We had a blast at PAX East. We got to meet a lot of awesome developers, players, and community members for our favorite games. Heartbourne and itZKooPA wrap it up in this video.
Heartbourne’s top three:
itZKooPa’s top 3:
If you want a chance at winning the Worldbreaker Epic Collection or the Alliance Rogue/Horde Priest class decks, hop over to the contest post for details.
Star Wars: The Old Republic may have been crowned with the longest wait time – largely due to a 40 minute demo – but Nexon managed to hold its own. The F2P developer/publisher had two large swaths of space in the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. Off to one side was Vindictus, the dungeon-based action RPG the company released last October. Dead center of the convention floor was Dragon Nest, another dungeon-based action RPG, but of a different variety.
Dragon Nest is the freshmen release for Eyedentity Games, a Korean company founded in 2007. The game features the typical anime art style found in the genre. Combat is heavily based on targeting, as spells and abilities do not automatically connect with the intended target(s). Being a dungeon-based game, Dragon Nest features a heavy amount of instanced play and party-based combat.
iTZKooPA’s interview with Producer Davy Garaix goes in to further detail, including character classes, the story of the goddesses, the item shop and character and guild advancement.
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 Agenda take 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.
Heartbourne had a slight nerdgasm when he walked by the Mayfair booth at PAX East and couldn’t help but check out some of the new variants of the popular tabletop game, Settlers of Catan. Ron Magin gave us a demo of Catan Histories: Settlers of America – Trails to Rails. Players familiar with the base Catan experience will pick up the new mechanics quickly, but the game seems to be accessible and engaging enough for new players to jump right in.
If you aren’t familiar with Settlers of Catan, the game is a tabletop game for four players that started gaining popularity in America in recent years. Players compete to develop their settlements on an island by building roads, cities, and more to harvest resources. By trading and making strategic decisions, players gain victory points toward winning the game. Expansion packs and variants add new mechanics to the game, such as Cities and Knights, in which players must fight off hostile barbarians, and Seafarers, where players must navigate between islands.
You can get Settlers of America and other Catan games at many retailers, game shops, or online.
There wasn’t a lot of WoW stuff at PAX East, but there were a few WoW blogger types about. We met up after the Raid Warning guys finished up with their very entertaining panel and had a quick chat before heading down to meet with the Cryptozoic guys to try out the Assault on Icecrown Citadel raid deck.
The people in this video include:
If you want to read about how our experience with the raid deck went, make sure to check out Heartbourne’s great write-up.
I had the pleasure of trying out the new Assault on Icecrown Citadel raid set at PAX East. Cryptozoic was nice enough to lend us a set to take for a test run. The game comes with four decks: the raid boss, The Lich King, and three opposing heroes, Jaina Proudmoore, Sylvanas Windrunner, and Highlord Tirion Fordring. Players with their own decks or cards can modify their decks or play with their own setups against Arthas, but the box set contains everything you’ll need to get started.
Since the game requires four players, we rounded up some of our friends from other sites. I, Heartbourne, took on Sylvanas’ role, while Michael Sacco from WoW Insider played Jaina Proudmoore and Thespius from Raid Warning played Tirion. Seven from Raid Warning stepped up as the Lich King, and Joe Perez from WoW Insider and Raid Warning helped him out. Neither me nor Seven had played the WoW TCG before, so the guidance of Sacco and Perez were well appreciated.
Read about my experiences after the break.
iTZKooPA met up with Drew Walker from Cryptozoic to talk about the new Assault on Icecrown Citadel raid set, as well as the new TCG expansions Worldbreaker and War of the Elements.
Check out Heartbourne’s first hand impressions of the raid deck!
Regardless if you care for the Star Wars franchise or not, one has to step back and give credit where it’s due to BioWare. After 34 years of something so phenomenal being around, a world is unified in a passion for the universe brought by George Lucas. In between your fanboys, you can come to the conclusion that the majority of the fanbase howls in joy over the original series (IV-VI).
If anyone has played a BioWare game, ranging from Baldur’s Gate to Dragon Age II, you know of the rich storytelling components in the company’s games.
Back at PAX Prime, I had a chance to talk with Senior Producer Blaine Christine to mostly quell my fears over the space combat system and its rumor of being “on rails”. With every question I had asked, he expressed the deep integration of story in just about every action you take in the game.
This has had me thinking for quite a while now, especially with my growing distaste for some games losing sight of their original story and lore (or bending it); just how much does the story go for? Does it give the same nostalgic epic feeling I had while watching Episode IV: A New Hope? Continue Reading
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Eve Online Score: 8.75
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| Rank | Game Title | Score |
| 2 | Runes of Magic | 8.38 |
| 3 | Star Wars: The Old Republic | 8.25 |
| 4 | TERA | 7.94 |
| 5 | RIFT | 7.94 |
| 6 | World of Warcraft | 7.88 |
| 7 | SMITE | 7.88 |
| 8 | Guild Wars | 7.81 |
| 9 | Star Trek Online | 7.75 |
| 10 | Global Agenda | 7.75 |
