hot-weatherIssue 102 – Greetings and Salutations, Friends!! Ah, the sweltering days of summer are upon us and what is there better to do on a hot day then sit in the air conditioning and game. Of course you could go to the pool to ogle the bods … err, I mean get some refreshing exercise – but you can’t slay Orcs while wading in the deep end! While keeping cool in this infernal days of summer, check out what’s going on in your favorite MMO titles.

Sony is teasing us again with some new trademarks, and speaking of trademarks, we finally know what “The Dark Below” is. Blizzard has some news for Hearthstone fans and for the folks still playing WoW (while eagerly awaiting Warlords of Draenor). WildStar is making an effort for players to better secure their accounts; I always suggest taking advantage of extra security.

SOE Trademarks Words

Posted 7.7.14 – Sony Online Entertainment has trademarked some words: “The Darkened Sea” and “Alter of Malice”. There isn’t a lot of detail as to what these words mean. There is a small description that references RPGs. The author of the Massively post thinks the titles sound like MMO titles. I guess we will have to wait and see.
Massively post

Remember “The Dark Below”?

Posted 7.7.14 – Speaking of trademarked words, remember last year before Blizzard told us the name of the next WoW expansion everyone was curious about the trademarked phrase “The Dark Below”. Then, all of a sudden, we never heard anything about it again. It turns out that “The Dark Below” is for an upcoming expansion for Bungie’s Destiny MMO.  I really don’t know how people thought that it would be the WoW expansion and it turned out to be in a complete different universe. Be that as it may, if you have played and/or enjoyed Destiny, then you should be happy to know that an expansion is on the way. If you don’t have the game, buying Ghost Edition or the Limited Edition will grant you special access to the expansions (notice the plural).
WoW Insider post

Hearthstone Adventure Pack Coming (at a price)

Posted 7.8.14 – Blizzard announced that Hearthstone will be getting its first Adventure pack, entitled Curse of Naxxramas. Part of it will be free for all players, but to fully unlock the game will cost you quite a bit more money then I would have expected. If you want to unlock it, you will need to fork over $25 ($24.99 to be exact)! I guess if you really enjoy the game you may be willing to pay that, but I only played it long enough to unlock the in-game WoW mount. Have any of you been playing? Are you still enjoying it? [Update 7.15: Additional Details]
Massively post

WildStar Offering Incentive for Security

Posted 7.9.14 – If you have a WildStar account but you haven’t activated your 2-step verification, Carbine is trying to convince to do it. Starting on July 10th, any player that applies the 2-step verification will not only get the cosmetic helm, a title and a 2% XP boost but will now also get a free bike mount (The Retroblade). Don’t worry, if you already have 2-step verification then you should receive this mount. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to have the additional peace of mind to prevent someone from hacking your account, but this is a great deal to get with that peace of mind.
Massively post

ArcheAge Beta Starting 7.17 – Looks Promising

Posted 7.11.14 – I haven’t talked about ArcheAge much, though I have seen it quite a bit reading through the news. Then I find this article on GameSpot that claims its the next MMO that will “consume your life”. The game has two very interesting mechanics in it. Players do not have to follow some pre-defined path to explore the game’s content, you can progress at your own pace. Second, not only are they giving you player housing, but you can also have farms that can impact the games economy. I had no idea the complexity of this game. If there weren’t a $50 price tag for getting into the beta, I would actually consider trying it out.
GameSpot article

Gaze of the Black Prince Activate!

Posted 7.14.14 – Blizzard is giving players a nice little boost toward completing your legendary cloak questline. If you were playing a couple weeks ago you may have noticed this buff once before. The “Gaze of the Black Prince” increases all reputation gains with Wrathion as well as increases the drop rate of the quest items needed. This is good news for me as I have had terrible luck acquiring the 12 runestones (I only have 1 and I have been trying to run LFR frequently, ToT and SoO). Although I still think Blizzard needs to allow legendary items to be used in transmog. I really don’t understand why this isn’t something they allow. These quests require a lot of effort, we should be allow to show off our time invested.
Massively post

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