Bewitched, Bothered, Bewildered

For me Summer has frankly been one huge disappointment so far. Months of cold wet weather followed by a respite that had me hoping…a week of thirty degree heat, I was all set for some fun.

Then the rain came back and I realised it’s almost August, so instead of remaining disappointed at the total lack of summer I’ve chosen to check out the inevitable stream of games coming this Autumn and Winter to cheer me up. It’s quite a long list this year which is excellent, so here’s my real favourites.

Hellboy: The Science of Evil - August.
While I’ve not seen a whole lot on this one, I’m simply interested in it as a Hellboy tie-in, though I hear it isn’t related to either film.

Lego Batman: The Videogame - September.
While not the Dark Knight game that’s apparently in development (and could have done with being developed in time for the movie, however never mind) this one will be joining my collection of lego videogames (Star Wars and Indiana Jones so far…)

Silent Hill: Homecoming - September.
Just what my Halloween will be needing, along with another good bout with BioShock. The Silent Hill series never fails to leave me with the shakes.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - September.
We’ve been eagerly awaiting this one for a long time, finally a Star Wars game done well (That is, since Knights of the Old Republic) which will actually make the Force almost as important as the lightsaber wielding.

Dead Space - October.
Joining BioShock and Silent Hill we have a non-franchised game apparently inspired by a cross between Doom and Event Horizon as you play a nameless, faceless survivor who wakes aboard a seemingly abandoned ship in the depths of space.

Ghostbusters - Autumn.
Originally intended as the official second sequal to the popular nineties franchise, I’ve heard rumours now that we may actually be getting a Ghostbusters 3 movie. Until that materialises though we finally get to don proton packs of our own in a game written by and starring Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, along with Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson.

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe - Autumn.
The chance to play as Batman taking on Sub Zero? Who could pass it up?

Prince of Persia - Autumn.
My favourite series of games finally makes a long overdue appearance on the next generation consoles. I’ve played Persia since the days of my Pentium 286 and always been a fan of the revolutionary control systems.

Call of Duty 5: World at War - November.
Call of Duty 4 got me through the poorly timed two week Christmas recovery from an operation last year and Call of Duty 5 will see a return to the World War 2 battlefield that I so loved from the first two in the series. This one as pretty much a given.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King - Not soon enough.
Needless to say, my most anticipated game of the year. I truly cannot wait to dig into my new Deathknight character as he cuts a swathe through Northrend. The beta information that’s been flooding out has been mouthwatering.

In Lord of the Rings Online we have deeds, on Xbox Live they are called Achievements and in Warhammer Online it will be the Tome of Knowledge. These are all variations on the same theme of rewarding players for doing innovative little things which you would normally only do for fun, such as killing x number of the local bandit population just because, or going off and exploring high level zones, choosing to explore every inch of the world or doing a mass of quests all in one area (something I personally recommend for those who really want a feel for an area…quests should advance lore, if you don’t know a zone after completing thirty-odd quests then something is wrong with the game.)

Blizzard is ever mindful of popular trends so it came as no surprise to me today, though it pleased me greatly to find out that someone with access to Alpha testing of Wrath of the Lich King has leaked some information on WoW’s new achievement system. Here we have those things I mentioned above, along with achieving so many arena wins and so many battleground wins. There’s been no mention of what these points will go toward, though I quite enjoy titles however I doubt that will happen to any great extent due to Blizzard’s reluctance to reward with anything other than coin and/or gear.

I’ve seen some talk of how this will apply to high level characters, of which there are currently a lot. Even when the expansion releases with it’s new class, the lowest level new characters will still be jumping straight in at level 55 so a lot of the ‘level to 10′ and ‘level to 20′ styled achievements could be obsolete if handled badly. Personally I think that with WoW’s extreme levels of data tracking (check Rayda’s listing on WoWArmoury to see the extent to which third parties alone can access character information) it should be fairly easy to implement this, with high level characters simply being instantly blessed with points they would have achieved so far. I can’t imagine there isn’t a database somewhere which hasn’t tracked all this data.

When World of Warcraft’s newest expansion went into Alpha (or Friends and Family) testing on May 1st Blizzard had to get the client to it’s testers in some way. It used the standard method of hosting it on it’s servers and allowing people to download the installer, however when the client went on-line they didn’t at first spot their major mistake.

They forgot to password protect the download.

For the average gamer such as you and I this doesn’t mean a whole lot, our accounts still need to be flagged to allow access to the Alpha so having the client installed would just mean hard disk space going to waste, however there are those out there that can do something with the client. It began with the less questionable practice of taking a peak at the files in the directories and then having a closer look at said files using a few choice tools to find names of new weapons, areas and maybe even images. Also even without access to the servers, players could still get access to the login and character creation screen so it took no time at all for Death Knights of all shapes and sizes to appear.
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With the new expansion for World of Warcraft sort-of-vaguely-possibly-maybe ramping up for Beta in the form of a competition for those with art skills (the prize being a replica of the Lich King’s Frostmourne sword and a guaranteed Beta spot) I’ve been delving in to the sad world of the World of Warcraft beta testers.

I’ve tested games in the past, including a good twelve months spent in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes prior to release which was sadly the most exciting twelve months of my whole time in the world of Telon. Every game community differs in it’s approach to Beta, some of them are well implemented, some communities consider it to be an elite club that only they should be a part of and some are for the most part free-for-alls. I’m used to the WoW community so had a fair idea of the stupidity to expect from it’s possible Beta testers yet my expectations were far exceeded.
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