In the dawn of Mines of Moria, the fine ladies over at Turbine decided “Hell, it was about time” to open a new development office, right in the heart of Redwood City, California, U.S. Of A., Earth. And, since opening new businesses usually involves new job spots, some ex-Flagship employees were keenly lured to join forces, in whatever future project (or projects) the company has in mind.

The first one to join Turbine's military is Dave Brevik, “ex-chief visionary officer” at Flagship, followed by Jeff Lind and Matt McKnight. All these guys were involved with Flagship, while previously Brevik was president of Blizzard North and Lind did some nasty things over at Electronic Arts, involving franchises like the The Sims and The Lord of the Rings.

We wish them luck. And most of all, we wish they can actually do a better job here than that craptastic Hellfail: London, that nobody played.

The time has come for us to polish those shotguns and dial that Stargate secret access code, because, here it is, a closed Beta Test begins on Wednesday for FireSky's Stargate Worlds, the very much anticipated sci-fi MMO. Interested in this? I bet you are, well, at least, I am. If your breakfast consisted of immense quantities of shit and your luck has skyrocketed faster than George W. Bush can count to ten, pay a visit to the game's official website and sign up for a chance to get a spot into the Beta.



It seems like the developers are also planning some Open Beta in the near future, more exactly somewhere early in 2009. Stargate Worlds should also launch in 2009, that is, if nothing bad happens.

Oh boy! I'm pretty excited, this will finally be my chance to kill that son of a bitch Daniel Jackson, I hate that helpless idiot almost as much as I hate Bethesda.

Whenever you say Blizzard, you say Battle.net. Whenever you say Battle.net, you say free services and servers provided by Blizzard for their online community. This big badass company has been facilitating the virtual life of its fans for as long as I can remember, feeding them with decent and stable servers for their non-MMOish titles, such as the Warcraft and Diablo franchises. Fun times, indeed.

... Up until now. According to Big Download, things are about to change very soon. While covering a Diablo III gameplay panel at this year's BlizzCon, game producer Jay Wilson said something in the lines of:

"We are looking to monetize Battle.Net so that we get to keep making these games and updating features. We kind of have to."

Obviously, this will piss off fans like never before. I mean, many of them already frowned when Blizzard started to stare more at their profits and less at their fan base, with World of Warcraft squeezing large amounts of money each day, and with Starcraft 2 being cleverly sold as three separate games. But now, this?

The "good" news is that we have no details about what this "monetizing" actually means, or if it is aimed at the gamers themselves, or at some random advertising companies. Will we be forced to pay a monthly fee? A one-time fee? Or will we be staring at Coca-Cola commercials on every fucking Battlecruiser, while wiping the floor with the Protoss forces? Time will tell.

By the way. I find it peculiar that all these "clever" marketing strategies, specially designed to bring more income at all costs, have started right AFTER Activision got their paws on Blizzard. Hmmm...

PvP seems too easy so far in Warhammer Online - or, at least, Mythic thinks so. Certain world objectives, such as Fortress Lords and (contested) capital city guards, are getting a makeover in terms of imbaness, becoming a constantly increasing pain in the fine asses of all those brave enough to challenge them to a fight.

If we made them epic, at least let people feel epic when defeating them, says Mythic, and I agree. Such huge events, like storming (and conquering) well defended cities, should be much harder than it takes an airplane to crash without riposte into the walls of the Pentagon.

To help players out a bit, the company is also revamping two of Warhammer's high end armor sets as follows:

- We have updated the Annihilator and Conqueror armor sets (acquired through a variety of high level RvR) to include Wards, in order to maintain parity with PvE Armor Sets.
- The Annihilator set now includes the same Ward as that offered by the Bastion Stair's Bloodlord set.
- The Conqueror set now includes the same Ward as that offered by the City Dungeon Sentinel set.
- Players who equip pieces from the Annihilator and Conqueror armor sets will be better-equipped to challenge the Fortress Lords and contested city guards. The more pieces equipped, the better defended players will be against these deadly adversaries.

And since we're casually exchanging thoughts about World of Warcraft, let's stop for a bit and take a look at this here “casual” gamer. His Internets id seems to be Bradster and, unlike most multi-boxers out there, this guy boasts with rampaging Azeroth, Outland and (soon-to-be) Northrend with no less than 36 different accounts simultaneously. Yep, you've heard me right.



While he is a keen Horde player also interested in future solo raiding (I am expecting a “how to solo Sunwell" video when he dings 70 or 80), his main reason for this is the PvP factor. Mostly, world PvP. Beause we all know Arena is the suxx0r and that resto druids and dpslolrogues are overpowered.

This guy spends around 5711 USD per year to feed his hungry subscriptions, and intends to throw another 1500 USD down the sink when Wrath of the Lich King comes out, spending this otherwise promising pile of cash on 36 copies of the expansion. His ultimate goal? Invading Stormwind, leaving Onyxia's human form pregnant (oh, wait, she's gone), and then invading Ironforge and leaving the Gnomes pregnant. With a fucking overdose of Osama Bin Laden-like nuking power, I hope.



He uses a total number of 11 computers to do this, and his crazy idea basically involves a group of drunken, berseker-mode level 80 Orc Shamans, which are currently somewhere in the 60-70 bracket.

Well, what can I say. I wish him luck and thank God he is not on my server, since I play Alliance. A ganking extravaganza at the hands of a freaking 36 angry Elemental Shaman crew is not something I would like to witness.Over the jump you can bask in awe, reading this guy's own statement regarding this. (...)

 Continue reading 'How To Solo Sunwell With 36 WoW Accounts'...

Being a World of Warcraft player myself, every time I click on the Internets, following some random WoW news-related thing, I just hope it is not yet another “welfare” announcement. And, since this year's BlizzCon was overcrowded with more interesting news, mostly regarding Diablo III and Starcraft 2, World of Warcraft's presence was incredibly scarce.

Thank god for WorldofWar.net and the likes, dedicated sites and personnel who know what questions to ask (and, most importantly, WHEN to ask them. I remember a retarded Hungarian would-be editor who worked at a Romanian magazine, asking the Diablo III crew questions about WoW, at last year's GC).



One of the recent press conferences held at BlizzCon featured a question regarding paid in-game character customization, a feature that has long been promised. Sure, we have the barber shop and all, I can get rid of all my pub hair (and Dwarven chicks can actually shave those damned hairy breasts of theirs), but this was something different. Jay Allen cleverly avoided the question until the end, just like a drunk cat on a hot tin roof, but he had to give in after a while - Yes, folks, we WILL have this thing called paid character customization. While, just like it always happens when it comes to Blizzard, we have absolutely no details about this whatsoever, we can all try and... visualize. I think i'll be getting my hot Night Elven chick a penis, just for the lulz.

“Hello, my name is Unimportant Person, and I represent Bigass Money-hungry Bethesda. I am here today to let you all know that, somehow, without the knowledge of our pure (in)-breed Hell Hounds (which, if I must say, are constantly watching over the company's treasury ), a copy of Fallout 3 was leaked, flushed and obliterated into the hands of criminal gamers that should be raped in the ass in prison. Of course, we had nothing to do with it. No, Sir.”


There we have it. Before launch, Bethesda's attempt at making the Fallout universe politically correct is already beeing played by some keen X360 users all around the world. Good for them. I still wonder how the hell this version got UNINTENTIONALLY (yeah, right) in the hands of some random users, and not the PC version. Because, you know, we are used to pirated PC stuff first.

The guys over at Tom's Games are thoroughly investigating the matter, while officials from Oblivilol's mommy and daddy are trying to figure out if this is the final release code, or some earlier build.

We all know them. We have all heard about them. The menace of social life, the top of the geekdom iceberg, the Laetitia Casta of gaming and the laughing stock for all those cheapscake Romanians who would rather cut down their penises and create illegal (singleplayer) servers all for themselves, than to buy and pay a monthly fee for an original game - they are called MMOs.

And, by God, we have tons of them. We have free MMOs, we have expensive MMOs, we have cute MMOs, we have violent MMOs, we have porn MMOs, hell, we even have that thing called Age of Conan, trying to prove for sometime now (and failing) that it is not a pile of crap. Yah, we have them all.

In the recent light of patch 1.02, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (which I have bought and played up until level 2, alt-tabbing to my Sunwell raid after that), seems to be doing pretty good so far, just weeks after release. Impressive. The ladies at Mythic have just announced that their little baby hit 750,000 registered users, all mad fighters for law, justice, Waaargh, and various other Warhammer related shit. Like candies.



This game holds surprisingly good so far, with solid core gameplay, good RvR arousement and (early) ejaculation, and while we await for the much promised (and not released at the start) content, we'll just have to take a look at Wrath of the Lich King and Mines of Moria, the new expansions for the other two MMOs out there. And for the awesomeness of Age of Singleplayerconan, lol.

1UP scoop.

Now that Fallout 3 is Gold and ready to ship into stores soon, the dearly beloved folks at Bethesda decided to let us know what to expect, when it comes to hungry system resource management. So, if you are still childishly thinking this game will be any good, or, at least, that it will keep a minor portion of the REAL Fallout... touch, then feel free to admire its requirements, for the PC Version.

 (...)

 Continue reading 'Fallout 3 System Requirements'...

An official press release just came out recently, stamping a North American and European release date for Mines of Moria, the (almost) awaited expansion pack for Lord of the Rings Online. Tolkien fans from all over the world will be able to bask in awe, as the game comes with new additions, items, things, a texture of two, all of which can be admired while players will try to retake Khazad-dûm from the minions of Saruman.



Even more, for the European preorders, the game comes with exclusive bonus items AND a lifetime membership for only 149.99 EUROS. I wish other MMOs would take on the same marketing strategy, but alas, other MMOs make enough money just the way things are right now. The expansion is set to launch on November 18.