Category Archives: Video Games

Last-minute Christmas Gift for a nerd: WoW Monopoly

WoW MonopolyStill looking for a last-minute gift for that special nerd in your family? World of Warcraft Monopoly is on sale right now, and there’s still time to ship it in time for Christmas.

With “g” as the currency and Chance card that say things like “You’ve wiped the group! Pay 50g!”, this is sure to be every WoW-player’s wet dream.

$13.99 at Amazon

 

Walmart.com Cancels ALL SWTOR pre-orders

Like the procrastinator that I am, I didn’t pre-order SWTOR (Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG) in time to get it from my usual source, Amazon.  This left me with only several options to get my hands on a copy of the Collectors Edition. I chose Walmart and I chose poorly.

On October 21 I made my purchase. They mailed my early access game code, and I’ve already registered it with my account.  They changed my card the FULL amount of the game at that time.

Without having received email notification, or ANY kind of notification for that matter, I saw that my order has been cancelled on Wamart.com.  How nice.

Right now, many folks in the SWTOR forum thread created about this are calling it a computer glitch that will be rectified by the 9th, but we shall see.

I ordered another copy just now through Newegg.com, but I don’t have high hopes for either situation – how can Newegg still have copies to sell? Are they going to do the same thing?  Will update as I get more info.

 

Steam Hacked

Looks like Steam was hacked last night.  Usernames, passwords, purchase history, encrypted credit card data, the whole deal.  Hopefully the fallout from this isn’t too bad. The Gawker thing was bad enough.

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 cracked. We are still investigating.

We don’t have evidence of credit card misuse at this time. Nonetheless you should watch your credit card activity and statements closely.

While we only know of a few forum accounts that have been compromised, all forum users will be required to change their passwords the next time they login. If you have used your Steam forum password on other accounts you should change those passwords as well.

We do not know of any compromised Steam accounts, so we are not planning to force a change of Steam account passwords (which are separate from forum passwords). However, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to change that as well, especially if it is the same as your Steam forum account password.

We will reopen the forums as soon as we can.

I am truly sorry this happened, and I apologize for the inconvenience.

Gabe.

LEGO Universe MMORPG to shut down

Just received notice in my inbox this morning that Lego’s push into the MMORPG market will be no more, as they are shutting down the servers on Jan 31, 2012, only 1 year a few months after opening.

Although this was a fairly functional MMORPG, this game was designed for children, plain and simple. The only interesting aspect of it was the Lego piece collecting and personal properties where you had the ability to create whatever you could imagine. And now everyone eagerly awaiting SWTOR can look forward to swarms of these kids invading their servers.

This is the email received this morning:

Hello Adventurer, today we are very sad to announce that LEGO® Universe will be closing on January 31, 2012. This was a very difficult decision to make, but unfortunately LEGO Universe has not been able to attract the number of members needed to keep the game open.

We realize how sad this will make the many players who have enjoyed LEGO Universe and we are committed to providing open communication with both kids and parents as we transition through this difficult time. We understand this is a challenging change and apologize for not being able to give parents forewarning before the general announcement.

We are thankful to have had the opportunity to share this adventure with an amazing community of players. We hope you will continue to enjoy LEGO Universe for the last few months. As a thank you, if you are a paying subscriber on December 31, 2011, we will provide you the full game for the final month for free.

Again, we want to thank the fantastic community of players who made LEGO Universe such a vibrant, fun and creative experience.

Sincerely,

The LEGO Universe Team

The Details:

  • The game will be turned off on January 31, 2012 at midnight (EST).
  • All current subscribers (1, 6 or 12 month plans) who still have active subscriptions on December 31 will receive a refund for any remaining game time remaining after December 31 as well as free play from January 1, 2012 until January 31.
    • For example, if you purchased a 6-month subscription on September 1, 2011 (which would expire on February 29, 2012), you would be refunded $16.66 for the 2 months following December 31.
  • We will begin processing all refunds on February 1, 2012. All refunds will be made to the credit card used for the original subscription.
  • If your subscription expires before December 31 you will need to purchase an additional 1 month subscription by December 31 in order to get the free game play in January (again, any unused game time as of December 31 will be refunded.)
  • LEGO Universe game cards can only be used until December 1st 2011. Unused game cards after December 1st can be converted to LEGO Shop @Home gift cards for the same value.
    • Please note: Details on how to convert unused game cards will be posted on December 1.
  • You can continue to enjoy the free to play zone until January 31, 2012 but your last chance to convert to a paying subscription is December 31, 2011.

 

AVG Thinks Portal 2 is a virus

Portal 2 VirusEither GLaDOS is messing with me, or I need to replace my antivirus software.

After doing some digging, turns out that AVG is just reporting it as a false-positive.

Nothing else on my system was infected, and this game wasn’t pirated, so there’s no way this could be a real threat.  I’ve done just fine with AVG for quite a few years, but this really bugs me. Time to check out Avast!