C’thun – World of Warcraft (2006)

If you were bold enough to battle C’thun in World of Warcraft, then you were in for some pain. Introduced with patch 1.9 in 2006, C’thun was insanely tough, randomly swallowing select players and digesting them slowly. Such was C’thun’s power that he could insta-kill raid group members with a single beam attack. Even weakening him for short periods of time did little to affect his health. When Blizzard realized that C’thun was effectively unbalanced, it stepped in to nerf him. Those who were there, however, will remember his terror forever.

Daybreak Studios has been suffering the worst of these DDoS attacks that hacker groups such as the Lixard Squad keep initiating recently, and now, it seems like their servers are under fire once again. Lizard Squad, the notorious hacking group, is claiming responsibility for DDoS attacks on game servers for Planetside 2, Everquest, H1Z1, and more.

Daybreak has been suffering from these attacks since last year, back when the studio was still called Sony Online Entertainment; last week, one of the perpetrators of those attacks was convicted, but managed to avoid jailtime, prompting Daybreak CEO John Smedley to claim that he would be ‘going after him.’

To be fair, Smedley’s sentiments were well justified- the regular DDoS attacks would be reason enough for him to feel that way, but the problems go beyond just that. For instance, this was the hacker who issued a bomb thread against Smedley’s flight, and had it grounded.

Unfortunately, Smedley’s remarks are what seem to have caused the current round of DDoS attacks on Lizard Squad servers. Smedley took to Twitter to confirm that the issue was being looked into.

Hopefully they get things running again.

Sony’s Sony Online Entertainment- an historic developer with titles and franchises such as Planetside, Everquest, and more recently, H1Z1 under its belt- has been sold off to Columbus Nova, a well known and massive investment management firm. Sony Online Entertainment will now be called Daybreak Game Company, and they confirmed that they will be making their games for multiple formats- including mobiles and yes, Xbox One.

“Today, we are pleased to announce that we have been acquired by Columbus Nova, an investment management firm well known for its success with its existing portfolio of technology, media and entertainment focused companies. This means that effective immediately SOE will operate as an independent game development studio where we will continue to focus on creating exceptional online games for players around the world, and now as a multi-platform gaming company. Yes, that means PlayStation and Xbox, mobile and more,” they said, to make it very clear.

It’s a little baffling as to why this sale was made- while SOE has always been a bit of an odd anomaly in Sony’s lineup of studios, existing in its own bubble and never even supporting Sony’s own hardware, that had begun to change in recent months, as SOE was beginning to become more and more integrated with Sony WWS, and was starting to bring its games over to PS4. With SOE’s games confirmed for Xbox One as well, the PS4 just lost a bunch of valuable exclusives.

Stay tuned, and we will keep you posted on all developments.

The twentieth expansion pack for the long running massively multiplayer online role playing game, Sony’s EverQuest, is now available. Entitled EverQuest: Call of the Forsaken. As is standard for expansion packs for MMOs at this point, it expands on the story and lore, and adds new areas, weapons, and quests.

The new improvements include Mercenary Alternate Advancements, a specialized line of AAs that will enable players to customize the skills of mercenaries and make them even more powerful; mercenary gear, which lets players manage mercenary equipment and provide them with powerful weapons and armor, in addition to new Hero Missions and Zones.

It’s pretty standard, iterative, and rote as expansions go; honestly, it’s nothing special, but if you have stuck with the game for this long, you might as well just give this one a shot as well to celebrate the impending release of the next EverQuest game.

Stay tuned for more coverage.

“When I was given the opportunity to return to the team it was something I just had to do! I found, in addition to all of the great new features and UI elements, that the game, at its core, was still very much the EQ I was involved with.

“In fact, some of my first work as a game designer on the team will be working on areas that have been alluded to since launch. I can’t say more than that, of course, but I’m sure you can imagine how exciting this is for me.”

A follow-up to Everquest then, or some new changes? We’re down with that.

Source: GIBiz