No, I’m not making this up. Although I laughed out loud at one commenter who asked if the acronym stood for Massively Mormon Online Game.

The Bible Online is based on the first book of the Bible, Genesis. Players can meet and play the real heroes of Genesis, Abraham and his descendants. The game is designed for users to actually experience the Book of Genesis by fulfilling quests of Abraham, which is based on the true stories of the Genesis. As a MMORTS, players are to lead their tribe, build buildings, maintain resources and engage in warfare with other tribes. However, players do not stay in one place, but will go on a quest to go to the Promised Land.

The first chapter, Heroes, focuses on Abraham who needs to take his tribe to the promised land. You take on the role of Abraham and his descendants and work to grow your tribe through expansion and battle. You are given progressive quests which take the format of a biblical quote, a task, a hint and a reward. You will need to gather resources to build buildings to grow the tribe. A large tribe is important for recruiting soldiers for battle, including sling soldiers, spearmen, archers, cavalry and apparently St. Michael. I may have misunderstood that bit.

Your goal is not just growth though – you will need to gather your people to lead them to Ur and then lead them to Haran and then finally lead them to the Promised Land in Cana’an.

The Bible Online: Ch.1 The Heroes also offers additional elements of RPG. When Abraham dies, Isaac becomes the tribe leader and after Isaac dies, Jacob leads the tribe. There are also quests for users to experience Genesis according to the history of the Bible. For example, as it is written in Genesis 14:13~14, there is a quest for Abraham to lead 318 men to rescue his nephew Lot.

FIAA, who also developed Kalos War and Operation7 is a German company who is releasing the game into Open Beta today, the 6th of September. They’ll be giving away prizes to the most obsessive best players.

Unfortunately, their website seems to be fairly unstable and it took me a couple of tries to sign up for the beta test. Once I managed to register, log in and click the Join Beta button, I got a php error followed by a page which simply said “!!!IMPORTANT!!!” Not a great start for a browser-based MMO. Maybe they should have waited for the 7th day?

Let the “God Mode” jokes begin.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

The story: After years of wandering, you’ve come back to your hometown to set things right. Now you’re an outlaw, trying to make your way in this thriving metropolis. Enjoy Poisonville’s impressive 3D graphics right in your browser as you explore the city, buy or steal cars, take on exciting missions or dress in cool gear and hit up the hottest nightclubs. The city is 100% interactive – everything’s possible. You play Poisonville with thousands of other real players, Join one of this online game’s four gangs and fight your way to the top of your ‘hood. Infinite gameplay possibilities make Poisonville a highlight for all online game fans.

There are four gangs in the city and you are assigned to one of them, making the other three your mortal enemies. The goal of the game is straightforward. “Find out who framed you ten years ago and pay them back – with interest. Get a gun and some cool new threads and get even.”

The trailer looks pretty interesting:

You can play in the Open Beta just by signing up with a username and email address. I created a character and was shown a new web page informing me that I was in the Kingston Cartel. I wandered through the Online Store where there were lots of weapons and clothes that I couldn’t afford. I thought it was a nice touch to have aspects of the game as a website so that players can optimize their players while at work when they don’t have access to their primary gaming computer. I was hoping for a tutorial but other than clans (the in-game version of guilds) and the shop, there didn’t seem much to do.

Instead, I hit play and was given my orange-jumpsuited character. The game doesn’t play in my browser but a separate window pops up giving me a few character options. There aren’t a lot of options but you can choose your skin-tone and change your gang.

I then got a slow-moving refresh of my character in a blocky bedroom. Movement is a combination of mouselook and wasd and there was an empty wardrobe which I could open and close using E.

I was a little bit shocked though. The game looked nothing like the trailer.

I chose the medium settings although I have the spec for their “high” option and once it loaded, it seemed to move smoothly but it looked like a CAD mock-up of a game, not the smooth graphics shown in the clip above. I took a job and ran up and down the street – still didn’t see any naked women though. Or actually, any women at all. Anywhere.

The geometry is made up of harsh lines and the city scapes aren’t particularly exciting but as a free-to-play shoot-em-up with a low barrier to entry, I could see this catching on. This isn’t really my type of game and to be honest, I’m not crazy about testing things out in beta. But if you are looking for a fast and fun diversion, this might be right up your alley.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

It is quite possible to do well playing Might and Magic without paying a subscription. If you play without a 5 euro per month subscription you are limited in the number of heroes and cities you can control but slow development can be stronger in the long run.

So how do you get started?

The first choice you make is what faction to play. There is not a huge variance so it will not affect the game much but the Necromancers and the Mages seem the most balanced which is good for slow play.

Heroes

Don’t hire your second hero straight away.

Use the first hero to do the honour quests (the ones that give troops as a reward), fine tune the combats so that you get the maximum exp. http://mmhk.jactari.info/fight is a good site for testing combat results.

Buy Landlord and one point of Charismatic Enlister with your first hero. His next six skill points go into Enlister.

Attack and magic, what more could you need?

Refresh the Tavern daily until you get the option of hiring a Fanatic Sorceror or Disturbed Wizard. These guys are ideal for the second ‘keeper’ but you don’t want to recruit them just yet. If you don’t have one of these in the first tavern hire any of them for the cheap troops (after Charisma) use them to upgrade a mine or two and then dismiss them.

As the fights become harder, you will not have enough troop generation to be able to fight non-stop. You should prioritise mine improvements and intersperse Landlord training between your combats. It will take you about four days to get to eighth level, depending on how quickly you can turn around activity and what types of troops you are faced with.

You can spy on a nearby city, maximising the time spent overnight. This should get 100 to 200 exp depending on how tough the other city is, though there is a risk that you’ll get injured if the other city has a tough hero.

Once you have maximised Enlister, you can enlist the next hero. The extra skill points mean that this guy starts off with some nice skills.

First hero – Landlord, Charismatic Enlister rank 1, Enlister rank 3 then architect skills to develop the second city. He’ should become a merchant too, eventually.

Buildings

Improve your mines as soon as money becomes available in the following order:

1. Gold mine
2. Lumber mill
3. Ore mine
4. Rare mine

This is a key part of the long term strategy to use improve rather than upgrade. It will mean you are strapped for cash and develop slowly.

Early on, you can sell your rare production to get the extra cash for mines. Obviously, you should sell them at the peak day and, ideally, season. There isn’t much player economy because you can only trade with nearby people. You will need some rares to upgrade the magic guild so don’t sell looted rares.

City

In the city you’ll want to build as fast as ore and timber allow. Build the town hall first, this is cheap cash production. Build a market for the quest but don’t worry about the ‘trade 5,000g’ quest. Next you’ll want to be able to produce some archers rather than rely on what heroes bring. Then build a store house and after that a magic guild (for the quest).

After the First Few Days

Might and Magic is very much a team effort. If you are a strong player without a subscription then you should have no trouble getting into a good alliance.

You may be fanatical enough to pay the subscription, if so, point your friends at this article and get them to join in – they’ll develop into good late-game allies.

Each of the 13 tears is a team effort

Hero 2 should be a Fanatic Sorceror or the slightly better Disturbed Wizard; you want zero defence. With the four skill points you can buy this guy ‘Leader’ and two ranks of Harangue.

Straight away, this hero will be stronger than your other hero and will ramp up quickly with levels as he is now the focus. Hero 2 should first train a spell-casting class is to complete the spell-casting quest; magic isn’t really useful until much later in the game. To round off the second hero, you want to take Warrior and a point in each of the classes, most of their development will be in Warrior from now on plus some Diplomacy.

A quick note on fighting battles: when your hero is strong, you sometimes find that having just one type of troop is a good tactic. The Overrun concept is covered quite early in the quest chain but ‘Heroic Overrun’ isn’t very well explained. The best way to complete this quest is to set up an attack so that just one or two of the enemy troops survive, then the next stack is enough of that troop type to get an over run (the fight planner above can be use to fine-tune this).

Second hero:

• Leadership
• Harangue 2
• Spell Casting
• Warrior
• Infantry Master 1
• Marksman 1
• Tactics 1
• Rider 1

At this point Diplomat has some merit and is worth a point.

Mines

Once your mines are Improved to 4, it is just cost effective to place a research station next to them. It continues to be worthwhile to upgrade the research station but you should improve the mines as a priority.

City

Work towards being able to produce your own cavalry by making the tier 3 troop housing (if needed by your faction: some factions have tier 3 cavalry).

Buy troops sparingly. The money is better used in development which gets expensive. You can store up to ten times the troop production capacity in troops. You can keep your army ticking over by using diplomacy. Hit the same faction NPCs with a big stack (superior power before bonus), this should mean that either you recruit them or you defeat them with low losses. The recruiting should offset some of your losses on the other 75% of fights.

If they can't beat you...

Hero 3 is, logically enough, a defence hero as you have a support and an attack hero so defence and magic are a good choice: Protector or Illuminated Protector. You won’t need much actual defence just yet so he’s going to fill your support needs with builder and a point in each ‘digging’ skill.

Make Hero 3 a builder. Put one point in each ‘production’ and then then a further point in each unless you are threatened with PvP, in which case choose knight and a magic skill.

By the time you have improved all mines to level 5, you should have pretty much cleared your area and be ready to found a new city. Develop that one in much the same way (NPCs will be tougher) and aim to capture a ‘brown’ abandoned city for your third. You lack a scout and that is going to be rectified with the fourth hero: an attack and magic Ranger / Barbarian.

Posted by Aach on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Wukung has already rated a number of games this year, including Darksiders, Bayonetta, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, Mass Effect 2, Dante’s Inferno, BioShock 2, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, Heavy Rain, Yakuza 3, Bad Company 2, Half Minute Hero, BlazBlue, Red Steel 2, Disgaea 2, FFXIII, Just Cause 2, Splinter Cell Conviction, Nier, Super Street Fighter IV and Iron Man 2 and Alan Wake, Red Dead Redemption, No More Heroes 2, God of War 3! Here is his latest set of reviews, exclusively available on MMORPG-Info.

These reviews have been sitting mostly finished for quite a while but I was planning on finishing Super Mario Galaxy 2. Unfortunately that fell by the wayside due to my Castlevania HD addiction. So I’ve given up worrying about having not finished SMG2, I doubt the last couple of levels would change my opinion much.

Transformers: War For Cybertron (Xbox 360 Tested, PS3)

The campaign wears out its welcome with frequent dull boss fights and excessively long levels. Encounters where you lack any viable cover or the durability to survive in the open provide frustrating difficulty spikes. The ammo capacity on weapons is horrible and leaves you hunting ammo boxes after even the most minor encounter and too frequently completely out of ammo. In contrast the team based multilayer side steps all of the campaign’s problems. Well balanced classes and varied sets of abilities give an strong multilayer component which is sadly hampered by a very slim map selection and unreliable matchmaking.
7/10

Demon’s Souls (PS3)

If you can break through Demon’s Souls brutally difficult start there is a deep, atmospheric and very enjoyable game. Much of Demon’s Souls renowned difficulty stems from a seemingly unnecessary lack of guidance given to the player. While this can be offset by using some of the online fan resources it’s a pity that it will be barrier for many to enjoying an otherwise excellent game.
9/10

Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii)

Super Mario Galaxy: The Lost Levels in some ways would have been a more accurate title. Fortunately those levels are better than the those of the first Super Mario Galaxy. There is a bit of a difficulty hike overall but the difficulty curve is much more even this time around. The story is stripped down even compared to slim but memorable offerings of the previous game but Mario has never really been about the story.
9/10

Crackdown 2 (Xbox 360)

In many ways Crackdown 2 is very similar to the first game and in other ways it’s strikingly different. Reuse of the previous games map with only minor modifications at first feels like a bit of a cop out but the pay off in feeling of continuity makes up for it. The sometimes overly fussy climbing mechanics remain but exploration is still overall enjoyable. The game feels heavily geared towards multiplayer which is a pity since multiplayer is pretty dire. The mechanics are poorly balanced for the PvP matches. Combine limited communication with the lack of structure multiplayer co-operative multiplayer in the campaign for the most part fairly unsatisfying.

Most of the fun is to be found in side tasks and just messing around. Crackdown 2 is distinct enough on top of improvements to make pacific city an enjoyable play ground once again.
8/10

Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck’s Revenge (XBOX 360 (tested), PS3, PC)

Monkey Island 2 with all new graphics and voice overs from the established series voice cast. Compared to MI1: SE the style of the new artwork is much better and the new voice overs are excellent. As much as I love Monkey Island 2, I’ve always felt it is slightly over rated due to some very unintuitive puzzles and a weak final act. However even before the enhancements it still stands up as a great game thanks to some excellent set pieces and great writing. The Special Edition’s hint system and object highlighting mitigates the unintuitive puzzle issues of the original. There is something here, both for people who have never played Monkey Island 2 and those with long held happy memories of it.
9/10

Limbo (Xbox 360)

Short but sweet puzzle platformer. Limbo packs Some clever puzzles and a great sense of atmosphere. It’s possible to finish in one sitting and even with its limited length there are some pacing issues with the last half being very barren.
9/10

Castlevania: Harmony of Despair (Xbox 360)

Taking most of its assets from the Nintendo DS Castlevania games, Castlevania HD brings together characters from across the series for multiplayer centric 2D platformer dungeon action. The recent Castlevania games have resembled Metroid or Zelda, while in some ways similar Castlevania HD is more like Diablo. With a very steep level of difficulty at the start and a major grind at the high end, Castlevania HD will be pretty divisive game with many players unable to get along with it and others completely lost in loot lust.
8/10

Posted by Wukung on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Slayer

Official Guide

Type

Swordsman

Armor

Heavy

Weapons

Bludgeon Weapons, Katanas, Short Swords, Zanbatos, Lightsabres

Specializations

Blade Master

Soul Bender

Berserker

Asura

DFO official Skill List for Slayers

Fighter

Official Guide

Type

Hand-to-hand combat

Armor

Light

Weapons

Knuckles, Tonfas, Claws, Gauntlets, Boxing Gloves

Specializations

Nen Master

Striker

Brawler

Grappler

DFO official Skill List for Fighters

Mage

Official Guide

Type

Magic Spells

Armor

Cloth

Weapons

Staves, Poles, Spears, Rods, Broomsticks

Specializations

Elementalist

Summoner

Witch

Battle Mage

DFO official Skill List for Mages

Priest

Official Guide

Type

Holy Power

Armor

Heavy

Weapons

Battle Axes, Totems, Crosses, Rosaries, Scythes

Specializations

Crusader

Monk

Exorcist

DFO official Skill List for Priests

Gunner

Official guide for Female Gunner and Male Gunner

Type

Firearms

Armor

Leather

Weapons

Autoguns, Muskets, Hand Cannons, Revolvers, Bow Guns

Specializations

Ranger

Launcher

Mechanic

Spitfire

DFO official Skill List for Gunners

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Last week, I posted about the Stargate Command classes. Today, we will be looking over the various strengths and tricks of the unique System Lord classes. So grab your staff weapon, sharpen your knives and prepare to fight in the service of your god!

Jaffa

• Your staff weapon has a special feature: around your cross-hair you will note a orange ring. Once you fire, that ring disappears only to return a few seconds later. This is its charging feature. You can simply fire off your staff weapon repeatedly but, after the first shot, there will be no blast damage and overall damage will be reduced. If you pace yourself then you can shoot off full-power blasts each time, dealing higher damage and blast damage. Remember that blast damage is useful when fighting in a corridor: if you’re finding it hard to hit your enemies, shooting at their feet will make it much harder for them to avoid the blast damage.
• Sometimes there are simply too many enemies. A group of soldiers all ganged up with their P90′s will drop you before you can say “Kree!” The Shock Grenade makes your life much easier on this count. When thrown, there is a short time after which it explodes, blinding anyone within range. This leaves them blundering and firing wildly, a ripe target for you or your Goa’uld lord.
• The Staff Weapon is deadly on its own but several Jaffa grouped together and forming a firing line are a recipe for victory. Stick together with fellow Jaffa and you will soon find soldier after soldier falling to your mighty blasts.

Goa’uld

• Your shield is essential to your long profitable life. It defends you against the Turrets of the Scientist, the P90 of the Soldier and both the Sniper Rifle and the Pistol of the Commando. Distract a annoying sentry and suddenly your Jaffa can advance and destroy it with ease, while bullets strike your shield uselessly. Bear in mind that use of any of your other devices will deactivate the shield, leaving you defenceless until it recharges.
• Your hand device is a powerful weapon, not only destroying the mind of the target while in use but also disorienting him and making it harder for him to shoot back. Use this on any pesky humans who have strayed from the rest, as one-on-one there is very little a victim of the hand device can do to escape it.
• Your push (right-click while using the hand device) allows you to push your enemies away and disorient them. Whether you push them off a balcony, into a Stargate, down a pit or into the hands of your Jaffa is up to you. Certainly it is useful for beating a tactical retreat (a mighty god would never run away), as your enemy will not only be further away but also left dizzy and unsure of where he is. Remember that pushing might give your targets an advantage as it puts them out of range of your hand device but possibly still in range of their fire arms.
• Your healing device marks you as a benevolent god, allowing you to cure the ills of your Jaffa and Ashrak, as well as any other fellow Goa’uld. You can heal yourself but you will walk slowly and not heal as fast as if another Goa’uld were healing you. Working in conjunction with another Goa’uld will hasten the process but can also be a weapon in itself. Three Goa’uld healing a charging Jaffa make the Jaffa all but invincible: all his damage disappears nearly as soon as it appears. It bears repeating that even this healing device will disable your shield, leaving you vulnerable.

Ashrak:

• Your cloaking device makes you unique among the classes of both the System Lords and the Stargate Command. It’s not perfect (movement will create shimmering purple patches that might be spotted by an intrepid Soldier) but for the most part it makes you unseen by your enemy. Any attacks will completely collapse the cloak, making you visible and leaving your cloak to recharge. Be aware that crouching, although better for hiding, also makes your trademark Goa’uld eyes light up, making you a beacon in certain situations … a beacon which draws P90 fire.
• A useful item with varied situational use is your Hara’kash or gem device. This item, when aimed at a Stargate Command enemy, will drain his stamina making him unable to run. It will also restore small amounts of your health. This can be useful if a assassination attempt goes awry but is also useful due to the fact that the cloak will not turn off if you use it. Use the device on an enemy busy with another foe to give your ally a advantage, as well as to restore any lost health, but beware of using it uncloaked, as it will leave you slow for a small while, unable to switch to your knife.
• Your knife allows you to stab your enemies and although many might joke about “Bringing a knife to a gun-fight”, the weapon is lethal in certain situations. Any blow from behind with the knife is an instant kill, making the combination of your cloak and your knife deadly indeed. It also has decent damage from other angles, and can destroy turrets and dispensers. Remember that attacking with the knife WILL disable your cloak, so position yourself well before breaking your cover.

Now, go forth and trash those insolent Tau’ri! Kree!

Posted by Conot on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

http://www.nekogames.jp/mt/2008/01/cursor10.html

It may appear simplistic but the Cursor * 10 gameplay had me enthralled through multiple plays, trying to work out the best way to make it to the top.

I’m pleased to see that there is now a new set of puzzles: Cursor * 10 2nd Session.

Although there is scoring, that’s the wrong thing to focus on – the goal is to make it to the 16th level. In order to solve the puzzle, you have to help future instances of yourself get up the stairs. I have to admit that the air turned blue on floor six when I cursed my past-self for snatching the key that I needed – how rude!

I still think that this is a very clever new look at basic gameplay and I’d love to see further twists on this concept. Now I just have to work out how my future-self can help the previous instances of myself to get that high score…

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

The game allows you to play as both factions from the original series (Stargate SG-1): Stargate Command and the System Lords. Each faction has three classes available. What makes Stargate Resistance special is its differences from most class-based games. Each class for either side has no comparable opposite number, every class is unique and has its own strengths and weaknesses. The Soldier has the fast firing P90, the Jaffa the powerful but slow Staff Weapon, the Commando the long ranged sniper rifle, the Goa’uld the short-ranged hand device. Thus, playing either side is a unique experience, with very different tactics and possibilities.

What may interest some is the ideology as well as the potential shown by Stargate Resistance. The game was developed by Firesky Studios, the same people making the up-and-coming MMO Stargate Worlds. Some may be aware that Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment filed for Chapter 11 (corporate bankruptcy) a while ago, but development still continues.

Stargate Resistance was designed as a proof of concept, proving that Firesky was capable of delivering regularly updated, balanced combat system. It is also a means for a small amount of fund raising to continue the production of SGW.

You can choose to play System Lords or Stargate Command, each with three unique classes. Here is a rundown of the Stargate Command classes.

Soldier:

• Your main weapon, the P90, fires fast and accurate but damage per bullet is low. For this reason you need to be able to keep a steady aim on your opponent, not just spray and pray.
• For those pesky shielded Goa’uld who simply refuse to die to your bullets, the Grenade Launcher is your weapon of choice. Blast damage and high damage means this can be devastating to a bunched up group of Jaffa and will also reveal an Ashrak who is hiding nearby. Beware of the Grenade Launcher’s long reload times and remember to reload it after a melee, so that you don’t end up trying to fire off a grenade only to find the chamber empty.
• Smoke grenades are useful to cover yourself and your squad, emitting white smoke that completely hides you. Use it to cover team mates in an advance or to hide a Scientist’s turret that is about to appear, leaving your enemy shooting wildly but receiving accurate death from within the cloud. Remember that smoke grenades can disadvantage you as much as advantage you. Invisible Ashraks will be even more difficult to find here and marks such as glowing eyes or a shield will be all but impossible to see inside.

Commando:

• Your emphasis should always be on long range. Your sniper rifle can easily drop a Jaffa or unshielded Goa’uld and can also track an Ashrak with its thermal sights. Find somewhere nice and isolated, preferably where there’s no way to approach you from behind, settle down and start counting kills. Be aware that while scoping, you will have tunnel vision and be severely reduced in your ability to watch out for an Ashrak sneaking up behind you, which bring us on to the next item…
• Claymores, explosives, mines. Exploding devices are your best friend. These smart little bombs can be placed somewhere, normally a doorway or directly behind you, and they will constantly watch, not blowing up until some juicy System Lord target is within their sights. This will protect you from your tunnel vision, hurting the enemy or possibly killing them, as well as giving you the warning you need to spin round and empty a clip into any survivors. Don’t expect this to fight your battles for you though, as enemies can still walk around the claymores and may blow them up prematurely if they spot them from the distance.
• The .50 cal pistol is your best method of short range defense. It packs a punch and has strong recoil but a few bullets will put most Jaffa down. No deeper skill needed to understand this weapon: try to work out the recoil and pre-emptively adjust your aim for it. Other than that, simply shoot and kill.

Scientist:

• You’re not a big fighter, you don’t have much health and you certainly don’t have many weapons. The Sabine Nanite Sprayer is your main tool of trade. With two different attacks, symbiote poison and healing nanites, this neat little gadget allows you to spray out the enemies and then heal your own soldiers to give them the advantage. The poison will reveal Ashraks, so spray in corners or near your turrets to avoid a nasty suprise. The poison is infective, meaning that if you can get one Jaffa who is running back to his buddies, he will infect his buddies as well, making your job all the easier. You should heal anyone whenever you can but don’t heal another scientist when there’s a soldier there instead.
• Your pistol is nothing special. It is weaker than the P90 or the sniper rifle … weaker even than the Commando’s pistol. However, it is highly accurate and has 15 bullets per clip, making it a wonderful strafing weapon. Infect your enemies with poison, then simply pump as many bullets as possible into them until they stop moving.
• Your Turret and Nanite Dispenser are two powerful tools. You summon them by placing a beacon, which then brings the selected item to you in a few seconds. The Turret will easily take down a Jaffa. Remember that a Goa’uld with a shield is immune to its bullets and can distract it from the big Jaffa with a Staff Weapon. Also remember that the Staff weapon has blast damage, so a Jaffa can easily pop in and out of cover while blasting your Turret to bits. You want to put your Turret somewhere where it can ambush someone and it isn’t easy to attack. Also remember that your Turret WILL NOT TARGET invisible Ashraks, meaning that you should keep a healthy (for you anyway) cloud of poison around it if you want to discourage them.
• Your Dispenser allows you to heal many people at once, and at a faster rate than your Nanite Sprayer. People will often cluster around these, so remember to put it somewhere where your hostile neighborhood Jaffa can’t shoot off his blast damage to hurt a whole bunch of people at once. Used behind cover it can allow team mates to recover damage quickly in order to return to the battlefield.

Stargate Resistance is currently available on Steam for $19.99 and is currently the Direct 2 Drive deal of the week. The game is frequently updated with maps released periodically. Come back next week for a set of tips and tricks for the frightensome leaders of the Jaffa, The System Lords!

Posted by Conot on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Or maybe I’m just easily amused. See what you think:

“Don’t you hate it when you want to buy weed but your disposition with your dealer isn’t high enough? We do.”

The video has become an overnight viral sensation which is great news, because Max and Sam have now committed to making more. I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with!

You can find out more by following their tumblr account: This Guy Are Sick (Note: includes adult content)

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Cow Clicker is a Facebook app which encapsulates everything that is great about social games. The game accounts for all different playstyles and makes for riveting gameplay.

Ian Bogost, the developer, explains Cow Clicker in his blog.

You get a cow. You can click on it. In six hours, you can click it again. Clicking earns you clicks. You can buy custom “premium” cows through micropayments (the Cow Clicker currency is called “mooney”), and you can buy your way out of the time delay by spending it. You can publish feed stories about clicking your cow, and you can click friends’ cow clicks in their feed stories. Cow Clicker is Facebook games distilled to their essence.

You start with a single cow and a pasture. In your pasture, you can house your friend’s cow. When your cow moos, the other cows in your pasture moo. Clicking your cow earns them clicks and when they click you get credit. This is viral game sharing at its best.

In the barn, you can collect different cows. You start with a plain cow but you can swiftly move up the ranks and get exciting upgrades like a Holstein Cow or a Hereford Cow or even a Bacon Cow! If you are impatient, you can buy Mooney which allows you to click more often or simply buy that handsome new cow you have your eye on. At a rate of 1,000 Mooney for $10, it’s a bargain!

Visit the herd and visit your friends to find their status update. When you see one of them broadcast I'm clicking a cow, you can choose the option Click my click and earn a Mooney for both you and your friend. The game also includes an exciting ranking system based on clicks. Watch the leaderboard to see who is clicking the most. You can earn a gold, silver or bronze udder for making the top ranks of all time!

There’s great information on the Facebook discussion forums including this useful thread of Favorite strategies for cow clicking?

I like to click with the left button on my mouse every 6 hours. Anybody else have a good strategy?

I like to forget about the cow, then suddenly remember that several hours have indeed passed before I frantically click it. That “Moooooo” is really a thrill.

I just click constantly, maybe 120-180 times a minute, so I don’t miss the time turnover.

I alternate between my right index and right middle finger in order to avoid clicking fatigue.

Note that some players are discussing Greasemonkey scripts and mechanical clicking devices in order to get ahead, which, in my opinion, is not in the spirit of Cow Clicking. But I guess if you really want that Bling Cow, you might want to consider it.

I recommend reading Ian Bogost’s post about why he developed this game and his thoughts on the latest breed of social games which encourage compulsive clicking without effort nor gameplay. He concludes the piece with an uncomfortable insight into his own time spent developing the game.

Even over the few days I spent developing Cow Clicker, I found myself watching people play, listening to feedback, and imagining changes. I “listened to my players” and made enhancements far beyond what was reasonable for a work of carpentry or a simple parody. It’s hard for me to express the compulsion and self-loathing that have accompanied the apparently trivial creation of this little theory-cum-parody game. Have I fully represented the distillation I hoped to accomplish? Or is some feature missing? And ought I not to add it if so? Where’s the vampire cow or the werewolf cow or the cthulhu cow? Ought I not to make them? Perhaps I became consumed myself. Such is the spirit of the day, it would seem: mundane, outward obsession whose worst trick is to disguise itself as fruitfulness.

And with that, my six-hours are just about up, time for another click! That golden udder will be mine…

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.