Hide the kids: World of Warcraft selling GOLD for CASH

Rock, Paper, Shotgun sums this gem up nicely:

The day has come. Pack your children into a suitcase, sell the dog, flee to the countryside and put all your energy into growing giant marrows. The end times are coming. The Great Doom has begun. The last bastion has fallen.

World of Warcraft now allows you, in a roundabout sort of way, to officially swap real money for in-game gold. RUN FOR THE HILLS.

The basics are this:

Blizzard sells pet for $10
Pet is NOT Bind on Aquire
Players sell Pet in Auction House for X gold
Players are now able to basically buy gold for cash via $10 pet

Why Blizzard just doesn't cut the shennanigans out is beyond me. They need to just shut up and start selling gold and other mictro-transactions and move World of Warcraft to a Free 2 Play model.

League of Legends: Dominion is LIVE

League of Legends: Dominion is now live. Go!

Summoners!

The moment that you’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived! Today, you’ll step onto the battlefield to face off against your opponents on the Crystal Scar! Get ready to capture, defend and dominate your enemies in this brand new game mode for League of Legends!

We promised to deliver the unexpected in 2011, and today we make good on that claim.

Nearly a year in the making, League of Legends: Dominion represents the largest and most ambitious update to League of Legends since its launch in October of 2009. In Dominion, summoners do battle on a brand new map, the Crystal Scar, and vie for control over five Capture Points, a style of play never before attempted in the League of Legends universe.

League of Legends: Dominion is the latest example of our ongoing commitment to bringing you the best of the MOBA genre in new and innovative ways. You’ve been requesting new battlefields upon which to test your skills, and today you’ll do battle not only on a brand new Field of Justice, but in an entirely new and groundbreaking game mode!

Prepare yourselves, summoners! The battle for the Crystal Scar has officially begun!

Video for the unattenuated:

Combining passions: Green Bay Packer Highlights and Star Fox

Video speaks for itself.  Its my own personal nerdgasm.

It's MOBA, not ARTS

MOBA - Multiplayer Online Battle Arena
ARTS - Action Real Time Strategy

It annoys me, greatly, that games such as League of Legends (LoL) and DOTA2 are referred to as ARTS.  The term action does NOT fit with the term strategy.  Strategy infers some form of logistical component to the gameplay.  None of aforementioned games feature any form of logistical management.  They very much focus on the action, aka tactical, gameplay elements.

MOBA, on the other hand, describes the games perfectly.  They are multiplayer games that feature battles in arena-style maps.  Sure, the DOTA model has lanes, creeps, and towers, but don't be fooled.  DOTA is still about killing the other team.  DOTA just adds objective-based gameplay into the arena (and objective-based gameplay long ago took over straight up death match).

So next time you are out at the pub talking up the latest dime-a-dozen MOBA coming down the line, please remember this post.

Star Wars: The Old Republic Won't Require Origin

News today via a post on the Star Wars: The Old Republic forums that SW:ToR will NOT require Origin.

That's good news for anyone planning on playing the game.

That's bad news for EA that they can't even get their flagship title to promote their system, but at the end of the day maybe not losing sales is a better prospect.

That still means no SW:ToR on Steam (or any other digital distribution system other than Origin).