Less than a day ago, Codemasters' free-to-play MMORPG, Archlord, just got a new free expansion! This takes us into the "third season," since the expansion is called "Episode 3: Spirits Awakening." Since there's not much else to add now, but if you're new to Archlord, maybe it would be a good idea for you to check those Archlord Emotes before anything else. After all, you gotta know how to express your feelings in the game, right?

Now, let's see what's new in this third expansion for this MMORPG, shall we?

"Episode 3: Spirits Awakening adds 30% new game content to the existing game including three extensive new zones and over 80 new skills and abilities. <-180x150 Small Rectangle - right->

ArchLord Episode 3: Spirits Awakening adds a number of new features and free game content including:

Expanded world – 30% all-new game content
All-new zones – 3 new zones for players to explore
New class skills – Over 80 new skills
ArchLord abilities – New ruling ArchLord skills and abilities
New armour & items – New collectible armour sets with unique stats
New monsters & enemies – New monsters and zone bosses

Available now, Episode 3 is available either through an automatic patch for existing players when logging into the game or included within the full free game download on the game's official website for new players at: www.archlordgame.com"

Regarding the automatic update, you should know it takes a while, so if you have the game installed already, and didn't update it yet, you'd better start the update and go out have a pizza and a few beers. That's not what I did, but I think the beer and pizza sound better than firing up the program and going to sleep while it downloads the patch and updates the game files...

According to Ed Relf, Director of Marketing at Codemasters Online, "This is an exciting time in the ongoing development of ArchLord. ArchLord has never been more popular with almost 750,000 players now playing with this number increasing almost 20,000 new players each week! ArchLord is going from strength to strength and we are assessing the need right now to open new servers just to cope with the increased levels of demand for this great, free MMORPG."

I know Archlord didn't get high scores in the reviews published so far, but I also think there are a lot of extremely bad and boring MMORPGs, and this one doesn't go that low. After all, Archlord is my perfect MMORPG - you log in, play 10-20 minutes, finish one quest or two, then get out, since it becomes boring. ;)

Crazy about football? If the answer is "no," then let me make things clear - I was talking about soccer, and not American football. Still a negative answer? Good, so I am not the only one who's not impressed much by this, and the same goes for the FIFA game series. Anyway, I have to confess I enjoyed a lot playing FIFA on the same keyboard on an old PC with a friend of mine...but that was happening a decade ago! Now, I only hope that FIFA 09 can keep me busy for at least a few hours, since the latest news seem to point us at some very interesting new features in EA's franchise...

...such as adidas Live Season, a service that's going to allow FIFA 09 gamers to grab weekly information about football players, so the real-world events will be mirrored inside the game. I only wonder if they're going to add personal life events as morale boosters, too - that would really be something nice, but let's see what Andrew Wilson, Vice President & Executive Producer for the franchise, has to say about this new addition to the game, shall we?<-125x125 Button - right->

"This is an ambitious and completely unique feature that has never been attempted before for football videogames. The game will feel and play differently each week. With adidas Live Season if Ronaldinho has a great match on the weekend you’ll feel the difference when you pick up the controller as his in-game attributes increase."

Heh, that's really sweet! Even more, it seems a "global network of football scouts" will keep an eye on every player, providing "accurate and in-depth player and team data each week."

Unfortunately, the service will be offered to PS 3, Xbox 360 and PC gamers, but will only be available for Barclay’s Premier League, La Liga BBVA, Ligue 1, Bundesliga, Serie A and Mexican Primera Division. Well, that's life, I guess I can't have the weekly stats of my favorite players in the local parking lot championships...

If you will ever find out what did real pirates eat, you'll surely figure out why is technology important today, believe me! This is one thing we often forget about technology - how much it changed the way we eat, although for most of us, this change did more damage than it should have. In fact, I won't even mention any name of the big corporations stuffing us with additives and tortured, forcefully inflated animals called "food," because we started with a different question - "What did real pirates eat?," and now we'll get close to that subject.

Why only "close?" Well, I am no real pirate, and I don't have any knowledge about the existence of such a character in my family tree, and real pirates didn't use to write biographies in which they mentioned every meal, but we have news about a pretty close thing to a real pirate of the Medieval Ages, a game pirate!

Now, I don't know if those guys in the video game industry have any idea what did real pirates eat, and I am sure they don't even care, but the truth is they are the ones eating pirates these days, since their latest victim, a 24 year old from Oakland, is going to eat in a cool place for the next 15 months...<-125x125 Button - right->
The story goes like this - on Friday, Kifah Maswadi was sentenced to 15 months in prison and fined no less than $415,000 for copyright infringement, because he sold Power Player handheld consoles with various pirated copies of a bunch of video games, many of them Nintendo titles. Since we were talking about technology earlier, it should be obvious he used the Internet for these transactions, and it seems his profit exceeded $390,000.

I am sure this guy doesn't care about real pirates either, especially since he'll have no less than three years of supervised release, and 50 hours of community service, with the funny part of the whole thing being the fact that he will educate people on copyright infringement, instead of wiping the sidewalk...

If real pirates would have been forced to preach about the straight path in life to others, I am sure they would have hanged themselves, but I guess Kifah will have to move on with his life, and take it all like a real pirate, that if he doesn't have the bad luck of ending up face to face with some big guy eager to show him what did real pirates eat, after all...

Hello again, my friends! Looking for some Mario Kart Wii cheats? Don't worry, I got'em right here! Released in April, Mario Kart Wii sold 300,000 copies on the launch day in Japan alone, and by mid-July, it reached over 1,5 million copies sold there, but its success wasn't only a Japanese business, because it sold 1.1 million copies in the US in April 2008 alone, putting it right behind the Xbox 360 version of GTA 4!

If we're talking about Mario Kart Wii cheats, then you should go grab a beer, maybe even two or three beers(just be sure you have the legal drinking age, lol!), and continue reading...or maybe even print this, because this is more than just Mario Kart Wii cheats - we have unlockable characters, karts, bikes, and more. Ready or not, here we go...

Unlockable Characters(and requirements for each of them)

Baby Daisy - Earn at least a one star ranking in each 50cc Wii Grand Prix cup races
Baby Luigi - Unlock eight Expert Staff ghost data in Time Trial mode<-336x280 Large Rectangle - right->
Birdo - Defeat 250 people in online racing, or play Time Trial mode on sixteen different courses
Bowser Jr. - Earn at least a one star ranking in each 100cc Retro Grand Prix cup races
Daisy - Win the 150cc Special Cup
Diddy Kong - Win the 50cc Lightning Cup
Dry Bones - Win the 100cc Leaf Cup
Dry Bowser - Earn at least a one star ranking in each 150cc Wii Grand Prix cups
Funky Kong - Unlock four Expert Staff ghost data in Time Trial mode
King Boo - Win the 50cc Star Cup
Mii (Outfit A) - To play as the Mii associated with your profile, win the 100cc Special Cup
Mii (Outfit B) - To play as the Mii associated with your profile in a different outfit, play through and complete all thirty-two time trials
Rosalina - Have a Super Mario Galaxy save on your Wii
Toadette - Play Time Trial Mode on all thirty-two courses


Unlockable Large Karts

Aero Glider - Earn at least a one star ranking in each 150cc Retro Grand Prix races
Dragonetti - Win the 150cc Lightning Cup
Piranha Prowler - Win the 50cc Special Cup


Unlockable Large Bikes

Phantom - Win the Mirror Cup
Torpedo - Unlock twelve Expert Staff ghost data in Time Trial mode
Twinkle Star - Win the 100cc Star Cup


Unlockable Cups

Leaf Cup - Earn trophies in the Shell Cup and Banana Cup
Lightning Cup - Earn a trophy in Leaf Cup
Special Cup - Earn a trophy in Star Cup
Star Cup - Earn trophies in the Mushroom Cup and Flower Cup


Unlockable Small Bikes

Bubble Bike - Win the Mirror Leaf Cup
Magikruiser - Play Time Trial Mode on any eight courses
Quacker - Win the 150cc Star Cup


Unlockable Medium Bikes

Dolphin Dasher - Win the Mirror Star Cup
Nitrocycle - Attain at least a one star ranking in all 100cc Wii Grand Prix cup races
Rapide - Win the 100cc Lightning Cup


I know I may have forgotten something, but this should be most of it. Also, I know that "Mario Kart Wii cheats" is not the best way to describe the above, but I would rather find unlocks when looking for cheats, and those cheats are not available, than the other way around. Mario Kart Wii cheats or not, I hope you enjoyed today's tips and tricks for Mario Kart!

Back in 1999, it all started with Codename Eagle, a PC game that laid the foundation for the Battlefield series, started by Battlefield 1942, released in September 2002 for the Mac and PC. Battlefield 1942 got two expansion packs, namely The Road To Rome and Secret Weapons of World War II. In March, 2004, Battlefield Vietnam arrived for US-based PC players, followed by Battlefield 2 and its three additional packs - Special Forces, Euro Force and Armored Fury. This game, revealed in June 2005, was also only available in the US, and was a PC-exclusive release. After that, we got Battlefield 2142 for the PC and Mac, together with a few console releases, like Battlefield: Bad Company. Now, Battlefield Heroes, currently under development, is expected to become "a phenomenon!"

In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Acclaim Inc founder and development veteran David Perry said the upcoming title in the Battlefield series will be "a huge hit," expressing his "incredible faith that EA is going to pull this off."

While a number of companies tried the free-to-play model before, EA's try shouldn't be underestimated, said Perry, adding that "EA is a retail-based company and that means they're dealing with retailers everyday, they have constant retail issues that they're dealing with, and the last thing in the world they want to do is announce that they're going to go free-to-play... that's not a good relationship builder with your retail sales teams."

The basic idea behind the free-to-play model is that, in average, gamers spend more than <-336x280 Large Rectangle - right->the price of a retail single player release, or a multiplayer without any additional fees.

"I've made so many games and we never, ever had the idea that people would pay more than the price of the game for the game, no one would pay over USD 60 if it's a USD 60 game. On our 2Moons game you've got people that spend USD 3000 happily, and if we had more stuff for them to buy they would buy it.

Could you imagine if you were to take Halo and offer it free-to-play? How much money do you think some people would spend on Halo if they had a huge array of items that they could buy? I recon there's a cap out at about USD 10,000. When you think about it, the most we ask for is USD 60 and when you get those people spending a lot of money it brings the average up. On Acclaim Games right now we average USD 75 per person."

Really impressive, if you ask me. Not quite unexpected, since even I spent a few bucks on such games, and I am not crazy at all about MMOs, as you probably know already.

At last, here's what David Perry said about the future of Battlefield Heroes - "I think Battlefield Heroes is going to be a huge hit, it's going to be a bit of a phenomenon... I have incredible faith that EA is going to pull this off." If he's right or not, that remains to be seen, but I hardly wait to get my hands on this piece of "cartoonish world war!"