Happy weekend! Hope everyone’s had a chance to play or is looking forward to some quality time with their favorite games. If this is your first time checking in with us this week, here are some of the things you might have missed!
There are a few weeks left in our Summer Top Site contest, powered by The Secret World. The winning guild gets a sweet Alienware laptop, but you can win some cool prizes from Guild Launch and GUNNAR Optiks, just for voting. For more details, check out our contests & promotion page on our community site, TheGuildLife.com.
We’re also just a couple weeks away from unveiling our first-ever Dragon Slayer awards. These awards were created to recognize the groups and individuals behind our favorite games and gaming communities. Have you voted? If not, take a minute and make your voice heard here!
For our Weekly Giveaway, we’re offering up a “Winner’s Choice” where a couple lucky Guild Launch fans will get their choice of a Mists of Pandaria (WOW) Collectors Edition box or a Riders of Rohan (LOTRO) Legendary Edition download. You can still enter here until midnight on Sunday!
Speaking of Mists of Pandaria, the fourth expansion to the World of Warcraft is fast approaching and some of the biggest stories this week revolved around the release of the ‘pre-expansion’ patch that heralds the transition to the new storylines and offers players a chance to get a headstart on getting used to talent changes, UI improvements, etc. Earlier in the week, in a move many expected, Blizzard announced that this patch would arrive on August 28th, the same day that NCSoft/ArenaNet’s highly anticipated Guild Wars 2 will hit the shelves. You can check out my article, titled “Coincidence or Countermeasure?” for a relatively brief history of Blizzard and their propensity for such release date shenanigans.
Later in the week, the WOW community received the unexpected news that all accounts would have access to all playable races. The move will open up the Worgen & Goblin races with the impending patch and the new Pandarens upon MOP’s release to all players, regardless of which expansions they have purchased. WOW’s ‘free to 20′ trial option can be pretty restrictive to keep out gold farmers and other spammers, so its nice to see something being added for those players trying the game for the first time.
In other news, the gaming world descended on Cologne, Germany this week for gamescom, Europe’s largest entertainment and interactive gaming convention. While there wasn’t any huge news, chances are, whatever games or companies you follow had some presence and something to share with the crowd. Blizzard chose this venue to release the cinematic of Mists of Pandaria, Sony unveiled a new Planetside 2 trailer, and RIFT, LOTRO and AION fans all got an additional glimpse into their upcoming expansions. gamescom concludes on Sunday.
Oh, and some guy in New York got arrested for armed robbery, after pulling a gun on a Fordham student and demanding the transfer of 4.7 billion in Runescape currency. Yes, I said Runescape.
On the Guild Launch, we unveiled a few new features for the users in a release this week, including some improvements to forum post display, including post voting, as well as some added functionality for admins, like temporary bans and expanded moderation tools. Check out the full patch notes here and find out more about post voting in this week’s Feature Friday post.
On Facebook this week, we asked two questions that proved to be quite popular with our fans there. Check them out and offer your thoughts:
What was your first MMO?
&
What MMORPG archetype/role do your prefer?
That should catch you up on all you may have missed last week through the various content channels here @ Guild Launch! Make sure you enter all the contests listed above, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and ’til next time, slay more dragons!
-Thomas (aka @sirthomasx)
