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Blizzard Entertainment has released the third and final chapter of a short story set in the World of Warcraft universe. The Curse of Ner'zhul tells the tale of events leading up to those in the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack.

All of Lordaeron rejoiced at Prince Arthas' triumphant return from Northrend, but their elation was not to last. Not long after Arthas knelt before King Terenas, the former paladin thrust Frostmourne into his father's heart. At the Lich King's command, the fallen prince went on to murder his mentor, Uther the Lightbringer, and claim Kel'Thuzad's remains. When Arthas had finished, Capital City, formerly one of humanity's crown jewels, had been reduced to a silent wasteland of death and despair.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

WoW: The Curse of Ner'zhul Chapter 3

Independent game and software developer, Midori, has announced the release of a new kid friendly freeware title called Beauty Salon. Made with the PTK game engine Beauty Salon is available for Mac OS X as well as for Windows.

Beauty Salon is a dress up game that lets kids experiment with changing hair styles and hair color, eye color and skin color. It takes inspiration from Japanese Manga and American cartoon styles and results in a colorful and simple dress up activity for children.

Throw away icky cosmetics expecially those made from unnatural, toxic substances, and instead, play with this fun manga style dress up game. Feel free to change your hair style or color to reflect your mood today, or change your eyes to blue or brown or something else to add some color to your life. You can even change your skin color to match your hair!

Beauty Salon

Midori

Mosquito Ops, a new freeware 3D OpenGL game, has been released for Mac OS X (10.4+) and Windows. In the game players take the role of a mosquito and must complete various objectives such as sucking blood or finding lost mosquito eggs. The game was created over the course of 12 weeks by Oliver Hörbinger and Clemens Mautner Markhof as part of a university course.

Before taking this university class, we were warned, to develop cross platform. In the end it required only additionally 15 - 20 hours of programming and figuring the differences out. It's not that difficult, you only have to take care about the little-big endian issues, which need to be solved whenever you are handling byte data like 3D models, and images. Just swap the data, according to your system architecture, and that's it. All used external libs come platform independent, which was also a big help and saved us a lot of hassle. As trade off you can't use some nifty OS features, like Cocoa GUI(MacOS X), but for a 3D game that's probably not a big issue.

Mosquito Ops

Macworld Game Room: Mosquito Ops Debuts

GameDaily BIZ has posted a new article from New York Times bestselling fantasy author R.A. Salvatore. The article offers the author's insights into how advances in technology, like the internet, have changed the way people relate to storytelling. Salvatore asserts that games will continue to cement their place next to books, television, and movies as a powerful storytelling medium.

We've seen Ultima, Everquest, EQII, Asheron's Call, ACII, Dark Age of Camelot, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Lord of the Rings Online and so many others, culminating, at this time, with the amazing success of World of Warcraft. But we're just beginning! The industry, the art form (and yes, Roger Ebert, it will become an art form), is in its infancy. I'm sure other designers feel as I do: that I'm on the front edge of this gigantic wave that's going to wash over the world and profoundly change the way we get our entertainment. As the computing power gets stronger and bandwidth goes super-speed, I wonder if people will, instead of watching soap operas, create an avatar and live in one. Follow that logic for a while and you'll see that the implications regarding societal ethics and mores is stunning. If a woman creates a soap opera character and has an affair in-game, is she cheating on her husband? Is it wrong to kill someone else's avatar in a game? What about breaking into someone else's virtual home and stealing?

So many questions are opened, with answers that will evolve over the course of decades, no doubt.

But let's get back to the here and now. I knew my job as a novelist, as I said before. I invite you the reader to adventure along with my characters on some epic quest. In a video game such as the one I'm now working on with 38 Studios, that job changes profoundly, because the most important character in this adventure will be, has to be, the one you, the player, creates. You don't want me or any other author writing your adventure for you; you want to "write" it yourself, through your adventuring. My job, the designer's job, then, is to make a world both fantastical and believable, a world that makes sense. Think of it like weaving a gigantic carpet, and I maintain that the deeper the threads – the history of the world, of the races, their relationships and conflicts – the more consistent and enjoyable your journey will be.

Follow the link below to read the rest of the article.

GameDailybiz: R.A. Salvatore Speaks About The New Fantasy

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