There have been more open world, sandbox style adventures in recent memory than ever before. Non-linear gameplay is fully embraced and every videogame genre has felt its influence at one point or another. The ability to turn off, or flat out ignore mission objectives is a must in today's titles and the unlimited access to a living, breathing game world is embraced without reservation. How often, however, have we allowed that freedom to take the place of a well crafted and well explored story? Grand Theft Auto is usually quoted as a landmark franchise for the ability to blend an open and emergent gameplay with a dedicated and evolving storyline. Read More...

Whether you love them or hate them, Activision and Treyarch have to be commended on their DLC support behind Call of Duty: World at War. Presently it looks like August is going to see more of that support with the release of a third map pack. As with the previous two downloadable packs, the third set of maps will feature 3 standard multiplayer maps, Battery, Breach, and Revolution, as well as a Nazi Zombie map entitled Der Riese. Battery is said to take place on an armored island surrounded by anti-ship mines. Breach will be an all out firefight set on the streets of Berlin, Germany. Read More...

Here it is folks. Finally the second iPhone app, probably most waited for, has been released for World of Warcraft. The World of Warcraft mobile Armory. This wonderful app will finally allow players to view character information (gear, achievements, specs..etc), talent calculators, item browser, in-game calendars, glyphs, guild listings, arena team status and much much more. The program is incredibly fast and very easy on the eyes. Its a great way to customize talent specs and just keep an eye out on whats happening in the guild no matter where you are. Read More...

Myst is Finally Coming to PSP Some interesting news for this week's PSN releases. It looks like this week PSP owners will have a chance to download and play the popular PC puzzler Myst on their PSPs. Play it with out having to mod or hack the system to get it on there to boot. If you haven't already or picked up the title for your iPhone or other application ready system. Something interesting about this is that it is slated to be the original game as the PC, except that it will include the stuff that was cut from the original release. Yes that sounds backwards. Read More...

Isn't there a add-on for Peggle to begin with? I believe there is.... *goes and log-on to his WoW account to make sure* ...yeah there is. So why is this so important? Well it's because its not an add-on but an actual game outside of World of Warcraft. 10 World of Warcraft stages for all your Peggle goodness. This includes backgrounds from Blizzard artists, compete against a friend or PC in Duel mode, Quick Play levels anytime you want to hone your Peggle skills, and add to your Peggle Master rank with super-extra-hard challenges. T. Read More...

WoW Faction-Change Service in the Works When I first started playing World of Warcraft, I chose the Horde side of things. Big surprise with the Horde having undead huh? But, all of the real world people I knew who played loved the Alliance side of things for some reason. Which left me either having to worry about leveling two toons, forcing them to try Horde, or giving in and being bored with the Alliance. Didn't make it good for my continuation of the game. Things may be changing now. Read More...

There is an unfair bias among many in the media here in North America against micro-transactions and free-to-play Massive Multiplayer Online games. That somehow if you play a non-subscription-based system (i.e. World of Warcraft), you’ll catch some communicable disease of un-coolness. What most gaming enthusiast journalists fail to focus on is this market is increasing by huge leaps daily with more and more players, especially individuals who would never play something like World of Warcraft but put tens of hours a week into one of these free-to-play MMOs. At E3 this year, I stopped by Perfect World Entertainment to see their assortment of free-to-play MMOs, especially Jade Dynasty. I had an opportunity to sit with Andrew Brown, the game’s product manager, to discuss the open beta and upcoming release. Read More...

Activision has unleashed Map Pack 2 for download on both the PlayStation Store and Xbox Live Marketplace. The pack features 4 new maps entitled Banzai, Corrosion, Sub Pens, and Shi No Numa. Banzai takes place in a jungle deep in Japanese territory. Corrosion makes use of a rundown Russian train yard as a battleground. A bombed out Japanese submarine base is the site for Sub Pens. Shi No Numa which is Japanese for ‘Zombie Swamp’ adds a third map to face down the unstoppable zombie hordes. Read More...

APB, which stands for All Points Bulletin, is the upcoming Persistent Online Game from developer Realtime Worlds. It is a game in which players enter cities as one of two sides, an enforcer or a criminal. With up to 100 people per city, the two sides, as well as various gangs, are in a constant conflict. APB strives to make the gameplay more player driven, than game driven as with most Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games. They like to consider it as a Dynamic Action Based game, not an MMO or a Role-Playing Game (RPG). Read More...

Druids, are you tired of looking the same as all the other Druids? Would you want to change colors in your bear and cat form? Do you want to dance in bear form in style? Well now you can, as Blizzard has announced new looks for the Druids! In the next major patch for World of Warcraft, druids will be able to find color schemes for the bear and cat forms. Blizzard made the following announcement on their Under Development page: “There will be five different designs for each of these forms for the Horde and Alliance. Night elves can choose to change their cat and bear look at any time by visiting the barber shop and changing their character's hair color, while tauren will be able to change which look they use by switching skin tones in the barber shop -- a new feature for tauren in the next major content patch. Read More...

FTW! Last month World of Warcraft made an announcement that they would be bringing us two new Gamer Fuel flavors of Mountain Dew.  Alliance Blue and Horde Red.  The official Warcraft site has been posting little about it but no real definite dates. Currently there is a website here with a timer quickly counting down.  The mystery is that it says you can start winning tokens and you can enter a chance to win every 15 minutes. At the bottom of the page is your typical "enter e-mail address here" bar. Read More...

World of Warcraft On The iPhone Well it looks like the world is going to end soon as enough people to constitute an entire large US state will bring down the internet as well as the mobile communications around the world. At least if this is proved to be something real as well as something to come out. But as the tag line states, World of Warcraft has been seen on the iPhone via a new app. The video below shows off how an app that was being used to run Second Life on the iPhone has been tweaked and worked to let WoW users log in anywhere they have phone reception and play. Read More...

Question, do you like World of Warcraft? Do you like Peggle? Do you want to play both at the same time? Well now you can! That’s right you heard it here folks. Peggle makers PopCap has a nice add-on to allow your play Peggle in the game World of Warcraft.  Now this is not going to be good for me and here’s why. I love World of Warcraft. I am also addicted to Peggle and for PopCap to make an add-on for World of Warcraft spells trouble for anyone that loves both. Read More...

Attention please! It's time to learn the Secrets of Ulduar in the snowy regions of Storm Peaks! A few new things been released for this patch and the most notable Dual Spec. How this lovely ability works is when you are at level 40 you will be able to purchase Dual Spec for 1000g and it will allow you to switch between 2 different specs, glyphs and action bars. Now I could go on and list more changes like UI Improvement, The Argent Tournament. But I figured you would want to read the official patch notes instead. Read More...

Alright you animal loving people out there especially those who play the lovely game of World of Warcraft. This Saturday the lovely group of peta has set up an event on the WhisperWind realm at the Howling Fjord area to help stop the killing of….seals??  “Thrall refused to ban the slaughter of seals, despite multiple requests from the Alliance to do so, because Orgrimmar stands to make a large profit from the fur.  Activists from across the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor are banding together to put a stop to the atrocious seal slaughter.” Just recently the Canadian government has started their killing on seals, which means sealers are free to kill up to 338,200 of these harmless creatures. Read More...