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ZAM's E3 2015 Wrap-up

E3: Eternal Crusade Early Access Coming Soon

Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade has seen various changes over the past year, and the team at Behaviour Interactive is focused on delivering a quality experience with open feedback flowing from its players. We spoke to Senior Producer Nathan Richardsson at E3 last month about game engine changes, console versions, and the upcoming Early Access.

Early (Founder's) Access, which Nathan likened to "the equivalent of Closed Alpha", is coming this summer and will have one 32+ player map, two game modes (siege and assault), destructible objects, and more. For the Space Marines faction with its Dark Angel sub-faction three vehicles will be available: the Rhino, Predator, and the Vindicator, and four classes will be playable: Tactical, Assault, Devastator, and the Apothecary. The Chaos Space Marine faction with its Word Bearers sub-faction will have the Chaos Predator, Chaos Rhino, and Vindicator vehicles, as well as the Havoc, Raptor, Sorcerer, and Tactical classes.

E3: EverQuest & EverQuest II Progression Servers

E3 doesn't stop when its doors are closed for the day. We snagged Executive Producer Holly "Windstalker" Longdale at this year's Daybreak after-party (and again this week in a follow-up), chatting about some recent changes that hit EverQuest's progression servers as well as the upcoming progression servers and merges for EverQuest II.

Trion Brings Action-Fueled MMO Devilian to West

Devilian, an ARPG MMO currently released only in Thailand and South Korea, will be coming North America and Europe with Trion Worlds at the helm. We spoke with Producer Andrew Sipotz, Program Manager Victoria Voss and Trion CEO Scott Hartsman last week about the game and we took our first look at how it plays.

At character creation players will be able to choose between four classes: Evoker (battlefield control and projectile blasts), Shadowhunter (whip-wielder that can alternate between melee and ranged), Cannoneer (tactical), and the Berserker (dual-wielder, plate-wearer). During gameplay your character can shift into devilian form, which is a super-charged winged demon form that uses its own ability set, enhanced stats, unique equipment, and has its own progression. By slaying mobs you'll gain devil soul, which both contributes to leveling up your devilian form and grants more time to be shifted into the form.

Andrew: "In the game you play as a devilian who has been awoken from a long slumber after an ancient war between man and demon. The storyline progresses as you quest; there's story for the class that you play through and learn more about the background, what's going on with the world and has happened since you've been asleep, and what the new evil is up to."

E3 2015: Rocket League is Buckets of Fun

Cross. Platform. Play. I was ecstatic upon learning that Rocket League at this year's E3 had that capability, even with control differences of a mouse/keyboard and a PS4 controller. The sequel to Supersonic Acrobat Rocket-Powered Battlecars, the team at Psyonix sharpened their skills to deliver Rocket League, a tighter game with a much shorter name. In short, it's soccer (or football, depending where you're at) with cars. The goal: scoring a goal by hitting the ball with your car. There's no announcer screaming out an elongated "goal," and we doubt that there would be any national upsets over team bouts in your living room, so rest assured that when your car scores the winning goal over a heated match of epic proportions, you can sleep soundly at night. 

E3: Heavensward Interview with Naoki Yoshida

Lindsay Geektron and Mike Bailey, along with the Gamer Escape staff, sat down with Naoki Yoshida at E3 last week to discuss the now-released Heavensward expansion for Final Fantasy XIV.


Translations have been provided by Gamer Escape.

E3: Sword Coast Legends Dungeon Master Mode

Sword Coast Legends, the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons RPG based in the Forgotten Realms, has been turning heads with the list of promising features that developer n-Space has presented. Along with the promise of a massive storyline and challenging gameplay, the game will also support multiplayer as well as a Dungeon Master (DM) Mode. We got to sit in on a preview of the DM mode and participated in the resulting dungeon run last week at E3.

E3: Carbine Details WildStar F2P Update

WildStar will be transitioning to free-to-play this fall, and we took the time to speak to Product Director Mike Donatelli and Creative Director Chad Moore during E3 for more information on what the change will offer new and existing players.

The game will be getting a host of changes to make it more user-friendly, with the first one being the tutorial options. Currently there's one tutorial zone that everyone goes through, and while that will still remain as a choice, players will now also be able to choose to bypass it or begin a step prior to it. Focusing on the player's MMO experience, tutorial options include Novice (never played MMOs before; extremely basic knowledge), Intermediate (the current WildStar Arkship tutorial experience, though streamlined to be quicker), and Expert (bypass the tutorials while being granted experience and gear that you would have gained from it).

E3: Elite Dangerous Excellent on Xbox One

Externally, it seems as if the greatest accomplishment that the members of Frontier Developments surpassed with Elite: Dangerous was cramming an entire galaxy into the game. I've always dreamt of setting course to Sirius so I could see the origins of the human species, but I might just end up in a space battle instead of between two unknown races of advanced powers and weapons. That's one of the lures behind Elite: Dangerous. We never know what we'll end up with in plotting our way across the stars. This year's E3 was an exciting venture into the dark unknown at the Elite: Dangerous booth, and ZAM got to see the game flourish on the Xbox One.

E3 2015: Strike Vector EX Coming to Console

If you know my play style, you're probably aware that I'm a huge proponent of the keyboard and mouse setup for some genres of games. Playing an FPS with two joysticks will probably lead me to throwing the joysticks across the room and searching for a better control setup. Well, believe it or not, the control style for Strike Vector EX is one I actually favor. Rather than feel like I was controlling a wild horse with lasers and rocket launchers as the PC version felt at times, running with sticks and triggers felt much more natural.

You might be familiar with the hover mode in the PC version—with the advent of the controller, hover mode is the state every ship is in when they're not firing boosters. However, ships can't simply stop on a dime entering hover mode: they "skid" mid-air to stop. As far as customization goes with the controller, controls can be customized but not entirely. In addition to the "controller mapping," dual-wielding weapons has been pulled from the game, so we'll no longer see plasma cannons with homing rockets.