Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Let the Fall Frenzy Begin

I see Wildstar has committed to a date of September 29th for its F2P rollout, which means that the Fall release/announcement craziness has begun.

Now, let me see if I've got all this right:


  • LOTRO's server transfers are presently ongoing. The first server closures are expected to begin sometime either later in September or early October. The mini-Reds have been following these developments closely, and while they're sad to see their old server go, they're kind of excited that my long suffering L15 Champion will get moved to the server they're on, so I could join their Kinship.
  • Wildstar's F2P releases on September 29th. They get ahead of the rush for SWTOR's and GW2's October releases, and they're hoping to bring back some of the crowd they had that first month or two after launch. I'm planning on signing up for the game, so this is one person they didn't have at launch, but I'm realistic in that I've got a lot of games I play a little bit of. We'll see how things look, I suppose.
  • GW2's Heart of Thorns releases on October 23rd. Depending on who you talk to, this could be the dawning of the apocalypse or just business as usual. Me, I'm still playing the original GW2 release --and I don't see me having money in the budget for Heart of Thorns for a while-- so I'm planning on sticking with GW as-is for the time being.
  • SWTOR's Knights of the Fallen Empire releases on October 27th. Since this is my only subscription at this time, I get the expac for free, if you want to ignore the cost of a subscription, that is. As I typically do when there's a big expac in a game I play a lot of, I'll let everyone else run ahead for a while and then jump into the expac zone. Since you won't be able to go back and visit the old zones once you move to KotFE areas, I intend to hang around and enjoy things in the original areas as long as possible.
  • Funcom's Age of Conan rolled out a new expac back in May to coincide with AoC's seventh anniversary (where did the time go?), so they beat the rush. That said, they're still coming out with incremental updates that are currently in the test server.
  • Star Trek Online's final chapter in the current expansion (the Iconian War) is set to drop sometime in mid-late September. There's a new expac on the horizon --called A New Dawn-- will be released sometime this Fall and go through 2016. Since I'm still in the mid-low areas for STO, this doesn't have a great impact to me.
  • Neverwinter released Strongholds, and that reminded me that I ought to get back to playing the game more. I'd played around with it every so often, but my problem is that I figure I'm playing for a little while and then I look up and realize it's 4 AM.
  • Blizzcon is the first week of November. Given that this is Blizzard we're talking about here, expect some new surprises. After all, that's pretty much what they do at Blizzcon.

I think I touched on most of the bases of games that I follow. That said, I'd be remiss in forgetting that LEGO Dimensions releases for consoles at the end of September. Me, I'm psyched about getting a chance to play the Doctor.

7 comments:

  1. Eric Musco has actually confirmed that you will be able to go back to the old planets in KotFE (source). Not that this should discourage you from your plans... ;)

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    1. That's very interesting, since the old quests will be disappearing. At least according to the infographics I've seen.

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    2. Well, there's no real basis for believing that either. Musco has confirmed that they aren't removing any content (source), what has been said is that certain class/story quests will be removed from your log or become inaccessible if you haven't completed them before starting the KotFE arc. I'm assuming this is because there will be some references to past events in the story, and if you've never done that particular quest it will just be set to a default status. We're still waiting on clarification on which missions this will include, however I see no reason to assume it would be everything.

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    3. I presumed, that based on the knowledge that a) they're not doing a Cataclysm and redoing all of the "old worlds", and b) there's an infographic warning that when you transition to KotFE you will lose access to your old quests (can't find the damn thing now), they were going to introduce massive phasing in game.

      I personally don't see how you can't NOT have Nar Shadda in the storyline, since Hutts will be Hutts, and we know that the Sith and Jedi have retreated back to their home worlds, so that implies that those worlds will be L55-ish from the start. As for other worlds, it wouldn't shock me if my least favorite world Belsavis has a place to play in the expac as well.

      When DO you sleep, Shin? Isn't it around 4-5 AM there when you posted this?

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  2. I would have thought that if they need to re-use planets for the new story, they'll simply be treated as new areas, say in the way the Black Hole is a separate part of Corellia or Section X is a different part of Belsavis.

    And lol, it was 6:40 when I posted that. :P I have to get up early for work.

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    1. Ah, so you're 5 hours ahead of me. Brussels is 6 (I know this from my job), but for some reason I thought you were 4 hours ahead.

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  3. If I'm not mistaken, the Coffee expansion even opens up on the 20th for subscribers (and on the 27th for the plebs). Just thought I would warn you! ;)

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