The latest drop of Wildstar media explains the final two of the MMO's four "Paths" - the player choice that defines the type of content you'll get to focus on. Previously we learned of the Explorer and Soldier paths. Not that they weren't somewhat self-explanatory: explorers explore, and soldier... er... soldie? Now we get to see the Scientists and Settlers. Can you guess what they do?



If that rambunctious round-up hasn't fully explained the Scientist's research-focused skill-set, or the Settler's construction kit of team bonuses, the game's latest Devspeak Diary is an only slightly less exuberant look at the four paths, and how they work both separately and in combination.



Wildstar is currently in the second phase of closed beta testing. You can learn more about the game with our hands-on preview.

Don't let the lovely pastel colour shading and adorable badger yelps at the start of this early Shelter footage fool you. Nature is cruel, uncaring, and full of jerk birds who'll happily steal baby cubs like the diabolically hungry monsters that they are. I almost expected Werner Herzog to chime in halfway through this trailer, adding some appropriately bleak narration about the existential torment of survival.

"As the mother of a litter of cubs you are forced out from familiar and safe surroundings to find new shelter in a beautiful, but dangerous world," reads the game's description. "The harsh reality of nature plays a pivotal role in the game whilst at the same time Shelter aims to pay a homage to the great outdoors and all its imposing beauty."

Shelter is due out later this year from Pid developers Might and Delight. You can vote for it on Greenlight right now.

In light of Call of Duty: Ghosts game-changing dog announcement, I've been waiting to see what DICE would pull out of their secret bag of development tricks to gain the advantage with Battlefield 4. Maybe they'd reveal the introduction of Dog+, or "the wolf" as it's more commonly known. Or perhaps they'd stop being such massive teases, and just admit that the game is 90% dinosaurs.

Whatever their plan, they're staying quiet for now - instead settling for the announcement of Battlefield 4's release date. Expect to see EA's FPS sequel arrive October 29th in the US, and November 1st in the UK (UK date via EG). Once again, then, the old Tuesday/Friday physical distribution set-up is making the rather ridiculous imposition on our increasingly digital gaming habits.

So far, we've only seen a glimpse of the game's single-player. EA say they'll be demoing the more anticipated multiplayer portion of Battlefield 4 on June 10th, at 9pm GMT, as part of their E3 streaming.

As part of last night's Xbox One reveal, EA introduced Ignite, the shiny new engine that'll power their next-gen sporting titles - including the upcoming FIFA 14. EA say Ignite will allow them to deliver better physics, AI and animation to the pitch. And after year upon year of minor iterations, a dramatic overhaul to the underlying EA Sports tech sounds rather exciting. Which makes it all the more annoying that the engine won't be coming to PC.

The news came from FIFA's Community Manager Rob Hodson:

Clarification for the PC related questions earlier - EA SPORTS IGNITE will power FIFA 14 on Xbox One and PS4, not PC bit.ly/192nrNz— Rob Hodson (@RobHodson_) May 21, 2013


Essentially, EA Sports are scoring the same PC own goal as last season generation: withholding the most advanced version of their engine. It wasn't until FIFA 12 that PC gamers finally caught up with the series' current generation engine. How long are we going to have to wait for feature parity this time?

More than ever, the next generation of consoles have PC architecture running through them. On a technical level, it's not like a publishing house as large as EA couldn't port their engine. Instead, for whatever reason, they won't.

It's a real shame to see. While PCs can absolutely keep up with the upcoming console hardware in terms of power and capability, it seems we still can't prevent game makers from giving them an artificial boost.

Thanks, DSO Gaming.

Assuming you've utterly gorged yourself on icing-laden birthday goodness, TERA players are now qualified for a weirdo sort of treasure hunt that culminates in your coming into control of a gibbering, only vaguely terrifying new mount.

Gift boxes have been strewn haphazardly across Arborea, and while some may contain unspecified "other items," you'll want to be on the lookout for the letters spelling out the name of your favorite MMO. No, not Rift—I mean T-E-R-A! Once you've collected the all four letters, click on the "A" to receive the Gourmando Amount skill book, from which you can learn to ride, well, this fruit-basket-topped thing:



En Masse have created an FAQ for the event, but the most pertinent facts you'll need to know are that A. the spell book is tradeable (so if you can't be bothered, you can probably expect another player to sell you one for an extortionate price) and B. the event ends May 31. So get up and get searchin'; Gourmando's not going to stick around forever, but cake will always be there for you, even at the end of the birthday month.

Could Battlefield 4 get any more human, dramatic, or believable than it did by using "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in a gameplay trailer? I know, I didn't think so either—but they've done it again! EA is getting in touch with our soft sides by appealing to our heartrending desire to own all of the DLC, and they're doing it by offering the first for free. Provided you pre-order, that is.

Little's been revealed of the first "sprawling" DLC, China Rising, which is set across four multiplayer maps on the Chinese mainland and offers new vehicles and high-tech military equipment. When pre-ordering Battlefield 4 over at the website, though, you'll receive China Rising for "no additional cost" on top of the base game's $60.

Meanwhile, if you order the Digital Deluxe edition through Origin, you get some bonus unspecified in-game digital items and access to the multiplayer beta in addition to the base game and first DLC.

Details probably seem a little scant because of Battlefield 4 being on that Xbox thing, but we'll dig up more info for you soon.

Are you the hunter or the hunted? The DayZ Mod development team has released a new version of proposed changes and fixes to the zombie survival simulator and is seeking input from the community about anything that has been left out. The community changelog for the next update is a fascinating look at how the game has evolved since I first landed on Chernarus almost a year ago.

The preliminary list includes updates to the Arma 2 mod's melee system, the kind of loot that spawns at various crash sites within the game, and the mechanics of alerting and aggravating the undead. While much has been said and written about the strange and alienating universe of PvP interaction within DayZ, the menacing dance of death that a player engages in with the game's zombie population has always intrigued me. So much of my initial reaction to this mod focused on the terror of permadeath at the hands of a zombie on a low-population server where I was unlikely to get any help. It was almost always up to me to survive and I usually didn't make it for long.

Still, the mod's official game stats tell me the player base has hiked nearly 3.8 billion kilometers through DayZ's apocalyptic landscape. In a way these changelogs are a record of our own nightmares, courtesy of the development team.

And with the alpha release of the DayZ Standalone title not set to happen until June at the earliest, the DayZ Mod remains a uniquely relevant—and frightening—online sandbox for survival-horror fans.

Because warring should be available for everyone. That's according to ArenaNet, anyway, which has cited player accessibility as one of their primary reasons for the adjustment.

Guild Wars 2's price point has been lowered by a tenner for both the digital and digital deluxe editions, bringing them down to $50 and $70 respectively. While it's not a massive difference, it's an interesting time to be implementing a permanent discount—episodic content, such as what we've seen of the Southsun update, has been coming out of the MMO at a rabbit-breeding pace, and there's only more to come. Additionally, ArenaNet says that "record numbers of people" are playing. Could this be a sign that free-to-play is now so thoroughly dominating the MMO scene that it's lowering the price point for even subscriptionless MMOs?

In any case, if you've been wanting to check out GW2 and a $10 drop is enough to sway you, scoot on over to the Guild Wars 2 website.

Diablo 3 has been out for just a little over a year, and Blizzard has burned the cooldown on its Infernal Horadric Ring of Visualizing Statistics to bring us the infographic below. Among the notable figures: Players have spent over 930 years of play time in D3 collectively, the average number of daily players is over two million, and about 67 million characters have been created in total.

I also found it interesting that the most popular classes in Normal mode (Demon Hunter and Wizard) were significantly different from the most popular classes in Hardcore (Barbarian and Monk). Also notable for bragging rights: The European servers had the highest percentage of Hardcore characters, followed by the Americas, and then Asia. Have a look for yourself:

It's always fun to say that WoW is "rolling out" a new patch, as if Pandaria's hardships are manufactured and deployed via a conveyor-belt production line. So the Horde and the Alliance are sniping at one another again, yes, but what does this mean for you, the player? There are many upsides to all the conflict, including but not limited to: new scenarios, reduced XP needed in leveling, changes to loot rolls, and while we're at it, probably just more loot in general.

Thank goodness the Battle.net blog's been compiling all this information in what's only a slightly overwhelming manner. Players can go deeper into the conflict-ridden plotline with a new series of level 90 quests in everyone's favorite world PVP battleground, the Barrens. Meanwhile, four new scenarios have been added, each with a separate heroic mode. Heroic modes have also been added to two existing scenarios.

But if you're still leveling and nowhere near heroic-ready? Good news! The amount of XP needed to get from levels 85 to 90 have been shaved down by 33%. My rogue, who I'm fairly sure I left sitting morosely around the eggplant-rich farms of Valley of the Four Winds, will probably be happy to hear this. Additionally, low-leveled miners and herbalists won't need to visit those cruddy old continents to skill up any more—they can now do that while keeping up with the cool bears in Pandaria.

Loot specialization's also a new thing, allowing for more control with off-spec loot drops. Also, the ever-important pet battles have received some fixes. Finally, as per usual, don't forget to check up on what's changed for your character's specific class.

The full details are over at the WoW blog. The new slew of features has already been implemented on the servers, so all you'll need to do now is run your launcher, download the good stuff, and meet your guildies in-game for some renewed tussling over loot drops.