Joystiq

News

• Faction changes coming to World of Warcraft
  Horde can be Alliance, Alliance can be Horde, cats and dogs sleeping together! It's lunacy!
• Patch 3.2 PTR unveils Tier 9 sets
  The next level of epic armor is coming to the game in the latest content patch...
• Patch 3.2 PTR Tier 9 set names
  ...And it's got a great set of lore names to go with along with it.
• Patch 3.2 upcoming Engineering changes
  Big changes for one of the game's most popular professions.
• Exodus punished for exploiting Yogg-Saron encounter
  After a guild accomplishes a world-first achievement kill, Blizzard determines they didn't quite follow the rules.
  

Features

• Patch 3.2 PTR: Tauren Druid conversation may reveal lore and expansion secrets
  A pair of Druids chatting in the new content patch might hint at the future of the game.
• The OverAchiever: Guide to Midsummer Fire Festival achievements
  Azeroth is heating up with the Fire Festival -- here's how to get everything done this week.
• Arcane Brilliance: More questions than answers
  Our Mage columnist didn't get all his questions answered in Blizzard's recent Q&A article about the class.
• Patch 3.2 PTR: New heirloom items gallery
  A pictoral look at some new heirloom items headed to the game.
• WoW Casually: What Patch 3.2 means for casuals
  Oh, you don't raid five times a week? Patch 3.2 has something for you as well.

Things are heating up both outside and in the World of Warcraft lately, as we're gearing up for a big time content release. Joystiq's sister site WoW.com has all the news you need about patch 3.2, from the latest changes and updates to when we'll actually see it out on the live realms. Read on for more about the biggest and best MMO around.

News

• Patch 3.2 PTR patch notes
  Here's the breakdown on what'll be in the Public Test Realm very soon.
• Crusaders' Coliseum details released
  Blizzard gives out deets on what we'll see in the next big instance added to the game.
• Patch 3.2 changes to the tiered Emblem system
  3.2 will bring both new sets of gear tokens to collect, as well as some tweaks and updates to old ones.
• New Shaman totem interface revealed
  Shamans will have new ways to both watch and lay down their totems.
• Class Q&A: Mage
  Blizzard answers questions on "the iconic caster" class.

Features

• WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2
  Everything you need to know about the upcoming content patch, and then some.
• The OverAchiever: Guide to Midsummer Fire Festival Achievements
  The Fire Festival is back, and so's our guide to get the most out of it.
• Insider Trader: Patch 3.2 profession change analysis
  What's new with professions? Read this column and find out.
• The Queue: Patch 3.2 and beyond the infinite
  Our readers ask questions every day, and we offer up answers just as often.
• Guildwatch: We're not even in his guild
  Another week brings another look at all of the guild drama, downed, and recruiting news from around the realms.

Joystiq's sister site WoW.com covers the most popular MMO ever, World of Warcraft, every day of every week. Want to know what's new in Azeroth? Here's our biggest stories from the last seven days.

News

• Upcoming mount changes
  Required levels for mounts are being lowered, as are the costs for each.
• Isle of Conquest details released
  Hot new deets on the game's upcoming battleground instance.
• Mountain Dew Battle-bots now live
  Mountain Dew released their promotional in-game items -- come and get 'em while they're... bot?
• New zeppelin and portals coming in Patch 3.2
  In addition to the mount updates, Blizzard is adding a new zep to ride and a portal straight to Outland. How convenient!
• Yogg Saron and Flame Leviathan nerfed tonight
  Two Ulduar bosses get hit with the nerf bat.

Features

• Guildwatch: He's really, really sorry
  Drama, downed, and recruiting news from around the realms.
• Ten things WoW players should know from E3
  Activision is bigger than ever, the MMO genre is widening, and wow, Star Wars: The Old Republic looks good.
• Addon Spotlight: Essential addons for raid leaders
  Our weekly column for UI addons examines some recommended installs for those leading raids.
• Popular scams and how to avoid them
  There are scams aplenty in Azeroth, so here's some tips on how to dodge them.
• WoW, Casually: Tips for leveling on a PvP realm
  Play on a player vs. player realm but don't want to die that often? Here's how to stay alive.

WoW Insider is now WoW.com, if you haven't yet heard, but don't worry: we still have everything you need to know about the world's most popular massively multiplayer online game, from tips and tricks to news and views. Here's our most popular posts from the past week, including news about all the new Druid forms above -- if it's in Azeroth, we've got news about it, just for you.

News

• Beware of Blood Elves selling mounts
  One of our writers' friends falls prey to the game's newest scam.
• Achieved: Level 1 to 80 with no deaths
  A character appropriately named Cautious reached the highest level in the game without dying once.
• Revamped Night Elf Druid cat forms revealed
  New looks for Night Elf Druids.
• Zarhym explains Druid form color combos
  Want to make sure your Druid has the form you want? Here's how.
• Ensidia gets world-first Algalon 25-man kill
  One of the game's biggest pro guilds downs the last major boss in the current content.

Features

• An interview with a scammer
  The perp in the article above gets the WoW.com interview spotlight shined on him.
• WoW, Casually: Rating the classes for casuals
  Which class is best to play for a casual player?
• Arcane Brilliance: Reaching the hit cap
  Mages, here's how to make the most out of those spells you're casting.
• The lore of Ulduar
  The latest game dungeon has more than a few hooks and hints into the rest of the World of Warcraft.
• The Queue: Waterfalls
  Our Q&A column will actually go chasing waterfalls to find answers to your questions. Not just stick to the rivers and the lakes that they're used to.

And then, just to talk a little bit more about the token system, how are those instituted? What kind of things can you advance? Let's say I build up a million dollars, what can I do with that money in the game? You say you can buy your own personal car. Does that respawn if it's blown up or something like that?

Yeah! So, basically, [in] the living city there are all kinds of vehicles you can just rip off or carjack, even enforcers can just commandeer them. But your own personal vehicles have benefits. Number one, they are completely customized to your heart's desire. Number two, they tend to be better. They tend to be more durable, better performing, and they can have these functional upgrades we talked about. So you can have a car with a ram plate on it that actually makes it to when you ram into stuff, instead of you taking a lot of damage, you're inflicting on another car you hit. So there's different kinds of upgrades. Like, for example, each car can have up to, depending on where you are at in the progression or what you have access to and how much you're willing to pay, potentially up to three of those different little tokens, those functional upgrades, on top of that to increase its power.

And that, also, is all on the interface, in your garage you go to.

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APB was probably one of the most impressive games we didn't actually see played at E3 -- while Realtime Worlds didn't have any actual gameplay to show off, they did have a nice demo session (in a booth guarded by these two tattooed ladies -- don't worry, EJ's wife, we asked him to pose for this one) where they talked about how their persistent MMO shooter will combine emergent cops-and-robbers gameplay with an extremely impressive level of customization.

After the demo session, lead designer EJ Moreland sat down with us, and cleared up most of the wanted bounties we still had on the game: what's advancement like? How is the game using Last.fm? And just how will they balance out the ad-hoc gameplay of criminals committing crimes and enforcers catching them with the usual MMO process of character advancement? Read on for more.

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Listen -- not every game at E3 is a winner. The Joystiq heavyweights get to go play all the big games and interview all of the developer hotshots, and that's the stuff you love reading about. But some of us are down in the trenches, doing all of the demos that no one else wants to do, checking out all the games whose names are read around the schedule planning table, and answered only with the silence of bloggers who have better games to play.

That's not to say that Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympics is a bad game -- its audience will probably enjoy it. Just like the previous Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, it offers multiple Olympic sports-based minigames featuring popular Nintendo and Sega characters, controlled by various Wii and DS motions. People who like buying that kind of thing (parents wandering a videogame store looking for wholesome family entertainment) will probably enjoy it. But even though most of the Joystiq staff passed on this demo (and your faithful blogger bravely attended it), it was one of the more surreal things we've seen this week. Our strange experiences, let us show you them.

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FROM: The Joystiq Office of Law Enforcement
RE: Vogster's CrimeCraft, a "persistent world next-gen shooter" due out August 25th.

Attention: CrimeCraft is to be considered armed and dangerous, and should not be approached in a video game store. Stay away at all costs.

Last seen location: E3 2009, in the Vogster booth.

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Golden Sun is back after six years (the last time we saw a Golden Sun game was The Lost Age sequel), and this time it's on the DS system. We've got the first video, straight from the Nintendo keynote this morning, and you can watch it above.

Looks good, no? It's gone more or less full 3D, but there's still the same exploring, summons, and (we're guessing) battle that appeared in the last few games. Camelot told us a while back that they'd love to play a Golden Sun DS game, and now that it's announced and we've seen this trailer, we can't help but agree.

Believe it -- Sony just announced at E3 that Square-Enix will be releasing Final Fantasy XIV in 2010. The game will apparently be a sequel of sorts to XI, as it'll be the second trip of the series into the land of Massively Multiplayer Online games. It'll be available on PS3, and they called it the "only console," so a PC release is not out of the question.

There's an all-CG trailer which we'll try to have soon, and no news on gameplay or really anything else. But yes, that just happened: not only did Square-Enix announce a XIV before XIII has come out, but it's an MMO... and they're saying 2010.

Sony has landed a big Rockstar exclusive -- they have just announced that the Grand Theft Auto developer is bringing a new IP called Agent to the PS3. Details are still as shrouded in secrecy like so many spies, but we're told the game "will take the player across the globe" to participate in various spy-related activities.

Sony says they expect Agent to have the same effect on their platform as the original GTA3 exclusive did with the PS2, but we'll have to see. They didn't show gameplay or even a cinematic at the press conference, so even though the prospect of a Rockstar-developed PS3 exclusive sounds enticing, we'll probably have to wait quite a while for more.

Hot on the heels of the PSP Go announcement, Sony also tells us at E3 that Gran Turismo may finally see release on the system. They say that even though the game will be on the tiny system, it will be packed with content: 800 cars to race around on 35 tracks with multiple variations that actually allow for 60 different race route. In singleplayer, you'll be able to run singleplayer time trials, and there will also be a mode to help your driving improve. Multiplayer will bring ad hoc four player racing as well as the ability to trade cars back and forth with your friends.

The game will release on October 1, right alongside the new PSP system.

Nintendo has cracked open the vault of upcoming titles due out later this year, and there's quite a few new titles mentioned for DSiWare. A few we already knew about (Gameloft's Uno and Hudson's Sudoku games were expected), but Prehistorik Man, published by Interplay, is an old SNES game (so Virtual Console we guess?), and there's a working title for a DSiWare game called Six in One Translator. Could you be translating between six different languages on your DSi sometime later this year? There are also quite a few "Domo" games planned -- we're guessing these are games that have to do with the popular Japanese Domo character, though

The full list of publishers, games, and expected release dates is after the break.

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