Since it’s launch, Guild Wars 2 has been a rather successful MMO, and one that didn’t boast the standard monthly subscription fee. Instead, you simply purchased a serial code for the game and that was it. Of course, there were in game cosmetics you could spend money on, but the game never asked you for more money simply to play. Now, however, ArenaNet has embraced the Free To Play model. The announcement was made at the Guild Wars 2 PAX Panel, and is effective as of today.

Of course, with an MMORPG that already has an established player base (and one that shelled out cash for the game to boot) things aren’t as simple as just flipping a switch that turns off the price of admission. Instead, free accounts will be limited in ways that existing and new paid accounts will not be. Free Players will be limited to two character slots and 5 bag slots. They will also be unable to access the Revenant profession and the Heart of Thorns content. The core world of the game will be more segmented, with free players only being allowed to starter maps until they reach level 10 and the major city of Lion’s Arch being locked out until level 35.

Perhaps the most interesting restrictions however deal with communications and the Trading Post. The Trading Post is a huge part of Guild Wars 2. Wihle I was levelling up my Mesmer and looking for the top gear I needed, the pages of Black Lion were seared into my retinas. Free players will still ahve access to the Trading Post, but only to a select lists of items to buy and sell.

Lastly, communications will be severely limited for free players, presumably so the unpaying masses don’t disturb their serial number holding betters. Whisper chat will be restricted to only the same map and only to one new person every 30 seconds except for mutual friends. Map chat will be totally unavailable, and squad chat will only unlock at level 30.

Oh, and ArenaNet also announced that Heart of Thorns will be released on October 23rd and that it will include raid content.

After teasing us earlier this week, the details of the the Thief’s elite specialization has finally been revealed, and it’s called the Daredevil.

The daredevil is a mobile damage dealer who can bring the pain to multiple enemies at once and also has enhanced dodge-roll abilities. To read all about the new abilities check out Karl McLain’s blog post over on the GW2 website.

For anyone who would like to get a chance to see the daredevil in action before they get to try it in the next beta weekend event, be sure to watch the next Points of Interest show on Friday 8/28 at noon PDT on the official GW2 Twitch channel.

The second Beta Weekend Event will be taking place starting at noon Pacific Time (UTC-7) on Friday, September 4, and running until 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time (UTC-7) on Sunday, September 6.

Beta weekend events are a large milestone in the development of our expansion, and we can’t wait to play the game with you over the weekend and to continue down the path that brings Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns to release! And while we count down to our second beta weekend, make sure to join us for our massive announcement about Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns live from PAX Prime on Saturday, 29 August, at 5:30 p.m. UTC (10:30 a.m. Pacific Time), broadcast live on the official Guild Wars 2 Twitch channel, or join us in person if you’re attending PAX!

The Rockstar Editor was one of those editions to the game of GTA V with the PC release and one I was most interested in. I need to just find the time to play the game…

However, the Rockstar Editor has been supplemented with player-made mods since it released, mainly because it didn’t do everything that people needed it to (although people were still able to make great videos without modding the Editor). Rockstar seem to be paying attention because they’ve decided to upgrade the tools available in the upcoming months to make the video creation even better, along with porting Rockstar Editor to the console versions as well.

Here’s the list of changes coming:

• Ambient Audio and Sound Effects Library: Add ambient and atmospheric sound design with a library of audio tracks to help bring your scenes to life or add sound effects from a collection of Foley and other sfx.
• Snapmatic Integration: Now you can export any still frame at a marker point straight to Snapmatic, giving you ultimate freedom when searching for that perfect camera angle.
• Director Mode Updates: An enlarged minimap with location blips to highlight preset locations, the power to freeze chosen time of day settings and the ability to spawn air and water vehicles.
• Copy and Paste Marker Properties: Easily copy and paste your audio settings from any marker to another marker in the clip – adding invaluable efficiency to your go-to editing techniques.
• New Fonts: You’ll now have more style options than ever for your titles and credits — we’re tripling the library of available fonts with new styles.

Are you excited for these changes?

Ah Blizzard, you never manage to have a trouble-free launch of an expansion to a game do you?

Earlier today the long awaited next expansion to the popular online free-to-play card game Hearthstone went live. The Grand Tournament adds over 130 new cards to the game, all of which I’ve revealed in previous articles. There was also the option to pre-purchase a bundle of 50 of the new card packs as well as an exclusive cardback for pre-purchase for around £34.99, which is an offer a number of us in the station took up.

Unfortunately no big release is without its hiccups and from around fifteen minutes before the scheduled time of release, Hearthstone’s servers were being flooded with players eager to begin getting to grips with the new cards and open their pre-purchased 50 packs. This led to a lot of players being unable to log on with some even reporting the queue numbers being blank or reading in excess of 3 hours. Eventually Hearthstone was taken down for maintenance about an hour ago to try and get things running again and as of time of writing is still down, although it is estimated that it should be back up any time now.

At least this time it’s just server issues and nothing more severe. Just an annoying thing and so a lot of us will have to open their 50 packs tomorrow. I’ll be one of them, so join me on stream tomorrow at 6pm BST as I open them up!

[plumwd_twitch_stream channel=”sanitariumfm”]

A free patch is being released for all those who own the Risen 3: Titan Lords game on Steam which will greatly enhance the graphics of the game.

Piranha Bytes have made significant upgrades to the graphics and the patch is totally free; but if you run a 32-bit operating system you’re out of luck, the patch is only available for users of 64-bit operating systems. The full list of updates reads thus:

• Improved texture resolution for items, objects, foliage, terrain, particle effects, characters, monsters and other in-game models.
• Improved draw distances and viewing ranges.
• Larger caches, leading to smoother frame rates and less LOD streaming.
• The introduction of a new state of the art post-process effects such as bokeh depth of field and HDR bloom.
• Addition of a new physically based, more visually realistic cloud rendering technique that adds even more spectacular skies and sunsets to the dynamic day/night cycles.

The patch will be automatically applied to all with the automatic updates enabled on their Steam clients and enough bits, and while the vast majority seem to be having no problems it’s worth noting that a few have reported the loss of save games and some performance issues with the new patch downloaded. So might be best to wait off a little while to see if the patch is further tweaked to prevent these issues.