Dragon Age: Origins Character Creator and BioWare Social Network Now Available with Tools to Create a Player Character and Share Online Before the Game Launches

EDMONTON, Alberta–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Leading video game developer BioWare, a division of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS), today announced the release of the Dragon Age: Origins Character Creator and BioWare Social Network in North America and Europe. The BioWare Social Network will provide a destination for players of Dragon Age: Origins on any platform to upload screenshots, game data and story information to share with other community members as they progress through the dark and epic journey. The free* to download Character Creator allows players to create and customize a player character on the PC and then upload their character data and avatar online to the BioWare Social Network before Dragon Age: Origins launches. The Dragon Age: Origins Character Creator will provide players of Dragon Age: Origins with the tools to create a character with a nearly endless amount of options.

The Dragon Age: Origins Character Creator and BioWare Social Network gives gamers a chance to kick start their adventure by creating a character and unique avatar online to reflect their in-game personality and share it with the Dragon Age: Origins community. The Dragon Age: Origins Character Creator also allows players to save their handmade character to use when the PC game launches in November. This stand alone application is now available free of charge exclusively on the PC at: www.dragonage.com

We want to fully immerse players into the world of Dragon Age: Origins and the Character Creator and BioWare Social Network allows us to do just that, said Fernando Melo, Producer, BioWare. This is a great way for fans to connect, create and share their character creations now and in game experiences when the game launches. The creation and connection possibilities are nearly endless.

In Dragon Age: Origins, players take the role of a Grey Warden, one of the last of an ancient order of guardians. Now, as a rising evil threatens to destroy all life, it is up to players to unite the shattered lands and slay the corrupted dragon known as the Archdemon. To restore peace, players must make ruthless decisions and be willing to sacrifice their friends and loved ones for the greater good of mankind.

Dragon Age: Origins will be released on November 3rd in North America and November 6th in Europe on the Xbox 360 videogame and entertainment system and PC. The PlayStation3 version will follow later in November. Dragon Age: Origins is rated M by the ESRB and 18+ by PEGI.

Players can get more information on Dragon Age: Origins or sign up for the BioWare Social Network at: www.dragonage.com.

*Internet connection required.

There is also an Dragon Age Origins Interview: Executive Producer Mark Darrah on TheGamereviews.com

We’ve teamed up with Warrior Epic. Warrior Epic is an action-packed free MMORPG set in a vibrant 3D fantasy world. It’s a fun game with lots to explore, characters to build and lots of loot! Warrior Epic is a free to play game and we’ve scored a starter pack for everyone who is a customer of Shattered Crystal that is valued at $8.95.

Here is how the promo works:

* Follow this link and register a new account:
* Log in and complete the tutorial between October 12th and October 26th 2009.
* On October 27th 2009 your account will have the free 14 day starter pack added to it. (Starter Pack includes: 4th spirit slot, 4th potion slot and 20 double EXP potions)
* After the 14 days are up (11/10/09) the 4th slots will expire, the EXP potions will remain until they are all used up.

Shattered Crystal is also an authorized seller or Warrior Epic Gold and packages. So if you need currency or items in the game you can get it directly from us !

In preparation for the launch of these new features, on November 11, 2009, all current World of Warcraft players will be required to merge their World of Warcraft accounts with a Battle.net account in order to log in to the game. As our way to say ?thanks? for taking a moment to go through the process, existing World of Warcraft accounts that upgrade to Battle.net (including those that have already switched over) will receive a brand-new penguin in-game pet — check for him in your in-game mailbox later this week. Starting on November 11, all World of Warcraft players will need to log in to the game using a Battle.net username and password, and anyone who wishes to create a new World of Warcraft account will need to start with a Battle.net account.

Creating a Battle.net account is simple and free. To merge your existing account with a Battle.net account, visit http://us.battle.net . For more info, check out the Battle.net site or read the FAQ: http://us.battle.net/faq/index.html

Account conversion: http://us.battle.net
FAQ: http://us.battle.net/faq/index.html

Here is how the promo works:

* Click here and register a new account !
* Log in and complete the tutorial between October 12th and October 26th 2009.
* On October 27th 2009 your account will have the free 14 day starter pack added to it.
(Starter Pack includes: 4th spirit slot, 4th potion slot and 20 double EXP potions)
* After the 14 days are up (11/10/09) the 4th slot will expire, the EXP potions will remain until they are all used up.

Shattered Crystal is also an authorized seller or Warrior Epic Gold and packages.

For currency or in game items visit ShatteredCrystal.com

See you in game !

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In a lecture at GDC China, NetEase’s design director Yunfeng Lin discussed the fascinating gold farming bot-related issues in the company’s massively popular Westward Journey Chinese online game series, and how it fixed them.

Lin started by noting: “We are very firm about bot programs.. we will spare no effort to crack down on them.” With NetEase’s games in this series having hundreds of thousands or even millions of simultaneous users, it’s a major problem.

He explained that the company — which now also runs World Of Warcraft in China — started out by detecting bots — which try to accumulate in-game wealth to sell it to other payers for financial gain — by looking at their behavior.

The company’s game began by using a number of basic ‘check’ devices before in-game fights, including a visual test (‘Which character is facing left, when all the others are facing right?’, as well as slightly more complex mathematical questions.

Sneaky Bot Shenanigans

The bots were then coded to try to log off and quit the game when they are presented with a ‘check’ — to avoid detection. But NetEase adapted their code so that the game automatically flags them as a potential bot and does not allow them to continue without checking.

However, after around 6 months, the bots adapted. When the checkbox popped up, the bot programs would default back to a real person whose sole job is to bypass manual checks. In this way, 2 or 3 people may operate hundreds of accounts simultaneously.

NetEase then increased the security, so you have to type Chinese city names or idioms, and the player has to key in Chinese characters. In addition, players have to key in English words and say what position one particular letter is in, and also complete simple mathematical questions. Over time, even more detailed, complex captcha-like events were put in front of potential bots.

Bot Harm, Fixes Through Gameplay

Why are bots harmful, though? Lin stressed the lack of co-operation and social interaction that having masses of bots in your online game implies. This can lead to regular players leaving your game through frustration — and then when your bots leave, you’ll have nobody left at all.

How is NetEase fixing the issues beyond mechanical or captcha-related fixed. Interestingly, by making the gameplay more complex — something that will naturally make players happier anyhow. Lin explained that the company put different monsters in the game with different powers. In this way, actual tactics are important — grinding through by just attacking everything won’t work, so bots will need to be a lot more complex.

Other ways that NetEase developers actually changed the game design to thwart the bots include forcing a new monster-finding task — which takes one to two minutes — before players can collect particular pieces of treasure map loot in one of the games. This adds complexity and a particular task that’s difficult for a bot to reproduce.{…}

Read more at Gamasutra.com

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There were quite a few questions after the announced introduction of local banking in the upcoming Darkfall Expansion. We asked Claus Grovdal for some information on this that we could pass on to you:

Claus explained that this is the first step for local banking in Darkfall, something we refer to it internally as Limited Local Banking. It’s basically bank access in player owned houses. This will allow house owners to store crafting materials, loot, reagents etc in their house but it’s stored locally only – meaning you do not have access to the content of this specific bank vault from other banks in the world. Claus is excited about the added dynamics local banking will bring to villages especially since player controlled vendors are also being introduced in the Expansion. These changes are designed to make player villages a lot more attractive to live in or raid.

Claus explained that the topic of local banking is very interesting, and something the developers are willing to explore further should this limited introduction be a success. They are specifically looking at various options for local banking in clan cities, possibly starting out by allowing players access to a second vault at first, giving a bonus maximum limit, but where the contents of the vault are local only. Claus doesn’t rule out the possibility of eventually allowing only local banking in clan cities through a process of gradual evolution.

With any form of local banking, it’s a fine line between cool feature and ridiculous annoyance, so we are trying to do this in steps, and work with our players to get it just right., Claus concluded on the topic.

The developers are very interested in the community’s feedback on this, so please feel free to post your comments within this thread.

Please give them your feedback here.

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