DLA has arguably produced some of the best custom content for NWN 1 to date and I am sorry that they were treated so harshly. I am terribly disappointed in the obviously ham-fisted way Atari handled the situation. Yet,as others have said on the official forums, DLA had a business relationship with Bioware to produce custom content. Business is business, a cold cruel fact in today's world, even when it is a poorly run one (such as Atari). There was no guarantee that it was going to go the way everyone wanted it to go.

On the issue of money and Atari making any off of Premium Mods....I'm not privy to financial data. I'm told "some" in the past without specifics - but nothing to write home about in terms of money (that was my impression). Then again, it does not cost Atari anything to generate the revenue, either. They just need to shut up and take a cheque. It's not much more complicated than that.

Overall, Paradise is the disappointment of the year for the adventure community. All of the fuss and hype was for nothing which is actually a shame, since its wonderful world was the perfectly fertile ground to create a fantastic exotic adventure, but unfortunately the opportunity was lost. Fans of Sokal’s art are mainly the ones that will get the most out of the game, as well as graphic buffs, as long as they ignore the 3D problems. Surprisingly, even though a very easy adventure, it is better suited to experienced adventurers as it can easily become confusing and create unnecessary problems to beginners or casual gamers due to its bugs and poor puzzle implementation – and if this is your first adventure game, please don’t think that this is how adventures play. I give the game a D, which counts all the aforementioned bugs, but even a clean, 100% bug-free version could barely go up to a C-. Unless you have played everything else, look elsewhere for your adventuring fix and if you want to check out Sokal’s work, go for the Syberias or, why not, Amerzone.

Fans of the series will notice that Nival has played it very safe with this sequel. There are some notable improvements and additions, but overall the game feels very much like an updated version of any of the other titles in the franchise. While that might not be a bad thing for most gamers, those who have seen some of Nival's unique ideas in Blitzkrieg, Etherlords and Silent Storm might be wondering why Heroes V feels so familiar.

It's been a long couple of years since the last Heroes installment - and a worrisome transformation into the third dimension. The long wait is now over: our gaping mouths declared it officially worth it after seeing the startlingly gorgeous Heroes world. If you are just looking for a summer fling, be warned: Heroes has enough depth and sheer gameplay hours to wrap you around its finger for years. For fans of the Might and Magic series and turn-based strategy aficionados alike, Heroes V can't be missed.

HoMMV is the first title in the series to make it into three dimensions, and that’s no bad thing. The game looks pretty damn good, even without the fun stuff turned on - if you have a decent machine (and believe me, you'll need one) then HoMMV is very pretty indeed. Gameplay-wise, we’re looking at a turn based strategy game.Your Hero (which represents your army) can only move so far per turn and so on, but you can have multiple heroes (armies), cities (which you capture) and so on.

At last an adventure game worthy of playing. AGON: The Mysterious Codex is the first three chapters or episodes of the adventure series AGON or Ancient Games of Nations. This adventure mystery is from Viva Media, the same company that brought us other titles like Fritz 9 chess and Crazy Machines. You are placed in the role of Professor Samuel Hunt on the elusive trail of the Ancient Games of Nations.

Don’t ask me why you’re hunting down these varied games from around the world or if you’re going to get some final huge treasure or save the world when you finally do master all the games. The fun is in the quest and conquering the puzzles laid out before you. Plus the additional little bits of knowledge, wisdom and the chance to help others along the way. This is your typical adventure game in that you have to solve puzzles to move along the path toward your ultimate goal but it is a very well crafted story and finely made adventure game.

Upon getting a review assignment, even before I actually get a chance to play the game, I hop onto the Web to see what my fellow videogame journalists are saying about it. What I discovered about Frogwares 80 Days (published by Tri Synergy) was anything but flattering. By the time it got to my doorstep I wasn't looking forward to booting it up, let alone playing the sucker. But a funny thing happened about 15 minutes into actual gameplay... I was laughing. Out loud. And I was enjoying the experience! Proving once again that if you stick a chimp (or a "videogame journalist" in this casec) in a room with a writing utensil, he'll eventually pound out something worth reading. That, and opinions are like... well, you know. I consider myself a writer who plays videogames, not a gamer who writes. Thus, I tend to enjoy games with interesting storylines (even if they're not original) more than the Average Joe-Gamer. John Carmak once said, "Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important." Whatever.

Since the city was a utopia before the war broke out, there were no weapons. Every weapon that was created in the war and afterwards has been cobbled together out of regular household items. After breaking into a bar you are shot at by a sentry gun that is built into a chair. After setting off alarms you are attacked by a mobile sentry that is built out of an outboard motor. Even the weapon you are carrying is a hand made gun crafted out of various items scavenged from around the city. This theme of improvised weaponry continues throughout the entire game.

Gas Powered Games lead designer Daniel Achterman tells me that the disastrous world contains a lot more gore and adult subject matter, too. Some of the monsters I was shown, for instance, were wearing leather facemasks designed to hide the grotesque deformities caused by experimentation. The floor of the dungeon we were exploring was strewn with body parts and stained with blood, providing a much more grim and dark atmosphere than we ever witnessed while adventuring through the original storyline. Daniel also tells me that the expansion’s overall difficulty has been greatly increased, mainly due to popular request from fans. The five new “boss” monsters each have some sort of dynamic tied to them that will keep players from simply launching a brute force attack on them. Additionally, the team has made an effort to implement what they call “conditional monsters” into the expansion, which means that they produce some sort of effect after they die. This may include an explosion that damages any character nearby, or some other detrimental effect altogether.

Off the back of winning game of the show at E3, we’re looking for lots of talented people to join us in Australia. We’re working on the sequel to one of the best loved PC franchises of all time. I think gamers are going to go nuts when they find out.

The third in our series of public Dev Chats will be held on Saturday the 27th of May at 21:00 CEST. The subject of this chat is the Quest system in TCoS. The chat is expected to run an hour or so and will be done in Question and Answer format, so make sure to drop in a bit before the chat starts to begin submitting your questions.

You can stop by our irc server (irc.tcos.com) and join the #spellborn-QA channel in order to read or take part in the Q&A. Afterwards we will be making logs of the event available for those who cannot attend but are still curious as to how the system will work.

Expected Dev attendees for Dev Chat #3 include content lead 'Lady Landmine', community favorite Andreas 'Thee' Bettermann and PR manipulator Marco 'Freeze' van Haren.

Each fansite that is part of our Official Recognised Fansite Program features a exclusive blog maintained by a TCoS developer. The blogs contain a all revealing look behind the TCoS development scene and a sometimes too revealing look in the devs' personal lives (yes, some have one). Click 'Read more' to find out more about Pestibug's poly-boobs and ChrisN's Vailyrian bootcamp. Enjoy!

Welcome to this week's Community Spotlight!

The Spotlight is an opportunity for us to show you our favorite threads each week, in case you missed them.

Carefully handpicked and considered, the following threads were chosen for a variety of reasons. Like the perfect grape in a really good glass of wine (or grape juice, if you're one of our younger users), good threads only help in making this community a wonderful blend—without all that gunk at the bottom of the bottle.

UNCONSCIOUSLY, hands poised on their weapons, many warriors raised their heads towards the sky to see what started out as a great shadow that covered them.

Forming big circles over fortune encampment, a trained dragon, mounted by a Brave in armor, searched for a place to land in the plains already darkened with people. In the last few hours, many Fighters had reached the border of Al Drifa, in these plains more accustomed to hosting festivities and other markets rather than the veritable military camp that was currently there.

Q: "Since version 1.81, we have adjusted nineteen classes, in many cases making very significant changes. In this version, we are taking a step back, to assess the impact of all of these changes as a whole, and refine these adjustments as needed. In many (but not all) cases, we feel that we did not increase a class’s abilities enough, and we will be making additional improvements."

Does this supercede the announcement of the class changes to Valk on Pendragon currently with 1.84a?

A: No. The notes would be the final authority, but in any case, the Valk was one of the classes that wasn't "done" with the changes made in a previous patch.

Speaking of Valks, I got lots of questions about "is this intended" etc. for the material on Pendragon. Yes, it's all intended, but is it final? No, we're still collecting feedback.

That the Obsidian Developer Chat was cancelled and didn't take place on Wednesday doesn't mean there was no chatting whatsoever. Here are some juicy bits of the chat log we've received from an anonymous source. First of all, it looks like there aren't going to be any more patches or premium modules for NWN1, no matter how much the community is looking forward to each update. The Live Team seems to have been disbanded and the Dragonlance Adventures (DLA) team let go.

May 26 02:56:07 <[DLA]Steel_Wind> Atari is near insolvency and is deperate that NWN2 succeed. They don't give a rat's ass about DLA horses.

Those watching this issue might want to check out this thread on the BioWare forums for comments from a variety of interested parties. Thanks, Lucky Day.

When building an MMO one of the things that a great deal of time is spent on is creating the world itself! This is particularly true when you are dealing with a wonderfully deep license like the world created by Robert E Howard. The world has been envisioned by millions of peoples reading his books for decades and everyone has an ideal in their mind when they think of Cimmeria, Stygia, Tortage or anywhere else you care to mention!

Now is your chance to show the Age of Conan community your creative works! We are looking for a story about a character you will play or a character living in Hyboria. The top 3 creative stories selected will be allowed to set their own custom forum usertitle*!

We are delighted to confirm that we will be attending the Dragoncon convention in Atlanta in September and will again be having a player gathering for people to come and meet us and chat about the game and join in on some competitions and fun!

It’s finally happened – our user-content system finally gets an upgrade! And there are so many revisions and additions that you’re going to get a whole dev-log introducing the changes! :)

In fact, it’s the sheer size and scope of the changes that made it take so long. We’ve got a rather tight schedule around here at FLS, so imagine Aether’s challenge: coordinate the efforts of several devs and designers in order to give the entire user-content system and overhaul, but don’t use up any time on the schedule. How does one man manage a Herculean task like this? How did Aether get useful labor out of this herd of cats? By harassing us on a daily basis! By insulting our bloodlines, by pleading with us, and by plying us with free t-shirts and booze. Gently, quietly, and ever so slowly, Aether managed to turn our after-hours efforts into a product we can release to you: our adoring public.

Titan Quest has been on the drawing board for almost six years and has been in full production for more than two. In the very early years it was Brian Sullivan setting the vision for the product, with the help of cofounder Paul Chieffo, Max McGuire (programmer extraordinaire), Rich Sullivan (lead concept artist), and Josh McHugh (artist). In those early years, that group, with the help of a few others, worked in a small, windowless office we now call "The Dungeon." Iron Lore, led by President Brian Sullivan, has grown into a dedicated team of 38 developers with talent, patience, passion, and a love for games. Since it signed on as our publisher, THQ's superb professionals have helped us steer Titan Quest toward its fast-approaching launch date.

In our continuing efforts to preserve a solid game economy and to support the legitimate Guild Wars player, we have been actively pursuing those who use "bots" in Guild Wars. In the last week, we have closed more than one thousand accounts of those using third-party programs, and we will continue to take similar action in the future.

As promised earlier this week, we have randomly drawn 25 entries from all those we received from around the world in the Guild Wars Factions Guild Emblem Contest. These contestants will receive a collectible Guild Wars Skill Pin as a token of our thanks for taking part in the contest. The winners of the random drawing are listed on the contest page, along with a few additions to the winner and honorable mention lists.

The semi-finals and the finals of Season Two of the Guild Wars Factions Championship will take place this weekend. Visit this page to find out the dates and times of the matches, and don't miss a minute of the action! Join Observer Mode for your view of all the battles.

Jonric: Which is your preferred race and class combination in Auto Assault, and why is it special for you? Do you have a second favorite?

Hermann Peterscheck
Programmer
I currently enjoy playing the Human Lieutenant, which is a pet / summoning class. It's a good mix of direct damage and summons. I always like playing pet classes in games as it's fun to always feel like you have helpers. I'm usually not a huge grouper, thus pet classes are a way to get the best of both worlds. I really like building up the summon skills so that at higher levels, I have my own little army fighting alongside me.

Guild Wars' mostly-an-MMORPG approach has always made it a hard game to categorize. Sure, it's massive, multiplayer, and online, but it lacks the monthly fees and repetitive gameplay that all too often characterize the genre. So it's appropriate that Factions, in essence its first expansion pack, doesn't quite match the traditional definition of an expansion either.

First up, you don't need the original game to play it. You can buy Factions, start a new character, and begin exploring Factions' new continent, Cantha, straight away. Factions characters and those from the original Guild Wars campaign, Prophecies, can interact with each other. Factions also comes with 300 new skills, piles of new equipment, monsters, guild features, warring factions for players to ally with, and so on.

Combat in Auto Assault is very different. In fact, a fan of the Twisted Metal series on the Playstation may feel more comfortable with the controls than someone who plays World of Warcraft or EverQuest. The vehicles in Auto Assault require constant re-positioning and movement while fighting, something that is much different from the stand-still-and-push style of the games that share this title's genre. Each vehicle is equipped with multiple weapons to help combat foes. First, there is the basic front-mounted weapon which will produce a static arc on the player's screen for aiming. Second, there is a Turret mounted weapon which will produce another arc, helping players to aim. Third, cars can be outfitted with melee weapons to help with the close encounters. This is also good for running over enemies to gain experience while traveling. Lastly, there is a rear mounted weapon slot where players can outfit their car with a means of killing those who are hot on their tail. The arcs that are produced by the front and turret mounted weapons give the player a good idea of whether or not he or she will be able to hit their target. For the most part, if the enemies are inside the arcs, they will soon die with some lucky rolls of the dice. At first, learning to position the car can be difficult. However, it won't take very long for most players to get into a tedious routine of backing up, turning and going forward again. Of course, this combat can slightly change depending on what class the player chooses at the beginning of the game.

The next free expansion for City of Heroes/Villains, Issue 7, is extremely close to being released, but the developers took a few hours out of their busy schedules in order to take a couple of journalist for a spin in the new PVP zone, Recluse’s Victory. The zone is very unique as it features changing zone graphics depending on the outcome of the battle between heroes or villains.

We joined up with lead developer Matt Miller (aka. Positron) and zone designer Thomas Foss (aka. Ghost Widow). They showed us the zone and the many events in it and of course battled us...

MMOz: How does the traditional group balance change with the minion squad system? Most single avatar MMORPGs are based on the basic tank, damage dealer, healer group dynamic. As I understand it, an individual player's squad of minions can consist of a balanced party, but the “heavy” minion classes are tied to the player's own class. So does this mean a player of the Soldier class will be limited to weaker healing minions than a Priest player? Would a grouped Priest switch to a squad of eight healer minions, since their healer minions would be more powerful than healer minions controlled by another class of player?

Stieg Hedlund: I think you’ve summed that up quite well. The idea is that soloing players can create squads that balance their player character’s abilities, but will need to return to traditional roles (albeit with a squad) in group settings to be more effective. We wanted to make the group experience relatable to those of other MMOs so that squad play becomes an extension of those dynamics rather than competing with them.