Welcome to The Weekly Grind, a weekly roundup of all of the important news that graced the ever-growing genre of the MMORPG. Make sure to check the end of the post to see how a reader like yourself can get involved! Sit back and relax while we take a stroll through our favorite virtual worlds.
As all of you know, April Fools Day made a quick peek this week, and surprisingly the video game industry took this opportunity to show their funny side a bit more than usual. I myself thought I was part of an April Fool’s joke when out of nowhere a company called me on my cellphone and wanted to meet me for an interview. I was extremely excited and set up a date quickly after. As I started to tell the news to some of my friends, half of them were skeptical, telling me it was most likely an April Fool’s joke. The job was kind of too good to be true for the moment, and I myself became a bit skeptical in return. But I see the brighter side of things and went to what I hoped was an actual interview a couple of days later. Luckily for me it wasn’t a joke and I landed myself a sweet job. I guess I’m a bit lucky this time of the year. So this week’s news is filled with April Fool’s jokes and hopefully most of the websites still have the link functional. If not, I am sorry. Anyway, on with the tour!
NEWS
Sword of a Newer World – The first expansion for Sword of the New World is upon us, and we get to explore the lands of the dead! Expect to see ancestral items, new spells and landscapes, and a new PvP map filled with the walking dead!
Pirates Love Free Booty – Downtime sucks. Especially when it’s longer than it’s supposed to be. Flying Lab Software doesn’t like angry pirates, because angry pirates cause violent bar brawls. So they decided to give all of their loyal pirates free booty! Open up your treasure chest that appears in you inventory and get 6 Bonus Loot Books and 6 Bonus Experience Books, giving you a 20% chance to get double loot form enemies and a 20% experience boost for two real-time hours! Yar, that be a good deal!
Mines of Moria Collapsing – You know you’re good when you announce something new on your official website and the popularity crashes it. Turbine has a new “social gaming website” tied to the new expansion, Mines of Moria, which features social games such as King under the Mountain, a very dwarvish game. Most likely by the time you read this the site will be fixed, but you can catch what all of the fuss is about before the supports give way and the mine starts falling in on itself again.
Fools Everywhere! – Be part of the Fowl Peoples and supersize your chicken at The Battle of Amon Hen. Ever wanted to become a Skitterin? Well now you can with Tabula Rasa’s newly announced Skitterin Hybrid class! (Sounds dirty…) What’s missing from City of Heroes? Oh yeah, you can’t be an authentic comic book MMO without visual sounds! Biff! Oh and finally ponies are introduced in Dungeon Runners. About time.
Blizzard Wins Jester Hat – I would come back to play this. Blizzard never heard of the NES? Why would this seem like it could just work?
In This Corner! – Take a break from putting bullets in aliens and instead do so to your friends! Hell, you can even drink your sorrow away at the local bar located conveniently next to the arena. You can do all of this in the next 1.8 Patch for Tabula Rasa. Now if they only had a name for this arena…
Thanks for being there – Say farewell to your favorite Guild Wars community manager Gaile Gray during the Farewell to Gaile in-game event between April 4th and April 7th.
Join Da Greenskins! – Bwarharhar! We wil’ sho’ ya meddlin humies and stunties that Warhamma will be da greatest MMO on da internets! Ya beg to diffa’? Per aps ma axe cun tell ya difrent? Da sho don’t start yet and we gon ave a million!
The Journey Continues – Travel to the mysterious winter lands of Forochel, as you uncover the story of Book 13: The Doom of the Last King. While you traverse these lands be weary soldier, you are unfriendly to those who inhabit the lands. So make sure you make friends with them by grinding you heart out and giving them the antlers of moose and the claws of bears! 100 of each; don’t be lazy!
Clone Your Mate for Testing – You can’t really deal with all the bugs and testing on the test realms for end content if you need to start a brand new character from level 1. So for a limited time you can copy your pirate onto the test server to squash and slice all the bugs you can find!
Desert Diamond – Delve deeper into the city of Kalanthes, where the rich mingle with the shady. A recent letter from an assassin was found, and the priest of Ibis is in danger. At least you have a better visual of how the city looks like if you plan on stopping this assassin.
Discover – NCSoft is letting you discover the worlds of Lineage II and Guild Wars in their new neat Flash bases sites. Both websites are very creative, with artwork and lore for each race and most eonvironments found in the games. You might be flipping the pages for a while. I know I did.
Journal of the Week
This week’s journal comes from Slania over from the Age of Conan Vault. It’s a really good read and gets me pumped for Age of Conan which is coming out in May.
How can you get involved? I want all of you MMO fans to write me with your best fan fiction, or send me a picture of your best fan art of any MMO and it might just be featured on next week’s Weekly Grind. Also, send me your best screenshot that fits the theme that I ask for and I’ll put the best ones up. So start taking screenshots!
For next week I want to see your best MMO screenshot that best describes this word: Big. It can be a big monster, a tall building or a huge sword — just take it with style.
Email me at demetri(remove)@(remove)gamernode.com with your submissions.
Until next week, keep on grindin’.
