Games

Dungeons and Dragons Online went live back in 2006, and a number of my friends took part in the beta, enjoying the game immensely. Then the product went live, and they never played again. The reason was simple: the game was $50, the monthly fee was $15, and for many gamers that's a hard sell. Then suddenly, a week or so ago, everyone was playing again. A thread about the game popped up on our forum. Where did this buzz come from? Simple: the game was once again free to play.

World of Warcraft players desperate for a new mount to traverse the online role-playing game's fantasy world are getting a reality check from hackers who have devised a clever pop-up phishing scam to spread malware.

Security technicians at F-Secure Security Lab on Tuesday posted a blog entry Tuesday detailing the latest scam making its way through the world's most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG).

The nProtect GameGuard software is an anti-cheat program designed to stop botters and hackers from using illegal third-party programs, but the disabled community gets snagged in this poorly executed "take no prisoners" anti-cheating approach.

Take-Two Interactive will shuffle $20 million out the door to make headaches from "hot coffee" go away.

The game publisher said Wednesday it has settled a longstanding class-action shareholder lawsuit over an infamous sex scene squirreled away in the code of Grand Theft Auto: San Andres. Take-Two will stuff $20,115,000 into a settlement fund for members of the class-action lawsuit. The company's insurance carriers will pay $15,200,000 of the settlement, and Take-Two will foot the rest.

Is that orc fighting next to you really a human player or just a robot?

Two hacktivists at DEFCON last week revealed details of a new type of automated World of Warcraft character that can level itself without human control.

The computerised characters can cast spells, fight, select targets, move and even communicate autonomously. GamesBeat reports that James Luedke and Christopher Mooney demonstrated characters they call 'helpers' - but that almost everyone else calls 'robots - can slog through the dull work of grinding new characters up levels automatically.

A thread over on the Infinity Ward forums reveals that troubles are brewing on the multiplayer front of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for the PlayStation 3, as hackers are taking advantage of exploits that enables them to walk through buildings and fly. Additionally, hackers have also figured out how to receive unlimited ammunition, no reloads, activate God Mode and mount laser sights.

This instructable will show you how to rip a copy of a Wii game to your computer using only a USB stick and your Wii, and how to compress it for storage. You will need several things to make this happen:

Wii with firmware 3.4 and under.
A Wii with a functional DVD drive.
A computer with a usb port.
A large usb stick or usb hard drive.(8 GB at most for dual layer games.)

Software Requirements:

A sneaky Internet sleuth has discovered that Blizzard Entertainment has recently filed for trademarks under the name "Cataclysm" in the computer games, paper-based products, and online entertainment services. Is this an all-new game, a World of WarCraft expansion, or something else entirely?

All signs point to a new World of WarCraft expansion. WoW.com noticed that the domain name "wowcataclysm.com" has just expired from a squatter based in Australia with the URL transferring over to GoDaddy, the same service that handles all of Blizzard's domain names.

Blizzard, creators of World of Warcraft, Diablo and StarCraft, dropped a bit of a bombshell on the RTS community when it announced that there would be no LAN (Local Area Network) support for its upcoming sequel. Instead players will have to use Blizzard’s Battle.net online service, a move which the developer says was a “difficult decision” but a necessary “safeguard against piracy.”

The iPhone 3GS is already wooing game developers with its faster, more powerful platform, but don't expect a ton of games fully taking advantage of it to flood the App Store -- yet. Though 1 million iPhone 3GSs sold in one weekend, the latest Apple mobile device is essentially still a niche product, compared to the 40 million original iPhones, iPhone 3Gs, and both iPod Touch models already sold. And those won't be able to run games with the same efficiency and speed as the new iPhone 3GS.

In short, it's still too early to declare the era of iPhone 3GS games officially arrived.