Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Path of Exile Expedition expansion out on July 28th

 Powerful items, intense combat and new character customization options await.

An Expedition awaits. What a joyous time to embark on an adventure, detonate explosives, and fight off hordes of undead Kalguur. To what end, you ask? Riches, glory, and power. Of course. Path of Exile’s latest expansion can be played July 28 and includes all the hallmarks of the best games in the action RPG genre – powerful items, intense combat and, of course, terrifying, everpresent death. 

Path of Exile Expansion

In Expedition, you’ll assist Kalguuran traders in their efforts to recover the artifacts lost by their ancestors. Unable to fight the dangers of Wraeclast alone, they enlist your violent services to clear out their Expedition sites so that they may plunder the treasures buried below. You must strategically lay a series of explosives, detonate them, and then cull the deadly horde that rises from the earth. If you can manage this, ancient Kalguuran artifacts will be yours for the taking. Each of the Kalguuran traders provides a unique style of trade, offering the opportunity to deal, barter or gamble the artifacts in exchange for their tempting wares. 

Path of Exile Expansion


You may also discover Logbooks which chronicle the whereabouts of many hidden treasures from their past. These Logbooks can be crafted to maximize their danger and level of rewards. Take them to Dannig, the Kalguuran leader, and he’ll give passage to these far-off locations. These sprawling Expedition sites expose an unfathomable horde of monsters once unearthed. These areas can also contain secret passages which lead to exotic treasures and formidable bosses. 

Path of Exile Expansion

In addition to the tempting lure of hidden treasure in the Expedition League, you’ll also uncover 19 new ways to build your character. Path of Exile is all about customizing your gameplay to your heart’s desire and one of the fundamental building blocks of doing so is through skill and support gems. In this expansion, we wanted to really shake up Path of Exile’s metagame by providing a swathe of new options for character building. As such, we designed 19 new gems that are each themed around our Ascendancy Classes. 

Path of Exile Expansion

One of our favourite gems from this lineup is the new Summon Reaper skill, it was designed for Necromancers and summons a powerful minion which performs powerful attacks that cause enemies to bleed, can be commanded to attack specific locations, and literally feeds off of your other minions. There’s also the Spectral Helix gem which was designed for the Ascendant. It throws out a ghostly copy of your weapon which spirals outward from your location, harming any enemies it passes through.



As an extension of our desire to shake up Path of Exile’s metagame, we’ve also made some massive balance changes. The Expedition is Path of Exile’s 30th expansion since its Closed Beta, and because every expansion introduces powerful new options for character building, players are now more powerful than ever. The balance changes in Expedition will help to restore the challenge that Path of Exile is known for. We’ve also reworked our flask system to encourage more thoughtful, interactive gameplay and provide interesting new ways for players to mitigate incoming damage. 


If you haven’t played before, if it’s been a while since you have, or you’re a regular pro, this is the perfect time to play Path of Exile. Not only is it free to play but right now the entire community is taking up the challenge of finding the new best gameplay strategies and you can be right there with them. In a game where knowledge is power, having a shakeup of this scale really levels the playing field. Each expansion introduces a fresh economy and competitive ladder for you to make your mark in. You can also complete challenges in exchange for exclusive cosmetic rewards! Did we mention it’s free? (No, really – no demo version, no pay to win. Just cosmetics, if you want.)

If you find yourself absorbed in the world of Wraeclast, you’ll be happy to know that we put out expansions every thirteen weeks. We hope to see you there on July 28.

SOURCE:  PS BLOG

FINAL FANTASY is Rising while World of Warcraft is Falling?

 

World of Warcraft
          FILE PHOTO. Chinese Theater during the premiere of "Warcraft" 
in Hollywood,  California. © AFP / VALERIE MACON


Blizzard thought they had a monopoly with World of Warcraft. But PR disasters and rebellious streamers have allowed Final Fantasy XIV to challenge them for the massively multiplayer online genre crown.
The world of Azeroth has survived many attempts to destroy it, but it may have finally met its match.

Blizzard's World of Warcraft has been the king of the massively multiplayer online (MMO) genre for almost two decades, but the head that wears the crown is starting to grow heavy.  According to Activision-Blizzard Q1 2021 financials, Blizzard has seen 29% of its overall active player base bleed away in the last three years.


Two million players have reportedly quit Blizzard's portfolio of games since the company released its Q4 2020 results.  And all this comes on the heels of a number of massive public relations disasters ‘Blizzardvision’ (as some players are calling it) have inflicted upon itself.

Blizzard, which used to be the ‘gold standard in the gaming industry, has seemingly been in a steady state of decline since being merged with Activision.  Everything from its disastrous reveal of Diablo: Immortal – a mobile game that created a huge fan backlash at Blizzcon – to its banning of top-tier Hearthstone player Blitzchung for endorsing Hong Kong's democracy movement, has tarnished the company's previously immaculate sheen.  In addition, reports of bad working conditions and massive layoffs has company morale at an all-time low.

But nothing has seemed to hurt Blizzard more than lackluster World of Warcraft expansions which are criticized by longtime players as “lazy” and “cash grabs.”  The game's recent expansion – Shadowlands – has rubbed numerous players up the wrong way.  Not just in terms of a lack of story, but Blizzard's focus on shifting the game to cater more to casual players and mobile users is starting to have a real negative effect on its hardcore player base.

However, nothing seems to have had a bigger impact than World of Warcraft's biggest streamer, Asmongold, jumping ship from WoW to Final Fantasy XIV.

Asmongold, who has over two million followers on Twitch and 689,000 subscribers on YouTube, inspired a mass exodus to the rival MMO as he began streaming the 11-year-old game from publisher Square Enix.  As former World of Warcraft lead developer Mark Kern said on Twitter:

“So when Asmongold started dipping his toes into alternatives to WoW, interviewing Final Fantasy content creators and then, finally, playing it himself on stream, Blizzard was unaware or unbelieving of what was happening. THEY were the monopoly.

Even Asmongold was taken by shock at the sheer number of viewers his Final Fantasy stream attracted.  Even he had underestimated the number of dissatisfied and curious for alternative WoW gamers.”

It is important to note that in the streaming world, gamers are quick to hop on the next ‘hottest’ trend in order to get viewers to their stream.  And with Asmongold ‘striking gold’ with Final Fantasy XIV, the game has seen a massive influx of ‘WoW Refugees’.

So much so, that Final Fantasy XIV has begun breaking its concurrent player record on Steam.  However, its sudden popularity hasn't been without issue.  Many players are finding the game's servers continuously full, making it hard to log in and play the game.  Even Final Fantasy's European servers are packed, with the game's free trial shunting players into a “neverending queue.”

But the sudden rise in popularity of Final Fantasy XIV with the migration away from World of Warcraft signals one very important thing – ’Blizzardvision’ has taken World of Warcraft fans for granted, and players are starting to rebel.

Never before has World of Warcraft faced such a backlash.  Now, the real question is – can the game survive?  According to Mark Kern, the answer is most likely ‘no’: 


“The transition from WoW to Final Fantasy XIV has nothing to do with which is the better game.  It has everything to do with how one company has treated their fan base, because they thought they had an invincible monopoly.”

No matter which way one looks at it, World of Warcraft, and Blizzard, are in a fight for their very survival.

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SOURCE: World of Warcraft is dying...and it's being killed by Final Fantasy