Next week, registered group members will receive a private invitation to join the 1v1 tournament on a first-come, first-served basis – there are only 512 spots so pre-register now! Participating players can then join one of two brackets and compete in the single-elimination competition from October 18th to November 2nd, where all 512 skillful swordsmen will battle it out for their spot in the live final.
Having proven their skills in the online tournament, the final 2 players in each bracket will be flown out to G4’s headquarters in Los Angeles on the weekend of November 22! Greatness awaits the semifinalists who will compete live in G4’s studio, with their ultimate showdown to appear during an episode of G4’s X-Play. Whoever emerges victorious will not only have proven themselves to their opponents but also to a television audience!
Show that your soul still burns and join the Soulcalibur IV Xbox 360 Tournament!
modestas1988 still leads in the Burnout Paradise, Need for Speed ProStreet and Forza 2 ladders, while G2_Wolf maintained his stranglehold on the Trackmania Nations Forever ladder. The second round of ladders will advance seven people per ladder.
Remember that the third ladder is for Trackmania Nations Forever only and will advance eight players to the final bracket.
Developers and publishers have finally found something to dangle to gamers who buy used games: special “new-only” DLC.
Copies of Gears of War 2 and NBA Live will include one time use codes for exclusive DLC. Gears 2 buyers will get five free multiplayer maps, while NBA Live customers get free access to EA’s 365 system, which periodically updates stats and roster info for basketball teams. Those who buy NBA Live used will have to pay $19.95 for access to the system.
Rock Band 2 already includes a one-off code for exclusive content.
The aim is, of course, to curb game used game sales from Gamestop, Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, etc. by sweetening the pot for gamers to by new.
Will it work? In the original Gears of War on Xbox 360, if you didn’t have DLC maps, game rooms using those maps didn’t show up in your browser and you never knew what you were missing. However, Gears of War didn’t have DLC from the very beginning–in Gears 2, the initial wave of players will have these maps at the outset. The second and third wave of players, who try and buy the game used, won’t be able to play on these maps at all, because they won’t be available as downloads from Xbox LIVE Marketplace…or so Epic says now.
The Gears crew introduces us to some new members of the Locust Horde in this video. I’m most excited about finally being able to fight the Brumak, but the Scourge character also looks like a treat. Watch below.
Attention all racers: The second ladder of GGL’s Virtual Racing Season, presented by Bosch, ends Oct. 5! The second ladder will advance seven players from each game in the VRS (Burnout Paradise, Need for Speed ProStreet, Forza 2 and Trackmania Nations Forever), or 28 players total, to the final bracket.
Blizzard has been awarded $6 million in its case against MDY Industries, creator of the MMO Glider Software. MMO Glider, a bot program, allows its users to automate their actions in World of Warcraft so they can actually live their lives.
But this is a matter of principles, and Blizzard is a principled company. That’s why they needed the extra $6 million on top of the hojillion dollars they make each month off of WoW subscriptions.
According to the BBC, over 100,000 copies of MMO Glider were sold to WoW players.
The battle over MMO Glider isn’t done yet, though. Blizzard can appeal the judgment for more cash, and remaining issues (like whether or not MDY violated the Digital Millenium Copyright Act) will be resolved in January 2009.
Some new screenshots of Demigod hit today, showing off the giant castle guy and an angel with a crossbow. What can I say? I got nothin’…except these shots.
Demigod, inspired by Warcraft III mod Defense of the Ancients, is developed by Gas Powered Games. Chris Taylor of Total Annihilation, Dungeon Siege and Supreme Commander helms the project, which should be out in stores February 2009.
In case you hadn’t noticed, we’ve upgraded GGL Wire! This is all part of our grand plan to modernize the site and match the color scheme to GGL’s new game pages.
As well as a new theme, we’ve got better Flickr integration for those important photo galleries and will soon be adding many more news sources to Wire. This will make it easier for you–the reader–to get important gaming news that has nothing to do with gaming cakes delivered to you.
These are just a few of the changes that Wire will get in the upcoming months, so welcome, and enjoy the ride! Let us know how you feel about the changes in the comments.
The team sizes are flexible, so teams can mutually decide team sizes up to 32 players. Here are dates and times:
Schedule:
9/22/08: Registration and practice ladders begin (registration is open for the duration of the ladders–already underway)
10/15/08: Official ladder begins
12/14/08: Competition ends
Prizing:
1st: $750
2nd: $300
3rd: $200
Giveaway:
We will also give away “a game a day” for 30 days from 10/15/08 – 11/13/08. In order to be eligible to win a game, you have to be a member of the Stalker group and have to have completed at least 1 of the following types of activities on the site: played a match in the Stalker tournament, posted news/forum/video/review on the Stalker: Clear Sky game page, written a blog (anywhere on GGL), or invited someone to join GGL (with conversion).
Interplay, a company who once published many a great game and collapsed under the weight of its hubris, is looking to get back into the mix with a Fallout MMO. And get this: It’s hired Chris Taylor (no, not that one, but the original Chris Taylor), who helped design Fallout and Fallout 2, to help the process along.
As part of its original deal to sell the Fallout IP to Bethesda Softworks, Interplay retained the right to create the MMO title. Bethesda, meanwhile, gets to make the highly tangible Fallout 3 instead.
Good times, right? Hold on just a second.
As part of the agreement, Interplay needs to raise a minimum of $30 million in funding within two years of April 9, 2007, or the rights revert back to Bethesda. Given the current state of Wall Street, I’m guessing that a lot of investment bankers won’t be signing on anytime soon.
One of the biggest selling points of Little Big Planet, Sony’s upcoming platformer for the PlayStation 3, is the ability to create and edit levels on the fly while playing online with friends. I’m sure you are glad to know this feature won’t be included in the initial relase of LBP, according to a developer by the name of Sam_Protagonist on the PlayStation forums.
The good news is that LBP will include “create mode” for local offline play, so it still made it in…it’s just not online-enabled.
You will also be able to share the levels you create offline.Protagonist stuck to the company line that Sony is working as diligently as possible to get an update out for the game to include the lost feature, but the entire thing smells of a bait and switch. In any event, get your wallets out: LBP hits stores worldwide in the third week of October.
Microtransaction Voltron assemble! There’s a crisis in Santa Monica!
Actually, not really. However, Activision has just announced that it will make DLC a bigger part of Call of Duty: World At War, which is being developed by Treyarch.
CoD5 will have three times as much DLC as CoD4, as well as premium content to give gamers a leg up on the competition. The premium program, dubbed “Day One Advantage,” which sounds more like a yeast infection remedy than a glorious content mechanism, will allow paying users to gain two new weapons (a rifle and light machine gun) quicker than their miserly counterparts.
I could argue the dubious nature of such a program, and how initatives like it lead to the wimpification of gamers everywhere, but I’ll leave you with this: Since the game isn’t being developed by Infinity Ward, and it’s going back to WWII, I’d skip it.
GGL has teamed with Namco to bring you the Soulcalibur IV Xbox 360 Tournament, with $5,000 in prizes and a televised final on G4’s X-Play!
Only two days remain in the second ladder of 
Blizzard has been awarded $6 million in its case against MDY Industries, creator of the MMO Glider Software. MMO Glider, a bot program, allows its users to automate their actions in World of Warcraft so they can actually live their lives.
GGL has teamed up with GSC Game World to bring you the 
Interplay, a company who once published many a great game and collapsed under the weight of its hubris, is looking to get back into the mix with a Fallout MMO. And get this: It’s hired Chris Taylor (no, not that one, but the original Chris Taylor), who helped design Fallout and Fallout 2, to help the process along.
Microtransaction Voltron assemble! There’s a crisis in Santa Monica!