Elder Scrolls Online Details & Screenshots

Skyrim is still going strong on Steam’s stats at #3 in the past 48 hours, but Bethesda already has the next game in the pipeline. Game Informer‘s cover story for June confirms the Elder Scrolls series is taking it’s first step into the MMO market with the development of Elder Scrolls Online.

Because it’s not like the MMO market is oversaturated already or anything like that.

Zenimax Online Studios has been hard at work on ESO for the past several years and is finally ready to reveal all the cool stuff they’ve been doing. The Game Informer article will reveal their plans for solo and public quests, and huge PvP content between 3 factions vying for control over different regions with hundreds of players battling it out at once. Could be the best thing ever, could be the most derivative thing ever – only time will tell.

ESO will take place 1000 years before the events of Skyrim, as the daedric prince Molag Bal attempts to bring Tamriel under his demonic rule.

Read on to check out the first screenshots from Elder Scrolls Online.

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Awesomenauts Blast On To Xbox & PS3

It’s the year 3587, conflict spans the stars. Huge robot armies are locked in an enduring stalemate. In their bid for galactic conquest they call upon the most powerfull group of mercenaries in the universe: the Awesomenauts!

If DOTA and Contra made sweet, sweet love to each other, Awesomenauts would be the result of that union. Two teams of cartoon heroes battling it out in a side-scrolling beat ‘em up arena as they work to drive their robot  army into the enemy’s base and win the big bucks.

My favourite part is the respawn minigame where you get to blast down to the level in a little rocket ship, collecting coins as you fall. Well, that and the amazing intro song which looks like an amazing Saturday morning cartoon from the 80s that I somehow missed.

Check out the release trailer below, then head over to Xbox Live or the PSN store to pick up the game and commence being awesome.

Perfect Strangers – The Game

Sometimes the world looks perfect, nothing to rearrange. Sometimes you realise that the world is missing a very literal conversion of a 90s sitcom theme song into a browser game. Thankfully that’s no longer a problem.

The crew at the “advergaming/design” company Joda saw a world without a browser game where the character of Balki Bartokomous from Perfect Strangers ran around collecting stars and said “No, this will not do.”

You will need to enter the dream you wish to achieve, such as “be rich” or “kill the Batman”, and then collect stars as your Balki character runs through an incredibly literal visualisation of the lyrics to the Perfect Strangers theme song. It’s exactly as amazing as it sounds.

I achieved 92% of my dream to kill the Batman. So close, and yet so far. Maybe you’ll do better over at nothingsgonnastopmenow.com

Diablo III Class Overview Videos

Hello, my friend. Stay awhile and listen.

Diablo 3 hits the stores in less than 2 weeks, so it’s time to get things in order. Pre-order, check. Time off from work to “visit Uncle Deckard”, check. Which class to play first, not checked.

This is a big problem, because I really can’t decide. The Wizard has lasers, the Monk gets to fly-kick stuff in the face, the Witchdoctor throws exploding frogs, the Demonhunter looks like Vayne and the Barbarian has a sweet loincloth.

Thankfully Blizzard have finished their series of Class Overview videos showcasing the backstory and the abilities of each option. If that’s not enough, you can also look through all the different skills and abilities of each class using the official Skill Calculator.

Hit the magic button below to check out all five Class Overview videos.
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The GTX 690 Will Make Credit Cards Cry

NVIDIA has announced their next GPU to use the same Kepler architecture of the GTX 680, and this one’s likely to send your credit card limit into a shame spiral. The GTX 690 will offer close to the performance of 2 GTX 680′s in SLI, but will set you back a whopping $1000 to pick one up.

The full announcement on the NVIDIA website includes all the sweet bar graph action you could want, and a kickin’ rad animated break down of the new form factor.

This is where Kepler’s fanatical focus on power efficiency pays off most handsomely. The GPUs on the GeForce GTX 690 have a boost clock of 1019 MHz, just a hair (2.8%) shy of the GeForce GTX 680 at 1058 MHz. What’s more, all other specs are identical; the number of cores, memory speed, and memory bandwidth per GPU are the same on both cards.

What this means is that the GeForce GTX 690 performs more or less just like a pair of GeForce GTX 680s in SLI; almost nothing was compromised in bringing two Kepler GPUs to the same board.

Head over to the NVIDIA website to check out the full announcement and begin planning how many pints of blood you’ll need to sell to be able to afford this new behemoth.

MLG Swarming With League of Legends

MLG has announced they will be adding League of Legends to the remainder of the 2012 Pro Circuit, beginning with the MLG Spring Championship in June. A mix of 8 invited teams and 12 online qualifiers will battle it out for a share of $40,000 in prize money and the adoration of gaming nerds around the world.

League of Legends is one of the most-watched eSports titles outside of Korea today, and was featured at two MLG Pro Circuit competitions in 2011. Since launching in October 2009, over 30 million players have downloaded the free-to-play MOBA style game with more than four million players arguing over who is the bigger noob daily.

Unlike DOTA 2, League of Legends combines the same depth of strategy as an eSports title with an approachable game dynamic that attracts casual players to spend hundreds of dollars a month on Astronaut skins for their favourite rodent champions.

In other news, something called Starcraft 2 will have a playable beta version of it’s Heart of the Swarm expansion at the MLG Spring Championship too. That might be good too.

MLG Weekly Episode 37 on Freezone

This week’s episode of MLG Weekly is hot off the Freezone presses and packed full of greasy teenagers battling other greasy teenagers for piles of greasy prize money and greasy trophies!

The greasefest in Episode 37 includes:

• The Top 10 Halo Reach plays from the MLG Winter Championships
• Tips from MLG Champion CDJR on how to play Kung Lao in Mortal Kombat (which Australians can’t play due to outdated classification laws)
• A breakdown of back-to-back MLG champion MarineKing’s trademark 2 Rax strategy in SC2
• A nail-biting finish to the Uncharted 3 FFA finals
• An intense match from the Halo Reach winners bracket between Classic and Instinct

Check out episode 37 below, and head over to the MLG Freezone channel for more eSports action.

*Freezone video content is entirely quota-free for iiNet, Westnet, Netspace and Internode customers (excludes satellite and mobile broadband customers)

Gabe Decrees DOTA 2 Will Be Free

While Valve is hard at work on the beta development phase of DOTA 2, gamers have been waitin’ and debatin’ on whether the game will have an up-front fee, or if it’ll be entirely free.

Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve, has confirmed that the game will be free ‘with a twist’ while speaking to the Seven Day Cooldown podcast:

“It’s going to be free-to-play — it’ll have some twists, but that’s the easiest way for people to think about it,” Newell said.

“We’re trying to figure out ways so that people who are more valuable to everybody else [are] recognized and accommodated. We all know people where if they’re playing we want to play, and there are other people where if they’re playing we would [rather] be on the other side of the planet.”

“It’s just a question of coming up with mechanisms that recognize and reward people who are doing things that are valuable to other groups of people.”

Gabe went on to explain that good behaviour could include anything from players who write useful guides or who volunteer their time to teach newer players. He said he couldn’t think of any existing free-to-play models that are the same as what Valve has in mind for DOTA 2, however I can.

League of Legends, a rival MOBA game, has a similar system of reward with it’s Summoners Code of Conduct and Tribunal. Players are encouraged to vote on breaches of this code in a Tribunal process that rewards them with in-game currency. Unfortunately the rewards are fairly minor, much less currency than one could earn by simply playing a game of LoL, which stops most players from participating in the Tribunal on a regular basis.

Riot has released statistics claiming the Tribunal is a resounding success, so hopefully if Valve plan to include more substantial rewards with DOTA 2‘s incentive system, it should be a successful model.

Source: Polygon

Grab Super MNC Free On Steam

Monday Night Combat is back – now with 100% more Super in front of it, 100% more free to play and 50% more chickens!

Super Monday Night Combat continues the proud MNC tradition of team-based, cartoon FPS MOBA gameplay and is supposed to be in the beta phase of development. However due to some unfortunate mishaps, the game is now freely available from Steam.

Developer Uber Entertainment explained the sudden release, which was a surprise to them too, via their forums:

We did a bunch of invites over the weekend and there was some wonkiness on how the messaging went out with lots of confusion which resulted in more silliness. We decided to just open it up. There will be an announcement about it on Steam soon.

Don’t question it, just grab a copy from Steam and start playing! While you’re waiting for the download, you can check out the gameplay intro video below:

MLG Weekly Now On Freezone

The iiNet Freezone now has a weekly injection of eSports madness with the MLG Weekly series bringing you all the best action as professionals and amateurs battle it out for massive cash prizes.

The latest episode includes some intense games of King of Fighters XIII, Soul Calibur V, Mortal Kombat, Halo Reach and Starcraft 2. Check it out below or head over to the MLG channel for more episodes.

All Freezone video content is completely quota-free for iiNet, Westnet, Netspace and Internode customers (excludes satellite and mobile broadband customers).