FPS General

Trion Worlds announced earlier this week that they have surpassed over 1 million registered accounts for their open-world shooter Defiance. 1 million is a huge number for any game, let alone an ambitious trans-media project like Defiance - merging the worlds of television and gaming.

So, what are 1 million Ark Hunters actually doing in Defiance? According to Trion Worlds, quite a bit!

• Hellbugs, the nasty buggers that can turn even the most enjoyable Arkfall event into a bloody battle to the death, aren't doing so well. Players in Defiance have killed 500,000,000 hellbugs to date. This is roughly 16 million hellbugs being killed per day, based on the April 2nd launch date.

• Defiance boasts a huge open world, and the most popular way to get around is in the ATV. That being said, players have driven 50,000,000 miles throughout the Bay area. 

• Working together is part of what makes Defiance awesome so it makes sense that 1,000,000 Arkfall events have been triggered since the game launched just one month ago. That is 33,000 Arkfall events per day! That's incredible.

If you're wondering what you're missing out on in Defiance, make sure you visit DefianceForum.com to catch up on the latest news from the video game and the SyFy original program.

Trion Worlds and Syfy have announced a contest to further merge the two worlds of Defiance! You already see Nolan and Irisa crossing from the game to the show, and now players have the chance to follow them over. A competition will be held in-game from April 30th - May 12th to see who deserves to see themselves in an upcoming episode of Defiance:

The ark hunter earning the most ark salvage per hour (excluding ark salvage earned from the Salvage Matrix) during their time played over the course of the contest will win. Only players who register for the contest and complete both “Most Wanted” pursuits will be eligible to win. All registrants must complete both the “Most Wanted: Competitor” and “Most Wanted: Rogue’s Gallery” in-game pursuits between 12:00am PDT April 30 and 11:59pm PDT May 12.

Both pursuits will be in-game in the “Goals” section of the GO menu starting at 12:00am PDT April 30. The “Rogue’s Gallery” pursuit tasks you with eliminating various mutants, raiders, 99ers, and more, while the “Competitor” pursuit pits you against other ark hunters in team-based PvP and Shadow War modes. The winner will have artists from the Defiance series render their character’s likeness into a special place in an upcoming episode.

Contest registration can be found at www.defiance.com/most-wanted, so don't miss out on your chance to become immortalized on Syfy. Future contests are promised to further connect the two media worlds -- stay tuned here and to the Defiance Forums for more information.

This massively mulltiplayer online shooter and television series go hand-in-hand in an unprecedented partnership featuring an interconnected world and crossing storylines!  The Syfy series is in full swing, with viewers to follow the immersive drama each week as they adventure in the game. Check out this preview of next week's episode, to air Monday at 9/8c:

Need information to get off on the right foot in-game? The Defiance Wiki has a full knowledge base to fill your noggin with, and our Defiance Hub combined with the Defiance Forums will keep you up to date with news and community banter. Stick with us, Ark Hunters -- we're in it for the long haul.

Have you been playing and following along? Let us know what you think in the comments below!

Defiance made some major waves last week when the series premiere made its debut on SyFy Channel. The network announced that Defiance was their most successful launch since 2006, when their original show Eureka debuted on the channel.

So, what's in store for episode 2?

We've got everything you need to know in our Defiance episode 2 preview. To start with, let's recap - briefly - where things left off. It goes without saying, but note that this post is going to be spoilertastic so stop reading now if you haven't watching episode 1 yet. (You can fix that by clicking here, by the way.)

Towards the end of the Defiance pilot episode, we witnessed the death of Luke McCawley - the son of Rafe McCawley, the leader of the McCawley family. Joshua Nolan began to investigate this murder and found out that it was perpetrated by none other than the mayoral assistant Ben Darus.

Unfortunately, Ben flees the city and kills the guards, dropping the stasis net that protects Defiance from outside threats.

Did you miss last night's big premiere of Defiance on SyFy Channel? If so, we've got you covered with a full episode recap and stream. 

If you don't want anything spoiled for you, go ahead and skip down to the bottom of this post to watch the episode for yourself. The pilot episode clocks in at around an hour and a half, but we're not sure how long an average episode would be. For those of you curious how the episode was, we humbly present to you our episode 1 recap below.

We've known from the outset that Defiance is an ambitious project. Creating a world that will support both a video game environment and a full sci-fi program? If that's not ambitious, we don't know what is. This pilot episode serves to introduce us to all of the characters that we will come to know throughout this first season of Defiance, but it does more than that. It also introduces us to the world of Defiance in a brand new way.

We've been spending time with the Trion Worlds game and while that experience has given us a great idea of the world that Defiance inhabits, it wasn't until watching the show that we truly got it. The characters, the world and the environment came alive in a new way for us last night.

As with any online game, Defiance has a system of XP that you can be grinding on for hours to rack up. With this guide from our own Crazy Penguin, however, that time can be reduced drastically. 

Take a look above and make sure to visit our channel on YouTube and subscribe for more awesome Defiance videos!

As you most likely know, Defiance is not only a great open-world shooter from Trion Worlds but also a full sci-fi program on SyFy channel. 

The show is debuting tonight, so let's take a look at what you can expect from the series premiere. Episode 1 of Defiance airs tonight on SyFy Channel at 9:00PM, local time.

In case you're not familiar with the story in Defiance, this is what the show is about in a nutshell; set in the near future, a group of alien species collectively known as the Votans have arrived on Earth. Initially waging war against each other, the humans and Votans have now been forced to work together in the aftermath of the Arkfall event in 2030. The world as we know it has changed, the very surface of the Earth left altered.

So, episode 1. Here's what you can expect from tonights episode - without any spoilers, of course.

As much as that title looks like something a forum spammer would be posting, this is an honest to goodness guide on helping you cash in all of those Arkfall codes from Defiance that have been floating around out there.

From the video:

1. Collect Arkfall codes here: http://orcz.com/Defiance:_Arkfall_Codes
2. Submit your Arkfall codes here: http://www.defiance.com/en/my-ego/
3. Play Defiance and enjoy free things.

Be sure to visit http://www.defianceforum.com for more on Defiance! 

Defiance has officially been released into the wild and videos are sprouting up all over YouTube, with fans sharing some of their tips, tricks and gameplays.

One such video producer is Qelric, a friend of ours and a partner with Curse's Union for Gamers, an awesome YouTube Partner program that offers the best CPM around and no lock-in deals that require you to produce content for one group for the rest of your life. 

In her latest video, Qelric brings us some Defiance gameplay from the early stages of the game as she quests out as a Human Ark Hunter.

Do you have anything you'd like featured on Defiance Forum? Be sure to post your content in the DF forums and then send Nate a private message over there letting him know you submitted. 

With Defiance launching tomorrow in North America, or midnight tonight if you're impatient like us.

With this being the case, we thought it would be a great time to go back and recap just what it is that Trion Worlds and SyFy are hoping to create in Defiance.

Without further ado, here is what you can expect from Defiance - for now, we'll focus on the game.

Let's start at the beginning. Defiance is not just a video game. It's also a TV show from the talented minds at SyFy Channel. The two worlds interconnect in many ways, but are both also capable of standing on their own feet.

The Story

Not too far in the future, a group of aliens collectively known as the Votans arrived on Earth. The Votans were seeking a new home after their own star system was destroyed. Tensions mounted and things got out of hand, ultimately leading to the Votan-Human conflict known as the Pale Wars. The Pale Wars only ended when the Arkfall happened.

The Arkfall occurred when the entire Ark fleet in orbit simultaneously exploded, raining Arks down upon the Earth and unleashing the terraforming technology within in an utterly chaotic manner. Gone were the plans that the Votans had of using the technology sparingly and cautiously. Mountain ranges were raised, gaping chasms were ripped from the land and the planet was burned. Life as we knew it ended.

Last last month, we had the chance to check out Defiance a preview event for the media in San Diego, CA. The game and show look amazing, as we expected, and we were even able to grab some folks for an interview.

You can stream that interview above and make sure you visit DefianceForum.com for all of your Defiance needs!

Cross posted from DefianceForum.com - original article can be read here.

Customizing your weapons in any game is a must but more so in first-person shooters than probably any other genre. The sheer volume of customization options in FPS games makes it a must for developers to invest time in. Players want to be able to change up the way their weapons perform in different situations and to tweak them as they see fit.

Thankfully, in Defiance, that won't be a problem at all.

Released just this morning, the trailer below (after the break) shows off all of the options that will be available to players in Defiance. The video also focuses on the weapons themselves, showing off a few of the tools of the trade that you will have at your disposal.

Check out the video and be sure to visit DefianceForum.com for all of your Defiance needs. We're building an amazing Defiance community over there and we'd love to have you on board!

Hot off the press this morning is a brand new trailer for Defiance, focusing on the competitive multiplayer aspect of the game. For PC players, this open-world approach is a tried and true formula that has worked in the past, but with a Trion Worlds flair. As for console players, the open-world approach hasn't been done very well in the past and we think that you will really enjoy what Defiance has to offer in that regard.

Check it out above and make sure you visit http://www.defianceforum.com for all of your Defiance needs.

See you in the game, Ark Hunters!

The team at DefianceForum.com been nothing short of vocal in their support for getting Defiance on Steam and, while Trion Worlds has certainly not said the game won't be coming to Steam, they also haven't confirmed it yet. Well, it looks like we might have that confirmation, as the game has appeared in the Steam database.

If you're unfamiliar with the Steam database, here's a quick debriefing. The database can be browsed at http://steamdb.info/, where they compile a mass amount of information on games that are listed internally to appear on Steam. If we're lucky, occasionally we get confirmation on games that haven't even been announced yet.

In this case, Defiance has been announced but not confirmed for Steam. At this time, the only way we know that players will be able to play is through the independent Trion Worlds launcher. However, it looks like that is about to change, according to Steamdb.info, the game may be coming to Steam after all.

The above image (click to enlarge) was posted on SteamDB.info in regards to Defiance: Test App 224600 is clearly attributed to 'Defiance' and is tied to Trion Worlds. This, of course, isn't surefire proof that the game is coming to Steam but it definitely suggests that this will be the case!

Stay tuned to DefianceForum.com for all of your Ark Hunting needs!

Source: http://steamdb.info/app/224600/

More than a few members of the Defiance community have been reporting that after pre-ordering Defiance on Amazon.com, they have not received their promised beta key. According to the product listing, players would receive a beta key for Defiance after pre-ordering the game on any platform but, unfortunately, this isn't how things have been happening.

As this is a pretty serious breach in player expectations, Trion Worlds has gotten involved personally, promising to get to the bottom of the delay.

Posted just moments ago on the Defiance homepage, community manager Myll_Erik said:

Working on this today folks - I've been asking questions and hunting people down trying to get this resolved.

For their part, Amazon isn't standing idly by while customers are left out in the dark. To learn more about what Amazon is saying about the situation, be sure to visit http://www.defianceforum.com - your complete resource for Defiance discussion, news and more!

Trion Worlds has announced that Defiance will officially launch worldwide on April 2nd! The much-anticipated release date is something we've been curious about for a long time as Defiance has long been rumored for an April release date. This April 2nd date will correspond nicely with the projected April debut date of the Defiance SyFy program, as well.

In addition to this exciting launch date news, Trion Worlds has also released the full version of the live-action trailer that they teased earlier this month. The trailer, entitled 'Join the Fight', can be viewed in its entirety above. For more on Defiance, make sure you visit the Defiance Wiki on Gamepedia at http://defiance.gamepedia.com/.

Defiance is available for pre-order on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC and ships on April 2nd.

Curse.com is proud to bring a brand new site into the family with DefianceForum.com! The team here is really excited for Trion Worlds' upcoming MMOFPS Defiance and we wanted to provide a one-stop resource for players to convene, share strategies, make friends and discuss this amazing game with like-minded fans!

If you're not familiar with the game, Defiance is both an upcoming MMOFPS in-development at Trion Worlds and a SyFy original program. Both of these mediums will serve to tell the story of Von Bach Industries and the Ark Hunters in San Francisco, in two unique ways. The TV show will be a chance for fans to immerse themselves completely in the lore and continuing story while the MMOFPS is a chance to get your boots on the ground and become an Ark Hunter yourself.

We'll be covering everything from the world of Defiance, including guides, tutorials, news and discussion from the world of the game as well as episode lists and recaps when the show makes its big debut on SyFy Channel later this year. In addition to all of our coverage, the wiki team has also put together a hub on Gamepedia, so make sure you check that out as well!

The game is just starting to heat up and there's so much to look forward to from both Trion Worlds and SyFy Channel as Defiance picks up speed in 2013. Everyone here at FPS General and Curse are looking forward to Defiance and we hope you join us at DefianceForum.com!

We'll see you there, Ark Hunters.

Released last week in closed beta, Defiance is starting to make waves in the shooter community. The premise of a SyFy original program/open-world online shooter hybrid has been getting us pumped up for a long time so it's a lot of fun to see Trion Worlds releasing more information on the game. We spent time with the beta over the weekend but, unfortunately, the NDA we signed doesn't let us say much about it at this time. Just suffice it to say that we're going to have a lot more to say when that NDA lifts.

In the meantime, Trion Worlds has released a live-action teaser trailer for Defiance in advance of a full-length live-action trailer to be released in the near future. The trailer takes place in the barren desert, giving some brief insight to the lives that these ark hunters lead in the game (and show). We can't wait for the full length trailer, but we'll settle for the teaser for now. Check it out after the break, but first let's look at the special editions that Trion Worlds announced today!

There are going to be several editions of the game - both physical and digital, each with their own unique bonuses and perks. To begin with, players can unlock a bunch of content simply by dropping $5 to pre-order Defiance. These bonuses include an in-game Outlander outfit, custom in-game title, special pre-order weapon (dependent on where you pre-order the game), 3-day XP boost and an invitation to the ongoing Defiance beta.

As for the special editions themselves, they range from $59.99 for the standard edition to $149.99 for the Gametop-exclusive Collector's Edition. We could spend hours going over the details in these special edition, but they're so varied that you can just take a look at them after the break.

Enjoy, ark hunters!

Just a reminder that today marks the first day of Defiance's very first beta weekend, giving a handful of lucky players a chance to explore the game and see what it's all about. On top of that, not only are you getting early access to the game, but you're actually helping the team at Trion Worlds make Defiance better with your feedback.

If you're curious about how to get in on the beta and which platforms it is on, Trion Worlds has put together a quick Q&A over on their Facebook page:

Q: Where do I download the beta client?

A: Details about the beta will be communicated via email to the address on your Trion Worlds account. Please make sure to add beta@defiance.com to your Safe Senders list to ensure delivery!

Q: Is the beta under NDA?

A: Yes, the Defiance beta test is under NDA. Please keep all details regarding the Defiance beta out of public channels, as players who break the NDA will be removed from future Defiance betas.

Q:  I received a Defiance beta code; what do I do next?

A: IF you get a beta code, go to the Apply Code page at TrionWorlds.com: https://defiance.trionworlds.com/commerce/voucher/redeem-voucher-flow. Once you  have been accepted into beta, you will receive a beta invite email which will take you through the rest of the simple steps to access and download the beta client.

Please note, if you have already received a beta invite email, you are signed up for the beta and DO NOT REQUIRE a beta key.

Q: What platform is the Defiance beta for?

A: The first beta is for PC players. However, future beta tests will include PlayStation®3 and Xbox 360® players, so stay tuned to http://www.defiance.com/beta for further details.

Q: Where are the beta forums located?

A: The Defiance beta forums are located at: http://beta.forums.defiance.com/cas_login.php?do=login&url=/

The forum will be accessible once your beta access has been confirmed via email.

Beta Key Giveaway

Don't forget that Curse.com is giving away beta keys in North America and Europe! We still have some left but they're going to go quickly now that the beta has officially started today, so make sure you visit http://www.curse.com/betas/defiance-na as soon as possible and redeem yours today (or head here to pick up your EU Defiance beta key!)

After you receive your key, simply follow the instructions above and you'll be good to go as soon as you receive confirmation from Trion Worlds via email.

Check out the Defiance Wiki for more information on the game!

Defiance is set to hit closed beta later this month and FPS General and Curse have you covered for beta access. The first beta weekend is getting underway on January 18th and grabbing your beta key couldn't be any easier, but first let's take a step back and see what Defiance is all about.

Currently in-development at Trion Worlds, Defiance is a massively multiplayer first-person shooter (MMOFPS). So, what's so special about an MMOFPS? Well, despite the fact that the brilliant minds at Trion Worlds are developing the game, Defiance is actually also an upcoming television program on SyFy channel. The events in the game will mirror the goings-on of the SyFy show, making Defiance an ambitious and unique experience for players and viewers alike, merging two separate (yet decidedly similar) communities in one awesome mashup.

So, how do you get your key? Simply hit up http://www.curse.com/betas/defiance-na and redeem yourself a Defiance beta key - it's that easy. Furthermore, these beta keys will be valid for future beta test weekends as well so don't feel like you're only getting a single-use key here, we've got you covered in the long run as well.

We're also happy to say that we are going to be giving away a wealth of keys for folks in Europe, so make sure you visit http://www.curse.com/betas/defiance-eu to pick up yours today.

The beta starts on January 18th and will run through January 20th for the inaugural beta weekend and we will have keys for this weekend in both Europe and North America. Make sure you visit http://defiance.com/beta/ for more information on what the closed beta entails.

Thanks for reading and we'll see you in the game, Ark Hunters!