SpellForce 2 would be easy to recommend based solely on its campaign play, but the skirmish mode adds its own excitement to the game and will provide for some fun gameplay after you’ve made your way through the campaign. In this mode the game plays like a more traditional RTS game with emphasis on resource gathering, base-building, and army raising. SpellForce 2 departs from the standard RTS model in that you create your hero before entering skirmish mode and this hero will grow in experience and abilities as you play your way through the skirmish battles. Each map has a recommended hero level associated with it and this guide should be adhered to as an underpowered hero can easily find himself slain by the first sword blow the first time the enemy is encountered.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is by far the most impressive entry in the series so far, and the 360 title is definitely one of the most impressive titles in the systems library thus far. Although not without its faults, Oblivion is a beautiful game that will keep you entertained for weeks to come. It offers deep RPG elements, with quick exciting combat that will keep any gamer satisfied for quite some time.

"The important thing about AI to me", continues Levine, "is not that monsters are performing cool tactics. Rather, that they're creating a believable world in which people are motivated by meaningful things and allowing you to observe these behaviours, and most importantly have the ability to interact with the behaviours. We want a world where there's an actual ecology going on. We want a relationship between all the different players in the world including you. And more importantly, we want ways for you to interact with that ecology, have an impact on that ecology and be affected by it in ways you can plan and ways you can't."

If you kill someone in this game, it's because you want to. That's right, night owls and early risers in Gothic 3, when you fell a foe they're simply knocked to the ground or "fallen." Like characters in console RPGs, your enemies aren't dead at the end of a combat, just down. It's up to you to decide to walk away or to finish them off with a kill stroke. The Gothic series has always reached for the stars when it comes to giving its players the freedom to act. In its third iteration, Gothic will hopefully be a series that can deliver on its dreams.

If you ask hardcore RPGers, you’ll hear an endless list of great things about Gothic. So it’s no surprise that Gothic 3 is a highly anticipated game among fans of the genre. The game promises to offer a non-linear, open-ended adventure with an enthralling story and a detailed simulation of environment and human behavior. Just RPG was fortunate enough to sit down with Aspyr at E3 and get a closer look at the game.

Diary entry of the monstrously bad-looking developer pt. I

The world we created still feels a little bit dull for players that are not much into PvP, alliance operations & politics and other activities that don’t involve other players. The group of players that come in mind that feel this lack are mostly the new comers and solo players. How do we fix that? We create the content of course, but the bigger question is:

How do we do that?
Our development team faces a battle about whether we should create instanced content vs. static content. Creating instanced or random generated content would be the easiest solution, especially with so many players playing the game, but we want to be true to the world. Creating static content on the other hand would mean that in couple of days everyone would know about them and they would simply be camped/farmed to death, where a simple time zone difference can mean that you won’t ever be able to enjoy specific content if it’s known by the Sir Farm Alot corporation.

Are you the type of gamer that plays only on relentless and invincible? Do you wish you could turn your difficulty slider up to 11? You think you have a group of street-smart, hero-crushing hardcore villains that can take on any challenge?

Well put your villainy where your mouth is and try your hand at the City of Villains(TM) Recluses’ Strike Force Challenge! The winners will be the first team to successfully complete the entire Lord Recluse Strike Force on the Test Server and complete the entry process which allows us to verify completion of the Strike Force

This first-person, point and click, adventure is set in the 1930s and casts the player as Howard Brooks, a young engineer. Invited aboard the famous Hindenburg, he loses consciousness and wakes up to find himself mysteriously alone in the airship. Taking control of the zeppelin, he will travel across the world, exploring locales such as the Empire state building in New York, a palace in India, and a Mesopotamian temple, on the trail of one Miss Sullivan, a famous archaeologist - and, hopefully, discovering how Atlantis ties into all this in the process.

Heroes of Might and Magic V is an enjoyable game. It has been awhile since I played a Heroes game – I hardly played IV, though I did play III more than that. From everything I’ve read and been told, the game is like a ‘best-of’, combining the good parts of III and IV. Well, Nival did a good job of picking what to bring over and wrapped it all up in a gorgeous 3D engine. They’ve made some new introductions to the series, namely the initiative system. Heroes, while not jumping out into unfamiliar territory, is still a good game.

When I first heard that I would be checking out a game called The Witcher by CD Projekt, I wasn't all that excited. Sure, it was a role-playing game, but that market has been saturated for years and few new games in it excite me these days. Which is why I was completely shocked and happily surprised when I left CD Projekt's booth after another long day at the convention center. Not only did this game have a deep and dark storyline, great action-RPG gameplay and impressive graphics, but it also seemed like it would exceed my expectations for any PC game being released this year.

Funcom and Conan Inc. has extended the agreement in which Funcom has the exclusive rights to develop any and all Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games based on the Conan license. The agreement gives Funcom the right to develop MMO games with the Conan brand on PC, present and future gaming consoles, portable devices and mobile systems until 2018. In addition, Funcom now has an option to prolong the agreement with five additional years.

I miss the good old fashioned point and click adventure gameplay where you pick up items and need to figure out where it goes. Spending hours and hours solving puzzles with simple solutions once you knew what the solution was. However, I can understand that these types of games may not appeal to everyone, but throwing in some action sequences hardly makes the game any better. In the beginning of the game you head off to the gym and you can practice your moves with your teacher, Jama, who you’ve trained with for years. But the fights are hardly challenging or engaging. They’re tedious at best and more of a nuisance than adding any element of fun. If you’re going to include a fighting sequence, at least make it somewhat enjoyable or at least accurate. I find myself punching and kicking thin air a lot and all I need to do is align myself right in front of the other person and then do a few strong kicks.

Few would disagree that Disney has a hit on its hands with ToonTown Online. It took a few years of learning and tweaking but they captured the youngest of audiences and brought them into the MMO market in a way most parents felt safe and confident with. With Pirates of the Caribbean Online Disney is ready to reach for the next step up – the E10+ crowd. The little we saw looks as if they’ve got off to a good start.

The first thing to understand is this is not an adult game and is not drawn in an adult style. Neither is it in a wholly cartoon-style as ToonTown is – it lies somewhere pleasantly in the middle. You will be playing in the world of Pirates of the Caribbean but not as the characters from the movie (or the ride). It’s a rather fun, caricatured presentation of Spanish, English and “Shanty” style pirate worlds.

After that very long wait, fans of TLJ have finally gotten their wish for a sequel, with the release of Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. Was the wait worth it? In my opinion, yes. A game like Dreamfall is very difficult to categorize, mainly because I didn’t feel like I was playing a game at all – it was more like watching an interactive movie (more on this later). Let me also say this: While Dreamfall is a game that can stand on its own, it is extremely beneficial to have played TLJ as well, so you have some familiarity with the storyline, the twin worlds, and some of the major characters who make repeat appearances in Dreamfall.

Brian "Storm" Booker, Lead Systems Designer

# This update includes the ability to respec characters. The first respec will be free. How much will the next respec cost? Will this fee scale upward with each subsequent respec?

Respec is free at first then the next few are incredibly cheap, but the cost in clink to re-train your character does increase each time you do it. The re-training personnel find it difficult to teach the same character over and over and will charge extra each time you do it. The first 10 aren't very expensive, but if you re-train your character 20+ times, you will find the cost rises to 400 scrip and will remain fixed at that price. You can re-train any number of times, clink provided, but you can only re-train once every 48 hours.

Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach is the classic RPG game’s first step into the MMORPG world. Many people carry the opinion that Dungeons & Dragons started it all as far as role playing goes. With its foundations in the mid-seventies to its height in the eighties, D&D has always given players fun worlds to explore and create on their own. The classic D&D scenario is a small group of players, between five or six, getting together to explore a dungeon filled with monsters, traps, myths, and mystery. Each player selects a character class and race which has become the standard in many RPGs.This pack of travelers meets up and decides to go out and right the wrongs of the realm that have been troubling its citizens. How well does this scenario fit into a video game? Very well, the entire RPG world has been shaped by this type of situation. How well does this fit into an MMO? It works, but there are many things lacking in the Massive-Multiplayer department. Also, the game has almost no solo content; this can be a problem if you want to just play for an hour or so by yourself. The game has its fun moments, but does not offer an expansive world for players to explore.

After much cajoling, begging, and eventually arm-twisting (ok, I just had to wait for E3 and finals to finish), the Downloads section is back!

Well, actually, right now it's empty. Completely empty. Bereft of any content whatsoever. It's sad.

But, if you'd like to submit your link, description and an image for your plugin, app or just cool stuff, I'll be happy to review it and approve it!

Jonric: As an introductory overview, what kind of online world is Hero Online? What is its underlying premise or concept?

Jack Stanley: Hero Online is an incredibly innovative MMORPG that integrates the excitement and wonder of Asian martial arts folklore into an immersive online world where players can experience the rush of martial arts movements without having to invest years of actual training time. Maneuvers like running with incredible speed or jumping incredibly tall heights are all basic skills that players will have the opportunity to master in addition to learning combat with skills in both unarmed and weapon forms. Think Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon meets MMORPG, and you'll probably have a general idea of what Hero Online is like.

SUN's most interesting feature may be its battle zone scheme, which involves completing missions in order to unlock the instanced areas in which they take place for further hunting, which can be cooperative or competitive, as well as PvP. Players will be able to select various parameters such as may type, number of participants and level of difficulty. As well, via what's called a field mapping system, the result of individual conflicts directly affect the combat occurring elsewhere; they're part of a larger-scale battle. To help maintain an appropriate pace to the action, it will be possible to communicate with team members using integrated voice chat. The visuals are definitely a strong point, with impressive effects and lots of detail.

1) First off, could you introduce yourself to our reader and tell us your role in the development of "Pirates of the Burning Sea"?

Hey everyone! I’m Taylor Daynes, the Lead Designer of this shindig we call Pirates of the Burning Sea.

2) Since ships will be single-player operated, I'm wondering how smart the NPCs are. Will there be any NPC controlled ships?pirates of the burning sea

In addition to a world full of NPC enemies, many of the missions in our game involve NPC allies. One thing we’ve learned from other games, it’s that if you are going to have NPC allies, they’d better be worth something. NPCs that just wander off and get killed, or worse, wander off and get you killed are a recipe for frustration. So we firmly believe that NPCs need to be competent. This is a tricky problem for us though, because unlike other MMOs, where NPCs can pretty much just run straight up to you and auto-attack, our NPCs need to know how to use the wind, how to present their broadside to you in order to attack, and how to stay out of your firing arcs. Brady “Jigmasta” Houck – our AI guru – has worked on our AI over the last year, and I’m happy to report that our NPCs are very smart. Surprisingly smart. They often startle me with actions or tactics that we didn’t program into them. For instance, one NPC in a fast ship planted himself right in front of me, waited for me to come to a stop after colliding with it, and then it boarded me now that I was an easy grappling target. Stuff like that makes your day!