I had the pleasure of trying out the new Assault on Icecrown Citadel raid set at PAX East. Cryptozoic was nice enough to lend us a set to take for a test run. The game comes with four decks: the raid boss, The Lich King, and three opposing heroes, Jaina Proudmoore, Sylvanas Windrunner, and Highlord Tirion Fordring. Players with their own decks or cards can modify their decks or play with their own setups against Arthas, but the box set contains everything you’ll need to get started.

Since the game requires four players, we rounded up some of our friends from other sites. I, Heartbourne, took on Sylvanas’ role, while Michael Sacco from WoW Insider played Jaina Proudmoore and Thespius from Raid Warning played Tirion. Seven from Raid Warning stepped up as the Lich King, and Joe Perez from WoW Insider and Raid Warning helped him out. Neither me nor Seven had played the WoW TCG before, so the guidance of Sacco and Perez were well appreciated.

Read about my experiences after the break.

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This game presumably features both Guilds and Wars.

We continue our coverage of PAX ’10 today with a real doozy! If you’ve been following the progress of Guild Wars 2, you probably already know that ArenaNet is aiming to take the MMORPG to the next level. They’ve been promising a lot of features that once seemed like pipe dreams for the genre — dynamic content, real-time, positional combat, personalized stories, and the level of presentation normally reserved for single-player affairs. The question on everyone’s mind, though: can they deliver?!

If the following videos are any indication, the answer is resounding abso-frickin’-lutely! You will want to have Guild Wars 2′s babies.

Lore Hound managed to get access to an extensive live demo of the game held behind closed doors, only for members of the media present at PAX (not to mention an interview between iTZKooPA and Game Designer Eric Flannum to be posted later this week). It’s so large that we had no choice but to split it up into two videos.

So what can you expect to see? The first set of footage takes us through a bit of the character creation process, one of many possible game intros (which will be different based on how you build your backstory), and the entirety of the tutorial mission which ends in a surprisingly epic encounter (Flannum even mentions they don’t want players to have to wait until hitting the level cap before seeing cool things happen).

The second video is even more interesting as it demonstrates more of the persistent world: Elementalist and Warrior combat mechanics, dynamic world play, the Event system, a tour of the human city Divinity’s Reach, and a high-level fight against a massive dragon called The Shatterer that makes Deathwing look like a newborn pup (and apparently, this one’s only a minion; the Elder Dragons are supposed to be even more gigantic). Keep an eye out for the innovative “Down” mechanic, too (just because you’ve lost all your health doesn’t mean you’re completely out of the fight).

It looks great, it looks pretty, and it looks like a hell of a lot of fun. So check out Part 1 below, and Part 2 after the break, and let us know what you think! Don’t forget to check back soon for the interview, which may answer some of the questions you have about the demo.

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The last couple of years in the MMO industry have been interesting, to say the least. As gaming in general has become more mainstream, online integration has greatly increased in availability and significance in modern media. With the success of games on various social networks such as Facebook, more and more companies are looking at the MMO market as the next logical step; and where attention goes, money usually follows.

While there are certainly positive aspects to this process, one of the downsides is that a number of announced titles seem to have the MMO label slapped on simply for the sake of it. Some of the newer games under this heading are arguably successful in their attempt to differ from the traditional notion of MMOs and the way we view them today. Others, however, seem to use the concept of persistence as a gimmick and never really deliver on the MMO front while still attempting to charge customers the same price of admission as other, more established games in the genre.

What essentially looks like developers pigeonholing themselves into a sub-genre their game isn’t a typical example of actually makes sense from a business point of view. Under the MMO heading, a title may become a much more profitable undertaking and attract more interest from investors. The company then has opportunities to not only charge its customers for a copy of the product but also find additional ways to monetize it. It is also a smart move from a marketing point of view — adding an MMO label to a game has the potential to attract a new market and benefit from customers who might not have been interested otherwise, as well as give the title a way to differentiate itself from primary competitors (i.e. it’s not just another action game). Continue Reading

"I was just keepin' the seat warm for ya, Mr. Morhaime, I swear!"

Apparently, crime does pay — that is, until you get caught! Private servers in-and-of-themselves aren’t a pox on the gaming community. For instance, they’ve been used by die-hard fans of certain titles to continue playing online long after official servers have been shut down. But that changes when you’re jacking users from a still-active, and very popular MMORPG.

Such was the idea of one Alyson Reeves, who operated her server under the name of Scape Gaming. There are plenty of private servers out there, so you might be wondering why Reeves was singled out by Blizzard? Well, not only was she allowing her users to circumvent the customary subscription fee normally required to play the game, but she was charging them money for effortless level-ups and rare items, all under the guise of “donations.” According to data obtained through PayPal, this makeshift cash shop earned Reeves at least $3,052,339 in revenue. Continue Reading