would you pay?

Project Natal’s killer app may not be a videogame, Naughty Dog co-founder and current social game startup Monkey Gods’ Chief Monkey Jason Rubin believes. It’s more about the interface, he says, and how it works into the rest of our living room setup.

“Things like Natal are going to revolutionize far more than gaming. I think putting Natal in the Xbox gives the Xbox an opportunity to become a lot more than just a game machine and I think there are things you can do outside of gaming that will justify buying the Natal. I firmly believe that if Microsoft plays its cards right that they could sell far more Xboxes next generation … they could sell it to people that don’t play games,” Rubin said on the latest episode of Bonus Round.

“The amazing thing about Natal is that never before has a piece of hardware hooked up to your television been able to recognize you and who you are, had information about you and what you like, and been able to hear your voice and understand your voice.

“And the capabilities that come out of that I believe go far beyond games and that the killer app for it — and all these things need something that catches people’s attention — surprisingly, we may find out that it’s not specifically a game. It’s not whacking balls against the wall. It will be the interface and what it allows you to do to all the other things hooked up to your tv.

“I’m a firm believer now, after playing around with Natal, that Natal and things like it are going to revolutionize our den.

“Once you have that interface and the ability to hook this up to your den, Natal will give you reasons to love it that aren’t games. Not calling games as bad, games will be good too, but the killer app may not be a game.”

Former DICE CEO Fredrik Liljegren voiced some strong opinions regarding the Wii in a recent interview with Gaming Union. When asked, Liljegren stated he would only develop a game for the Wii if he believed the game would be “an absolute home run.”

“Because the Wii, to me, I would describe it as a Virus, that doesn’t stick…,” he said of Nintendo’s flagship system. “The people that only own the Wii, ask that consumer how often they use their machine. They just don’t use it, it was cool, but they’re not gamers, so they put it away.”

Liljegren, who was also one of DICE’s co-founders, also called the Wii a “toy” and something that is not a dedicated entertainment device. Clearly, the man thinks of the Wii as little more than a novelty, a viewpoint held by many of the hardcore gaming community.

StarCraft II is still headed for a release in the first half of the year, according to production director Chris Sigaty.

"We were targeting three to five months for the beta, we're really at a three month period of time for the beta at this point," Sigaty said during the BlizzCast podcast.

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Pop Cap Games has unveiled the findings of its 2010 Social Gaming Research report looking into UK and US gamers.

The research confirmed the perception that most social gamers are women, who occupy 54% of the total in the US and 58% in the UK.

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Square Enix’s “VanaFest 2010″ is taking place today (where they’ve already announced three new add-ons for Final Fantasy XI), and while its name suggests it’s all about celebrating their current MMO, they still slipped some exciting Final Fantasy XIV news in as well: They’ve announced the beta test will begin on March 11.

It’ll be a closed beta test available to only a small number of invitees at first (Square Enix took applications back in December), but the beta will naturally expand over time. “Those who were not selected in this drawing, fear not, for there will be other opportunities to come,” said Square Enix in the announcement (via Joystiq). The beta will also only be on the PC at first.

And even if you don’t get into the beta later on, you won’t have to wait too much longer to get your hands on Final Fantasy XIV — it’s set for release later this year.

Sir Clive Sinclair, entrepreneur and inventor behind the Sinclair ZX80, has revealed he "can't be bothered" to use a computer any more.

As a home computer, the ZX80 quickly became one of the most popular platforms among gamers. However, Sinclair hasn’t kept up to date with the latest developments in home computing.

"I don't use a computer at all, the company does," he explained, adding that he even had people read and write e-mails for him. 

When asked why, he responded: "Sheer laziness I think. I can't be bothered."

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The story between Valve and PlayStation 3 seems to be a never-ending one. Valve’s utter distaste towards the Blu-ray-capable machine has slowly changed into something else, something different, with writer Chet Faliszek now saying that before making another PS3 The Orange Box disasterpiece, they need to get their act together and learn more about the system. Just about the same thing he said not too long ago.

“We thought that the Orange Box didn’t put our best foot forward with the PS3 community. We don’t want to do something like that again on the PS3. We want to give PS3 owners the best possible experience. Some of that will come from us learning and getting better. Before we can go onto the PS3 again, we want to make sure we’re better at developing for it.”

Valve on PS3, win or fail? Or just too much talking with no walking?

The ‘fall 2010′ release window previously bestowed upon Splash Damage’s Brink may have been just turned into an actual release date; according to a sweepstakes that GameStop is holding (thanks, Jay), the stylized shooter will see release on September 7, 2010.

Amazon.com shows the same exact release date for all — PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 — versions of the game. A UK retailer, Game, has it down for a ‘September 2010′ release as well.

We saw the unveiling of Transformers: War for Cybertron a while back and every now and then, small tidbits of info on the game are popping up. But let’s face it, what we’ve all been waiting for, really, is some actual gameplay footage. And as you might have guessed by the obvious title, that’s exactly what’s been delivered by High Moon Studios. And we’ll be damned if this isn’t looking a little bit impressive, with its Gears of War-influenced camera angles and smooth transitions from a two-legged badass into machines of destruction with wings and wheels. Do we finally have a proper Transformers game on our hands?

Check out the latest screenshots too, showing how a world without Michael Bay looks like.

Transformers: War for Cybertron is coming out late June.

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