Jagex has made tons of large, new updates for Members and FreePlay users alike.

Many core aspects of RuneScape have changes, hopefully for the better. I’m excited, and you probably will be after seeing all the changes.

First of all, the Dual Arena is now available for Free Players. What’s that? It’s the sound of millions of FreePlayers cheering.

Second, everyone gets more bank space! Members get 32 more slots, and FreePlayers get an additional 8.

Wilderness Changes

• The wilderness is now 40% of the original size, and PvP is no longer available in the entire place. Instead, it’s now broken into several arenas with various minigames available. The rest of the wilderness is filled with nasty NPC (Revenants, as they’re called).
• PKing is done in the Bounty Hunter arena. When you enter the arena, you are assigned a bounty (a random player in the arena) that you must kill. You can attack players who aren’t your bounty, but you will be given a 3-minute penalty and must stay in the arena for the duration. Upon entering the Bounty Hunter arena, you are automatically given a skull above your head. Bounty Hunter is only available on certain worlds (members and non-members).
• You can now only bring items that Jagex deems appropriate for Wildy use. That means weapons and food mainly. This is to prevent real-world trading and item loss.
• Clan Wars is now available for FreePlay users.

Read more.

Item/Trade Changes

• In an effort to prevent scamming and real-world trading, Jagex will be placing a limitation on the trading system. “Unbalanced trades” exceeding a 3,000gp limit will no longer be allowed after the first week of January.
• When you drop items, they will only become visible to other players if their value (market value) is below 3,000gp.
• When you die in RuneScape, you leave a gravestone to protect your items for a time. The gravestone will only last a few minutes (longer if you upgrade the gravestone of if another player repairs it for you), giving you time to run back and reclaim your items. You must buy a stone from Father Aereck in the Lumbridge church (after completing the Restless Ghost quest). Gravestones do not work in the Bounty Hunter arena.
• The party room is now available to FreePlay users, as a replacement for drop-parties.

Read more.

Jagex sure has made a lot of big changes. Several things that were previously Members-Only are now available to everyone! Now, that’s progress. RuneScape is starting to get more fun than ever.

This is a bit of a coincidence, actually. I was just thinking about sending in a suggestion that some older Members-Only things be made available to FreePlay users. I thinking more along the lines of quests, or other smaller features…not Duel Arena/Clan Wars/etc! Well, great job, Jagex! Disney could learn a few things from you…

Trading just got easier…and more profitable.

RuneScape’s Grand Exchange auction house has been finished, finally. You can place an item up for sale, pick your price, and wait. You can play RuneScape…or log out and do other things while you wait for the item to be sold. You can buy anything up for sell using a handy search tool.

Also introduced are Armor Sets, boxes containing entire sets of armor…so you can forget hunting for an entire set of gold-trimmed Rune armor!

Pirates of the Caribbean Online launched just yesterday (Halloween). You can pay for free, but plenty of things are disabled unless you pay $10/month for “Unlimited Access.” I really wish they hadn’t decided to restrict voodoo and teleportation to premium users, but oh well. It’s still fun anyway.

What are you waiting for? Sign up, it’s free!

“The beta ends…and the revolution begins.”

By November 1, the Pirates of the Caribbean Online MMORPG will be live for all to play. You can play for free, but paying “premium” members get more (of course). The downloadable client will be available in Mac and PC formats, so sharpen your cutlasses and all that. Get ready for some serious fun.

The pricing scheme for Pirates of the Caribbean Online has been announced. According to the released information, the Premium accounts, which offer more features than their free counterparts, will cost $9.95/month.

According to Disney, Premium accounts will feature “bigger and better ships,” the ability to create guilds, “expanded PVP combat,” and “expanded quests.” Just how much will free player get? What ship classes will be locked to free accounts? What quests won’t be available?

Hopefully Disney won’t be overly-cheap on the freeplay feature set. Too often free users are totally neglected in MMORPGS, rarely seeing anything new, or not having much to do at all.

Jagex LTD has expanded the RuneScape Clan Chat system today. Now you can set-up your clan to share drops earned in multi-combat zones among nearby clan members. Whenever a monster is beat, the loot will be semi-randomly given to a clan member within 16 “squares” of the monster. If you’re not lucky enough to get the loot, the game will remember and try to improve your probability the next time around. You can read more in the RuneScape Knowledge Base.

Here’s an interesting idea that merits experimentation: What if you attack the lesser demon in the Wizards’ Tower with your clan? Will someone get the loot without having to use Telekinetic Grab?

In Desktop Tower Defense, your objective is to stop the lines of “Creeps” from crossing the desk. They go from one side to the other, though in some difficulty levels, there is more than one line of enemies.

To stop them from crossing the board, you place “towers” with various abilities to zap them before they get to their destination. For every creep that you miss, you lose one of your lives. For every Creep you zap, you get points and gold. Gold is used for buying/upgrading towers.

The tower types are

• The Pellet Tower, which is the cheapest of the towers. It fires reasonably fast, and it’s damage levels are okay. It’s cheap, so start with this one.
• The Squirt Tower fires real fast, but doesn’t damage the creeps much.
• The Dart Tower is the heavy artillery. It’s not exactly cheap, and it fires slowly, but it packs a punch.
• The Swarm Tower fires a group of four tracer missiles to take out flying creeps.
• The Frost Tower slows your opponents so your other towers can do their work.
• The Bash Tower repeatedly emits a shockwave to seriously reduce the health of nearby creeps.

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Aaaarrrg! Pirates of The Caribbean Online be startin’ part two of the beta. Here be a few of the things that be fixed so far:

• Improved interface
• More interesting NPCs
• Quest improvements
• Board ships easier
• No more falling out of ships
• Improved enemy AI
• More music and visual effects

See more in the Release Notes.

Harry potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the videogame, is the fifth installment of the Harry Potter videogame series. It has great graphics (the best so far), but there’s not much you can do. It has been called over and over, and I agree, “just an endless chore simulation”.

You start out at Grimmauld Place and learn how to do basic spells.

• Wingardium Leviosa: The Levitation Charm (you use this to help pack Ron’s trunk)
• Reparo: The Fixing Charm (Sirius has you fix everything in the house with this).
• Depulso and Accio: Depulso is the Knockback Jinx and Accio is the Summoning Charm.

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After the success of Lego Star Wars The Video Game, Lucas Arts and Traveler’s Tales aren’t about to pass up opportunities for new Lego [Insert Movie Here] The Video Game titles. In addition to your ordinary Indiana Jones games (by Lucas Arts), we’ll be seeing Lego Indiana Jones The Video Game. The release is set for “Summer 2008,” coinciding with the release of the new movie. According to the trailer on the official site, the game will cover the original three Indiana Jones films.

I haven’t seen much about it yet, but there have been rumors about a Lego Batman game as well.