One of my all-time favorite blogs to read is Tobold’s. It’s a great place to get a fresh take on everything that’s happening in the MMORPG world. As I was perusing his site over the weekend, I ran across this article.

In short, he refers to the recent rumors that Blizzard’s Chinese World of Warcraft servers aren’t going to be coming back up anytime soon. For those of you who aren’t aware, Blizzard recently transferred their license to operate WoW in China to NetEase, away from The9.

The9 filed several lawsuits in an attempt to stop this transfer, and the Chinese government accordingly refused to give NetEase a license to operate WoW, saying that “in order to protect the interests of domestic gaming enterprises,” they would “suspend review of all games belonging to foreign companies in the event of lawsuits or arbitration between foreign companies and Chinese companies.”

The Chinese servers have already been down for a month or so, and there’s still no word on when they might return. This really doesn’t hurt Blizzard as much financially as you might think, as they received little revenue from the Chinese players, who pay as little as 6 cents an hour to play.

But how does this get Blizzard down to 5 million subscribers?

Read the full article »

Today EA LA officially announced the conclusion to the Tiberium series, Command and Conquer 4. Players will finally witness Kane’s master plan come together or fail utterly as the bitter rivals Global Defense Initiative (GDI) and the Brotherhood of Nod race to save mankind from destruction.

“Command & Conquer is a powerful franchise with an amazing 15-year legacy. We are thrilled to bring the dramatic Tiberium saga to a conclusion in Command & Conquer 4. This game is designed to give fans all the answers they’ve been looking for,” said Mike Glosecki, Lead Producer of Command & Conquer 4 at EA Los Angeles. “With its objective-based multiplayer mode, persistent player progression and all-in-one mobile base, players will experience Command & Conquer like never before.”

Much of the information on C&C4 is being kept under wraps and doled out as exclusive content. For more details on Command & Conquer 4 make sure to catch BattleCast PrimeTime on the July 24th episode. They’ll be revealing exclusive information C&C4. The first glimpse of the game will be the premier cinematic trailer aired exclusively on the July 23rd episode of Gametrailers TV on SPIKE TV. The ETA for Command & Conquer 4 is sometime in 2010. Read the full article »

This week’s Rock Band Unplugged DLC is quite an eccentric mix with a little of everything from Stevie Ray Vaughan to the Dixie Chicks. All offerings are master tracks from the original artists. Harmonix is throwing in the song used as the end credits of Portal, “Still Alive” by Joathan Coulton as sung by GLaDOS, as a free download.

Tracks:

Dixie Chicks                                           “Sin Wagon”
GLaDOS and Jonathan Coulton                  “Still Alive”
The Pixies                                             “Here Comes Your Man”
R.E.M.                                                 “Losing My Religion”
Stevie Ray Vaughan                               “Pride and Joy”

All tracks, except for “Still Alive” which is free, are available for purchase for $1.99 each on the in-game Rock Band Unplugged music store.

As an aside, if you like “Still Alive” I highly recommend checking out Jonathan Coulton’s website. He specializes in comedic songs based on videogames and gaming culture. Some of our family favorite are “Re: Your Brains“, “Creepy Doll” and “Code Monkey“. A dedicated fan and World of Warcraft player, Mike Spiff Booth has made a whole series of very funny and well done WoW machinima to Coulton’s songs.

OXM and Joystiq are revealing that the upcoming controversial sequel to Left 4 Dead will try and entice players who maybe aren’t quite as enthused about the quick turn around between last year’s initial release and this year’s Southern bound sequel with some nice demo shaped cookies..

It seems that the upcoming demo of the game will be available to players who pre-order the title before it hits general outlets. The details are sparse at the moment but this early access will likely be to the same content the rest of the world will get when the multiplayer demo hits Steam and Xbox Live, just a teensy bit earlier.

I understand Valve wanting to feed the L4D 2 hype, but as far as pre-order incentives go this one just seems to be a bit too lame duck to me. Offer an exclusive level or weapon or heck, maybe give us access to a member of the original game in our L4D 2 play, but giving out the same demo just earlier seems like an epic undersell of a much anticipated/debated sequel.

EA Sports has released the Season Preview for Madden NFL 10. Predictions are based on a combination of individual player and overall team ratings.

You can find team roster ratings and over all team ratings for the Cowboys, Eagles, Giants and Redskins online at the Madden NFL 10 Season Preview website.

AFC North will be the next division rated leading up to the Madden NFL 10 predictions for the 2009 NFL division winners, season MVP, and more August 3rd. Madden NFL series has been uncannily accurate at predicting the Superbowl winners for 6 years running. It predicted Pittsburgh Steelers’ win over the Arizona Cardinals this years at Pitt 28, Cards 24. The actual score was Pitt 27, Cards 23. I wouldn’t bet against  Madden NFL 10’s prediction that’s for sure.

Look for Madden NFL 10 on the Xbox 360, PS2,PS3, PSP and the Wii.

Battlefield 1943 is coming exclusively in digital format to the Xbox LIVE Marketplace July 8th and the PlayStation Network July 9th. PC gamers will just have to wait until September to get in on the action.

Battlefield 1943 features Frostbite’s next generation destruction technology which packs full Vehicle Warfare FPS multiplayer for up to 24 people into a 560MB download. I can never argue with getting more for less. Read more about the Frostbite engine and the worldwide community challenge to unlock the Coral Sea map after the break.

Read the full article »

Tracks from Green Day’s 21st Century Breakdown release will be coming to the Rock Band and Rock Band 2 Wii catalog. These three new tracks are a stark contrast with 8 choice original masters from artists participating in the RockStar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival. Behemoth, Cannibal Corpse, Marilyn Manson and Slayer are all on the list.

Tracks:

Behemoth                         “Conquer All”

(All tracks are original master recordings)

Tracks from festival artists Killswitch Engine and Bullet For My Valentine are already part of the extensive Rock Band DLC catlog. All these selections will be up for the PS3, Xbox 360 and the Wii the week of July 6th.

It’s a holiday weekend, and normally that means more time for gaming. So, what are you going to play? If you’re not sure, or you’re looking for something new, Stardock has a sale going on right now that is definitely worth a look.

If you’re not familiar with Stardock’s digital distribution platform, Impulse, this would be a good time to give it a look. After all, they’re offering some great deals, like Call of Duty 4 for just $34.99 and Sins of a Solar Empire with its expansion for just $29.99.

The sale also includes titles like the complete Unreal series, Prototype, Red Faction Guerilla, and more. You can get your copy of Impulse and check out all the deals at ImpulseDriven.com

You can also see the full list of games on sale, along with their prices, after the break.

Read the full article »

Having run completely dry of any other Zero Punctuation material, Yahtzee has turned in desperation to the bottom of the bin and set his sites on The Sims 3. If you’ve watched Zero Punctuation, you know not to expect the glowing recommendation he gave inFAMOUS. However this could be the funniest, most painfully accurate review ever from a certain point of view.

The Sims is a highly controversial, emotionally charged subject in the Sines household. The kids and I really enjoy it while Shawn… he just realized he’s been channeling Yahtzee all this time.

Zero Punctuation is regular weekly feature on The Escapist.

Last week we saw the id/Bethesda merger under parent company ZeniMax Media and there was much rejoicing, but what if Electronic Arts merged its two online game developers into one giant super developer wouldn’t that raise some eyebrows and be general cause for mass excitement?

Well that actually happened as the publishing giant reorganized a bit putting RPG mavens Bioware and long time MMO developers Mythic in the same division. While the two studios will remain mostly autonomous for the time being, they now both have a single reporting line up the chain to the big bosses and money men. That single leader? Bioware’s Dr. Ray Muzyka.

Dr. Muzyka’s ascencion to the head of the organization basically also points to the exit of Mythic’s longtime leader Mark Jacobs. According to Jacob’s blog the MMO pioneer is taking a sabatical for awhile and he leaves with a classy ‘I’m not going to dish on anything, I’m just going to thank folks and peacefully step aside’ sort of announcement – a classy response that we don’t get to see so often these days.

Regarding the future path of the now combined studio’s efforts, Dr. Muzyka indicated in an official response over on IGN that:

Anything’s possible. We can’t say it wouldn’t happen. There’s no active plans, currently to do that, but the teams at Mythic and BioWare I know from talking to all of them, they’re really excited about working together, so I think that fuels a lot of cool things.

Warhammer: Age of Reckoning is still holding strong in the WoW dominated MMO market while Bioware’s first effort – the much anticipated Star Wars: The Old Republic is still a ways off. Mythic has a lot of experience that could help the minds at Bioware pull off their vision of Star Wars and maybe even put a dent in the Warcraft numbers but only time will tell if this pairing will be all it seems.