turinmacleod

Back in April-ish, when I started writing about all things Eternal Crusade, I became, very involved in the Eternal Crusade forums. I realized that the community probably far more knowledgeable on the various topics being discussed, and that it might serve me well as a game-journalist (HAH!), to put together a list of people on the forums who were well-spoken, intelligent, able to converse with others of differing opinion.

This week we are going to look at various cash shops around the gaming universe, and how Eternal Crusade’s Rogue Trader Store stacks up in comparison. Remember back in June, Miguel made this post, regarding potential changes to the Rogue Trader Store, but, with the busy summer schedule most game companies keep, we haven’t seen a follow up to the shop just yet. So we thought this might be a good time to look at some other successful game shops, and how they do things.

This week we wrap up our look at each of the factions of Behaviour's Eternal Crusade with the Emperor's chosen, the Space Marines. Often referred to as Loyalists, to differentiate them from their fallen brethren, the Traitor Chaos Marines, the warriors of the Space Marine Chapters are genetically-enhanced super soldiers bio-engineered by the Emperor to be his shock troops.

This week we will be talking a look at Chaos Space Marines, their arms and armor, a peek at the Chapters and what they are all about, and speculate a little bit on their future.

This week we are going to take a look at all things ORKY! Classes, Free to Waaagh, weapons, armor, culture, all of the things that make Orks the soccer hooligans we love to hate.

Today we'll be catching up with Darkest Dungeon, a game that first caught our attention at PAX East this year. Darkest Dungeon is an old-school rogue-like with a couple of twists. The first thing that grabs you is the art style, a very Gothic, dark style that looks like it was hand-drawn with a traditional crow-quill. Heavy black inking and rich colors give this game a really unique presence that absolutely suits the game's dark and somber themes.

This week, and for the next few weeks while we wait for some actual game-play to dig into, we are going to take a look at the four confirmed factions, the weapons they use, and how these weapons work on the tabletop. Hopefully this will give us some insight so we can extrapolate a bit about how they will work in EC.

Behaviour has stated on several occasions that cash shop variants of common in-game weapons and armor will largely be alternate skins, and occasionally slightly rearranged statistics. Trading range for rate of fire, trading ammo capacity for reload time, things of that nature. Skilled players will counter the negatives and therefore benefit from the positives. Isn't that really “Skill to Win”?

In our last article, I mentioned that I had gotten a look at the Founders Program page while it was still being developed, and that I... uhhh, took notes. I had to get confirmation that we could actually use those notes, because, as you know, the Founders Program was pushed back a bit, so that the devs could get it exactly the way they wanted it. I promised that I would preface this sneak peek with the following disclaimer.

We met with Yves Bordeleau and Vincent Gallopain of Rogue Factor, for a look at some early gameplay footage of their upcoming strategy RPG Mordheim at E3 last week, and the game is looking pretty interesting. Mordheim is based on Games Workshop's tabletop skirmish game of the same name, and the devs have closely followed the tabletop rule set, with a few exceptions, which we will discuss in a moment.

At E3 last week, we had the opportunity to take Elite for a test spin. Not only that, but we were given some time with, wait for it… the Oculus Rift version! Garrett and Bill were generous enough to let me take it for a spin since I had never tried the Oculus Rift prior to this, and there is only one word to describe the experience: MIND-BLOWING!

Another game we took a look at during E3 was Xaviant's Lichdom, a FPS/RPG hybrid, that immediately struck us as a spiritual successor to the old-school games Heretic and Hexen. Developers have really created, what they refer to as a “titanium cannon” as opposed to the glass-cannon role that most games pigeon-hole mages into. The result is a character that feels extremely potent, wielding both offensive and defensive magics as he wades into the fray.

Hey guys, I am writing this one from a hotel room in L.A., after having just sat in on the E3 Eternal Crusade roundtable presentation. The biggest piece of news was the announcement that Behaviour is pushing back the release of the Founders Program to the 25th of June. While disappointing, the pushback was necessary in order to allow the implementation of all the neat things that Behaviour wanted to get into the Founders Program.

OK, public service message delivered, let’s get to the meat of this week’s article, which is: all about the common misconceptions regarding Eternal Crusade. These are the things that we see popping up on forums everywhere we look, the things that we hear Miguel answer again and again and again in interviews and on AMA’s. The common sort of misinformation genially spread by people who don’t know better…yet. So, let’s educate ourselves a bit.

Pikko servers means that Behaviour will be able to put thousands of warriors onto the battlefields of Eternal Crusade without putting all that stress onto a single server or server cluster. As the battlefield population shifts, so will the Pikko Server dynamically allocate system resources to maintain a top-notch playing experience, keeping frame rates high and movement smooth and responsive.