Ice beam.

“Hey, Pherephassa.” I ask.

“Yeah, iTZKooPA?” she responds.

“I’m a control freak. Is that weird?” I confessed.

“Why, heavens no. In fact, this game Neverwinter I’ve been playing has an entire class dedicated to the task. You should give it a whirl.” she informed.

And so I did. I did for over two hours during last weekend’s second beta event for Neverwinter. While I may not have been a huge fan of the DPS class with some crowd control abilities, it was a radically different play style than the Trickster Rogue I played week one. Change is good. I can only imagine how diverse that means Cryptic Studios has made the Guardian Fighter, Devoted Cleric and Great Weapon Fighter.

The Control Wizard is the master of the Arcane. Capable of wielding this field of magic for destructive and support purposes, a control wizard is a dangerous foe and powerful enemy in the lands of Neverwinter. The other classes can keep the party alive and end of foes life, but a skilled control wizard can keep such creatures from ever landing a blow.

Hit the jump for the latest class montage and a collection of wizardy screenshots. Continue Reading

HiRez announced another god this morning, and it’s been the officially leaked goddess, Freya.

They were proud to show off sketches, Zbrush renders, and polypainted renders of her via Facebook in celebration of 100,000 likes on their Facebook page, and after yesterday’s gameplay preview, it’s no wonder they revealed her today.

Here’s the video of their reveal; and continue reading for the text version of her passive and active abilities.

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As a reader of this article, I assume you know that last weekend, the scholars over at BioWare had a huge event where they invited everyone who had signed up for The Old Republic beta to come and test their upcoming MMO. This mass invite was invoked to “stress test” The Old Republic‘s servers to figure out just how much they could handle and receive a fair amount of feedback about the current state of the game before the Sith launch their attack on Coruscant on December 20th.

I was one of the inconceivable measure of players who jumped onboard over the weekend, and all I have to say is: it’s pretty awesome.

From the beginning I knew exactly what I wanted to play as: the Sith Inquisitor. As the writing director for SW:TOR Daniel Erickson said “People are going to be drawn to the Inquisitor that both want to be the mastermind and really pull the strings behind the scenes, or people who just really want to shoot lightning out of their hands” and frankly, I am of the latter.

Hit the jump to see some screenshots of the Sith Inquisitor in action, along with my synopsis of the leveling experience I had.

Warning: Some spoilers ahead. Read with caution.
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Though once removed from the game, Heroic Leap found its way into the WoW CCG.

The second day of updates began with a list of changes for the Warrior class, arguably the tanking class most in need of improvements. It’s also arguable as to whether or not Cataclysm is going to deliver on that front. But, hey! New spells! You know the drill…

Unlike most of the other classes so far, the Warrior will get no new lower-level abilities, but they’ll have the customary post-80 stuff to play with. The first is Inner Rage, a passive skill that makes capping out on Rage less of a detriment by temporarily buffing the player. However, it’ll be under the microscope for the duration of the upcoming beta to determine whether or not people are purposefully capping Rage just to take advantage of it.

The second spell in the Warrior’s expanded arsenal is Gushing Wound, which is a new bleed-effect attack that stacks up to a max of three and applies every time the target moves. This will undoubtedly be beneficial for fights in which the boss or mob needs to be kited, and it can almost go unsaid how important it’ll figure into a PvP rotation.

Finally, we’ve got the triumphant return of Heroic Leap. If you’ve been playing World of Warcraft for a long time, then you’ll know this is an ability they tried to implement back in the beta for Wrath of the Lich King, but cut due to people messing about with it. Ultimately, it was too much of a pain in the ass for Blizzard to get it to work the way they wanted it to at the time, so it was removed from the game. It’s unclear whether or not Heroic Leap will work just as it did back then, but it does provide Warriors with a new means of initiating a fight (it shares a cooldown with Charge), casting Thunder Clap when they land.

Something else that should be noted is a new mechanic called Vengeance. This is the second Mastery stat that will appear in all tanking trees, so expect to see it have an effect on other classes, as well. Basically, every time the tank gets whacked by the enemy, they gain a stacking buff to their damage (and, subsequently, their threat generation). It’s a little complicated, but a more comprehensive explanation (as well as the rest of the Warrior changes) can be found beyond the cut. Continue Reading