GamerNode: Latest PC News

NCSoft to give Aion major update every year

The newest MMORPG to come from publisher NCSoft, Aion, is going to be getting "at least" one major content update every year. This according to an interview brand manager Christian-Peter Heimbach conducted with VG247.

"There will be at least one major update a year," said Heimbach. "You know this from our previous titles. We're currently adjusting on how we're going to make these available, but there will be free content updates for all players, and we're looking then at how big the major updates will be."

The game has already gathered over 400,000 pre-orders and will go live in the US tomorrow and Friday in Europe.

[VG247]

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BioWare and LucasArts unsure of Old Republic payme...

One of the most highly anticipated games currently in developement, BioWare and LucasArts' Star Wars: The Old Republic, is still without a release date. It's also missing something else: a payment method.

LucasArts and BioWare are weighing a list of options, but they have yet to decide which they will use. These options range from subscritpions to micro-transactions, and the final method could also vary based on where in the world a player is playing.

"We're considering it all, absolutely," said LucasArts president Darrell Rodriguez. "You start looking at how different communities, territories such as Asia, actually play games, and we start to consider it all -- especially if we want it to be a worldwide phenomenon."

It seems interested gamers will have to be patient to find out just how th...

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Now you can change your WoW Faction for $30

Blizzard opened up the new World of Warcraft Faction Change service today, allowing players of the world's most popular MMORPG to change any character's faction for a fee of $30, provided the character has reached at least level 10.

Players who make use of the service will be allowed to choose any race that is available for their selected class, fully customizing the new character's name and appearance. Old names will remain unavailable to the WoW masses for a period of 90 days. All non-faction-specific mounts, equipment, achievements, and titles will remain unchanged after making the switch; those that are faction-specific will be replaced with "cross-faction equivalents." Non-combat pets and characters' experience points will be completely unaffected.

The Faction Change option can be foun...

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Empire: Total War Update 1.4 coming in September

Creative Assembly and Sega have announced that Empire: Total War will be updated to version 1.4 in late September. The update will focus on improving enemy artificial intelligence, with an overhaul to both the campaign and battle AI, as well as rebalanced sieges and naval battles.

Said Creative Assembly creative director Mike Simpson, "This update will please all Empire: Total War players as we've continuously listened to the feedback received via our forums. The framework has been laid down for all the exciting content that will come to the series in the future, and that's thanks to all the players of Empire: Total War."

A more complete list of fixes in the 1.4 update follows:

- Fix for auto unlimbering causing the attack order to terminate prematurely resulting in an inability to stop the ...

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BioWare reveals Sith Warrior for The Old Republic

It shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone who knows that Star Wars: The Old Republic exists, but LucasArts and BioWare revealed the Sith Warrior as their newest playable class in the highly anticipated MMO. The lightsaber-wielding, hatred-filled force adept has its own profile page on The Old Republic website with details and hints on how the Sith will act and play in the game.

"Though the lightsaber is the Warrior's primary method of attack, he also uses his dark command of the Force to paralyze, terrify, and kill," says the site. "Protected by heavy armor and his powers of intimidation, the Warrior wades into the thick of the fight and unleashes pure hatred and fury to eliminate all who would stand against him."

The profile also mentions how the Sith Empire is run in the game, and that s...

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm scheduled for 2010

In one of the biggest stories to come out of this year's BlizzCon, Mike Morhaime has revealed that World of Warcraft's next expansion, Cataclysm, is scheduled to be released sometime in 2010. The news came during a DirecTV interview with the Blizzard CEO, however no further details regarding the release were given.

Of course a 365-day release window is a little too wide to get excited about -- projections such as these represent only general plans for publishers to come to market with their products -- but at the very least it gives eager WoW fans a little more to look forward to for the coming year.

GamerNode will have more info as it becomes available.

[WoW.com]

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Developers release Zeno Clash SDK

Who doesn't love Valve's Source engine? Not only is it the platform for a multitude of great games, but it also seems to encourage developers to release the source code for nearly everything that make use of it.

Such is the case with the strange and original Zeno Clash; ACE Team yesterday released the SDK for the general public to tinker with. Players who download the files from the Zeno Clash Wiki will be able to create custom levels and mods for the game. Documentation is also available on the wiki.

[ACE Team]

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Blizzard trademarks "Cataclysm"

Yesterday Blizzard applied for a new trademark for the name "Cataclysm." The trademark would cover everything from online games to "paper-based products." Many have speculated that this indicates the name, or codename, of Blizzard's upcoming, uber secretive, next-gen MMO.

While Blizzard currently has a whole slew of unannounced titles coming in the future, I can't help but think that this is actually the name for Blizzard's next WoW expansion. Many people claim that the next expansion will be in the "maelstrom" region of Azeroth. For those of you who are not familiar with Azeroth, the Maelstrom is the big spinning thingy right in the center of the map. 

The Maelstrom was refered to as the "Great Cataclysm" in the Warcraft books, and it just makes sense to me that this would be the direction...

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Official Black Mesa trailer

If you don't know about Black Mesa: Source (now just Black Mesa), now's the time to learn. BMS, as it's been fondly referred to by its followers, is a total conversion mod for Half-Life 2 that aims to recreate the original Half-Life using the Source engine. Black Mesa's website has exploded due to the high volume of traffic this video has already generated, and for good reason; it looks amazing.

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World of Goo has 90% piracy rate

While we're on the subject of piracy (and using PotC-inspired images), a sad fact has come out today: 90% of the people playing the wonderful World of Goo have pirated it.

It's easy to laugh at piracy when people pirate games using DRM or published by companies like EA, but when the game being pirated is the creation of an indie 2-man studio running out of the developers' own pockets... Well, let's just say it's very sad news. 

According to 2D Boy founder Ron Carmel, it's been a little disconcerning to see the number of people pirating the game, but the company is not entirely crushed by it. "We're doing ok, though," he said. "We're getting good sales through WiiWare, Steam, and our website. Not going bankrupt just yet!" A few people have emailed or commented on the 2D Boy site that they in...

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Steam Cloud ready to launch with L4D demo

Steam just seems to get better and better every day. Tomorrow will see the launch of Steam Cloud, a group of tools that are set to make gaming even easier on Steam.

Steam Cloud saves things like configuration settings, key mappings, difficulty settings and even save games, and then ties them to your Steam account so that where ever you log in, your settings and saves will follow you.

"For some time now, Steam has allowed gamers to log on from any computer in the world and access their applications. This also makes it easy to upgrade a PC without worrying about losing your games," said Gabe Newell, president and co-founder of Valve. "Steam Cloud is a natural extension of the portability Steam affords gamers and developers, and we intend to expand its feature set as it is used in Left 4 Dead ...

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Waagh! What is it good for and what is it not so g...

It's been nearly a whole year since I last posted any of my opinions here at GamerNode. I've come back from a great deal of time off from writing, and as such I might be a tad rusty...so bare with me. I thought It would be a cool to take a look at Warhammer: Online and say what I believe the game has going for it and against it.

So let's start with what the game has going for it.

New-ness: Yes that's right, it has new-ness! Warhammer: Online is a breath of fresh air in the stale lungs of the MMO industry. Anything that looks new to gamers, looks cool, and seems to have some changes made to the way we play MMOs, is surely to have a crowd waiting outside of Gamestop to buy the game.

Features: From public quests, to the detailed tome of knowledge, you've got features upon features of cool th...

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Spore is on Time's Best Inventions of 2008 list

Most gamers have been touched by the concepts of super game designer Will Wright, either directly or indirectly. We've played his games (The Sims) or have played games that were influenced by his ideas.

Evidently, the effect of his work has transcended beyond the gaming world; Time magazine says that one of his recent creations, Spore, has secured a spot in its "List of Best Inventions for 2008."

We'll let Time speak for itself:

"It's blasphemy, brilliance or both to take the entire evolution of a species - from a single-celled animalcule in a drop of water to a space-faring, galaxy-exploring sentient being - and turn it into a video game.

"But that's exactly what Will Wright has done. Wright is the man who created The Sims, a game about everyday life in suburbia, but apparently he found th...

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Hellgate: London closing gates forever in Feb '09

There is sad news for fans of the action shooter Hellgate: London as Namco Bandai has announced that it will be shutting down the servers for the game next year, February 2009.

The action by Namco Bandai isn't totally unexpected as Flagship Studios, the developers for the title, sunk in July of this year due to problems at the company. An anonymous former employee at Flagship commented in a forum post on Something Awful that:

"Flagship bit off way more than they could chew and made a lot of development and structural mistakes in how they went about things. They had a lot of big dreamers on staff, but not enough nitty-gritty people who knew how to get poo poo done. It sucks, but that's life I guess."

Many of the staff at Flagship Studios jumped ship and formed their own game company -- Runic G...

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Old school PC gaming site hopes to make it big

With the global economy going through one of the most profound downturns in recent memory, some gamers are looking for ways to save money on games due to the financial crunch.

For the PC crowd, a new online game service, Good Old Games, is trying to fill this need. The site is specializing in classic PC titles such as Earthworm Jim, Gothic, the original Fallout, Freespace, and others.

The games range in price from $6-$10 a pop and are completely DRM free. GOG.com also furnishes nice little community components for its users too.

Tom Ohle, a rep from GOG said, "Our goal here is really just to build up the best collection of classic PC games and to build up a great community around that. That's our focus for now."

The GOG community is made up of old school PC game fans and people who missed ou...

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Woman kills ex Maple Story husband, gets arrested

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Especially if that woman is your virtual ex-wife.

In Tokyo, a 43-year-old woman was so angry over a sudden divorce from her Maple Story hubby that she logged on to his account and deleted him in cold, virtual blood. "I was suddenly divorced, without a word of warning. That made me so angry," the official quoted her as telling investigators and admitting the allegations.

When the 33-year-old office worker realized his avatar had been murdered in cold blood, he contacted the authorities, who then arrested the woman on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data. If convicted, she could face up to five years in prison, or a fine of $5,000.

So for those millions still playing Maple Story who are grinding to complete your ...

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Giant "uh oh." There's no CD key for NBA 2K9

There are certain things in life that go together: peanut butter and jelly, Smith and Wesson, PC games and CD keys. But in the case of 2K Sports' NBA 2K9 for the PC, they left out the CD key. What happens when that happens? Well, for one thing, you can't install the game.

Gamers were complaining on the 2K Sports forum bemoaning the fact that their freshly purchased copies of NBA 2K9 had no CD keys to be found.

Nccomicfan, on the 2K forums stated:

"I think as more people get their copies thru the day this is going to get much much worse...could the entire US release have been packaged without CD keys?"

2K Sports wrote back to one of the many customers who called in the problem and said:

Hello, I apologize for the confusion in the matter, it appears that 2K Sports is aware of this issue and worki...

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Star Wars: The Old Republic, the new MMO

Rumors have circulated this year about BioWare and LucasArts collaborating on a joint project to produce a new Star Wars MMO. It wasn't a matter of if it would happen as much as when it would happen. Today, the official word has come in; the game is called Star Wars: The Old Republic.

The game's setting will take place about 300 years after the events of the Knights of the Old Republic. The MMO will give players the option to join the Old Republic or fight on the side of the Sith Empire.

Ray Muzyka, head of BioWare commented:

"Traditionally, massively multiplayer online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars - combat, exploration and character progression. In Star Wars: The Old Republic, we're fusing BioWare's heritage of critically-acclaimed storytelling with the amazing pedigre...

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"Piracy of games won't kill the PC game industry"

The usual "wisdom" from PC game developers is that piracy hurts and if not controlled or effectively eliminated, it will lead to the death of PCs and PC games. However, Randy Stude, president of the PC Gaming Alliance, disagrees with this thinking.

Stude believes that the issue of piracy is overblown.

"The [online game] revenues being generated [in China and Korea] just blow the mind. You're talking almost 5 billion dollars. Almost half the world's PC software revenues are coming from marketplaces that have almost no retail at all...

"You look at a game like Spore... despite the fact it's pirated out there on torrent networks, its selling great by any standard... it sort of bucks the notion that all games are going to be destroyed because of piracy. That's not the case... "I'm not saying that...

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First Natural Selection 2 footage

I'm sure many of you have played the original Natural Selection mod. If you have and you've been looking forward to the upcoming NS2, good news: the first video of NS2 in action has been released in the form of their fifth videocast. Showcasing the dynamic lighting, I have to say this video has me more than a bit excited.

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