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Ankama Games has introduced a new way to play its popular Dofus MMO. The Flash based online game will now offer players the chance to join the Heroic Server, a form of the game devoted to hardcore players willing to risk the permanent death of their characters. In addition the threat of perma-death the Heroic Server also features more experience per encounter and the ability to loot items from the corpses of other players.

Ankama’s teams have been working on the development of the Heroic Server these past months to perfect the game’s mechanisms and to offer players a stable in-game system of disconnection/reconnection for a better gaming experience.

In order to make the experience even more exciting, the Heroic Server also brings in new game rules! The main change is the introduction of permanent death for all characters. A new rule which is launched for the first time in online role-playing game history ! This server is unique and will enable players from all over the world to play in the world of DOFUS.

Whether players are taking on a monster or other players, they just cannot lose. In case of death, the opponent can take the victim’s items. Besides, each character will have the privilege of resting in peace in the Cemetery of Heroes – which is a worldwide ranking , updated every 24hrs and can be consulted on a dedicated web space!

The game rules have been adapted to this exclusive server. On the Heroic Server, skills level up a lot quicker which means more experience at the end of a fight or when a quest is completed. Profession experience is also gained a lot more quickly. In general, leveling up is much faster .

However, players will have to be extremely careful in their tactics since their character’s life is at stake at each blow! They will have to reinforce their guild strategy and communication  if they want to survive!

Dofus Official Site

Ankama Studio

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Inside Mac Games has posted a review of the mystery puzzle game Hidden Secrets: The Nightmare from Gogii Games. Here is an excerpt from the review:

To break out of your nightmare, you have two different types of puzzles to solve. About 20 of these are what the developers of the game called puzzle scenes. In these, you have to find objects within the scene and put them together with other objects in the scene to solve mysteries, such as reading diary notes or newspaper clippings.

These can be extremely challenging, in spite of the hints that you get along the way. Sometimes the things that you have to find are quite small and unremarkable, even when you are planning in full-screen mode. These puzzles are very similar to those that you would see in another recently launched game, Dream Chronicles.

IMG Review: Hidden Secrets: The Nightmare

Hidden Secrets: The Nightmare

Gogii Games

Buy Hidden Secrets: The Nightmare

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GamesIndustry.biz has comments made by Cyan World's Rand Miller at a recent GDC panel discussion. Miller again discussed the troubled history of Myst Online, offering his thoughts on the game's unique MMO focus and why past incarnations have failed to stay afloat.

Elaborating on why the game couldn't manage to initially keep itself alive, Miller said, "I'm always going to fall back on 'we were ahead of our time,' because it's easy."

"The biggest thing we did was an all or nothing proposal from an entertainment point of view," he continued. "It's not like you can start up a new TV network and give one show a month and expect it to be successful... We couldn't quite pull that off with the money we had."

Added Lewin, "I don't think there's any budget that would have worked," as the content production pipeline was extremely difficult. "Look at [TV series] Lost," he added. "Lost, at its level of quality, still can't get 26 episodes out in a year."

"There's a similar issue with Myst Online," he concluded. "It's a bigger issue when we're looking at broadband entertainment. The fallback is reality TV... [where the thought is] lets make users make idiots of themselves and we'll all laugh at them... We all do want to see the 'Lost's but production costs have to come down and we have to get smarter about tools."

GamesIndustry.biz: Myst Creator MMO Discussion

Cyan

Apple Games' has visited the darker side of Miami with a review of CSI: Miami, one of the latest titles for Apple's iPod multimedia device. Players join the cast of the popular television show and use a variety of forensic tools and interrogation techniques to solve the murder of a young woman found dead on South Beach. Apple's feature includes an overview of the game and a brief descriptions of the characters players will meet during the investigation.

As you explore houses, cars, apartments, and other locations, keep an eye out for anything that sparkles: that’s your tip to give something a closer look. Select the proper tool to collect evidence — UV lamps and luminol spray reveal traces of blood and other substances invisible to the naked eye, for example — and then analyze everything at the lab when you’re done.

At key intervals during the story’s four chapters, you bring in suspects and witnesses for a little chat. Choose a technique, such as accusingly or sympathetically, and ask them questions. Depending on their responses, you might want to change your technique, or perhaps present them with evidence that will force them to tell you the truth. At the conclusion of each chapter, you earn points for your field knowledge, technical skills, and questioning skills, with a final total awarded at the end of the game.

Apple Games: CSI Miami

Gamasutra has published a new article focusing on Rage, id Software's upcoming post-apocalypse first person action game. Speaking at the Austin GDC id's Tim Willits expressed doubts that modding would be possible for the game, citing the complexity of the game's megatexture system.

"Unfortunately, Rage is going to be more difficult to mod," said Willits, primarily because of the complexity of the game's vaunted megatexture system, which stores the texture data for levels as one huge texture map that streams in, rather than many smaller textures.

Megatextures require huge amounts of processing power to be baked into their final form for distribution on the game disc; Willits alluded to a large number of computers working for a long time to process them, analogous to a CG render farm.

Willits envisioned modders developing modular chunks of gameplay that can be slotted into the extant Rage world, rather than full mods, as a potential solution. While the game's large central wasteland is a streaming hub world, its levels are instance-based.

Gamasutra: id Rage May Not Support Mods

id Software

Rage: Campaign Edition

Buy Rage: Campaign Edition

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