Choose What You Pay for Tale of Tales’ Three Games

How’d you like to get three ostensibly artistic or thought-provoking games for under 50 dollars? How about under 30? Under 20? Well, why not set the price even?

Good news for those of you who love games and want something new for the Halloween season. Tale of Tales is selling a three-pack bundle of their games for a price you choose to set. While the games are originally priced at a total of 22 dollars, Tale of Tales is giving gamers the opportunity to purchase The Graveyard, The Path, and Fatale for a minimum of three dollars and to a maximum of whatever you so choose.

The purchases made will go towards funding their next game in development, called The Book of 8, which is a re-imagining of Tale of Tales’ first unfinished game, Project 8.

More details can be found at Tale of Tales’ site!
Source: TK-Nation

Everything Old (World) is New for Once

I think one of the nice things about never really investing in playing both sides of the faction game of WoW is that most of everything in Horde-side World of Warcraft is still new to me.

Sure, I might never be able to visit all the important zones before cataclysm strikes, but it’s nice to see some of the zone progression for the undead side as a Blood Elf warlock, and I’m enjoying my time with my Tauren Death Knight immensely (lack of herbalism profession ability notwithstanding).

I’m excited to see how the world will change for everyone once Cataclysm hits, and I look forward to re-experiencing the Azerothian zones on a Goblin hunter when the time comes.

How about you guys? Have you ever felt a renewed sense of fun from playing something a bit differently?

Shinji Mikami’s Tango Gameworks Joins Zenimax

This just in from Bethesda’s Twitter: Shinji Mikami, the creator of the Resident Evil series of games, along with his studio Tango Gameworks, have sealed the deal on the company’s acquisition by Zenimax Media.

The deal between Tango Gameworks and Zenimax will see Tango developing multiplatform titles alongside Bethesda Softworks, id Software, and recently acquired Arkane Studios.

In a nutshell, that’s the gist of everything on the story so far. You can find more PR-speak in the link here or you can just act like me and start wishing for a Fallout: Old Tokyo (with dual-language audio) with your hands outstretched and weaving through the air.

Linkpost: Two WoW-Related Posts That Made Me Smile

I was going through my feed reader and through assorted WoW blogs and recently found two really good entries that struck me as rather poignant given the situation with patch 4.0.1 and its nest of bugs.

The first, by Larisa of the Pink Pigtail Inn details a rather humorous slice of WoW interaction among a bunch of folks who are waiting for a sacrificial lamb to interact with the Headless Horseman’s pumpkin head to begin an event.

For those who don’t know about it, there’s a good chance that even putting your mouse on the tooltip for the Headless Horseman will forcibly disconnect you from the game, which makes the whole entry seem like an extended game of chicken, or an new scene from Waiting for Godot.

Next up, we have Chris from Game by Night, with an article that really made me wonder if the corporate atmosphere at Blizzard has changed so drastically, to the detriment of the game-playing public.

In it, he cites, the latest WoW patch as an example of Blizzard not following their old mantra of releasing something when it’s ready, and instead acting like other companies who have to hotfix or repatch their games in order to fix any brokenness that has occurred.

Needless to say, whether or not the situation outlined in Chris’ post is true, it can’t be denied that something is changing in Blizzard, and it may not be a good thing.

All I Want to Do is Pick Some Herbs

While this post will not be primarily in capslock, imagine a voice that gets steadily louder and more strained with each line.

All I want to do is pick herbs.

I even have +15 Herbalism because I’m a Tauren.

You took that away from me with some professions glitch that kills my ability to pick herbs.

Stupid me deletes my profession from its low standing to try and build it up again.

10 hours later, I’ve leveled it up to 326.

The next day, however, you turn my life upside down by glitching my professions again!

This time, it’s not just that I can’t pick herbs… you’re now also giving me grand master Herbalism status instead of master status, as if that makes any sense when I CAN’T PICK ANY EFFING HERBS!

Next thing you know, you’ll be removing my ability to inscribe for a second time, when I worked so hard to make it reach it’s current 200++ skillpoint state.

 

WHY CAN’T I QUIT YOU!?

The War for Precious Resources

Too much potential fun, it seems, can be a bad thing.

I have Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft eating up a summarily unhealthy portion of my waking hours when I’m not looking for a job. I have also finished downloading my own Steam copy of Fallout: New Vegas, which begs some kind of playthrough. Then, there’s this overwhelming urge for me to pick up a Kindle version of Christie Golden’s prelude book to the Cataclysm in World of Warcraft for use on my PC.

Now, time is a factor is and so is money. I’ve spent my budget for the month on New Vegas and on a sub to WoW, so I can probably think about getting book next month instead of RIGHT NOW.

That said, I’m finding that my time is invested into so many things that aren’t work/job hunting-related that I figure I should place some emphasis on work-life balance. For the readers and commenters out there in the blogosphere, I ask you: How do you balance your play and your work? Should I be feeling more stress over being unable to find a job that suits my needs and skillset or should I allow myself to chill and let the opportunities come as they will with some active prodding from myself?

World of Warcraft 4.1 Bringing in Dungeon and Map Changes

As earlier mentioned, World of Warcraft’s future patch, 4.1, will be bringing some old foes into new territories. What wasn’t touched upon was how dungeons would be revamped in Cataclysm in order to make the experience far less frustrating for players, in addition to bringing a sense of new-ness to the game.

That said, while I feel weird citing WoW Insider multiple times in the same day, here’s an update on that.

First off, the dungeons and raids of 4.1 WoW will have their maps redone in order to match Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm quality maps. This will also include some changes, which entail being given a backstory as to why you’re fighting, a 3D portrait of the boss, as well as a list of the loot drops for those bosses and a list of what that boss’ abilities are.

In other words… less time alt-tabbing out of WoW and more time in the game.

Those of you wondering what else the dungeons have in store for adventurers are also in luck, as it seems graveyards will be placed closer to dungeons, overhauls will assuredly be done to Uldaman, Sunken Temple, Wailing Caverns, Maraudon and Blackrock Depths (THANK GOODNESS FOR A BRD REVAMP), and some dungeons will be given wings to make them less a tiresome slog and more of a happy loot-filled jaunt through moderate danger.

For more information, check out WoW Insider’s post here and here for additional details and updates.

World of Warcraft Patch 4.1 Gets Previewed (Updated)

Some short and sweet Blizzcon news for the folks out here who are awake, like myself.

According to WoW Insider, patch 4.1 will come with some rather fun raids for the folks who like their raids elementally charged. Specifically, folks will be able to raid the elemental plane of fire (known as the Firelands) and take on Ragnaros in his own lair. There’s also going to be another dungeon known as the Abyssal Maw, which is for the elemental plane of water.

For folks who’re really into dungeon delving though, the big news for this particular update is simply this: Blizzard will attempt to introduce a new five-man dungeon in every patch. Since major patches usually have new content to them to begin with, it should stand to reason that either:

a) every incremental patch will potentially get a new five-man dungeon from hereon out.

b) patches will be fewer and farther between, with more hotfixes during the interim.

In any event, I suppose we should wait for follow-ups as they happen. Cheers.

 

EDIT: And WoW Insider has more info on the new Firelands Raid and the Abyssal Maw dungeon, as well as a picture layout of Firelands.

Fallout: New Vegas Gets Double-Patched on the PC

This just in through the Fallout Twitter. The PC version of Fallout: New Vegas has a second patch out for players who are suffering from certain issues. I was unable to cover the first patch, whose info can be found here, but the second patch is pretty straightforward.

Here’s the word from Bethesda’s Blog and the official forums:

As you may have seen, we released a patch over Steam for PC users last night. While we didn’t release a full changelist, the patch contains quest and scripting fixes. It’s not a minor hotfix, it contains over 200 fixes in all. We are in the final stages of testing this update on both 360 and PS3 and we hope to have them out to users very soon.

We are also pleased to say that we have just released a second fix for PC users to address the autosave and quicksave issues that some people were encountering. That particular issue was never seen prior to release and it was extremely difficult to reproduce reliably, even after the game had launched. In order to fix this problem we have had to disable Steam Cloud functionality. It has been turned off, and we won’t turn it back on until we’re absolutely sure it will not cause any more problems. Please restart your Steam client to make sure you get the update.

The forum post also notes that the infamous rotating Doc Mitchell issue and some other reported “bugs” were caused by corrupt files being pushed through Steam and can be solved by re-validating your game files  through Steam. For the actual creepy video, feel free to check after the jump.

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King’s Bounty Devs Working on MMO

Are you a King’s Bounty fan? If so, then you might like this next bit of news I have for you.

Katauri Interactive, the folks behind 1C’s King’s Bounty series of games, has a website up for an MMO project called Royal Quest. Not much is known about it as of yet, but if it’s anything like the King’s Bounty games, then it should have equal parts charm and strategy involved.

The description makes it out to be standard MMORPG territory, but something tells me it could make for an interesting game once a trailer gets released. Till then, feel free to check out the site linked above for a synopsis, feature set, and currently announced system requirements.

Did I mention there was a card carrying robot in the game? 😀

Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun