A Spore Nerd Corner

Another MMO is going free to play. That's right recently the makers of WildStar have announced it's going free to play. I don't know if it's just going completely free and just charging people for the extras in-game or if you'll still have to buy the game but they are getting rid of the monthly fee. Really you didn't need to pay a monthly fee, I know I didn't for the short time I played the game. All you had to do was buy (with in-game money) the special tokens that would let you in-turn buy game time. That's right, it's the system that WoW picked up, which kinda makes me wonder if WoW is going to be going free sometime in the future. hmmmmm. Anyway Wildstar is supposed to be going free this fall.  So if you haven't played or like me got tired of playing, this fall might be a good time to hop back into the game.

As if nobody saw this one coming, Bethesda has announced that The Elder Scrolls Online will be dropping it's subscription fees. The game from that point will be called The Elder Scrolls: Tamriel Unlimited.  It's not going to be completely free to play though, you're going to still have to buy the actual game. Buying the game will give you open access to all the already released content.  For those that are hardcore fans and have an urge to pay a sub you'll still be able to. The subs will be for 30, 90, 180 day durations which will give access to all the game-packs that have "optional content." Once the sub fee runs out you wont be able to access to content anymore. You'll also get "character progression bonuses, and crowns (an in-game currency). Bethesda has said they will give out more information on January 21 on their Twitch stream. Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited is set to launch March 17.

So Star Trek Online F2P (free to play) has finally gone live. I've always been a big Star Trek fan but I wasn't going to play this one. I downloaded it and thought and now all I can think is, oh look free to play...isn't even going to save this. First the good part. The character creation is great. It has a ton of different race choices and probably one of the most in depth actually creations methods I've ever seen in an mmo anywhere. While you can play a great deal of races some are still missing. Now  for everything else. I found the combat boring. At first I was using the original combat format keep pressing a number to fire the phaser, kill the Borg isn't that nice... well boring. I switched to the new combat system that was meant to be more of a 3rd person action shooter. Still I found myself clicking and waiting for the phaser to fire over and over again killed the Borg and moved onto the next sitting target. I never actually got hit and everything was dea...

On November 6th the Steam service relised that the hacking the happened didn't just effect their forums but may have gotten into the actual steam client. Steam released this post: Message from Gabe to Steam Community Announcement - Valve Yesterday, on November 10, 2011, the following message was sent to all users via a Steam message. Dear Steam Users and Steam Forum Users: Our Steam forums were defaced on the evening of Sunday, November 6. We began investigating and found that the intrusion goes beyond the Steam forums. We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums. This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was...

A lot of people have recently been commenting about how WoW has been looking a little empty lately, and for a good reason too. Close to 2 million people have left the game. Is this a sign of the death of WoW?  After all those people left before the major content patch of 4.3 and after Blizzcons announcement of the next expansion pack Mists of Pandaria. Do people really hate pandas that much?   I personally don't think so. I really don't think all the people that have left will stay gone. I've always found it amazing how many people "quit" and a month later they are waiting for a FL run. Another reason people could be leaving is because they are tired of paying a monthly fee. WoW now has a lot of competition, not by content standards,WoW still rules the roost, but by the simple fact that their are so many free to play games now.  DC Universe , Lord of the Rings are two big examples that recently have gone free, and companies like Nexon , Perfect World , and GPo...