Those mitts could snatch a ball at the goal line too. Even without thumbs!

Instance Gratification is the return of one of our premiere video outings. Originally featuring the cast of founder bloggers thrashing World of Warcraft dungeons and viewer runs of Dungeon & Dragons Online, the reinvigorated column heads to the realm of the Twitch channel. Come join us every Wednesday for dungeon dives, solo attempts and general loot hoarding in your favorite games.

After running around in last week’s episode with essentially no idea what I was doing I’ve decided to return to a universe that I can at least fake my way through thanks to years of reading. That’s right gnomes and goblins, we’re heading back into the World of Warcraft. It’s partly to enjoy and prepare for a smorgasbord of upcoming in-game events. Then there’s a dash of leaving Draenor and my guild neglected as I did a little WoW tourism the past few weeks. Solidsagart is in much need of preparing for the big bad patch 6.1 and Blackrock Foundry, the new raid which I am wholly unprepared for. Lastly, it gives me a final excuse to link to Massively, a sad, sad fact of reality.

Now getting back to the original anecdote, let’s see exactly how well I can fake healing in Highmaul with little understand of the true mechanics, no connection to any of the other players and an unimaginable lack of healing practice in general. Here’s to a wipe-free night. Yeah, right!

Be sure to subscribe to the channel for all our streams, giveaways and general shenanigans. Hit the jump for the livestream. The show will kick off around at its new time, 7:00 PM EST, and continue until approximately 9:00 PM! The floggings will continue until the ilvl has improved! Read more…

RadarX, SoE community manager, just posted a puzzling message on a few of the sony game forums. Apparently SoE has been acquired by the investment firm Columbus Nova and will become Daybreak Game Company. I’ll admit my first response upon reading this was to wonder if April Fools had come in February! Or maybe RadarX’s account has been hacked. I don’t see this announcement anywhere but on the forums – although this post is only an hour old! So maybe more public announcements are forthcoming? It does seem legit though as there is a twitter post from Dave Georgeson about it.

According to what looks like an open letter, nothing will change for the player. All it means is a change in name, and possible access to more resources for game development. Is this a new golden era of gaming? It seems an interesting development given John Smedley and Dave Georgeson’s repeated statements over the past year and more that they want to move gaming forward from the rut it’s been in and into something new again. A complex mix of hope and skepticism is what I’m feeling now, with a dash of humor as I note that DGC could also stand for Dave Georgeson Company.

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The branding conundrum that is Gigantic – seriously, try explaining to friend’s you’re heading to the Gigantic party without issue – was at PAX South in full force featuring one of the largest, loudest and most-attended booths of the fledgling convention of all things nerdy. Developer Motiga had good reason to return to the PAX scene, where we were introduced to Gigantic at the OG PAX. The alpha servers recently accepted two all-new heroes and a new map.

Naturally, both of those additions came up in our bi-yearly chat with the man with the plan James Phinney. We hit Phinney up for some more details on Gigantic’s expected released but were immediately laughed off. I mean, come on, the third-person MOBA already has 14 gods and you don’t need to balance lanes or jungle buffs given the game lacks minions of any kind!

Hit the jump to learn more about the latest pair of mages – one a summoner, the other more a glass cannon – and the new map, which is expected to be the title’s featured starting map. Read more…

Instance Gratification is the return of one of our premiere video outings. Originally featuring the cast of founder bloggers thrashing World of Warcraft dungeons and viewer runs of Dungeon & Dragons Online, the reinvigorated column heads to the realm of the Twitch channel. Come join us every Wednesday for dungeon dives, solo attempts and general loot hoarding in your favorite games.

For whatever reason, that’s what I thought the title of the expansion was the moment of the reveal. To be fair, my head was down in a notebook jotting some thoughts to paper. An expansion for Guild Wars 2 wasn’t unexpected, but PAX South, the fledgling latest edition to the growing ReedPOP franchise, didn’t appear to be the predictable outlet. Caught me by surprise. Digesting that information for a few microseconds and stifling a bit of laughter I decided to look at the screen for confirmation. In actuality the first expansion for GW2 is going to be Heart of Thorns.

Not to be confused with Heart of the Swarm. Similar maybe, but oh so different in actuality. As perusal, the attendance of PAX South has my brain being pulled in all sorts of directions. Mostly away from anything but playing videos games. As such, tonight’s Instance Gratification will feature Guild Wars 2 for the first time! I haven’t played the ArenaNet product since early launch. Truthfully, I didn’t put much time into the MMORPG mostly due to having no immediate friends being a part of the scene. That means I’m going to be on an ancient character that hasn’t been touched since late 2012.

One being played by someone who barely remembers how to play the pudgy beast.

Be sure to subscribe to the channel for all our streams, giveaways and general shenanigans. Hit the jump for the livestream. The show will kick off around at its new time, 7:00 PM EST, and its new day, Tuesday! Holy crap, what’s going on?! Read more…