'The Secret World' Video Game Released July 3rd!

‘The Secret World’, the highly anticipated modern-day massively multiplayer online game of myths, legends and conspiracies, draws ever closer to its July 3rd release date. In preparation for launch, Funcom is excited to announce that the fourth and final Beta Weekend – titled ‘The Battle Begins’ – will be made open to all of the more than 1.3 million gamers who have signed up to beta test ‘The Secret World’. Guaranteed access to the final Beta Weekend will also be given to everyone registering via the game’s official website by June 22nd (use the beta sign-up form on the right).

EA to release MMO racer video game 'Need For Speed World' on July 27th

Black Box, an Electronic Arts studio, announced that Need for Speed World, the massively multi-player online action racing game, is available for digital download on July 27 for the PC. Need for Speed World combines the rush of illicit street racing, deep RPG style progression and vehicle customization into an immersive, socially-connected Need for Speed experience. Players can compete against any one of their friends, family or pick from thousands of top ranked players to challenge in intense online battles and police pursuits across 150 miles of sprawling open world.

New World Rally Championship Video Game due for release 08 October

Black Bean Games today announced the final release date for WRC, the only official FIA World Rally Championship video game. The game is being developed by Milestone and will be available in stores on the 8th of October for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.

FIFA World Cup 2010 South Africa New England, Spain, Mexico and Italy team screenshots

FIFA World Cup 2010 South Africa New England, Spain, Mexico and Italy team screenshots

EA release 2010 World Cup South Africa video game with online tournament mode

Now everyone can play in the 2010 FIFA World Cup on the PlayStation 3 computer entertainment system, Xbox 360 videogame and entertainment system, Nintendo Wii, PSP (PlayStation Portable) and mobile in April 2010 in anticipation of the real-world tournament which begins in June.

Video Game Sword of the New World Launches Newest Expansion

GamersFirst has just released Echoes of an Empire, the newest expansion to Sword of the New World:Grando Espada.

World of Zoo - Animal Creator Video Game Demo download

THQ announce the launch of its World of Zoo video game Web site, www.worldofzoo.com, which includes a trial application of the company’s state-of-the-art downloadable Animal Creator tool that will allow players to create and design their very own World of Zoo animals. The Animal Creator program is a new and unique feature available only in World of Zoo, which is scheduled to be released to all major retail outlets for Nintendo Wii home video game system, Nintendo DS, and Windows PC in November 2009.

Using the Animal Creator program, players will be able to create their favorite zoo animals, save them on their hard drive, and share them with their families and friends via e-mail and other social networking or photo sharing sites. Players can also upload their customized animals into the full retail version of the Windows PC game once it is available, place the animals in their exhibits, and interact and play with them. World of Zoo has more than 90 pre-loaded animals in the game, and with the Animal Creator, players can create an endless number of animal species with different names, colors, traits, and personalities.

With real money now at stake, crackdowns on video game cheating gain currency

Some players give themselves the ability to magically see and shoot through walls. Others find a way to fly, making them nearly impossible to defeat.

Cheating like this in video games has a long and even respected tradition. Games have often slyly included ways — intentionally or not — for sophisticated players to hack into the software and then skip levels or take on supernatural powers.

But these days, the subject is getting a more serious look. Unlike older games, today's are networked to be played with strangers over the Internet. And now, real money is at stake. Fantasy games like World of Warcraft and computer environs like Second Life, to name a few, have their own currency or other virtual valuables that can be traded for hard U.S. dollars.

In other words, hacking into a video game to cheat can be a business strategy. And so clamping down on it could be key to maintaining virtual worlds' economies and reputations. Even chip-maker Intel Corp. is suggesting a technology for doing it.

But one huge question is: Can cheating really be stifled?

"What I've always said is: It'll go away the same time crime goes away," said Tony Ray, founder of Even Balance Inc., which makes cheating-detection software called Punkbuster. "There's always somebody trying to get around the rules."

Perhaps, but Gary McGraw and Greg Hoglund, authors of the new book Exploiting Online Games, argue that video game makers could do much more to stop it. McGraw and Hoglund contend that poor software design enables the vast majority of cheats.

Complex games operate partly on central servers run by the game companies and partly on a player's own computer. Essentially, the individual computer reports back to the game on the mouse clicks or trigger pulls performed by the player, and the game registers the appropriate response. That's where cheating hacks often occur: Tell your computer to report 100 trigger pulls for every one actually made, and you've turned a pistol into a machine gun that racks up points much faster.

McGraw and Hoglund offer ideas for how game makers could seal up such holes. And they argue that the entire software industry needs to be watching, since these "massively multiplayer online role-playing games" are at the leading edge of computing.

"The kinds of problems that they are facing right now are direct indications of the kinds of software security problems we can all face in the coming years," McGraw said.

Cheating tools flourish online, catering to insiders conversant in the games' arcane language.

"Take advantage of this programming breakthrough — why waste time grinding with the grunts.... play WoW in GOD MODE!" reads one ad for a $25 downloadable cheat package for World of Warcraft that purports to be "undetectable."

Most online game companies appear resigned to the fact that cheating will occur, so they try to block it by observing game play and looking for suspicious things, like avatars unexpectedly teleporting.

In one incident that could serve as a test case, Linden Lab, creator of the virtual universe Second Life, ejected a Pennsylvania lawyer and confiscated his virtual property after accusing him of cheating its land-auction process. The lawyer is suing Linden Lab in federal court for $8,000 in restitution.



Nexon America Inc. employs a team of workers who actively look for cheating in its games, including KartRider and MapleStory. They apply patches to fix problems as they arise.

"It's a daily battle that ultimately we have to win," said Nexon's director of operations, Min Kim. "It's just the cost of doing business at this point."

"World of Warcraft" creator Blizzard Entertainment deploys a software program called the Warden to detect cheating and ban perpetrators, but wouldn't agree to an interview to talk about it. The Punkbuster software works on many first-person shooters and is still being used in new games, like Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, in which players shoot their way through combat missions.

One problem is that these observer programs are invasive, since they must access the underlying operating system in a player's PC in order to sniff nefarious code. McGraw believes the Warden might even violate California's anti-spyware law.

Sometimes, there appears to be financial incentive for the game makers to be good — but not terrific — at stopping cheating. Consider this: Cheaters who get banned from games often immediately sign back up under a different user name, paying money for a new account in hopes of trying again. If cheating protections were significantly stronger, fewer perpetrators would continue to buy accounts.

Game companies might have better luck relying on reports of suspicious activity from legitimate players. One issue that irks aficionados is "gold farming," whereby people pay real money to companies like IGE.com in order to buy in-game currency. A recent check showed a World of Warcraft player could pay $420 to get 6,000 pieces of gold — enough to buy one of the game's pricey flying mounts. Other players have to laboriously work their way up to such achievements.

Buying gold breaks the game's terms of service — and it degrades the overall experience for everyone, said Hubert Thieblot, who leads Curse, one of the largest teams in World of Warcraft. A cheating player who takes all the targets in a certain area, for example, leaves too few for everyone else.

"You change your experience with how you play and how you behave," Thieblot said. "If you just buy gold you aren't going to do extra quests, you're not exploring areas as they want you to."

Although Intel's anti-cheating idea is still in the research phase, it could aid people like Thieblot.

Intel's technology would embed a module in a PC's circuitry that would analyze data coming off the keyboard and the mouse and compare it to what a game actually processes. If there are conflicts — the player clicked the mouse just once but the game read that as "fire 100 shots" — the Intel system would be able to signal the game makers or other players. The system could also put a "trusted" stamp on seemingly legitimate players.

Intel says its system would not degrade PC performance or be noticeable in game play, but the concept still needs work. Notably, it would require the support of PC makers as well as the game companies that would have to build in ties to the Intel system.

Meanwhile, Starr Long, who with industry veteran Richard Garriott is wrapping up the online sci-fi game Tabula Rasa for NCSoft Inc., worries that cheating can now ruin entire game worlds.

Like other game makers, Long won't get into specifics but says his programmers have done all they can to thwart cheating in Tabula Rasa.

"In the old days we didn't really think through what would happen once we started letting people play together," Long said. Now, Long says, "every single piece of content we put in the game, the first thing we say is 'Here's what we want this thing to do.' And the second thing we say is, 'OK, how are players going to try to exploit this?'"

Source: Associated Press

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Blizzard wins Warcraft bot battle

Blizzard has won the first round of a legal battle against the maker of software that automates game play in World of Warcraft. It brought the case against MDY Industries claiming its WowGlider program infringed its copyright.An Arizona district court has ruled MDY does infringe Blizzard's copyright but not in the way the game maker claimed.

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World of Warcraft legal battle over WOW bot with automated actions

The makers of World of Warcraft are locked in a legal battle with a firm that has produced a tool to automate many actions in the virtual world.

Blizzard is suing Michael Donnelly, the creator of the MMO Glider program, which performs key tasks in the game automatically, such as fighting.

Both sides have submitted legal summaries to a court in Arizona.

Blizzard says Glide is a software bot which infringes the company's copyright and potentially damages the game.

In its legal submission to the court last week, the firm said: "Blizzard's designs expectations are frustrated, and resources are allocated unevenly, when bots are introduced into the WoW universe, because bots spend far more time in-game than an ordinary player would and consume resources the entire time."

More from the BBC site

Play Halo 3 at school...

Educational methods at UNC might evolve to mirror the passions of "World of Warcraft" and "Halo 3" junkies.

On Wednesday, UNC's Information Technology Services hosted a discussion called "Games4Learning: A Symposium," which addressed the impact that computer games can have on learning, and the funding available for integrating those games into higher education.

"If we don't think about what this means for us here on campus, then we're missing the boat," said Elizabeth Evans, academic outreach consultant.

The symposium - which included lectures from professors and a member of the National Science Foundation - was a spawn of Games4Learning, an interest group composed of UNC students, faculty and staff.

The group connects individuals who want to see serious games - those that have a list of rules, a theme or context, a set of goals and no real-life consequences - integrated into University curriculum in the future.

"Games have the wrong reputation of being a waste of time," said John Weis, a Games4Learning student member. "The ultimate pie-in-the-sky goal is giving students and professors a way to supplement their curricula, not replace them."

Demonstrating the educational value of computer games and getting rid of the stigma attached to them is one main obstacle in the developmental process, Weis said.

In the future, serious games could be used as a source of education that entertains students and allows them to apply what they have learned in the classroom in real-world settings, said Evans, who helped organize the symposium.

"Inter-disciplinary activities are the possibility that excites me the most," Evans said. "It would open up the doors for people with different knowledge and skills to work together."

Universities and other research groups can apply for grants through the Research and Evaluation on Education in Science and Engineering program, said John Cherniavsky of the National Science Foundation.

The REESE program aims to advance research at the frontiers of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Researchers are working to incorporate the same aspects found in popular video games into educational curricula.

Nine million people play "World of Warcraft," and "Halo 3" raked in $173 million the weekend it was released, said N.C. State University professor Len Annetta.

Recognizing the popularity of online computer games in younger generations, Annetta is the lead principal investigator in a research program called Highly Interactive Fun Internet Virtual Environments in Science, which explores the potential of instructional technologies such as computer games.

"This isn't for everyone," Annetta said. "But certainly the population is growing."

WoW Level 70 in 2 days!

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HMV is PS3 launch partner

Sony is due to announce full details of the European PS3 launch and price point next week - that the 60GB model will hit the shops on March 23, priced at £425.

HMV will be Sony's official launch partner, with a special midnight event set to take place at their Oxford Street store.

HMV are currently discussing a range of possible options. I can't say right now whether this will include an official launch event, as such, but it's certainly the case that more and more publishers and games companies are approaching HMV following the success of a number of major launches over the last few years."



Most recently, HMV hosted the launch event for World of Warcraft expansion pack The Burning Crusade, which took place on Monday night. According to Ellis, "The midnight launch attracted a staggering 1500 fans, making it by far the biggest event of its kind ever staged by our Oxford Circus store."

HMV was also Nintendo's official partner for the launch of the Wii in December, and was previously chosen by Sony as its partner for the PSP launch in September 2005.

After delay, 'Warcraft' video game gets highly anticipated expansion

Every day, millions of people around the world gaze at their computer screens to explore a dangerous fantasy world of treasure-filled dungeons and flame-breathing dragons, a land where mortal enemies lurk around every corner.

It's the "World of Warcraft," the most successful online game ever, and it's a world about to get a whole lot bigger with Tuesday's release of a US$39.99 enhancement called "The Burning Crusade."

More than eight million registered users now pay up to $15 a month to gather with hundreds of other real people who masquerade as digital avatars in the never-ending fantasy world of Azeroth.

"The Burning Crusade" adds new locales such as Karazhan, Hellfire Citadel and Tempest Keep to Azeroth, and presents a spiralling war against demonic forces where the game's two opposing factions - the Alliance and the Horde - will face powerful new enemies.

Players will have access to the new realm of Outland that's nearly as large as the existing game world, and the highest level that characters can achieve has been raised from 60 to 70.

There are two new races to choose from as well: the remnants of an ancient space-faring civilization called the Draenei, and the Blood Elves, who are addicted to arcane magic.

But in a market already overpopulated with dwarves, paladins and trolls, is there room for even more of the same? If fans are any indication, the answer is a definite yes.

Trey Hancock, 26, has been shooting fireballs and frost novas to crush his mortal enemies in the video game "World of Warcraft" since it first launched in 2004. In his years of playing, the Houston resident led a guild of more than 200 people and raised four characters to the current top level of 60 - including his main character, a mage named Oraj.

Like many others, Hancock said he took a break in anticipation of the expansion, where his first goal will be to take Oraj to level 70.

"I haven't played for the last week because I know once it comes out I'm going to be playing it nonstop," he said.

It's just the sort of enthusiasm the company behind the game, Blizzard Entertainment Inc., is banking on.

"We were going to be happy if we got a million worldwide subscribers, we didn't feel like that was shooting the moon," said Rob Pardo, Blizzard's vice-president of game design and the lead designer for "World of Warcraft." "The way it blew up is far beyond our wildest expectations. But now that we are at the mark we are, we feel there's still an ability to grow that customer base even further."

Released in November 2004, "World of Warcraft" brought several new elements to the genre of massive multiplayer online roleplaying games, or MMORPGs. Most significantly, it was simple to play and a had high level of polish, according to Jon Wood, managing editor of the gaming website MMORPG.com.

"I think Blizzard looked at what was out there and found out what worked and what didn't work," he said. "The truth of the matter is, the game is very polished. The fact that it's very smooth and easy to learn has put them out front."

Pardo said polish has always been the mantra for the game's creators.

"It's extremely complicated, all the things we have to get right," he said. "We were on track for a Christmas release but we really felt like we should make sure the product's right for our customers."

"Warcraft's" popularity has transcended video game culture and spawned a series of action figures, comic books, novels and trading cards.

The game was even the focus of a recent "South Park" episode where Eric Cartman and friends balloon into overweight, pimply video addicts bent on defeating a rampaging player who threatens the very existence of the game.

The pop culture references extend into the game world, too. If you type "/dance" as a male Blood Elf, for example, your character will strut around with moves similar to the uber-dorky hero of the movie "Napoleon Dynamite."

"We're all entertainment geeks ourselves," Pardo said. "Part of our design process is having fun and putting in those references. It's kind of our way of giving homage to the things that inspire us."

David Daryani, owner of Tru-Gamerz video gaming centre in Dallas, said his customers regularly queue up to play the game, especially on the weekends. As a longtime "WoW" player himself, Daryani, 38, said he hasn't played much lately but was looking forward to seeing the new content and returning to his favourite activity: player versus player combat.

"If you have a bad day, you get on and say 'I'm just going to kick some Alliance butt,"' he said. "It just relieves some stress."

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade

Several years have passed since the Burning Legion's defeat at Mount Hyjal and the races of Azeroth have continued to rebuild their once shattered lives. With renewed strength, the heroes of the Horde and Alliance have begun to explore new lands and broken through the Dark Portal to investigate the realms beyond the known world. Will these heroes find friends or foes? What dangers and rewards lie in wait beyond the Dark Portal? And what will they do when they discover that the demons they thought vanquished have returned to renew their terrible Burning Crusade?
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade is the exciting new expansion to Blizzard's award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game. It expands the game by tremendous bounds, adding new races, lands, Battlegrounds, professions and items, and more. Here is just a partial list of what you can expect from the World of Warcraft expansion:

Features
An increase in the level cap to 70
Two new playable races, including the magical Blood Elves
New starting zones in Quel'Thalas and beyond
The entire new continent of Outland, reachable through the Dark Portal
Many new high-level dungeons to explore in Azeroth, Outland, and elsewhere
New flying mounts in Outland
Many new and dangerous monsters, including epic world bosses
Hundreds of new quests
Hundreds of new items
A new profession: Jewelcrafting
Socketed items

WOW - Fury Warrior

Farming



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Renovatio: The Beginning... Druid PvP WoW World of Warcraft

Flipcyde Level 60 Tauren Druid on Gorgonnash Server doing some PvP. World of Warcraft Version 1.8
Renovatio means Total Rebirth. And I feel that my druid has been reborn because of Rubix and Ferahgo aka Conquix.
Renovatio The Movie will be coming soon (when Burning Crusades is out).



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Galagzee - Youtube Stepmania video

Galagzee on StepMania. I just made this for fun really; I like the Song as a fan of the Arcade classic 'Galaga', but I'm not really great at the SM File.



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