Blizzard Entertainment today announced the release of Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion to its award-winning MMO, World of Warcraft. The game opens the forbidding wasteland of Northrend to exploration and features higher character levels, new dungeons and encounters, a new character profession, and the game’s first hero class: The Death Knight.

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Activision is sending out new invites to the Call of Duty World at War Beta to members of the call of duty site.  To sign up simply register at callofduty.com or go to http://www.callofduty.com/beta

Oh, and here are the details:

The Multiplayer Beta for Xbox 360™* is live! In order to participate, you will need to sign up as a CallofDuty.com member. U.S. gamers can also pre-order Call of Duty: World At War at any GameStop retail location and online at gamestop.com (while supplies last) to get your beta code.

The PC Beta is coming up next! Stay close to CallofDuty.com and check your email for details soon to come!

Through the Multiplayer Beta, players will experience Call of Duty: World at War’s new multiplayer features including:

• Addictive class-based multiplayer action
• Vehicle combat
• Persistent stats
• Player rankings
• Upgradeable weapons
• Squad-based gameplay
• Customizable classes and Perks

The full battle will commence on November 11, 2008 (November 14th for Europe) when Call of Duty: World at War is released to retailers nationwide!

Directions to participate in the Xbox 360 Demo Multiplayer Beta:

1. Receive your Xbox Live™ Marketplace Token and write it down. You will not be able to download the Beta without it
2. Log into Xbox Live with your gamer profile
3. Access Xbox Live Marketplace through the Xbox 360™ Dashboard
4. Click Redeem Code
5. Enter your Xbox Live Marketplace Token when prompted

Note: Canceling the download or turning off your Xbox 360 during the download will permanently void the token

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Gameplay

Gameplay will revolve around the player character’s manhunt through a fictional region of Africa and will be entirely open-ended, with the player being able to ally with anyone he/she chooses. The player’s choices are completely unfettered, giving a sandbox style of gameplay and allowing the story to progress at the speed the player chooses. Instead of using individual maps, the game will take place in a sprawling African landscape, with terrain ranging from savannah to jungle. The gameplay area will be 50 km2 (19.3 sq mi). Some members of the Ubisoft Montreal team spent two weeks in several locations in Africa filming and photographing native wildlife. The team will use the animal footage and environment photos to create an extremely realistic environment.

The player’s actions may also have a lasting effect on the environment: for example, one of the missions shown so far by the developers had the player sabotage a pipeline owned by one of the factions that’s pumping fresh water from a lake to a neighboring country, exchanging it for arms and munition. After the player destroys it, part of the surrounding area becomes flooded, including a mine where another mission may take place.

Various factions and vehicles will be featured; enemies will include human mercenaries, but sci-fi creatures such as the mutants from Far Cry will not be featured. Furthermore, the player’s feral abilities introduced in Far Cry Instincts and its expansions will not be returning in Far Cry 2. A dynamic weather system has been added that varies the weather based on the player’s ability - if the player is doing exceptionally well the sky will be clear and sunny, but if problems arise the sky will become dark and stormy.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer in Far Cry 2 attempts to include the dynamic elements of the singleplayer game (such as fire propagation) and to provide as accessible gameplay as possible so that it is available to all skill levels and so that players have specific gameplay aspects to keep in mind when designing their own maps in the map editor.

There can be up to twenty players per map, and the game will ship with fourteen developer-designed maps ranging from the slightly undersized to the modestly corpulent.
Setting and plot

One of the possible player characters.

Far Cry 2 abandons the science fiction aspects of its predecessor in favor of a more realistic setting. The game will take place in a small, fictional, central-African nation that is in a state of civil war. The name of the country is Mwanzo. The protagonist of previous Far Cry games, Jack Carver, will not be featured in this game. When Ubisoft interviewed players about the original Far Cry in their research for this game, the interviewees didn’t find the character very memorable or likeable. However in the “no heroes” trailer for Farcry 2 you see a man stab and kick the player to the ground who’s face looks much like Jack’s face from the computer version. As a result, in the sequel the player will be able to choose from nine different characters to play, each with a unique look and back story. All of the playable characters will be different types of mercenaries. The playable characters the player does not choose to play will become non-player characters who are friends of the player’s character and who can be found around the in-game nation.

According to the game’s plot, the nation’s government has recently collapsed, leaving two major factions vying for control. At war are the United Front for Liberation and Labor (UFLL, led by Addi Mbantuwe, a former opposition leader) and the Alliance for Popular Resistance (APR, led by Oliver Tambossa, Chief of Staff for the former government). Both factions have claimed that they have the people’s interests at heart, but both have shown signs of ruthlessness, warmongering, greed, and a general disregard for the well-being of the people. Both sides have hired many foreign mercenaries to bolster their strength over the course of the conflict.

Read more at Wikipedia

Far Cry 2 on Amazon

$49.99 Pre Order Now

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