Expansions

As promised earlier this week, the folks at Tilted Mill did not waste any time in releasing the first free content expansion for their fantasy RPG-village building sim Hinterland. The full game was released only last week but this new content update is now available via Valve's Steam client.

As we previously reported, the new content update adds wo new characters (the Archer and the Dwarf Warrior) along with new features like creature specific item drops, a new character info screen, auto-equipping, acquiring resources through economic means and more. In addition, the update adds French, German and Spanish language support for the game along with numerous balance changes and bug fixes.

Last August Ironclad Games and Stardock announced plans for not one but three micro-expansions for their hit space strategy game Sins of a Solar Empire. Last night G4TV's X-Play program had a live preview of the first micro-expansion, Entrenchment, which will add new defensive units and weapons to the game.

The preview also announced a release date for Entrenchment with Ironclad co-founder Blair Frazer announcing that it would become available via Stardock's Impulse client on Nov. 18. As previously reported the micro-expansions will be sold for $9.99 each. The second micro-expansion, which will add some new diplomacy features to the game, should be out two to three months after Entrencement.

As mentioned in our new interview with the folks at Tilted Mill today, the developer plans to release its first downloadable content update for Hinterland, their recent fantasy RPG-village building sim. The developer sent over a press release with details on the new content.

Two new characters (the Archer and the Dwarf Warrior ) will be included in the update along with features like creature specific item drops, a new character info screen, auto-equipping, acquiring resources through economic means and more. The free content update will be released via Steam "shortly" but no specific release date was announced.

The new screenshots from Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria continue to come from developer Turbine as the upcoming MMO expansion pack gets ready for its release this fall. This week five new screenshots show off some of the new "Legendary items that players can get their hands on in the game.

As we have previously reported, Mines of Moria will be released as a paid download for current subscribers and bundled in a new release of Lord of the Rings Online for retail stores. In addition to two new player classes (the Warden and the Rune-keeper), the expansion will raise the level cap to 60, and add 200 new monsters and 10 new areas along with lots more new features.

The alien evolution sim game Spore was released just last month but Electronic Arts might be trying to quickly launch an expansion pack for the game before the end of the year. Fan site Hooked on Spore has discovered that both Gamestop and Amazon's web site has listings for such an expansion pack.

While these listings have sinc been removied, Google still has a cache image of the pages which have a Spore "Cute & Creepy Parts Pack" expansion listed as shipping on Nov. 18 for $19.99. The title suggests that this addition will simply be new parts that you can add to the creature stage in the game and will not have any new gameplay. The removal of the listings may be due to a delay in its release or that EA just doesn't want to play its hand yet.

[Via Shacknews]

This patch for The Sims 2: Apartment life fixes a host of bugs and gameplay issues.

Download The Sims 2: Apartment Life v1.16.0.187 Patch (90 MB)

Trailer shows off the graphics and gameplay of Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods, the upcoming expansion to Gothic 3 role-playing game.

Download HD Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods Trailer (22 MB)

This new version of Worldbuilder for Command & Conquer 3 Kanes Wrath contains a few critical fixes to the version that originally shipped with the game. You must update your Kane's Wrath software to patch 1.01 for this latest version of Worldbuilder to function correctly.

-Tile feedback and Terrain Panting Mode has been fixed so users can now paint passability and impassibility terrains. This also fixes Tiberium Growth terrain painting.

-Fixed a generic crash when creating a new map.

Download the Kane's Wrath Worldbuilder v1.1 (6 MB)
Download Kane's Wrath Patch 1.01 (64 MB)

Remember last month when NCsoft announced plans to give subscribers of their super hero MMO City of Heroes an update that would include a new user-created mission editor for the game? Yeah...about that. Today the game's official web site has posted up a new update from its lead designer Matt Miller announcing that there have been some changes made for their next free content update. Basically, the mission creator has been pushed back to "Issue 14" and is now scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2009.

Issue 13, still due out this fall, will include previously announced new power sets (including shields) new missions, costume additions and the concept of Day Jobs which means that locations in the game when players log out determine their secret identity (log out of City Hall and your offline character becomes a city official, for example). Each job can unlock new rewards once you spent enough time at it.

In addition Issue 13 will have some previously unannounced new features like a Leveling Pack (you and a friend can make characters and have them have the same experience points even if your buddy plays more than you). Characters can also have two separate versions of their character in terms of powers and enhancements and there are also plans to rebalance powers for PvP and PVE. More news on this particular change will be announced later. For more info on City of Heroes check out the new Massively interview with Miller and executive producer Brian Clayton.

It's an expansion that up until last month we didn't know existed but now Lighthouse Interactive has announced that Sword of the Stars: A Murder of Crows has actually gone gold. The second expansion to the space strategy game developed by Kerberos Productions adds the game's sixth playable race (the Morrigi) along with new ships, weapons and more for the previous races to the game.

The title will be released in retail stores in the UK on October 10 but Gamersgate will let anyone purchase and download the expansion pack. It does require you own and install the previously released expansion pack Born in Blood or the Sword of the Stars Collector's Edition. Oh, and we have six new screenshots from A Murder of Crows to show off as well.

This is the trailer for EverQuest: Seeds of Destruction, the latest expansion coming to the long standing MMO. The expansion is scheduled to release on October 21, and players will travel through a portal into the far future to prevent the fabric of reality from unraveling.

Download the HD EverQuest: Seeds of Destruction Trailer (42 MB)

Last month, graphics chip maker Nvidia released it's first "Power Pack" consisting of a number of extra content and graphics demos for various games. Many of the items in the Power Pack had been released before by PhysX before Nvidia bought them earlier this year such as the free multiplayer shooter Warmonger and PhysX enabled Unreal Tournament 3 levels.

Today Nvidia announced that the Power Pack had achieved one million downloads in less than two weeks. More importantly, the company revealed that a second Power Pack download is in the works for release in October. The pack will contain "additional game levels, videos, and demos from a variety of games and applications" but no specifics were announced.

Two official maps for World in Conflict just released. Arizona is a "well-balanced Tug-of-War map" and Valley is a "visually stunning DX10 map."

Download the World in Conflict "Arizona" and "Valley" maps (135 MB)

It was one of the weirdest things about this month's release of Spore. Electronic Arts' manual for the game said you could have multiple accounts for the alien evolution sim but in reality there was just one such account available for each install of the game. Naturally, folks didn't like that. Now EA's producer of the game Lucy Bradshaw has announced that they have indeed caved in and made multiple accounts available for each copy.

Bradshaw states in a post on the official Spore message boards, "We are going to add the ability to have multiple Spore Screen Names for any one Spore Online Account. Here's how this will work: for each copy of Spore that you have purchased, you will be able to have one Spore Online Account, just as it is now. However, we will be adding the ability to have five Spore Screen Names for that account. When you launch Spore, you will be able to log in with any of those Screen Names."

People who already have the game can go to the Spore web site and add new screen names associated with their online account now so there's apparently no need for a patch. These screen names will have separate entries in the online Sporepedia and each will have their own achievements, buddy lists and other features. We wonder why it took an online protest to put in a feature that quite frankly should have been there from the start, but at least it's there now.

Gallery: Spore

While most titles get forgotten about a few months after its release, Valve continues to update their games with new patches and new content. None have gotten more attention in the past year than Team Fortress 2 which has seen new game modes, levels and updates to two of its character classes. Now the official Team Fortress 2 web site has posted work that the dev team is getting back to work on even more updates.

According to Team Fortress co-creator Robin Walker, the team has actually spent a few weeks helping out the Left 4 Dead team finish of their zombie co-op action game that's due out in November. Specifically Walker stated that they have helped out on the game's Versus mode (one team of humans against another team of zombies..sound familiar?) But fear not, as Walker states, "Now that we're wrapping up that work, we'll be returning to TF2. We've got a bunch of exciting changes coming down the pipe for the next class update. Feels good to be home again!."