Are you ready for Wednesday Night's Global Agenda Event? This is your less-than-24-hours reminder. As mentioned earlier, PC Gamer will be having an event in-game trying our hands on Oasis Checkpoint of Doom. We can't wait to blast some spooky ghouls with you in our finely crafted PC Gamer brand power suits, and hope you'll join us in-game tomorrow!

The details:

Wednesday, October 27, at 4PM PST
Players must be level 30 to be able to join in the raid.
Raids will occur every 30 minutes

Giveaway:
Make up a battle cry that PC Gamer should use in tonight's raid and post in the comments below. Battle cry should be family friendly and non-offensive. The first fifteen entries with a valid battle cry will win a copy of Global Agenda.

This contest is open to everyone.



Global Agenda is currently on sale at 30% off and can be bought here or on Steam for $21. See you on the battlefield!

Update: Winners have been selected and codes have been mailed out. See you in game.

The developers of class-based first-person shooter Global Agenda have confirmed that they are working on a brand new entry in the classic Tribes series, called Tribes Universe. It'll have huge battlefields, vehicle combat and will feature massive scraps involving more than a hundred players. Oh, and jetpacks. It wouldn't be Tribes without jetpacks.

Global Agenda featured an MMO-style metagame in which armies of players could fight for control of territorial hexes by taking each other's bases, but it looks as though Hi-Rez Studios are thinking even bigger for Tribes Universe.

Writing on the Global Agenda forums, Hi-Rez founder and lead designer Erez Goren said that "we can’t transform Global Agenda to a large scale battle format but since we liked this concept a lot, we decided to create a new game based on large scale fighting."

He added that "while working through the design we kept coming back to one old and loved game that represented many of the concepts we where incorporating into the new game (jetpacks, vehicles, large open space, three armor types, futuristic weapons, etc). Many of you will know this game as Tribes, the original on-line multiplayer shooter. As of now, Hi-Rez Studios is the proud new owner of the Tribes franchise."

HiRezErez also posted a list of features that will be included in the game:

Three Tribes (factions)
Full clan (agency) support
First person view (third person for some vehicles)
Full vehicle support (ground and air)
Full persistent world with territory control (no instances)
PvP focused
Huge outdoor maps (about 10x the area of sonoran desert)
Large scale fights (100+ players)
Jetpacks, skiing, lots of weapons, etc.

Tribes Universe will be staging alpha testing early next year. If you're a level 50 Global Agenda player, you'll have first dibs on a spot in the testing program, so it might be a good idea to get levelling now if you want to increase your chances of grabbing a place. This will be the first Tribes game since Tribes: Vengeance in 2004. The idea of a new, bigger Tribes in Unreal Engine 3 makes me go a bit wibbly with excitement. Did you play the old games? Are you excited about the change to man a Shrike in a new Tribes title? Let us know in the comments below.

Come play dress-up with the PC Gamer US editors in Global Agenda on Wednesday, October 27, at 4PM PST and be one of the first to run through the new Halloween themed mission, Oasis Checkpoint of Doom.

Oasis Checkpoint is a Defense Raid mission where 10 players defend a facility from waves of NPC attackers. It's decorated with “tricks” and “treats” for the holiday event, lasting from October 27 through October 31. Learn more about Raid Defense in this developer video blog.

Players must be level 30 to be able to join in the raid.






Thirteen new Halloween-themed masks will be available as random drops in the Halloween mission, and the items range in rarity from Uncommon to Epic. Players who defeat the final boss will score an additional mask on top of the normal mission rewards.

Raid timers will be reduced from 80 minutes to 30 minutes during the event in order to allow more players a chance to do a mission with PC Gamer. All the seasonal items received during the event will be wearable until the end of November.

Register for your free trial account here. Trial accounts are only able to reach level 12, though, and a one-time purchase of Global Agenda($30) will be required to advance beyond the level cap.

We'll see you in game!

Successful shooty-guns MMO Global Agenda was a success because it was designed from the ground up to appeal to people too busy with family to maintain a World of Warcraft commitment.

Speaking to EDGE, executive producer Todd Harris said, "World Of Warcraft has set the standard in terms of what the market place and end gamers think of as MMOs. We think there can be a lot of different types of MMOGs that can be successful. I think small can do it if they're conservative with their projections and their costs."

MMOs can't afford to try to be a huge phenomenon anymore - there are just too many of them. As Jim Edge pointed out, you need look no further than recent MMO tragedy APB for an example of what can go wrong when you think too big. Oh, Jim Edge. You are as wise as your beard is long.

Incidentally, I had ten copies of Global Agenda. I was quite looking forward to playing ten characters at once and cackling, but I accidentally mailed them out to ten people who came up with lame uses for jetpacks instead. I'm clumsy like that.

We've endured much, you and I. You had to endure two weeks of waiting to see if you were one of ten lucky readers who'd won a free copy of Global Agenda. I had to endure reading through a billion entries, each better than the last. To the ten of you who'll now be jetting around playing Global Agenda for free, my congratulations! We asked you for the ten lamest reasons or ways to use a jetpack. Here they are:

PD102 suggested "using a Jetpack to hover just above people's heads at a Cliff Richard concert." That's pretty lame, because other people behind you need to see Cliff Richard too. For shame!

Lack 26 may have let bitterness taint his entry. Better hope your supervisor at Jetpack Industries doesn't read PCGamer.com, Lack.
"Using it to deliver jetpacks, then having to trudge home in the rain having delivered said jetpack to those lucky enough to afford them; knowing all the while that your own life is miserable and empty in comparison and every day you have to go through the heartbreak of giving away what you most desire for yourself, a jetpack, to smiling, rich, happy families so they can soar like angels as a tiny speck drags its feet back down the driveway and through the gates."
Sir_Oddington reasons that there's no use flying around in the sky when you're missing out on a potential auxilliary poo storage chamber: "Hollow it out and use the metal shell as a spare sceptic tank." Pro tip: if someone then straps it to their back and tries to start that thing up, dive for cover.



contrapositive tells it like it is: "Reaper rushing."

DrugCrazed says: "To use as the beginning of a rube goldberg machine that pushes me up into the sky." I demand that the first step in the sequence is you turning on your apparently-but-not-really strapped on jetpack, which shoots off without you.

RichardDRMC is still fighting the good fight. He says, "Convert it to a podracer for little children. Then alienate one of the largest fan bases with some shitty prequals. Just sayin."

Bendito came dangerously close to my idea for a jetpack propelled rocking chair. He reckons you could use your jetpack for "Solo see-sawing".

jimangi wins a copy of Global Agenda because he'd "craft it into refined metal," but he also suggested that you could use your jetpack for "going to the shop for my copy of PC Gamer. That’s lame. Real men subscribe." Ah, I love the smell of patent advertising in the morning. The smell of victory.

Godl1keStev3 reckons that the height of laziness would be "using a jetpack to go DOWN the stairs." A winner is you, Stev3.

But Ociee made me lol the most with the mental image his entry conjures:
"Standing up."
Well done guys! I'll be sending you your codes via our forum's in-built "electromagnetic mail" system. Check your private messages for your keys. Once you have them, whack it into Steam.

Now, to fetch the list of codes from under the novelty magnets I've stuck onto my new non-cooling, curiously-jetpack-shaped, all-the-food-smells-like-paraffin fridge. It's a floating, smelly buffet!