The folks from Cryptic Studios will just have to pardon (or ignore) me if I'm wrong, but this sounds an awful lot like the Marvel MMO that was confirmed as cancelled just a couple of days ago. They may have lost Microsoft's support, but the makers of City of Heroes / City of Villains are still determined to waste our time with another superhero MMO game of super-dubious quality - renamed called Champions Online. Game Informer will have the first look at the game in their March issue, and they say it's coming on PC and consoles. That doesn't really fill you with hardcorish feelings, now does it?

Well, gank me silly and call me a gnome! Plans for some kind of World of Warcraft mobile functionality really are underway over at Blizzard. Mind you, the idea of an actual WoW MMO on cell phones still sounds just as ludicrous as before, but that's not what they're aiming for at all. In fact, they don't seem to be aiming for anything in particular right now, just idly fiddling with a small team of mobile developers, to see what they can come up with. That, according to Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce, quoted in an MTV article yesterday:

"We want to look at the mobile devices as something we can use to enhance the experience of our existing games. So we're going to have to look at ways to use the mobile device to enhance their 'World of Warcraft' experience. We'll see what kind of applications we can come up with.

(...) So as an example, one thing I think would be really cool - and whether we're going to be able to do this, I don't know, but it would be really cool - is if we could have a client on your mobile device like [Google Chat] that hooks you into your guild chat in the game. That would be really cool. Or the ability to view your in-game mail or view your in-game auctions. We probably wouldn't allow you to actually buy or sell via the mobile device, but you could certainly monitor."

If there's no hope for buying / selling at the Auction House, then seriously, what's the point?

- 4 years later... Final Fantasy XI product site launched. I bet you didn't see that one coming!

- Jack Keane demo unveils the first four levels of this allegedly funny adventure game by Ankh developer Deck13.

- PlayStation 3 sells 1 million units in UK, after 41 weeks on the market. That's 3 weeks longer that it took the Wii to reach the same figure there, and 9 weeks faster than the Xbox 360. Above average.

- Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch just dropped for me in Kara. Upon closer inspection, I noticed it's time to call it a night.

Great week so far, with plenty of games revealed out of the blue, like Red Alert 3, a new KotOR RPG or, by the way, a new Lord of the Rings game in the works at Pandemic (probably something more action this time). And the list goes on, as we learn from Eurogamer, with some new titles included in Atari's quarterly earnings report. And then some!

First off, there's a new expansion planned for Obisdian's RPG sequel, Neverwinter Nights 2. The second add-on should be relased between this April and March 2009; or to narrow that down a bit, let's assume it comes out in October - one year after the first expansion Mask of the Betrayer (which in turn came out one year after the original NWN 2).

Also during the next fiscal year, Atari intends to release a certain PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 game called Airborne Rangers. Right, like the classic "action simulation" game by MicroProse. That was two decades ago, so I don't think anyone would mind a shiny remake, or something.

There are several other gamelings listed in Eurogamer's story which don't sound worthy of our time, and they say Atari also has one or two "hardcore" projects which were not mentioned in the report. All of these will start getting proper announcements in the weeks to come, the publisher promised. Great, that should give me plenty of time to forget about this, and fake getting excited all over again.

I'm sure this won't come as a surprise anymore, but Microsoft is full of bullshit. And especially the company's senior VP of Interactive Entertainment, Don Mattrick is (no wonder, he used to be president of EA after all). Speaking on the latest Major Nelson podcast, he outright proclaimed that Grand Theft Auto IV will have "downloadable content and online multiplayer support (...) unique to [the Xbox] 360". That doesn't leave much room for interpretation, if you ask me. It's like saying that GTA IV would not playable in online multiplayer on the PS3. Which, with the risk of repeating myself, is utter bullshit.

Responding on this matter to GI.biz, a Rockstar spokesperson clearly explained that "both versions will support online multiplayer capabilities". So there you go, put down that hammer and leave your poor PS3 live to see another day. Or even 75 days, until the April 29 release of Grand Theft Auto IV on the Xbox 360 and PS3 PS3 and Xbox 360.

While every game producer and their mother is dreaming a wet and juicy plan of becoming rich over night, eventually not investing absolutely no effort at all into this, some of the old big houses still hold up to their standards. And I’m talking big standards here, like BioWare and their flawless RPG history. As true as it may be that those brave descendants of Terrence and Philip have gotten themselves into a big brown pile of shit right now, being under the fine “tutelage” of Electronic Arts, we certainly CANNOT expect bad things from them. No, sir.

OK. Now, we all know that BioWare is developing a MMORPG at the moment. And that’s about it, no scoops regarding its story, universe, number of farming bots per server, or other insightful information has been leaked. Many of us suspected, initially, that it would be a Star Wars inspired MMO, based on the Knights of the Old Republic francise. Well... apparently not. According to EA’s analyst report, BioWare is kinda busy right now, with much stuff to do on their hands. Some Mass Effect for the PC, the yet unfinished Dragon Age, the said MMORPG and, the nicest thing I’ve heard recently, a new Knights of the Old Republic title.

Rumor as it may be (yet), we can just hope it is another single-player role-playing game. Other internet sources are busy right now trying to get a confirmation from EA, and while they are at it, we’re just gonna rape Bastila one more time, for old times’ sake.



Kotaku scoop.

Quake 2 was, and will always be, one of the best shooters out there. It doesn’t matter that it’s older than my grandma, or that its graphics are not powered by CryEngine 2 - the sheer amount of gore and fun that it provided was (and still is, mind you), enough to keep me busy time and again.

A good news for those of us meddling with a pink Nintendo DS is the fact that Drunken Coders have finally managed to finish their Quake 2 homebrew port, after being busy with it for quite a while. This version contains all the single-player missions, also retaining some graphical goodies that can be found in the original PC game, like particle support, or ARM7 sound effects system.

As a warning though, the game cannot run on your handheld unless you are the proud owner of some RAM expansion, since Quake 2 has some memory requirements that make the DS bleed. Other info, downloads and pictures with naked asian girls can be found on Drunken Coders’ website. Enjoy the hyperblaster, kids.

For all those five people out there who give a shit about Age of Onan Conan, Gaute from FunCom posted a huge wall of text (100% chance to crit) on the upcoming MMORPG’s official website, sharing with us mortals some juicy details about the game’s progress so far. Here are a couple of his random thoughts:

Prestige Classes - It was a great idea those many years ago before we got into the depth of our character progression, but as we moved deeper and deeper into development and our internal alpha testing we found that the prestige classes were not giving the experience they were supposed to. In fact, the prestige classes were doing the opposite of what we wanted them to do when they got into the mix. It didn't give more variety or more solid character progression, it rather cornered the player. We wanted character progression to be about choice, and not about running down a small corridor to a given end. The end result was something people weren’t used to and upset them too much.

You will excuse me now while I go check the cyb0r status in Goldshire.

Someone is getting either pissed off, or really afraid by the sudden “console” invasion. PC gamers are no longer safe in their apartments, cats and dogs alike are beginning to sense the terror of not being able to randomly press our keyboard buttons exactly in the middle of a raid... More and more producers and publishers are greedily eyeing the console environment, which, let’s face it, has its advantages. Like not having to daily invest millions of yen into new hardware.

That’s why some of the big names in the gaming industry, especially in the PC department (like Microsoft, Nvidia, AMD), decided to announce a strategic alliance at the upcoming Game Developers Conference. This seemingly desperate PC Gaming Alliance is meant to promote our good old hunk of wires, conductors and processors as a TRUE gaming platform. In the face of annihilation. In the presence of a God.

Ah well, best of luck to them. As long as World of Warcraft stays on the PC, they are safe with me.

I distinctly recall Mark Skaggs (ex-Westwood / EA Pacific) dropping the bomb in late 2004, that work on a new Red Alert game had already started at that time, so let's not call this an "announcement". Rather, it's something even better: an unexpected details blowout, incoming very soon in the printed press around the world! So far, the Hungarian PC Guru (going on sale tomorrow, February 14) and the American PC Gamer magazines are the first to have their covers invaded by the red army, paving the way for the moment we've been waiting for, ever since EA "blew it" with Westwood.

Tick-tack...

... the bomb is ticking.