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Blizzard Entertainment recently released a new update for its popular MMORPG, World of Warcraft. In addition to the usual bug fixes, balance changes, and content additions the 3.0.8 patch introduces the promised ability to create Death Knights on any realm after you reach level 55.

Some of the updates in the latest version:

• Bonus Armor: The mechanics for items with bonus armor on them has changed (any cloth, leather, mail, or plate items with extra armor, or any other items with any armor). Bonus armor beyond the base armor of an item will no longer be multiplied by any talents or by the bonuses of Bear Form, Dire Bear Form, or Frost Presence.
• Racial restrictions on mounts have now been lifted. Night Elves on mechanostriders? Tauren on raptors? You’re not seeing things.
• Racial Resistances: These can now be mitigated against by gaining additional chance to hit.
• Tapping: All player spells which cause a creature to become aggressive to you will now also immediately cause the creature to be tapped.

World Of Warcraft Patch Notes

Blizzard Entertainment

World of Warcraft

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Inside Mac Games has posted a review of the hidden object game Rome: Curse of the Necklace from Big Fish Games. A part of the popular Travelogue 360 series of games, players will be searching highly detailed panoramas of various real-world locations in and around Rome, Italy for various objects to solve the mystery. Here's an excerpt from the review:

Each “level” or section of the game consists of two points of interest to search, a trip to the Olde Emporium to trade those special items you locate for information about the necklace, and an end of section mini-game. The trip to the Olde Emporium is pretty basic. You are presented with an image of a desk of objects and must locate one or more objects you are going to trade for. Generally these are a note, post card, or letter. Once you find the object, you can swap for and read it, building on the story. The story is a minor one, but it’s interesting and gives the player something to look forward to when completing a section.

IMG Review: Rome: Curse of the Necklace

Travelogue: 360 - Rome

Big Fish Games

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Gamepyre recently posted a new review of Soldak Entertainment's single player RPG, Depths of Peril. In the game players take the role of a faction leader protecting the barbarian city, Jorvik. To succeed they must complete quests while competing with rival factions to determine who will rule the city. Gamepyre gave the game a score of 80 out of 100.

While Depths of Peril is a single-player game, the ability to add companions to your covenant is a big bonus. There are two way to get a follower. The first and most common way to do it is by solving a quest. The guy (or gal) who considers joining your covenant has some task for you to do. But here's the complicated part. The other covenants are also competing for that character, so the first covenant to solve the quests gets to add that particular member to their tribe. This is where Depths of Peril is different from all other RPGs that I've seen. Not only do you have to solve quests, but you have to solve them before anyone else does; this adds almost an RTS (real-time-strategy) feel to the game (and I like it; it keeps me on my toes). The 2nd way to add a member to your covenant is by stumbling across them in the wilderness. If they happen to be an NPC willing to join a covenant, the first covenant to discover them gets to keep them.

Being the head of a household is not easy; especially when other houses are one step away from raiding, pillaging and trying to end your game. This is what makes Depths of Peril so much fun to play. You really have to learn to manage your funds well. Do you spend all your cash on that top-notch gear for yourself, or do you hire guards to protect your covenant and your belongings? Each choice you make alters the outcome of the game. Another really great feature of Depths of Peril is the ability to keep your character even if you change games. Lets say that you've made some bad choices when it comes to your covenant and you know you're losing the game. Well, all the hours put forth in that character do not go to waste. You can start a brand new game with the same character that you've spent all this time leveling. That's actually what I'm doing right now in my game. I'm focusing on gearing up my character with the best stuff that I can find and when my covenant ends up burning, I'll just start a new game. Fighting other covenants, while fun, it is not the only interaction possible. You can "bribe" other covenants to like you by giving them gifts, you can engage in trade and you can even form alliances. One sure way to lose the game quickly is to make enemies on all fronts. Timing is everything.

Gamepyre: Depths Of Peril Review

Soldak Entertainment

Depths of Peril

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Sports Interactive studio director Miles Jacobson recently spoke with VideoGamer.com about the problem of game piracy. In the interview Jacobson discussed the impact on the industry in general and SI's experience with piracy of titles in the Football Manager series.

"I don't know whether there is a proper cure for piracy without a change in society, to be honest. There needs to be some kind of copy protection in your product otherwise retail aren't going to stock your product, so we do have to take some measures. We will investigate all avenues open to us once again for next year to see what the best solution is. What we believed we had this year was something that was going to be better for the consumer compared to the system where you had to keep the disc in the drive, which you don't have to do with our system, and be completely unobtrusive.

"I don't think it will ever be fixed and it is a shame because the price of games would go down if the issue was fixed and we'd be able to have more people working on the titles."

When asked about the 90 per cent piracy rate that Beautiful Game Studios has confirmed rival product Championship Manager suffers, Jacobson replied: "It sounds about right to me. To put it into perspective, there was a key code that was leaked on a Russian piracy site, as being a key code that they claimed would work with any version of the game. It doesn't work at all. It's been attempted by 338,000 unique people. So, that's just one key code. That's not including people who are playing cracked versions. So 90 per cent could actually be quite low.

"But I don't know what the figures are because we've got no way of tracking it. We don't believe there is a way to track fully exactly how many downloads we have. What we do know is there are countries out there where there are 30,000 members signed up and active on a local language forum and we sell 2,000 copies in that country to date. So, that 90 per cent level could be a low figure. I could pick a figure out of my arse but it wouldn't really do anyone any good. But piracy is incredibly bad!"

VideoGamer.com: Sports Interactive Piracy Interview

Football Manager

SI

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Rock, Paper, Shotgun recently published a new interview with independent game developer Edmund McMillen. known for his work on unique game titles such as Gish and Meat Boy. Topics discussed in the interview range from McMillen's upcoming projects, progress on Gish 2, and his views on the judging process for the Independent Game Festival.

So what’s new in Gish 2? Are we in for major changes or a more traditional sequel?
Nothing is new in Gish 2 right now. We put Gish 2 on hold about 2 months ago to start on our next big release, No Quarter. We ran into a few walls in Gish 2, mostly due to the amount of time it would take to finish it. So we decided to start on a game we’d be inspired by making and something we could finish in about 6 months and bring to console.

Presumably Gish 2 will be a commercial offering like the first game. Is it these games that pay the bills so you can create your more esoteric projects?
It’s games like Gish 2 and No Quarter that will hopefully give me my big break, but I’m able to make a living off my more experimental flash work. Regardless of my income I’ll always prototype my ideas in flash because it’s easier to do and I can make ok money out of it. I can also gauge how people respond to an idea, like Meat Boy for instance. It’s by far my more popular flash game of all time, and now Tommy Refenes and I are working on a console worthy full version we hope to bring to Wii Ware later this year.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun: McMillen's Myriad Marvels

ChronicLogic

Gish

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