In order to make up for it, EA announced that they'd be releasing the DLC early on the PS3. Unfortunately, this decision had been made (and announced) a month before the game was even released, so nobody involved felt particularly consoled.

The suit alleges that EA "misled and profited from thousands of their customers by making a promise that they could not, and never intended, to keep” and aims to get the promised copy of Battlefield 1943 into the hands of those who are entitled to it.

MineCon Mojang Developers' Panel Livestream has just started. It should be an interesting panel covering the development side of MineCraft and Scrolls. Go check it out...

I'm pretty excited at the prospect of CS:GO being attached to my mouse and keyboard. I tried it out briefly at the Eurogamer Expo on the PS3 but, unfortunately, controllers cripple my FPS gun-limbs. I interviewed Chet about the game and crossplatformity on the very same day, if you're interested in such things.

Jube's Brief Star Wars: The Old Republic Impressions

Very brief, since I only got to play for one beta day, which amounted to level 5 or 6. Last weekend was my first beta invite, and the download was over 20GB and not very fast. Servers were maxed, since it was a stress test weekend.

Despite server traffic, the game performed very well with all settings on high. Character customization was a huge disappointment. The options were so few in number, and I think that's a big mistake since personalization is so important to so many MMO players. Despite the lack of customization, I thought the characters looked better than those in any other MMO I've ever played. Very smooth, flawless.

Weapons... To be honest I don't even know if there are character weapons outside of lightsabers, since that's all that I used and all that I saw. I didn't even bother to look beyond the lightsaber, because the saber is OMGFUN! I played a Jedi Knight and I had a couple of powerful saber skills. I think it would take me a good while to get bored of that particular weapon.

The couple of game areas that I saw looked good. Nothing special so far, just standard MMO faire. Quests were simple newbie tasks, kill x, rescue x, etc. I didn't really care about the quests though, I just enjoyed them because the more I could use my lightsaber, the better! /Geek.

Quests all come with cut-scene conversations. Normally I hate cut-scenes and I'm not at all into lore / story when it comes to MMOs. However, in SWTOR I actually enjoyed the cut-scenes. They're interactive and if you are grouped your group member is also involved in the conversation.

When Star Wars: The Old Republic was first announced, I was quite keen and media looked great, especially the CG trailers. Then all of a sudden BioWare started releasing gameplay videos, and I felt they looked like utter crap, so boring, plain, underwhelming graphics, etc. So, when I actually got into the beta and started to play, I was very happy to find that the game, the game mechanics, atmosphere, and graphics were all so much better than what I had seen in those [poorly selected] videos.

I'm looking forward to playing more SWTOR. I haven't pre-ordered. I'm not entirely sold on the game. I'm hoping to snag some more beta time before launch, so that I can decide if there's still more that I want to do and see, or if it all just runs its course quickly. If I had to choose right now without further beta time, I would buy the game. Remember, I only had a couple of hours of game time, so heck yeah I'd love to play more!

Share you opinions on Star Wars: The Old Republic!

While on the topic of Magicka, catch a new developer Q&A; below for "The Stars Are Left" add-on.

IGN just launched their MineCon Livestream if you want to go check it out. They will be covering Notch's keynote speech, as well as coverage of the big panels happening during the show. Go check it out!

Features

• 3 Unique factions, with different units and strategies.
• Epic single player campaign.
• Ability to control fleets of starships, space stations and planets.
• Research tree leading to powerful units and upgrades.
• Cinematic battle camera
• Multiplayer action providing endless re-playability.
• Unique gameplay providing a refreshing twist to the RTS genre.

You can use the monster sized infographic at the bottom of this post to take a look at some of the specific numbers, but here's a short list of highlights that the PR team put together for us.

11.5M active players per month play the game

Every day more than 4 million players enjoy League of Legends

There are more than 30 million registered players for the game

Peak concurrency totals over 1.3M simultaneous players worldwide

“The incredible passion and dedication of our players is positively inspiring,” said Brandon Beck, co-founder and CEO of Riot Games. “Our community’s boundless enthusiasm is why they are central to every decision we make at Riot.”

“It’s staggering to think about the fact that over a billion games of League of Legends have been played since launch,” said Marc Merrill, co-founder and President of Riot Games. “In 2012, we intend to deliver even more for our growing audience.”

“Crusader Kings is my favourite of our grand strategy games,” said Fred Wester, CEO of Paradox. “It takes that addictive core of building something epic, but the building blocks of the world are real people with real lives and real emotions, so your kingdom is always this entertainingly wobbly, teetering construct. There's not enough teetering in strategy these days. Anyway, that same focus on personalities makes it perfect for a live action trailer."

“Why did the live-action trailer ever die out, anyway? Actors are classy. Especially British actors. They're the classiest and snottiest of all. We're hoping that, through exposure to British actors, our game will absorb some of that snot.” Fredrik Wester continued.

“It's a metaphor,” explained Quintin Smith, ex-Rock Paper Shotgun writer and author of the trailers. “In an ironic play on our perceptions, the King is a manifestation of all of us, while his servants represent the ruling elite. That their positions are reversed is a reflection of these modern times. The trailers are actually themed around the seven deadly sins, for reasons too scholarly to go into here, but we start with wroth. That's the old English word for wrath. That's the kind of thing we know, here at Paradox. We're very high-functioning.”

“Also, we've got some knob jokes in one of the later ones,” added Quintin.

Personally, I’m really looking forward to this one. The previous Crusader Kings (when coupled with its expansion) was great for its strategy element as well as the intrigues and personal dramas tearing apart your dynasty from within. I remember trying diligently to turn my spoiled heir into a King Arthur type, only to see him constantly siring bastard children with serving wenches before drinking himself to death. The kingdom inevitably crumbled when all of his bastards (and other, distant relatives) were too busy fighting over who was the rightful heir to unite against the Mongol hordes.

The Dota 2 blog update this week is pretty short, so we'll try to keep this update short too. Alchemist has been added as the latest hero, and is identified in-game as a Carry. You can scope out some more details on the original Alchemist hero at the Playdota.com Alchemist page.

On the community side, Cyber Sports Arena has announced their very own Dota 2 Star Championship, although the site seems to be down at the moment. While you wait for it to come back up, feel free to check out some trippy Dota 2 themed wallpaper by Adam C Beamish.

Valve also confirms that Dota 2 beta invites are really cranking out now. It may not seem that way to those still on the wait list, but I can tell you first hand that on a daily basis the peak users in the beta is going up by hundreds of users. A month ago there would be maybe a two or three hundred people on at a time, now there are usually thousands. According to the Steam game stats page, Dota 2 peaked at 4,000 active players yesterday.

Last but not least, the blog ends with a link to the changelog for the latest patch.

Crytek GmbH (“Crytek”) is excited to reveal that Piranha Games’ recently announced premium free-to-play game MechWarrior® Online™ (http://www.mwomercs.com) will be powered by the all-in-one game development solution CryENGINE®3. Set in the year 3049 during the early stages of a massive interstellar war, MechWarrior Online puts you in command of the most powerful war machine to ever walk the field of battle, the mighty BattleMech™. Command your Mech™ and customize it to suit your battlefield role; upgrade systems, replace weapons, and tweak armor with endless options.

“Here at Crytek we are incredibly proud that Piranha Games have selected CryENGINE®3 to power their forthcoming Mechwarrior Online game,” says Carl Jones, Director of Global Business Development CryENGINE. “2012 will see a new segment in the games industry – as free-to-play games will step up to offer true AAA quality to gamers. Both Piranha and Crytek believe in the potential of this market and we look forward to helping them achieve their vision for an amazing game experience. With our own game, Warface and more than 20 of our current CryENGINE licensees also working on AAA quality, free-to-play games, CryENGINE is becoming the technology of choice for the highest quality online games.”