Dragons, werewolves and giant turtles battle in new Warlock: Master of the Arcane trailer
I don’t know about you, but I’d like to believe wizards can do battle without giant shelled animals bred for war and just choose to do so because they are well aware of how awesome they are. This exclusive new trailer for Warlock: Master of the Arcane—an upcoming turn-based strategy game with hexes, city management and wonderful warlock spells—shows some of the large-scale battles that’ll be happening in the world of Ardania when the game releases next Tuesday.
The question remains, however: what other giant animals should warlocks throw at each other?
Carbine announces that WildStar will support addons and promises they’ll be easy to build
Each week, the developers of Wildstar provide a glimpse into their process as they build the upcoming steampunk, sci-fi MMO that emphasizes multiple playstyles. This week, they announced that the game will fully support player-created addons. This is great news and a welcome change from the depressing trend of recent MMOs, like The Old Republic, Tera and DC Universe Online, not letting players build custom mods for their interface.
Cheat death in Tera with Crystals
I died at the tiny little hands of adorable pixies in Fey Forest. It only happened once, but in an MMO where your skill, not gear, is the biggest determinate between victory and defeat, every death is an embarrassment. Even worse, I was livestreaming at the time so literally ones of people saw it happen.
But one man stood among the crowd of mockers and offered me the best advice I’ve received since jumping into Tera: go buy Crystals for your gear. Those six words have redeemed my leveling speed; allow me to pass on this sage wisdom to you.
League of Legends World Championships will be worth record-breaking $3 million
You’ve probably heard of a little game called League of Legends by now. 11.5 million people play it every month, and it’s one of the hottest games in professional circles right now. Riot Games is adding fuel to the esport fire this week, with the addition of the new spectator mode that went live this morning and the announcement that this season’s World Championships will offer the largest prize in esports history, three million dollars.
Nowhere is safe in EVE Online as Goonswarm suicide-bombs galactic trade hub
Jita is the most populated system in the entire galaxy of EVE Online. It is far from the dangers of null sec, an incredibly safe zone guarded by a deadly NPC police force with impeccable response time. Hundreds of billions of ISK move between players every day as the rich traders and industrial overlords manufacture the goods that fuel the entire game and trade them on the well-protected markets in Jita, the heart of the Empire.
That was before last night. Today, Jita is a chaotic mess, trapped in the middle of an anarchistic suicide bombardment months in the making. We talk to members of Goonswarm, the group behind the attack that’s continuing all weekend, to try to find out what the crazy players of EVE Online are up to this time.
League of Legends spectator mode revamp adds time controls and AI-driven camera
There’s already a spectator mode in League of Legends, but it’s pretty bare bones and not many people use it currently. But all that’s about to change with the official release of spectator mode, coming in the next patch, that adds a ton of new features and awesome ways to watch your buddies dominate in the Fields of Justice.
Kid-friendly MMO Pirate101 announced by makers of Wizard101
Gamer daddies and mommas have had a longtime ally in KingsIsle, the dev studio behind Wizard101, which has been one of the most entertaining kid-friendly MMOs out there for several years. Just yesterday the studio announced their next offering, Pirate101, which trades in the card-game combat of Wizards for turn-based strategy and throws the whole thing in a pirate world where galleons fly among the stars.
Should you join League of Legends’ new referral program, or stay in the old one?
“Go big or go home” is a motto that’s doomed many a board game night for me. I want the big prize or nothing at all—it is my curse. But those more eager for mid-tier rewards are going to be excited about League of Legends new referral program, which removes the top-tier real-life rewards of the original program, but makes it significantly to get the in-game perks. Transitioning to the new referral program is optional, but permanent, so take a careful look at what each offers before you decide.
Cryptic announces that hackers stole account info in 2010
Cryptic, the dev studio behind Champions Online, Star Trek Online and the upcoming MMO Neverwinter, has just released a notice that some of their servers that contain users’ personal information were hacked in 2010 and that the encrypted data had been compromised. But the good news is that if you follow good internet practice and have changed your passwords sometime in the last two years, you probably don’t have to be worried by the bleak letter that just appeared on Cryptic’s website, or the cautionary email you may have just received.
DC Universe Online maps show you where to find everything
A while back, an OCD DCUO player put together a detailed map of the game’s main hub for heroes, The Watchtower. Today, another industrious fan took it three steps further by building detailed interactive maps for all of DCUO’s two major cities, Gotham and Metropolis, inside of Google Maps. And now he’s in the process of adding icons to help you locate everything you could possibly want to find in the urban sprawl.
Champion Roundtable: Hecarim, The Shadow of War
Josh, Lucas and Hollander dive for cover as the wicked horseman Hecarim charges into League of Legends this week with ghostly scythe and debatable usefulness. See what we think of this new high-mobility, high-damage champion in this week’s Champion Roundtable.
As always, you can download League of Legends for free on the game’s official site. If you do, add me (summoner name: Nereus) as a friend and we’ll get some games in!
TERA guild PvP preview
TERA’s open beta came to close Sunday night, but the early access period for everyone that pre-purchased the action-focused MMORPG starts up this weekend. We’ll be livestreaming a lot of our review process and will be making frequent updates on the site as we play through the game for review to let you know what we think as we go. In the meantime, here’s a preview of the good times we had in open world PvP on the dev servers.
Guild Wars 2 Asura preview: Experimental science and our exclusive hands-on impressions
Guild Wars’ pint-size Asura are as crazy as they are smart—and that’s saying a lot, because they’re really, really smart. Their homeland may not be on the frontlines of battle in Guild Wars 2, like the Charr and Human starting areas, but there’s more than enough chaos happening in the laboratories and neighborhoods near Rata Sum, their giant capital city. I was recently allowed to be the first person outside ArenaNet to play through these tiny mad scientists’ starting area on the games development servers and I had an absolute blast (both figuratively and literally). Here are 11 awesome things I did on my way to level 10 on my Asura Engineer.
Lord of the Rings Online is five years old today, so we’re giving you free stuff
Update: Winners have been selected and contacted via email. If they do not provide the necessary information to receive their prizes within 24 hours, we’ll randomly select new winners.
The winners are:
Sheena Desai (Lifetime account)
Jacqueline Walker (Mithril Edition)
Robin Preston (5K Turbine points)
Jumpgate devs launch Kickstarter campaign for new free-flying space-combat MMO
There are not enough quality space-combat games, and hardly any of the few that do exist attempt to take it grand in an MMO. The Old Republic did little more than tease my appetite for shooting amongst the stars, and the cancellation of Jumpgate Evolution a year ago left the situation feeling hopeless. But, like we’ve seen happen to so many niche genres lately, a Kickstarter campaign has arrived to revive the space-combat MMO.
