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Warhammer Online celebrates fourth anniversary with rewards and bonuses
Belch forth a mighty "WAAAGH!" today, for Warhammer Online is now officially four years old. EA Mythic's dark fantasy title came on the scene in 2008 with a strong emphasis on PvP combat. To celebrate the occasion, Mythic announced that all players will enjoy 10 days of bonus XP and RP starting today. Also as part of the festivities, fireworks can be looted from corpses during this time. Why are so many warriors carrying fireworks? Discount sale, of course. Finally, Mythic is rewarding the faithful who have stuck with WAR for all four years with a new portable mailbox at the end of the month. The devs used this opportunity to remind players that patch 1.4.7 is on course to go live later in September after the Wild Hunt event. The team's also working on a new random live event and an upcoming community patch.
EVE Evolved: Four years of EVE Evolved
On April 27th, 2008, I joined the Massively crew and published the first edition of a new weekly column dedicated to the world of EVE Online. It's hard to believe that the EVE Evolved column is now four years old, spanning nine major expansions and predating CCP Games' transformation into an industry giant with three games in development. Since the column's first crude scribbling about shuttles, I've written over 200 in-depth articles, guides, stories, and opinion pieces. With its free expansions and iterative updates, EVE is a rapidly changing game that provides a constant supply of things to write about. To celebrate the fourth anniversary of the column, I'm giving away two 30-day Pilot's License EXtensions to two lucky readers. To enter the competition, leave a comment stating which EVE Evolved article from this year is your favourite, and why it's your favorite, and what topic you'd like to see covered in the coming year. You will need an active EVE account to claim the prize, so be sure to include a character name with your comment if you want to be able to win a prize. If you're not comfortable with giving out your character name, use an alternate character or sign up a new trial account. The winners' names will be revealed in next week's column. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look back at some of the highlights from the column's fourth year.
Where in time is Azeroth?
There's a great question fluttering around the community lately: just when are we anyway? It's a good one for the Lore Nerd, actually, and maybe he can answer it in more detail than I can, but it's almost a question of relativity as much as it is of lore. The official lore says that World of Warcraft takes place four years after Warcraft III (hence the reason for the "four years have passed..." in the opening cinematic). And since then, we've heard from Blizzard that they consider every expansion to be another year in the history of Azeroth -- Burning Crusade takes place a year after the original game, and Wrath of the Lich King two years after that. But when, for example, did Van Cleef fall? Has it been just under two years since his plan to attack Stormwind was defeated? And what about our characters -- you'd assume that if you started from level 1 today, the story would be beginning four years after the events of Warcraft III again, so have our characters aged two years since they first stepped foot out of Elwynn or Durotar? And we'll ignore that when you get to Orgrimmar, you might see Death Knights walking around, who technically won't join the Horde until two years in the future.See how confusing? Of course, the right answer to all of these questions is "it's just a game," but there are plenty of interesting thought experiments here. Time and story in the World of Warcraft aren't necessarily connected, which is why Blizzard can get away with things like having Kael'thas in two places at once, but still tripped up by things like getting Onyxia out of Stormwind. Phasing helps a little bit (and who knows what WoW would be like if Blizzard designed it from the ground up with phasing -- we'll have to wait for the next-gen MMO to see how that works). The official timeline has Arthas brooding in Icecrown for around six years. But just like real relativity, our characters have experienced that time period in all sorts of different ways.
Four years of World of Warcraft
Yes, as you know from the little Blizzard Bear in your mailbox, yesterday was the fourth anniversary of our favorite game, World of Warcraft. It's been a huge four years -- we've seen Blizzard develop and change massively multiplayer games as we know them, and gaming as a whole in some ways. We've grown our own characters up all the way from level one to 30 and 60 and 70 and beyond, and we've gone through two expansions, eight endgames, countless patches and class changes, endless guild achievements and breakups and many, many "dings" and "grats."We at WoW Insider would like to congratulate Blizzard on four years of World of Warcraft -- it's been an amazing ride so far, and it's not over yet. After the break, some of our writers have posted their own thoughts and memories on the game's anniversary, and please add your own in the comments below.It could seem silly to celebrate the anniversary of a videogame, especially one that, if you've been playing since day one, you've spent over $800 and countless hours on. But then again, look at what this game has given back: groups and guilds full of friends (and some spouses), weeknights full of gear upgrades and XP gains, Saturday afternoons spent slaying dragons and Sunday evenings spent picking herbs in the Swamp of Sorrows or admiring the sunsets in Hinterlands. We've played this game for four years, and for most of us, it's been worth every quest. Here's to many, many more.
CoX 48-month vet reward goes live today
Time sure does fly when you play MMOs. The City of Heroes community team has officially unveiled the 48-month veteran rewards (yes, you read that right, that's four years!) for players who have been around since the beginning. In addition to a "Battle Hardened Badge," long-time players will get their choice of a summoned pet power. They can pick from a Light Fairy, Dark Fairy, Blue Wisp, Red Wisp, Shield Oscillator, Power Oscillator, Shield Drone, or Power Drone. Each kind of pet gives a specific bonus to the player and his team, so be extra careful which one you pick.The existence of these pets was leaked last week (they're already up on the ParagonWiki, for instance), but it was widely believed that they were a hoax. According to players on the test server, the buffs they give can be substantial, and if you get a group of vets together, the group buffs stack. Granted, the pets have awful resistances and barely a drop of HP, but their buffs are strong enough that they seem to be getting the kind of proper reception you would hope to see for a four year veteran reward. The rewards should take effect after the live update this morning.
