WoWCraft is a fun new cartoon from the creator of the amazing Starcrafts series. The opening episode of WowCraft is pretty spot on with how hard it can be to start a new character in an MMO.

"After a long playthrough of the game, we concluded that the Finance system was most in need of some development love this month. It has become common practice to cheat your way to $1,000,000 in the bank because there is simply no other way to raise that kind of capital, and the game becomes boring when you have to wait for it to roll in. There are many mods that filled the gap by adding more grants to the game. Furthermore, if you use all the official grants up (all four of them) and still have a negative cashflow, you have literally no way to recover other than cheating, because your bank balance will be decreasing every day and you won’t be able to afford to build new facilities. It was clear that Finance needed looking at. Urgently.

We’ve added a ton of new official grants, and added new requirements to them as well. You can now only have two grants running at once, although your accountant to expand that to three - so be careful which ones you choose. Grants can have “Pre-requisites” before they become available to you - eg you must have completed a previous grant, or have a certain number of prisoners on site. Some grants are hidden and will only reveal themselves when the conditions are right. There is a new special “Government Bailout” grant that acts as a second life - if you run out of money and have a negative cashflow, the government will put together a rescue package and bail you out of trouble. But only once."

Great to hear that money is now a bit easier to come by. I remember a few early playthroughs where I wanted to improve my prison, but couldn't because of cash flow problems. I did result to cheating while I was building up a good game strategy and then afterward knew the right build order to keep the money flowing.

http://forums.introversion.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=47811

"I do hope you have been making the best of your time, nephalem, because the sands in your hourglass have run out. The time has come for my master to sweep clean the streets of Westmarch, and your feeble efforts will mean little against our inevitable tide."

After spending the last few hours playing Diablo III: Reaper of Souls I can say that it is a very worthy upgrade to Diablo III. I started the new Crusader class and so far am loving it.

What are your spoiler free thoughts of Reaper of Souls? How did you start and where did you end off after your first day playing?

http://us.battle.net//d3/en/blog/13370216

How Nintendo has drawn Link has changed from game to game. This image references the different stages of his design and sort of shows off how his style varies from consoles to handhelds releases. It seems that the console versions feature a much more adult Link as the consoles have him at a younger age.

I imagine when we get a Zelda game supported by the Oculus Rift Link will be well into his late 30's.

"Mozilla and Unity are announcing new deployment tools bringing Unity-authored games to the Web without the need for plugins, made possible thanks to Mozilla-pioneered technologies including WebGL, a Web graphics library and asm.js, a supercharged subset of JavaScript. Unity’s WebGL add-on will be made available with the release of Unity 5.0 later this year."

Using open web technology such as WebGL and asm.js it should be pretty easy for developers to port their games to the web using the upcoming version of Unity. Currently Unity web games require a browser plugin and after the new version is out developers can start building native browser games.

Now that Internet Explorer is supporting WebGL if things works well enough, native Unity games "should" work everywhere.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/03/18/mozilla-and-unity-bring-unity-game-engine-to-webgl/

Diablo III: Reaper of Souls drops next week adding a whole bunch of content to the game world of Sanctuary. In the new Act V Diablo III story, Malthael the Angel of Death steals the soulstone and as such you must put a stop to it. It's fun seeing what maguffins the Diablo III writers come up with after the destruction of Diablo at the end of the game. On one hand, I love coming back to Diablo and having fun but on the other hand, haven't we killed ultimate evil a few times before? Well, apparently not because we need to take a swing at the Angel of Death. Still, the game looks great and I can't wait to play as the Crusader.

nod to the happenings of act V

The video linked above is a recent interview with some people involved with the voice acting at Blizzard including the voice actors of the new Crusader class. It's a really great roundtable style interview but I found one point interesting as it may shed some light to the particulars of Act V. In the interview, Gideon Emery lets slip that as he was reading lines for Reaper of Souls that you are "Visited by another character and had to reign in the emotion…." Whereas this could mean many things I am wondering if this is a possible hint at the return of some main characters we lost in Diablo III(to avoid spoilers I am being a bit hazy here).

more reaper newsy bits

If you are wondering how you might allocate skills to the new Crusader class, you should check out the new skill calculator. It allows you to read all the new skills and runes you can use to make your perfect build.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/crusader

If you want to know more about the design process for the Crusader, Blizzard has a nice post about it with some design sketches and videos.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/13299171

In other Diablo III news, the auction house is now closed bringing it's reign of terror to an end.

Diablo III drops March 25th on Mac and Windows. Also, if we kill death in Act V does that mean people stop dying in Sanctuary? I guess we'll know on March 25th.

Keiji Inafune's Mighty No. 9 is deep in development after a very successful Kickstarter but they took some time during GDC to release a new gameplay video. From the creator of Mega Man, the game seems very similar but give the game a modern edge. I really love the idea of a new fresh take at Mega Man but wasn't in love with all the art choices they showcased. After seeing Mighty No. 9 in action I am convinced the game will be good.

Mighty No. 9 will launch April of 2015 on Linux, Mac, Windows, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U, Vita and 3DS.

"In Hyper Light Drifter you'll travel a ruined land with a twisted past, delving deep to collect lost technologies and unveil secrets long buried. Hyper Light is comprised of various elements: combat that's lightning quick, brutal, never unfair and always satisfying; a highly stylized, lush and varied world to explore with an intense atmosphere; a strong narrative and character interactions expressed through visual design."

The more I see the gameplay and hear Disasterpeace score I want to play this. Heart Machine is planning on releasing Hyper Light Drifter in mid 2014 for the PC, Mac, Linux, PS4 and Vita.

In this episode of The Cheerful Ghost Roundtable we are talk about a smattering of game related bits such as the new Steam Controller re-design, Gauntlet Reboot & Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls. We also chat about what games we've been playing as well as other awesomery not found anywhere else(except for the other places you can find them).

What We are Playing & Drinking

• 0.25m scrypt: Darksiders & Darksiders II, Dark Souls & Pinball FX2


• 2.00m WhiteboySlim: GTA V Online & Ocarina of Time Remaster


• 5.00m Travis: Portal 2, Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake & Super Mario World


• 6.30m jdodson: Portal 2, Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake, Diablo III 2.0.X & Nom Nom Galaxy

This Episodes Roundtable Topics

• 10.15m WB Announces Gauntlet Reboot. Coming to PC Steam and SteamOS.


• 19.40m Diablo III Reaper of Souls.


• 32.40m Steam Controller Redesign with ALL NEW BUTTONS!


• 39.30m Leaks of the new Amazon controller for a probable new Amazon console.

"FREE TO PLAY is a feature-length documentary that follows three professional gamers from around the world as they compete for a million dollar prize in the first Dota 2 International Tournament. In recent years, E Sports has surged in popularity to become one of the most widely-practiced forms of competitive sport today. A million dollar tournament changed the landscape of the gaming world and for those elite players at the top of their craft, nothing would ever be the same again. Produced by Valve, the film documents the challenges and sacrifices required of players to compete at the highest level."

You can watch it right now on YouTube linked above or download it on Steam for free. Write your thoughts in the comments or post your review.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/245550/