Exciting week!

It's been an exciting week around here!

Not only is the Destiny of Velious beta getting underway for EverQuest II, but there's lots of other things happening too.  Last week saw the soft beta launch of "Dungeon Overlord", a facebook game that I've been playtesting in alpha for quite some time.  It's reminiscent of the old DungeonKeeper games (which I loved), in that you can build your underground dungeon lair, designate rooms, and attract creatures.  This is a social game, however, and besides attacking innocent NPC villages in the world above, you can also launch attacks on your fellow players, raid their dungeons, even destroy and steal things.  I've been enjoying the building aspect very much, but am not yet sure how much I will participate in the PvP side which I'm guessing may become quite competitive as the world fills up.  I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops, and in the mean time building up my hordes of evil minions ...  Check out the official page, watch the trailer, and give it a try on Facebook!

Edit to add an update: check out the great review from Curse.com!  And tune into the Jethal Silverwing show on Online Gaming Radio Tuesday night to hear Jethal and SOE's own Linda "Brasse" Carlson talk more about Dungeon Overlord.

Also just launched is EverQuest II's Fortune League, a Facebook-based fantasy-football type of tournament where you join a league, assemble a group of 6 hardy adventurers, and try to complete a weekly quests.  Participants can earn rewards for their characters within EverQuest II, as well as fame and glory within their league, of course!  The interesting thing about this game is that you assemble your group from all the race/class combinations available within EverQuest II, and their performance during the quest is actually based on real data pulled from the EverQuest II game data. So as I understand it, if barbarian wizards have a particularly bad week within EverQuest II, it will affect the performance of your barbarian wizard in Fortune League.... and the reverse is also true. I have never in my life played a fantasy football game so I had to have a good read of the instructions and FAQ and no doubt there's still much to learn, but it looks potentially a lot of fun, particularly for folks who really do enjoy fantasy football type games.  This week's quest is called Siege at Kaladim: "Isolated and penned into the city you tried to liberate, you and your team defend ancient Kaladim against the hordes of screaming mad bugbears and goblins trying to rout you out. If you can endure and survive long enough, your hope is that help may arrive in time to push your foes back again."  My brave group of mostly short races is eagerly waiting to fight back the bugbears!

And of course, last but surely not least, January 11th will see the launch of SOE's latest MMO, DC Universe Online.  This is launching for both PC and Playstation, I believe the first MMO to ever do this, and I'm sure the team in Austin has been heroically overcoming unexpected technical challenges in the process make lesser beings tremble.  I took part in the early beta testing on PC, but haven't had a chance to check it out more recently since I've been so busy with EQII's own upcoming launch.  It was lots of fun when I did play it though, and from what I've heard it's improved by leaps and bounds.  Besides being a fun comic book themed game where you can actually play with various big-name superheroes you know and love, it's also so pretty!  I confess I found myself flying around taking huge numbers of screenshots, and some of the quest areas inside buildings made me sigh and wish we had that furniture for player housing in EQII. 

 

Of course we are all hoping it does brilliantly, and are on the edges of our seats waiting till the launch.  Follow the link above for more information!  And if you didn't already see the fantastic "who do you trust" trailer released last year, here is is again:

Which ones will you be playing - or will it be all of them?  =)