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…

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!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GM-xidz2PA

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!

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.

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.

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?

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.

When you start the game, you’re given a chance to pick your level of difficulty. Easy has only one line of creeps, and a sizable portion of money; Medium has two lines of creeps; Hard has two lines as well…and you only get 50% of the standard lives. Then there are the sets of Challenge and Fun modes. Challenge modes are for total experts, and Fun modes are for frustrated players who want to have some fun. I recommend starting with Easy,and moving up to Medium when you’re ready.

Upon selecting your Level of Difficulty, you’re taken to the Desk. You’re given 80 Gold to place some initial towers (click on tower type, then click on the board to place). After you’ve used-up your 80 Gold, press the Start button.

The Creeps will start coming in waves of various types. The first seven waves of Creeps will be “normal” ones. Then there will be a Boss Creep with insane health levels. Next there will be “Group Creeps” that keep near each other instead of spreading out. Next come the “Immunes”, which are more resilient to your weaponry. Then you have extra fast ones, and so on. I haven’t covered all of the Creep types, and the order varies depending on your difficulty level.

To win, you have to keep placing new towers in strategic positions, and upgrading existing ones. To upgrade towers, simply select one (by clicking it) and choose the “upgrade” option to the right. Game play continues until you are out of lives.

Can you defeat the Creeps, and go all the way to level 50? Desktop Tower Defense is a fun and addicting puzzle game. Let’s see if you can figure out how to zap all the Creeps. If you find an interesting strategy, feel free to share it in the comments.

• 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.

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.

After attending the hearing the game brings you straight to Hogwarts. At Hogwarts you do more endless chores *GROAN* including

• Finding a library book on magical defense. After Umbridge doesn’t teach you how to use defensive spells, you find a restricted section book on practical defense.
• Finding the DA: After Neville shows you the Room of Requirement, you have to spend valuable time telling DA members where the next meeting is *SNORE*.

Once you learn all the spells, Umbridge takes over. Now you have to walk around doing endless chores while listening to stupid Umbridge public service announcements.

Right after Dumbridge takes over, Hermione tells you to start rallying the DA members. Now you get to find DA members and have fun causing chaos *SNOOOR-WHAT? COOL!*

After a while Fred and George have their “Finest Hour”. You actually control Fred and George setting off fireworks.

Once you reach the Department of Mysteries and find the prophecy, the Death Eaters attack. During the fight you get to control Sirius. His spells are more powerful than Harry’s.

Then Voldemort attacks. You get to control Dumbledore, use his powerful spells, and defeat old “moldy” Voldy.

HOOORAY! You’ve overthrown Umbridge, Defeated Voldemort, and alerted everyone to his presence! But wait! you’re only halfway done. You have to do a few things first.

• Luna’s Possessions: You’ve got to walk around finding her hidden possessions.
• Portraits: There are several portraits around Hogwarts that house secret passages. Ask them questions, and they’ll tell you what to do.
• Games: Around the school there are students playing games (Wizard Chess, Exploding Snap, or Gobstones). You can challenge them all to games.

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