Years ago Blizzard released an expansion to the then much younger MMO known as World of Warcraft. With it came the introduction of a new class for your player character: the Death Knight. They were named a ‘Hero Class’ and could start the game at Level 55. The only barrier was that in order to have a Death Knight you needed to already have a character that was over that level before you could create one.

Fast forward to the WoW of today, many expansions and updates later and Blizzard now see that barrier as unnecessary. So they plan to remove it entirely.

“With availability of the level 90 character boost, we feel the requirement to have a character level 55 or higher to unlock the Death Knight as a playable class is no longer relevant.” said community manager Nethaera. “The plan right now is to remove the limitation sometime next week, at which point players will be able to start a new Death Knight (which still begins at level 55) without first having to reach level 55 on another character.”

Although it’ll be of most benefit to new players, they will still need to wait a little while. Nethaera notes that in order to remove the barrier to creation, they will need to make some client-side changes so Blizzard will plan to include its removal within a scheduled content patch.

The next patch will be the introduction of the Blackrock Foundry raid during the early parts of next year, or barring that possibly Patch 2.1 at the latest.

ArcheAge, the sandbox pirate MMO is getting a new update for the winter season which includes among other things a new boss – a large red dragon. How Christmassy.

The Version 1.2 Build 4.16 will introduce the new dragon world boss to the lands of Karkasse, and already some of their minions will be found in the area the dragon is to appear. Wyrmkin will roam the zone and fight with you. You’ll need to seek out the Evenbards for their knowledge on how to deal with this particularly fiery new threat. Another large threat is the Dahuta cult which has grown in strength with the update and now has a base located under the Arcandian Sea. Raid it for some good loot.

In less threatening updates, the Winter Maiden Festival has set up in Erenor, bringing with it multiple stalls and events for players to engage with. There are even quests to complete, which will bring rewards upon completion. Building snowmen, stuffing stockings and multiple other things, all to bring cheer to the land.

As is usual with updates, there are also bug fixes, including ones to do with teleport books that lead to houses that no longer exist, re-use timers on Old Jars being increased and the removal of ‘ice skates’ from horses.

Payday 2 has a new update coming soon, and it seems that the six-man crew is about to be joined by another. And this time, it’s a female criminal.

Clover is somewhat of a mystery right now. All we know is that she has her own mask like the others, speaks with an Irish accent and has a love for a particular gemstone – diamonds. Especially a specific one she refers to as ‘the diamond’.

The history of this one gem is quite long and it seems to have travelled a bit. Originally dropping to the surface of our planet in a meteor, it was retrieved from its space rock casing and brought into Europe via the Mongolian armies as they rampaged through the land. It then passed through the hands of many rich and powerful people, including Adolf Hitler. In the present day it resides in a vault and Clover aims to ‘liberate’ it for herself.

The update is appropriately enough known as ‘The Diamond Heist’ update and Overkill have said its going to be the most difficult heist mission so far although finer details about the heist are being kept secret. Besides the fact that it involves ‘the diamond’ of course.

It’ll release on December 16th, so get ready to heist once more.

Earlier today on their sub-Reddit Mojang posted a topic on a new launcher for their big hit game Minecraft, which will hopefully cut out a lot of the problems related to Java.

While it’s not 100% brand new (its a native wrapping around what is currently available), they’re hoping that by using the new launcher and running off a version of Java that will now be installed with the game they can hopefully improve the time the game takes to launch and make running smoother than it has been in the past.

While they are developing it for Windows and OSX, currently only the Window version is available for the testing period right now. Dinnerbone has said they hope to get the OSX version out for testing early next year. However he does note that they may or may not make a native launcher for Linux as they’re not sure if Linux actually needs one at this stage.

There is also going to be a new installer available with better located icons and buttons, but for the moment only the native launcher is availble for the test.

If you’re interested, hop over to the topic and get a download link as well as reading up on the rest of the information available for you there.

Reddit “We need your help testing a new launcher!”: [x]

After a long development process, which included a little legal run in with the developers of The Elder Scrolls series, Mojang have finally released their new game, Scrolls today.

In a blog post on their site they wrote about the game “Scrolls costs $5 but you can play the demo version for free!” and pointed interested players to the new site at scrolls.com. Anyone who has previously bought the game or participated in Alpha or Beta testing will receive the full game on all formats at no extra cost.

To celebrate the release Mojang have also given all Minecraft accounts a special cape for your avatar to wear for two days, before it vanishes.

Scrolls has been released on PC, Mac and Android tablet and the demo version, with some features restricted, can be found on the site at scrolls.com