The last time iTZKooPA played a third-person shooter melded in to the MMOG form he didn’t come up for air for months. Not only did Global Agendatake him away from the likes of World of Warcraft, but his turtleness was pulled away from console and PC gaming to boot. Now Red 5 Studios, a company founded by numerous ex-Blizzard employees, is tossing its hat in the ring F2P ring with FireFall, a third-person science fiction shooter.
The cliff-diving turtle caught up with Mark Kern, the “God” of Red 5 Studios, to pick apart the cel-shaded title. FireFall will feature a handful of classes, easily rotated between by changing exoskeleton suits, dynamic events for PvP and PvE, an army (guild) progression system and assaults.
Why wouldn’t you want to shoot people in the face and then rain death from the sky? Plus, it’s gonna be free-to-play, with development driven by a typical sounding item shop! Sign up for beta here, and tell em iTZKooPA sent you.
Blizzard has officially announced the beginning of the Cataclysm closed beta test. Some invites were sent out today; make sure to opt-in with your Battle.net account.
Keep an eye on Lore Hound for more news and potentially beta keys! (As soon as, you know, we get some for ourselves).
In addition, this likely means the end of the alpha NDA, so expect a lot of sources to have a flood of Cataclysm information.
IRVINE, Calif. – June 30, 2010 – Blizzard Entertainment announced today that the closed beta test for Cataclysm™, its highly anticipated new expansion for World of Warcraft®, has begun. The company has started issuing invitations to participate in the testing process to a wide range of players from around the world who signed up via their Battle.net® accounts. While enjoying an early look at the game, beta testers will provide valuable feedback to help Blizzard Entertainment find bugs, address balance issues, and polish the new content.
“Our focus with Cataclysm has been to build on the knowledge we’ve gained through the previous expansions to deliver the best, most compelling World of Warcraft content for our players to date,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “Gathering focused feedback during the beta test will go a long way in helping us reach that goal when we launch Cataclysm later this year.”
Unless you keep your ear to the ground in the free-to-play scene you probably haven’t heard of Perfect World Entertainment. The company started off by making a game based upon its own name, Perfect World International, before expanding via publishing agreements. PWI was followed up by two other F2P 3D MMORPGs, Ether Saga Online and Jade Dynasty. Both titles are well regarded and continue to thrive. You may have heard of them thanks to one of last year’s most surprising titles, Torchlight. Perfect World Entertainment has signed an agreement to publish the MMORPG version of Torchlight in the near future.
Enough about Perfect World’s past though, what about the present. I was fortunate enough to sit down with Perfect World’s Sam Houston to go over the company’s upcoming line-up during my stint at PAX East 2010. The first thing that was made clear to me is that Perfect World is striving to make solid games. Not good-for-a-F2P-game solid, but solid, period. It was refreshing for me to hear someone from inside the F2P industry admit to that sector’s major stigma. Hopefully Perfect World can meet its goal. Continue Reading
