[LOTRO] A walk in Enedwaith, with farmyard animals

So the long awaited F2P update arrived in LOTRO EU last week, and with it the new high level zone and epic book story associated with Enedwaith (a new zone to the south of Eregion). Welcome to anyone who is trying the game for the first time. Have fun, it’s a beautifully wrought world. This [...]

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Gaming News: Red Shirt Guy immortalised in WoW, Kinect Launches, EA halves losses, Lego Universe, Genetic Algorithms beat SC2

EA held an investor call this week and although I have summarised the main points of note below, it is instructive as to how most mainstream news blogs deal with new stories. A single investor call from the CEO was chopped up and served as multiple different news stories, one point in each. But they’re [...]

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Crafting in SWTOR, and help rename the Jedi Wizard

Lots of cool information about Star Wars: The Old Republic today this week from Bioware. Darth Hater reports on news about crafting and PvP battlegrounds in the upcoming MMO. The crafting sounds very cool and interesting and different. You’ll be able to send your companions out to gather materials, craft items or engage in missions [...]

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In which I suffer class preference angst

Since the last patch I have now had some more time to play a few of my alts and there have been just a few cases where I’m now weighing up my preference order (ie. which classes I like most). This has been most striking to me with paladins. It’s a class I never really [...]

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All aboard the monetization train – pay for levels, ads in games

Just when you thought it was safe to step out of your computer room, a couple more companies are experimenting with additional ways to get their paws on your hard earned moolah. Buying levels in WAR Arkenor covers the new Warhammer Online account entitlement purchasing service –- a cash shop by any other name. As [...]

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Dragon Age: Facebook

It was only a matter of time. In the run up to Dragon Age II, a new themed Facebook game called Dragon Age: Legends is being launched by Bioware. And you can sign up to the beta today. It’s going to introduce us to the region of the Free Marches, the primary setting for Dragon [...]

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It’s just a sausage fest

Apparently it’s British Sausage week this week (didn’t actually realise it was sponsored by pork marketers until I researched this post, guess I’m being subversive by eating beef sausages then!). So it seemed somehow appropriate that when I logged into LOTRO last night after the F2P update had gone live, one of the many new [...]

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On the purpose of official forums

The main purpose of official forums is not for players to communicate with developers. It is for players to communicate with each other, and for developers to broadcast messages to players (eg. patch notes.) I think forum goers would be much happier overall if more people realised this. And if marketing departments via community managers [...]

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Explosives vs Dressing Up

Halloween in the UK is often presented as the grey squirrel of festivals – imported from the US and busy trying (and succeeding) to kill off our more adorable native festival of Guy Fawkes Day. Because what could be more adorable and kid-friendly than burning 400 year old political dissidents in effigy and letting off [...]

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