OwnedCore Report #15

**Kenneth** · 02-18-2018

Greetings OwnedCore, and welcome to the 15th OwnedCore Report. This report, like 14's will be jam packed with news, website changes, and a brand new article by both Veritable and our newest News Team Intern Killen! If you haven't seen it yet, Blizzard has been flying out former and current Warcraft 3 professionals to their headquarters which I will also be touching on as well. So without further ado, here we go.

Website Changes to OwnedCore

We here on OwnedCore have heard the many suggestions for this addition and decided to act swiftly. Now you can add your discord profile links to your profile which will show in both your About Me section and in the postbits under your profile name on every forum post.

How can you set this up? Easy. For a shortcut just go HERE

Without the link, just go to your profile & go to My Settings > Edit Profile > Instant Messaging > Discord Name.

Earn CoreCoins giving us your suggestions on our Design and Visual Profile!

Last week Eryxon made a thread asking you, the OwnedCore Community, for your input on our visual profile and design. This is the perfect place for you to voice your opinion and have your suggestions be heard more than ever. We want OwnedCore to move forward with the communities input in mind.

"The Best ideas posted in this thread will be rewarded with up to 25,000 CoreCoins"

So please, click HERE, and let us know your thoughts!

Community Highlights

[Active] Visual - Huge fireballs around your character as a Fire Mage by AraiXplorer

Anybody doing Project 80? If so Advanta posted an insane reduced leveling time guide.

x4kep posted an insane Fast Leveling with Dungeons guides as well in the Elite Section

Shark posted his very own 2018 Giveaway including a ton of T3 WoW in-game armor, a BFA Pre-Purchase, and more.

Anime Review by Killen

This is our newest addition to the Report. Killen, our News Team Intern will be writing a short term summary/opinion piece on 1 anime he thinks we should be watching. This week, Sword Art Online. Make sure to let him know your thoughts in the comments below!

Sword Art Online

In the year 2022, virtual reality technology has players being able to control their avatar with only their thoughts. a massive online roleplay game called Sword Art Online (SAO) has been created.
Kazuto Kirigaya Avatar name "Kirito” logs into the game along with 10.000 other players, but it turns out that the game creator has trapped all players in the virtual world, a floating castle named Aincrad. And to make matters worse, if a player were to die they'd die in real life. Lucky for Kirito he meets Azuna, skilled with a sword but also great at strategizing. To escape the death game Kirito and Azuna must work with their fellow players to clear all one hundred floors and defeat each floor boss.

After clearing the game
After the events of SAO Azuna never wakes up, but Kirito is shown a picture of a girl in a birdcage at the world tree in alfheim online, so in all hope of that being Azuna he logs into (ALO) a world where players are able to fly. Soon after he meets a player named Leafa. Leafa agrees to take Kirito to the world tree but the way is dangerous and a lot of events are about to unfold. (note all stats has been copied over from SAO)

After Sword Art Online

A year after Escaping SAO Kirito is now settling back to the real world. But hes approached by an officer talking about a murder that shot one in the virtual world and somehow died in the real world, Kirito accepts to help and go to a new game called gun Gale Online to find and stop the mass murder. Once inside Kirito meets Sinon, a professional sniper with a dark past she agrees to help Kirito enter bullet of bullets, a tournament where death gun are most likely to appear, together they must stop death gun from killing more lives

My opinion
It has a good start making you feel like, this is no longer a game but a new world they'll have to adapt and work together in if they want to live on, but it also have a good character design. Kirito is strong, likable, but also very emotional like Azuna, except shes also very self conscious. The animation on this is astounding all the bosses, characters, and the landscape is just beautiful compared to other animations from 2012.

Places you can watch
http://kissanime.ru/Anime/Sword-Art-Online
https://www.primewire.ag/watch-27351...an-online-free
http://9anime.stream/category/sword-art-online

Second Life to VR Chat: Evolution of VR Content in Games by Veritable

With the advent of Virtual Reality, or at least the idea of it in the past, there have been many games and movies that centralize their theme around living in the world that is not just created by the developers, but is created and/or modified by the users themselves.

VR Chat is the latest installment of such a game, where anyone who can do 3D Modelling can use Unity to create models, effects and even entire zones for other players to experience and interact in. But it's not the first one and it for sure won't be the last game to do this. Lets take a look at where this genre of game has come from, and where it may be going.

I will start off with a movie from the 90's called The Lawnmower Man. While the second movie wasn't that great itself, the first one was a revolutionary movie idea. Many of the teenagers who were getting into computers when it was created suddenly found themselves enamored by the possibility of creating a world in which you could actually move around in virtually. From a first person view point, it had the graphical awe of being something new and fascinating for an entire generation of fans.

After The Lawnmower Man, you started to see virtual reality concepts explode in the movie and game industry. The Lawnmower Man came out in 1992, and in 1995 we were introduced to Johnny Mnemonic; Strange Days; Virtuosity; Ghost in the Shell. In 1999 we had Existenz; The Matrix and beyond. Some of the newer movies really pushed the boundaries to include more mental aspects like The Cell, but all of these movies have Virtual Reality as a key focal point. Living in and reacting to your virtual environments.

In 2003 the game Second Life was unleashed unto the gaming community. It promised not only a virtual landscape, but a world in which people could actually create content and make money doing so. People and companies alike gathered around this central idea, creating online stores to buy virtual products, purchasing virtual land to open their shops and promote their identities inside an environment that allowed pretty much anything to go on. Properties included places like theme parks, virtual clubs and bars with live DJs, and even virtual strip clubs.

With the advent of Occulus Rift and the HTC Vive hardware, it brought the possibility of a home-based virtual experience without spending tens of thousands of dollars on equipment. In the early 90s a company Virtuality Group created a system to experience virtual reality, but would cost upwards of $55,000 USD for a complete setup, and pretty much marked its death in the greater public because of the price to enter. To see an example of a similar system used in a movie, look no further than Hackers, where Eugene (aka. The Plague) is found using the system by the FBI Director in the famous scene were he looks to be attacking something in some kind of boxing game which we can't see.

Current VR gear will set you back around $1,000 USD depending on how far you want to go, and how many systems you want to buy so could partake of the experience with a friend in the same room. A far cry from the 90s over-priced rich-only experience.

VR Chat basically brings Virtual Reality to the widest range of demographics, being on Playstation and only costing around $350 USD for a pretty decent experience. It is probably one of the best moves on Sony's part in the last couple of years as far as adopting new technologies. The addition of VR Chat in this system allows people to experience a Second Life type of experience for the lowest bar to entry price yet. I am sure it will get cheaper as more people adopt the technology and competition rises up to meet the demands.

The main draw of Second Life was the ability to make money off of items you created (scripted) in the game, landscapes you could create, or you could even sell your design and creation services to a company to produce their ideal zone.

In VR Chat, however, I do not see any motivation by Sony to allow real money to be made. I see no scripting sales ability. You can basically add your products to the system and others can utilize them with their in-game avatar to use in the Social Realm for free. VR Chat is pretty much a virtual chat room (Hence VR Chat name) but I think it could be so much more.

If you are motivated enough, you can even create a portal to your own land, and get it approved for permanent usage by the masses. Otherwise only people you invite there can visit it. They have a quality assurance team to make sure it doesn't kill frame rates, and degrade the experience that users experience in official zones. But you still don't get money for it, you can't get tips for people spending time in your zone, and you can't sell products or skins and models for virtual currency that can be traded like you could in Second Life. Officially at least.

I haven't seen any yet, but I imagine that a 3rd party site that would offer modelling for RMT services in VR Chat could pop up at any time, if it hasn't already. Selling 3D Models that only that one person can use, so they are unique. Unlike the Ugandan Knuckles.

Doing a unique model for a profit to the masses would be quite an attractive money making offer for users of VR Chat I would think.

Whether or not the systems Sony has in place can or will support this type of feature officially, remains to be seen. But I think that as a starting point, Sony is probably beating HTC Vive, Occulus Rift and all the Steam Offerings simply because of the ease of entry for the average gamer. After all, it's a new experience and the user base of Playstation is big enough, and global enough, to provide a massive fan base to expand the platform and future endeavors for years to come. Should they choose to...

For now, if you are unable to experience VR Chat, let me just show you the most recent fad... in all it's glory.

Gaming News From Around The Globe

So Diablo 3 announced their new season 13 and it seems pretty dry overall. New armor sets/cosmetic awards that look like they have took a couple hours work, Season Journey Rewards which don't seem worth the time commitment, and Haedrig's Gift. All in all there is a reason they excluded this game from the WoW collector's edition for BFA. But what strikes me even more about this is the timing. Just a couple days ago PoE, Diablo 3's biggest competitor, announced their new season Bestiary. And up until this point Diablo 3 has been in the dark. Are they really still trying to take players away from PoE by releasing their season before it? I feel like this is a lost cause and kinda a spit in the face to PoE because even Diablo Dev's must know this is pointless. For more information click here

Like stated above, PoE is coming out with a new season called Bestiary. For the first time ever you will be able to hunt, capture, and sacrifice beasts in order to craft powerful items. Dozens of new items, gems, and end game content will be added to this league. When you capture beasts you can keep them alive and put them on display in your Menagerie until you are ready to sacrifice them at the Blood Altar. The strongest Beastcrafting Recipes, from sacrificing Beasts, require defeating the rarest and most dangerous catches. Cosmetic Awards are also being added through things such as Spirit Beasts in the Spirit Lands.

Besides the beasts we have a revamped Ascendancy Class, 3 new Gems, Dozens of Fated Uniques, and a new quest in Act Ten. For all information click here

So a good amount of Warcraft 3 pros have been invited to the Blizzard Headquarters recently. Happy, Hawk, and I think Grubby amongst them. It is very weird that randomly Blizzard is flying them out because they all have just one thing in common, Warcraft 3. Due to this the theories have been running rampant and I will post some of the more "realistic" ones below. If you have any yourself please share!

Theory 1: Massive Balance Patch

I was reading that massive balance patches don't occur much in WC3 and is long overdue. It would make sense to get professionals opinion on big changes. But can't they get their opinions without flying them out?

Theory 2: Warcraft 3 Remastered

I think this is the one for sure. SC1 was just remastered and was a huge hit. Grubby also hinted on stream that this years Blizzcon is the "year of Warcraft 3". This would make the most sense to me and flying pros out to test it out would be a good idea but also a way to pay homage to those that stuck with the game for so long and show them the remastered version first.

Theory 3: Warcraft 4

I don't think RTS games are in a good enough position right now as a genre to warrant a brand new Warcraft game. This seems like the biggest stretch to me but it would make sense that if the news was this big to fly out some of the bigger names in the Warcraft 3 community to come check it out.