Here’s a heads up for fans of  ArmA II and World in Conflict. It’s time to update you games with the latest patches.

ArmA II continues the series that features in-depth team based conflict using an engine that has been used to train military troops. This game is one of those that enjoys a strong, talented mod community which helps keep it ever fresh. ArmA2 v. 1.02 Retail Patch is packed with tweaks improvements listed after the break.

World in Conflict is a real-time strategy offering players 3D battlegrounds and DirectX 10 graphics. It also enjoys a robust modding community. The World in Conflict 1.010 to 1.011 Retail Patch brings four new multiplayer maps into play along with some major re-balancing and bug fixes. The full patch notes are listed after the jump.
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After a renewed start we had an interruption these last few weeks but rest assured Filefront is still hosting and promoting all the great user created and hosted content contributed to us. We return with a double length post highlighting some great mods and files for quite a few outstanding games including usual suspects like Half-Life 2, the Battlefield games and of course one of my favorite series “that I am really no good at yet still enjoy” – Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War

Highlights from this week’s column include mods for:

• Doom III – Wrathchild Act I (not ROE compatible), Revised Alphalabs
• Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – A Provost of the Nine Divines, More Nord Beards
• Battlefield 2 – Operation Peacekeeper, Allies Intent Extended
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R – Ballistics Mod
• Far Cry 2 – new maps: MP_Surf & Gold Rush

There are also links to other maps, mods and patches for many of your favorite PC modifiable games. Be sure to check it all out after the jump.

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A new article on ExtremeTech pits antivirus software against some of the most demanding PC games around. AVG Free, BitDefender (GameDefender edition), Kaspersky and Norton (Gaming Edition) each face off against Crysis, Company of Heroes, Far Cry 2, Supreme Commander and World in Conflict.

ExtremeTech compared the performance of each game on a control system with and without each of the antivirus programs running. Between performance and price points you can get a fairly good idea of which of these software options are best for your gaming PC. Check out the final results from Gaming Performance Versus Antivirus Software on ExtremeTech.

Not even a week removed from the launch of the second expansion to World of Warcraft, and Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime is already talking about future expansions. In an interview with MTV Multiplayer, Morhaime admitted that Blizzard is already thinking about what to include in the massively popular MMO’s next expansion although — for now — they remain completely focused on Wrath of the Lich King. Obviously it’s far too early to go into any specifics as to what the contents might be. He did, however, say, “[W]e will continue making expansions as long as we have players that want to play World of Warcraft — we want to keep them entertained.”

Asked if that means Blizzard will be making expansions forever, Morhaime replied, “Well, probably not forever. But for the foreseeable future, we’d like to be doing regular expansions.” That sounds good, but what constitutes “regular” expansions? Blizzard originally said it wanted to release expansions every year, but the span between The Burning Crusade and Wrath was nearly two years. Are yearly releases still the plan?

[O]ur goal that we’ve talked about is to put out an annual expansion, but we haven’t quite been able to do that. We had one early last year and now we’re sort of late this year, but we do want to decrease the amount of time in between expansions. Although we’ll probably never get it down to a year [between each one] because there’s just so much content. We do want each expansion to be considered a big value for players.

Morhaime realizes there’s a potential fatigue that could come with frequent releases. “I agree — I think putting too many expansions out too frequently, you probably get to the point where people do need to start taking a little break,” he said.

However long it is that Blizzard continues making expansions, you shouldn’t expect to see the monthly subscription fee to drop anytime soon. Morhaime said he thinks the $15 per month “feels right to us and our players,” claiming “there really isn’t a better value you can get in entertainment.”

Having surpassed the 11 million subscribers mark not too long ago, it really doesn’t seem like there’s any imminent need for Blizzard to change what it’s doing.

Gamers were outraged when they heard that StarCraft 2 would be coming in three different parts. Blizzard had claimed it wouldn’t let the merger between Activision and Blizzard parent company Vivendi impact the way it did business. But the move reeked of the type of thingthat would fit right in with Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick’s recent comments that the company want their games to be exploitable. But it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that Blizzard COO Paul Sams vehemently denies that StarCraft 2 is being milked.

Speaking with VideoGamer.com today before a midnight launch of Wrath of the Lich King in London today, he said:

The fact of the matter is, it’s absolutely, positively untrue about us trying to stretch it out and milk it. People think that it was a monetary driven decision. I can absolutely, positively tell you, with 100 per cent certainty, that that was not part of the conversation. I guarantee it. I give my word. There was never, ever a conversation where we said, ‘let’s do this because we’re going to make more money’. I guarantee it. As a matter of fact the sole reason we did it was because we thought it was going to be a better experience. Anybody that says otherwise is not correct. It is absolutely not what we did it for.

Sims’ denial is more passionate than the usual corporate line we get, so maybe it’ll be enough to convince fans that Blizzard truly is doing this to deliver the best game is possible.

But we doubt it.

Following the merger between Activision and Vivendi to form Activision Blizzard, it was announced that a number of games — including high profile titles like Ghostbusters and Brutal Legend — were being dropped. Disappointing as it was, it was a mind-boggling decision to many gamers, given that Activision decided to retain the rights to other Vivendi franchises like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon. We’ve theorized that this was simply a matter of being able to milk those franchises more than you could the new Riddick, and sure enough, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick admitted as much during yesterday’s Activision Blizzard earnings call.

According to MTV Multiplayer, while answering a question on why some of Vivendi’s games were dropped, Kotick laid out the reality of the matter — albeit without referring to any specific games:

“[Those games] don’t have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises. … I think, generally, our strategy has been to focus… on the products that have those attributes and characteristics, the products that we know [that] if we release them today, we’ll be working on them 10 years from now.”

It’s a fair point given that Activision is, after all, a business, but it’s easy to be upset with that sort of strategy. Luckily, Kotick did say original properties are important, but they need to be careful with which properties they pursue. Of the 15 properties Activision Blizzard is planning to release next year, “three, maybe four” of those will be “exciting new intellectual properties.”Too bad none of them will be Ghostbusters or Brutal Legend.

Death is a touchy subject. It’s hardly an ideal state to be in whether in a videogame or in real life (that’s what they tell me, at least), and when you’re dealing with a game as iconic as a Diablo title, the way in which death is handled is quite a big deal.

The subject recently came up on the official Diablo 3 forums. A Blizzard staffer going by the username ‘Bashiok’ was quick to offer up an answer as to how death is being handled in the new Diablo title. There’s a stark difference between the new system and the one found in Diablo 2: rather than being sent back to town and having to venture back to pick up your body (without any of your gear, mind you), you’ll now be sent back to a checkpoint. These checkpoints are scattered throughout the world and “generally” at the end of each level of a dungeon. After respawning at a checkpoint you’ll be left with a small amount of health.

Bashiok added, “It’s just too early to put a ton of thought in to what penalties there should be, if any, added on top of it.” That doesn’t make me particularly optimistic that we’ll soon be playing Diablo 3, but at least we’re getting some look into how things are changing from Diablo 2. Hopefully we won’t have to suffer through an outcry over the change like we did when Blizzard first showed the game’s change in art direction over its predecessors.

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

- T.S. Eliot “The Hollow Men”

Wow, never thought I’d actually be able to quote T.S. Eliot on this site and have it make sense (now to work on inserting “The Wasteland” somehow).

Would you like to hear a sad tale? It begins almost 30 years ago when a small video game developer named “Sierra Entertainment” was founded by a husband and wife team working out of their own home. A decade later, the company had been picked up by investors and created the groundbreaking King’s Quest, Space Quest, and Police Quest series, cementing them as leaders in the adventure game genre. By the end of the 90’s the company had grown into a full-fledged publisher of instant classics like Homeworld and Half-Life and its expansions.

Oh, but here is where our story takes a turn. For you see, Sierra fell into some hard times near the end of the decade, which were only compounded by a scandal involving some fraudulent business statements. And so the company was sold off to Vivendi, and eventually became merely a brand name instead of a video game developer. As you may know, Vivendi recently merged with Activision to form “Activision Blizzard,” and the Sierra name has all but been eradicated since.

But there’s still one depressing footnote to this tale. You see, somehow one final game slipped into manufacturing right as the merger was happening; one last game to bear the “Sierra” label. And what was that game? The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. So essentially, Sierra, one of the more revered and respected video game companies in the history of video games, just released their last title…and it was a crappy tie-in to a crappy movie.

Sad. So incredibly sad.

Via Variety

This week, Adam Sessler is on another one of his rants, but this time he has a more serious tone to his humorous ire as he critiques the actions of two ultra-corporations of gaming. Adam lets loose on where he believes they are succeeding and where they are failing.

Afterward, state your thoughts in the comments section below – we would love to hear your thoughts on this as well – because it is you, the gamer, who ultimately decides which companies fail and which companies succeed.

Blizzard has announced the launch date for the Russian language build of its wildly popular World of Warcraft MMO. The fifth European language build of WoW will go online August 6, 2008.

“The launch of the Russian-language version reflects our continuing commitment to make World of Warcraft even more accessible for gamers throughout the world,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment®. “We also hope that providing a fully localised version of the game will further enhance the gameplay experience for our enthusiastic Russian community.”

Russian players will have the option to download and subscribe to a dedicated Russian account giving them access to Russian realms only. European WoW players will be able to download the Russian language pack or convert their existing account to a Russian account. Free character transfers to specific Russian realms will also be available for a limited period of time.

The Russian build of WoW will be available for Windows XP/Vista and Mac OS X 10.3.9 or higher. You can visit the Russian WoW site for more details.

via Business Wire