Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, the next big expansion for the popular subscription-based MMORPG, will be releasing on November 13th. This was announced by Blizzard’s Mike Morhaime, Chris Metzen, Ion Hazzikostas and Brian Holinka during a live stream. The expansion is currently in the beta testing stage.

Warlords of Draenor follows Mists of Pandaria and will introduce new features such as an increased level cap from 90 to 100, player built garrisons that can be upgraded and used to recruit NPCs, updated player character models and the Orc world of Draenor. There will also be a new difficulty level for raids dubbed Mythic and changes to PvP combat along with a new island full of different objectives and battles to participate in. It’s perhaps the most significant expansion to the MMO yet.

What are your thoughts on World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Regardless of your opinion on this, the Brave New World expansion restores much of the depth the series had lost in Civ 5, whilst simultaneously retaining a simplicity and elegance that can only come from the most masterful of gameplay designs.

Lets get the mediocre stuff out of the way first. As all expansion packs love to throw numbers around, much of the media surrounding Brave New World discusses its new civilizations. There are nine in total, with two coming from the series’ past (albeit with alternate leaders) and the seven never before seen civilizations to control.

"The first big change comes in the way culture is handled. You still manage culture as before but, rather than merely unlocking all policies to gain a cultural victory, the culture win conditions now rely much more on responding to what your opponents are doing. "

They’re decent enough but, by the game’s very focus on creating a level field between all players, none of the new civs are particularly revolutionary. There are also eight new wonders, but these too do much the same thing as all other wonders in Civ 5. That’s not what Brave New World is about though, with the many effective gameplay tweaks eclipsing the standard additions.

The first big change comes in the way culture is handled. You still manage culture as before but, rather than merely unlocking all policies to gain a cultural victory, the culture win conditions now rely much more on responding to what your opponents are doing. It’s all wrapped around the great people and works mechanic, with famous art, literature and music generated in your civilization gaining you tourism. These tourism points accrue over time, acting as your offensive score in the culture battle.

As your tourism spreads to other nations, they use their culture scores to defend against your influence. If your tourism score is higher than a nations culture, they fall under your influence and, if you can do this to all the nations, you win. It becomes a more satisfying game of cat and mouse than the previous method, but it never becomes complex to the point of overwhelming the other game mechanics or victory conditions.

All this culture hasn’t stunted the growth of the more pragmatic elements of the game. Particularly when large armies get involved or politics start getting complicated, money talks. With this in mind, the introduction of trade routes allows for reliable incomes that change the pace of the game. Building caravans or trade ships allows your nation to establish a trade route with another city or city state within range.

"For those worried it may become a bit of a grind pursuing the culture or economy method, Firaxis have added some new gameplay elements to mix things up in the late game. "

This route supplies both parties with a differing boost to gold and science. Balancing out helping yourself and inadvertently helping your opponents adds a tactical depth to these trade units, and the extra gold you can acquire allows for some interesting diplomatic strategies. It also helps a losing Civ to play catch up, even when it comes to city development. Whilst you can use your gold to auto-build, you can set trade routes between your own cities to speed up their growth or production. Trade routes are simple, versatile and improve the economic side of the game to no end.

For those worried it may become a bit of a grind pursuing the culture or economy method, Firaxis have added some new gameplay elements to mix things up in the late game. Once a player has discovered all other civilizations in the game or builds the World Congress, they become the hosts for the World Congress, holding regular meetings to decide on global policies.

These are effectively global game rules changes that all players must suggest and vote on. Some may be used to help you, like voting for arts fairs that increase the production of culture, great artists and, as a result, tourism. Others are strictly to irritate and hinder others. You can vote for (or against) the right to prevent all trade with another civilization for instance, or raise the price of unit maintenance to harm those players who just spam large armies.

This makes for a decidedly tactical shift in the latter parts of each game, made all the more significant through how you earn delegates. You get more followers if you’re the leader of the World Congress but, if not, you need to grind for new delegates by keeping the neutral city states on good terms with your nation. You can, of course, do so through having spies infiltrate the city states to rig elections. In fact, all of the mechanics from the original expansion are back as well, making Brave New World an even more decisive upgrade if you didn’t get the previous expansion.

"It's a glorious thing, a deepening and enrichment of mechanics without the usual cost to simplicity."

With the cultural and political gameplay additions alongside tweaks to espionage, Brave New World completely revolutionises the vanilla Civ 5 experience. This does raise an issue though as, having made previous expansion almost entirely pointless for those who didn’t have it already, will the next expansion also include all the content found in Brave New World? Here’s hoping your £20 isn’t spent in vain. Though £20 may seem steep in our current climate of cheap DLC, Brave New World adds enough significant new content to justify its price immensely, even if a later expansion will render it obsolete.

Just like any family member, Civ and I had a falling out. In 2010 my fond relative changed its attitude in an attempt to fit in and, in doing so, lost a part of its personality I found so endearing. No fights last forever though and, now that Brave New World has come along, Civ has dropped the act, returning to my life as its old self. It’s a glorious thing, a deepening and enrichment of mechanics without the usual cost to simplicity.

Expansion packs used to be a big commitment for PC titles, often complicating mechanics to the point of obscurity unless you really knew the original game. Brave New World is not one of these expansions. Far from shutting out those drawn in by Civ 5’s accessibility, BNW’s added depth arguably makes for an even more refined Civilization experience. It is the definitive Civ release to date, and should be considered essential for all fans of the series.

This game was reviewed on PC.

First up are the Pyro-Saurians, which are like Saurians from the original game but can breath fire. A quick dousing of water or ice is enough to stun them though, and you can lop off their tails for bonuses here as well. The Eliminator is a Minotaur-like creature with a huge hammer that must be staggered before it’s vulnerable to attack. Otherwise, you’re just inviting a beating.

The last of these enemies, and one that will haunt you throughout the game, is Death. Death can’t be beaten right away and his attacks inflict, er, death. But you can inflict enough damage to run away and escape. This damage carries over throughout the game…which makes you wonder just how much you have to hurt him before he dies.

Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen is currently slated to release on April 23rd in North America and April 26th in Europe.

With the new free DLC going live tomorrow, (September 13, 2011) for Red Dead Redemption, a patch has gone live to fix some things including the gambling exploit to make you one rich cowboy.   This DLC is entitled ‘Myths and Mavericks’ and in center on multiplayer.  The latest patch for Red Dead Redemption, now live, has fixed all the following issues in the game:

• Return of Undead Overrun to original rules (extended sudden death, no explosive spit)
• Fixes for several multiplayer exploits, including invincibility, invisibility, flying, and rapid-fire
• Fix for exploit which resulted in use of Undead weapons in Free Roam
• The addition of an option to exit Undead Overrun without sacrificing XP
• Fix for killing other players in Friendly Free Roam by cooking dynamite
• Fix for a Poker exploit that resulted in rapid accumulation of money
• Fix for occasionally being unable to move after crashing in a wagon
• Fix for Nuevo Paraiso bounties being reset upon loading a save
• Fix for System Link issue on Xbox 360

The answer to those questions is: yes and no. Yes, it is very enjoyable, and worth its price tag. But no, it doesn’t fix all the flaws of HoI3. Some improvements have been made to the original game- the AI is not much better, and the game now supports multi-core processors, so the graphics have been given a much needed boost too. Neutrality has been improved, which fans of the original game would find to be a huge plus.

The biggest improvement of all, though, is the addition of the Partisan system. Via the Partisan system, you can control the population in several ways “behind the scenes” even if you’re not in power. You can undermine their decisions, or undermine a particular ideology. It adds to the depth of the game greatly, and gives you all the more reason to invest more time into the game.

Politics is probably the thing that For the Motherland does best. Internal politics, trying to stay in power for as long as possible, while also building your nation’s strengths, and with the Partisan system to boot, the game gets an unprecedented level of depth and hooks you to itself in more ways than one.

Combat has been improved greatly as well, with the addition of war goals and the Theater mode. War goals are, well, war goals- you set specific goals in terms of political ruling or territorial expansion, and work towards those goals. This gives the game a great focused feel, and it keeps you in the heat of things at all times. With the Theater system, you can make changes to the fronts you or your allies are fighting on. You can make instantaneous decisions, like changing your stance from a peaceful diplomatic deal with one country to helping them in war against another.

However, there are a lot of flaws in For the Motherland. For one, the resource collection is illogical and distribution is a little scattered. The game is, like all Paradox games, full of bugs and glitches. The events in the game are not all historically accurate and the game tends to get a bit boring sometimes. Also, the fact that you cannot play this without having both, Hearts of Iron III and the first expansion pack might turn off some people.

However, the game boasts of a lot of replay value. The depth and complexity of the game make you want to come back for more and the newly added Battle Scenarios, which are like mini campaign which you can hop in to play for short doses of fun, add to that replay value greatly.

All in all, Hearts of Iron III: For the Motherland is a great new expansion pack for an already enjoyable game. The flaws are a little irritating at times, but the new additions are good enough for you to ignore the bugs. Just be ready to spend a lot of money on the original game and the other expansion pack to play this one, if you don’t have them already.

This game was reviewed on the PC.