I’ve often said that when Black Mage becomes the voice of reason, the rest of us are doomed. Every day it seems another financial institution is predicting how much The Old Republic cost to develop, has sold, and expects to retain in subscribers, which Bioware has not officially released, and the numbers are getting more ridiculous with each passing story. I’m still securing Fighter as a write-in analyst for a few of our website brethren.
New episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
I’ve often said that when Black Mage becomes the voice of reason, the rest of us are doomed. Every day it seems another financial institution is predicting how much The Old Republic cost to develop, has sold, and expects to retain in subscribers, which Bioware has not officially released, and the numbers are getting more ridiculous with each passing story. I’m still securing Fighter as a write-in analyst for a few of our website brethren.
New episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Good news, everyone! After a long period of awaiting information from En Masse Entertainment, the publisher has finally announced today that TERA will launch in North America on May 1st this year. Players will be able to order a standard and collector’s edition from various retailers, as well as no doubt a digital version on Steam and other outlets.
The Exiled Realm of Arborea, or TERA for short, is an action MMO based on the Unreal 3 engine, that was released in June of last year in Korea. The servers in Korea merged following reports that the game was not meeting financial expectations, a response by players to a noted lack of end-game content and an overwhelming presence of bots.
More on TERA as it appears.
(Source: TERA website)
Now that the crew is all together, I’ve been trying to give them all something to do. Red Mage is in charge of the Falling Out comic, making sure that it is ready on time, Black Mage is working sprite art, and White Mage is playing support class. Naturally.
New episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
[UPDATE] THQ has given an official statement. Turns out Kevin Dent was full of it.
THQ has not cancelled its 2014 line-up, and has not made any decisions regarding the planned MMO.
[ORIGINAL] It is a sad day for fans hopeful that Warhammer 40k: Dark Millenium Online could be what Warhammer Online was not. According to Kevin Dent, industry veteran, THQ has canned the upcoming MMO. The cancellation comes alongside information that THQ has wiped all of its 2014 release titles off of the table, and is returning its licenses on all applicable intellectual properties associated with those projects. Dent’s tweet:
“Apparently, The Game Workshops MMO has been cancelled by THQ”
Granted, there has been no official announcement by THQ that the Warhammer 40k MMO is cancelled, so there is still hope. Hopefully. More on this story as it appears.
Play Age of Conan now my lord, free forever. Instead of going into my usual rant about boobs and promoting negative stereotypes about the demographic, I’ll let the search results speak for themselves:
Age of Conan Naked: 79
Age of Coman Women: 75
Conan Nude: 50
Age of Conan Nude: 20
This week’s articles are dedicated to Shamus, a Great Dane belonging to my family, who passed away this weekend. Shamus was a rescue dog and died peacefully in his sleep overnight. We believe that he was around nine years old, although his true age is uncertain, and while he was only in the care of my mother for two weeks, they were two weeks of being pampered and spoiled.
He will be missed.
A team of Greek developers have combined their powers in order to create a video game for Amnesty International. The aim of the game is to bring awareness to Amnesty International’s push to end the death penalty in the countries where it still exists. Players take the role of an AI advocate in several countries that still push the death penalty, including the United States, China, and Iran. The player must open an Amnesty International office and raise public support for banning the death penalty.
You may recognize a few of the names on the group roster: Tasos Flambouras, Irene Zeleskou, and Allan Stellakis from the Darkfall developer Aventurine. Well, you probably recognize Tasos Flambouras anyway.
“The hardest part was to find an idea that could become a game but not betray the issue. We had seen something developed in the past by a French company for Amnesty International — it showed people being shot by an execution squad and the player had to stop the bullet with his hand. We thought this gave the entirely wrong message — the issue is not as simple as stopping the bullets. We needed an idea that worked for an issue that is so depressing and dire, but that was also fun to play. It also needed to put across Amnesty International’s message without portraying the inmates as angels — they are scum and they’ve committed crimes, but there are other reasons why they shouldn’t be executed.”
-Tasos Flambouras
Amnesty: The Game is available to play from the group’s website, linked below.
(Source: Game Politics)
(More: Amnesty: The Game)
In the past, I’ve discussed the ongoing “fight” between Turbine and Cryptic Studios over how Cryptic’s upcoming Neverwinter MMO will directly compete with Turbine’s Dungeons and Dragons Online. After an undisclosed settlement with Turbine, Cryptic made it clear as day that Neverwinter is not an MMO, and never will be an MMO. That being said, when Perfect World Entertainment purchased Cryptic, the developer did a flip and announced that the game would be a full open world MMO.
According to DDO Cast, Turbine has been busy purchasing domain names relating to Dungeons and Dragons, as well as Forgotten Realms. The optimist in me wants to believe that Turbine is planning on throwing the first punch by expanding the game into Forgotten Realms territory, and pulling back any customers who might have left for Cryptic’s game. The pessimist in me, however, feels the need to point out that companies buy domain names all the time for a variety of reasons. A selection of domains are below:
ddounderdark.com
ddoforgottenrealms.com
ddo-motu.com
lolthiscoming.com (Lolth is coming, thank you comments.)
But why is this relevant? The Dungeons and Dragons community is fractured (to say the least) when it comes to Eberron and Forgotten Realms, to the point where some won’t even touch Turbine’s MMO because it takes place in the former rather than the latter. In the event that Turbine does launch a Forgotten Realms expansion, it would offer a substantial increase to their potential player base.
(Source: DDO Cast)
Additional Links:
I allowed the group to write up some information about themselves. Never again.
Tune in for new episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
MMO Fallout 