Andy Wood

Season 2 of Justice League picks up the pace a couple of notches compared to Season 1.

Some of the heavy weights that they take on this round is Darkseid and Brainiac, the power-copying giant android, AMAZO, Demon Snakedudes, Grodd and his Secret Society, Joker and the first Royal Flush Gang, and the entire Thanagarian invasion force. It would seem that the writers are allowing Superman to get tougher as he isn’t getting his tail kicked as much.

One of my favorite episodes is A Better World where the League comes face to face with their counterparts from a parallel dimension, (aka the Justice Lords,) who have taken complete control of their own Earth and now seek to do the same to the League’s.

This was a fairly dark episode because of all of the League members, Superman’s alter ego proved that it could be just as dark – if not more so – than Batman ever thought of being. Of course the real highlight of this episode is the knuckle bashing between Justice Lord Superman and Doomsday.

The Shadow of the Necropolis, the tagline for the next batch of new end game raid content coming to Blizzard’s World of Warcraft might be heading “Live” this week (meaning patched into the game during tomorrow’s maintenance). A post from Jeffrey Kaplan (Tigole), raid and dungeons designer on the official message boards hints at the patch’s imminent release.

A quick and simple thanks to everyone who helped test patch 1.11 on the Public Test Realms. It’s amazing to see that we all share the same dedication for making this game great. With the nature of the MMORPG and quick-turnaround patching, we can never promise that things will be flawless. But we’ll do our best to fix bugs as quickly as possible and show expediency with any tuning issues that might arise.

Just so you know, our internal testing efforts are ongoing. Our QA raid team has spent many hours on every encounter in Naxxramas. Now, they’re focused on Sapphiron and Kel’Thuzad — the encounters which saw the least amount of testing on the PTR’s (unless you count death touch hacking your way through the dungeon =P). Even after patch 1.11 goes live, our internal team will continue to work on the unbeaten encounters in Naxx to ensure the best possible tuning. It’s always hard to get cutting edge content perfect, but we’ll do our best to be responsive should any problems rise to the surface.

No promises as to when the patch is going live, but if I were you, I’d start working on that Argent Dawn rep by tomorrow — either that or pillage the guild bank while the pillaging is good.

Your presence on the PTR’s was greatly appreciated.

While tomorrow may end up being patch day for 1.11, we’re sticking by the guess that it will be June 27th (next Tuesday), incidentally, Blizzard’s projection date for the patch has been “before the fourth of July” and whether it’s this Tuesday or next Tuesday, it certainly looks like they are going to hit their target.

Via 1UP

1UP is chatting how Chromehounds is looking like its multiplayer is meant to be the real game — much like another mech game that graced an early Xbox lineup. Single-player exists to train the player for Live play, and when you start your Live career what you’ve completed on the single-player side will transfer over. Unlocked equipment, the medals you earn for completing the six role types/storylines/training scenarios, and skill gauges other people can view based on how well you did in those scenarios are all available to set the foundation of your Hound piloting life.

And once you get into the gameplay, the system is very smooth. It’s easy to create, join, or leave squads that allow you and a group of players to look for or launch games together, either against other players or against bots. In the persistent Neroimus War online setting, conflict versus bots is always available, although it earns lesser rewards than conflict versus other people. The six roles that a Hound can have all have real and important differences on the field, and actually support each other in the way they’re meant to, so far. Clever Hound design and customization will help, but the core Hounds that are pre-built are all solid enough that you don’t have to be a mech-head to enjoy the Live experience.

The War itself, in the first instance of a developer taking advantage of Xbox Live Server Proxy to run their on on-going setting, seems to be fairly simple meta-game laid over the six-on-six combat. Playing any of the modes — such as capture the flag, deathmatch, or what have you — in the War mode gives your nation access to greater resources like unique equipment, better prices for fuel and ammo (that you expend in War mode missions), and general bragging rights. Even if your nation is hounded to the ground, you can choose to join one of the other two countries or fight as a mercenary, even trying to take back your homeland.