Turbine have revealed Cat woman as the latest upcoming character for Infinite Crisis. The DC universe MOBO will have Cat Woman on the champion roster from September 30th, so there isn’t long to wait.

As Gotham City’s master criminal turned mischievous vigilante, Catwoman’s attitude starts fights as quickly as her martial arts skills end them.  After her mother’s suicide, Selina Kyle’s father drank himself to an early grave. Selina was moved to an abusive state home from which she quickly escaped, taking to the streets. Petty thievery quickly became talented burglary, until she encountered Batman. The two soon discovered a mutual attraction, but due to… complications, neither party has ever fully committed to a romantic relationship.

Catlike reflexes, mastery of the martial arts, and a deadly whip make Catwoman a formidable and resourceful opponent. Check out her video reveal below to see what to expect in game.

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Find out more at the official site.

CCP Games have just announced announced EVE Online’s next free expansion – Rubicon. Rubicon is the 20^th free expansion for the huge sci-fi MMO EVE. The expansion is due to be released on November 19th, Rubicon builds upon ten years of EVE online, that’s quite a lot of space time!

Rubicon represents the point where the scales of intergalactic power will shift to players, the immortal capsuleers. It expands the unmatched autonomy that EVE’s pilots have over their game universe at the expense of its four main factions, and gives them a greater arsenal with which to build up and tear down the alliances within.

In EVE Online: Rubicon, empowered players wage guerilla-style warfare against their opponents, raid their space and erode industrial power from deep behind enemy lines. Focused on individual and small fleet activity, new quick-strike options offer a powerful war tactic and a fresh style of victory in EVE’s “sandbox” universe.

This November will also see a new set of mobile, player-owned structures created to support action outside of the safety of the hangar. Meant for both solo and group use, they accentuate and diversify gameplay for pilots seeking to find their homes amongst the stars.

Rubicon continues where Odyssey left off with new exploration content and a versatile new line of faction ships that are perfect for navigating and infiltrating the nearly 8,000 solar systems of the EVE Universe. In addition, the Marauder, Electronic Attack Frigate, Interceptor and Interdictor class hulls head back to the shipyards for re-engineering amongst other balancing changes. New certificate and ship identification systems will help novice players ease into one of the world’s most indisputably deep games and give veteran players a greater sense of what to accomplish next.

“Twenty expansions in ten years is an amazing milestone built on the shoulders of our legendary player community,” said Andie Nordgren, senior producer of EVE Online. “With Rubicon we are beginning an ambitious journey for the next several expansions of EVE that will end up with players taking control of the most potent technologies in the universe and controlling space on an unprecedented scale. Their insatiable desire for impact and adventure fuels both this vision and our passion for making the largest science fiction game universe.”

Find out more at the official site.

This weekend from Friday the 27th until Friday the 4th of October , Guild Wars 2 will be giving all new users free access to the game. To take part just register for a trial account here and be there at 8am on Friday to begin the free to play trial. The developers will also be lowering the price this Friday from £35 to £28. A new update is set to launch the following Tuesday called Twilight Assault. The new patch brings a new level 80 path in Twilight Arbor where players are able to work together to find a hidden facility.

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The Free Trial period starts at 12:01 AM PDT on September 27, 2013 and ends at 11:59 PM PDT on October 3, 2013.

Valve have just announced they will be releasing their very own operating system. It’s going to be built around Steam itself, while using the architecture of Linux. SteamOS as it’s called will be available soon as a free stand-alone operating system for living room machines.

Basically, if you can hook your computer up to the TV, this is the operating system for you. It’s great to think that Steam has come so far since replacing the World Opponent Network back in 2004.

Four new Steam features have been confirmed and will be available soon for both SteamOS, and for the Steam client. Here’s what Valve had to say;

In-home Streaming: You can play all your Windows and Mac games on your SteamOS machine, too. Just turn on your existing computer and run Steam as you always have – then your SteamOS machine can stream those games over your home network straight to your TV.

Music, TV, Movies: We’re working with many of the media services you know and love. Soon we will begin bringing them online, allowing you to access your favorite music and video with Steam and SteamOS.

Family Sharing: In the past, sharing Steam games with your family members was hard. Now you can share the games you love with the people you love. Family Sharing allows you to take turns playing one another’s games while earning your own Steam achievements and saving your individual game progress to the Steam cloud.

Family Options: The living-room is family territory. That’s great, but you don’t want to see your parents’ games in your library. Soon, families will have more control over what titles get seen by whom, and more features to allow everyone in the house to get the most out of their Steam libraries.

I love the idea of family sharing, I can’t wait to see exactly how that works. There is so much more, you can get the full story at the official release. I can’t wait to hear more, we have been promised more information over the coming weeks so stay tuned for more!

A new PvP season has started in the World of Warcraft, it came with the recent 5.4 patch. In season 14 you no longer have to play with a premade arena team in PvP. You can join on your own and be put into a group, you still have the option to queue with a team of 2,3 or 5. You will be matched against opponents based on the average individual rank of your team.

For the most part, the mechanics of Arena will remain the same. You’ll still gain and lose personal rating based on your wins and losses, though your Conquest Point cap will now be based on your Personal Rating. The rating requirements to purchase items will also be based on your Personal Rating. Likewise, at the end of an Arena season, the top players will still earn titles and mounts.

Overall I think the changes are positive and makes for a much more competitive playing field. You can choose to wait for your team mates, or you can dive right in.

Source.

Wargaming, the developer and publisher of the aptly named World of Warplanes, today confirmed new release dates for their free to play MMO. The new planned release dates are November 12th and 13th. The worldwide release of World of Warplanes will be made available to different regions on both dates. The delay is to iron out and fix any last remaining kinks, to ensure a cool experience on release.

Vlad Belozerov, World of Warplanes’ Director of Global Operations said; “We are committed to releasing a great title and are doing everything to ensure that World of Warplanes gets the final polish we believe the game needs. The extra time will allow the development team to fine-tune the game balance and make sure that every feature is top-notch before launch”.

When World of Warplanes goes live you will keep any experience points you have earned during the beta. To reward beta testers for their feedback and participation, their total sum of experience points will be evenly distributed between the pilots of low-level warplanes featured at release.

You can still get involved and play the open beta:

• www.worldofwarplanes.com (North America)
• www.worldofwarplanes.eu (Europe)

Mythic Entertainments Warhammer Online is set to shut its doors on December 18, 2013.  Five years into its run the team behind the struggling MMORPG cited all licensing deals are scheduled to come to an end. Carrie Gouskos, producer at Warhammer Online left the following message on the official website of the once famed MMO.

I was first introduced to Warhammer Online, when it was added last minute to GameSpot.com’s E3 2006 stage show. As one of the hosts of the show, my responsibility was to research the game and the franchise, gather questions from the audience, and give a thoughtful informative interview with whomever had been sent over from the development team.

I never could have anticipated what happened next. Jeff Hickman (Executive Producer) and Paul Barnett (Creative Director) gave one of the most memorable interviews in my career – and suddenly I was thrown into their universe. The online chat channel soliciting questions from the viewing public was spammed with directives like “No more questions, just let them keep talking” – which is not surprising if you’re at all familiar with Jeff Hickman’s indefatigable charisma and Paul Barnett’s passionate humor. The tone, candor, and refreshing quality of how they spoke about this game that they so clearly cared about made you just want to be a part of it. What was more surprising, however, was what followed – a large group of developers, perhaps delirious after three days of non-stop game demos, partly exhilarated by the positive response to the game, showed up at the GameSpot booth and invited me to their studio E3 party. I declined, because they scared me a little bit, but in retrospect it’s not hard to imagine how I ended up – three months later as a designer working at Mythic on Warhammer.

I made an offhanded comment the other day to someone on the Warhammer team that I spent six of the last seven years of my life working on Warhammer. There were breaks in there, but most of them still related to Warhammer in some way. Some aspects of these efforts never saw the light of day. For example, we completed, passed review, and ultimately opted not to release an iPhone companion application that would allow players to monitor the realm war and their guild status – three whole years before the studio decided to take mobile by its horns. We also spent over a year on a version aimed at the Asian markets that would convert the entire game free-to-play. The Vampire themed Blood Hunt expansion would have been a marvel. And in under a year we produced a spin-off product Wrath of Heroes, a MOBA-style game that used mostly Warhammer assets – which despite being a tremendous learning experience, never made it out of Beta. There are many memories like this, ones that I feel comfortable sharing now – including the fact that we do have two of the four remaining fully built cities (Karaz-A-Karak and Karak Eight Peaks which are truly truly beautiful but would take months and months of optimization before they could match the changes we made to the game along the way). And one of the greatest lessons I ever learned as the young unpolished Tome of Knowledge designer “Never put anything in the game that isn’t done yet and hint that it’s coming soon – see: The Cards system”. There were some beautiful ideas that were left on the cutting room floor. And they represent only a fraction of how much heart went into the game.

Most everything else made it, and Warhammer despite its flaws was a valiant effort into the MMO space. I don’t think any of its critics would ever call it boring. It struck out boldly, and some of the game’s novel features are now considered industry standard for MMOs. The credit goes to far too many to list it out here, and it’s almost irrelevant. The point is that some of the most talented people in gaming made Warhammer possible. They worked insanely long hours, and they put their heart and soul into trying to make this beautiful IP a living and breathing universe. World class artists. Genius engineers. Designers and content implementers who would put in 100 hours a week and not complain. Hard-ass producers who you would follow into battle anywhere. Writers that truly transported you. QA that wouldn’t let us get away with a thing. And so many others. For those that are still with Mythic and those that have since moved on, we couldn’t have asked for a more driven team dedicated to bringing this amazing franchise to life.

And finally, the players. If I were to list out all of the great experiences I’ve had with you, this would be a novel, so I want to say thank you from all of us to all of you for sticking with us so long. Even when you didn’t like the changes, even if you thought we made mistakes. The community made this game possible. And a special shout out to Pink for Tink – which was truly the measure of a community coming together to do something right.
Games Workshop has cultivated a world class IP. We were lucky enough to play in their universe for nearly a decade, with five great long years live. However, like all things – our contract has come to an end. Both Games Workshop and Mythic agreed to part ways, despite how hard it is emotionally on us to let the game go. It has been a tremendous honor to work with Games Workshop and even though we may be parting ways, our relationship with them remains strong. And now, hopefully, because this may be the last thing I ever write about Warhammer, I’ll be allowed to acknowledge the existence of Chaos Dwarves. Or maybe not.

We look forward to seeing you on the battlefield… at least until the war is over… and once again, we thank you humbly for five amazing years.

Whilst this marks the end of one era, another aiming to flourish in 2015. Warhammer : Eternal Crusade will to launch in 2015.

Guinness World record holder Ultima Online celebrates its 16th Birthday with a festive weekend of prizes. Whilst the worlds oldest MMORPG shows no signs of slowing down , it continues to attract players from all spectrum of the globe. Bored? Looking to have some fun? Be sure to attend this weekends event. Prizes include;

Hedge Maze Scavenger Hunt

1st Place – Kings Collection
2nd Place – Raised Garden Beds
3rd Place – Undertakers Staff

Fool Hardy – Pre enter via email to LadyTia@stratics.com no later than September 20th.

1st Place – Unique Dye – Blackrock Hue – Tokuno Style
2nd Place – Forged Metal Tool
3rd Place – 15th Anniversary Robe

Cultural Center Design Contest – Deadline extended to 5am CST September 20th

Winner will have their design built on the shard of their choice with your name as the designer.

Story Contest – Deadline extended to 5am CST September 20th

1st Place – Mesanna’s Wig
2nd Place – Mesanna’s Bustier
3rd Place – Mesanna’s Whip

Trivia Contest – The Grand Prize to be announced at the Party!

Ultima Online 16th Anniversary Party Invitation

Please read the original post and send me your entries to LadyTia@stratics.com

If you don’t enter, you can’t win! See you at the party!

See you at the party!

No stranger to controversy, Sulake recently posted the following announcement about a recent breach in its systems;

“A security issue in our system enabled some accounts’ email address and date of birth to be exposed. We have resolved the issue and all accounts remain secure as this data alone does NOT allow access. If you would like to take extra precaution, please change the email associated with your account and be sure to keep your password safe. We take the safety and data security of our users very seriously and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.”

Whilst we are unsure as to the full extent of the hack, it seems Sulake are attempting to comfort its users. For what it’s worth, we would recommend you change your password.

OGPlanet has announced their first beta test for Heva Clonia Online, their new free to play mmorpg. The beta testing phase for North America starts today and will run until September 30th. You can be one of the first to play this new mmo, servers officially open at 4:00PM PT / 7:00PM ET today!

To celebrate the launch of Heva Clonia Online, OGPlanet is holding the aptly named “Play Heva Clonia Online & Win Event”. Players will have a chance to win 1 of 10 PC Gamepad Controllers that OGPlanet is giving away. To enter, you must reach level 10 in-game by the end of the beta, on September 30th. Sign up is still open at the official site and you can pre-load the client to get in game at launch time.

Heva Clonia has a pet system, you get cute and unique pets by cloning the in-game monsters you come across while playing. Your Pet becomes is your closest ally when battling the powerful monsters in PVE or when testing your skills in PVP at the Main Arena. Choose your class, evolve your powers, master your skills and visit various towns and worlds.

Heva Clonia Online Main Features:

• Clone Monsters as Pets – Clone monsters to collect them throughout your adventure, train them as pets, and battle them against your foes!
• PVP Monster Battles – Test your monster’s skills and battle expertise in the Main Arena against your friends or other players for victory.
• Couple-Dungeons – Team up with your closest friend in this two-person dungeon challenge. Only true teamwork will prevail.
• Guild PVP Battles – Battle for guild supremacy in epic Guild VS Guild PvP battles! Only the strongest guild will rank the top of the leader board in this challenge.
• Mini-Games – Take a break from epic adventuring and questing to play some fun, casual mini-games. They’ll help take your mind off saving the world.

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