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D&D Online : Return to Gianthold

folder-rising-dragon-iconDungeons and Dragons Online is one of a few games that grows and improves with age. We have a hands on preview of the latest update, Return to Gianthold.

Since random encounters are just that, random, in the past I have had to take the word of Turbine about the fact they were working hard to improve encounters with dragons. I was finally able to witness the results of their labor first hand. This big red beast flew onto the battlefield and took up arms against our group. Literally he stood up on his hind legs and threw some combinations at us. The dragon’s movement is something to behold. It finally looks right. Attacks are fluid and not disjointed. The animation is far ahead of any other dragon encounter in Eberron.

 

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The Repopulation Player Housing Details

The Repopulation’s player housing feature has been unveiled in an update to the game’s official website. As the update explains, housing seems to be making a comeback in contemporary MMOs, though developers are often having to choose between instanced or open-world player housing.

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This won’t be the case for The Repopulation, however, as Above and Beyond Technologies will look to implement instanced player housing, open-world player housing, and even player city housing.

Get the complete finished details over at the official The Repopulation website.

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Guild Wars 2 : Making Guilds Better

Guild WarsI see guilds constantly fighting for new members in chat, bragging about having banks, banners, and even the numbers of their active players.  They all want you to join them.  You can join multiple guilds, which is a great way to expand your resources for finding dungeon groups, but you can only represent one guild at a time.  This means you can only gain influence for the guild you represent.  Guilds have started to fight for that, by offering weekly prizes in a drawing where only representing players may join.

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World of Warcraft : Blizzard open tagging

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In an interview over at GameSpy, Blizzard’s lead content designer Ion Hazzikostas explains why Blizzard hasn’t adopted the full open-tagging feature for World of Warcraft found in a number of high-profile MMOs such as RIFT and Guild Wars 2.

Open tagging, of course, refers to the ability to earn kill credit and experience simply for doing X% of damage to an enemy, regardless of whether or not you first tagged it or not. In World of Warcraft, the first player to tag an enemy gets full experience and credit, though Blizzard has made some exceptions recently for named quest targets and world bosses (tagged by your own faction).

“Part of the concern with open, free-for-all, open-tapping is that a lot of the game becomes more about tapping everything and tagging everything a little bit, especially when other players have already tapped them” he said. “Thirty seconds later, your quest completes because the other people killed them all. That’s not an ideal way to feel like you’re engaging in combat.”

Find out more about World of Warcraft.