Blue Orb has announced that SwitchBlade, an application that lets PC gamers use a console controller to play, will be getting a lot of new features with the advent of SwitchBlade PRO. Foremost is the addition of support for the Sony PlayStation 3's SIXAXIS controller. Details in the full article.

If you've been playing around with JoyToKey for your secret "controller fix" on PC games that otherwise didn't have such support, you might want to try Blue Orb's Switchblade. The free software is loads heavier than the little joystick to keyboard utility but is more inclined for use with the Xbox 360 controller. Plus, it just got more download mirrors.

If you open your day planner and adventure log and see all the events you've mapped out for the entire year, you'd notice that the World of Warcraft's monthly Darkmoone Faire carnival is now on it's way to the forests of Elwynn.

Because of the fact that you've been chasing that Faire around for a chance to finally grab that purple necklace, you'd want to make sure that this time around, come the first Monday of April, you'll have this planned out right.

But before you hop right on over to Daryl Lau's World of Warcraft guide blog, we'd like to remind you that attempting to earn the Orb or Amulet of the Darkmoon will take a lot of time. It will take a lot of time, that in fact, you could consider it a non-Raider's form of grabbing Epic gear, without having to farm so much consumables. So if you're part of a Raid-inclined guild, you might want to tell them you're trying something new.

It's not really nice not to show up when the guild's expecting you at the Raid instance, come late evening, and you're regions away back into Azeroth. And no, cheesy Guild quit messages aren't your easy ticket out either. Make sure that you are at least level 60 for this quest, and try to be there as the carnival is being set up (first Friday of the month).

Check out Daryl Lau's detailed (and farmer's) guide to getting your own purple "blingage" via the "Read" link below.

Artix Entertainment has just dropped us a line announcing that the quest for the Earth Orb is now under way in AdventureQuest. This quest will take players deep below Greenguard Forest to a cave system carved by monumental burrow worms for the sole purpose of hiding the orb.

New monsters, items, and a new guest will also make their appearance during the quest to save the world of Lore. Artix also announced that Suld mounted armor will be coming to shops this week. There will be a level 40 version available for everyone and a special level 60 version for Guardians. New weapons are also out in Yulgar's Inn shop, so check those out too.

If you haven't encountered it yet, AdventureQuest is a Flash-animated role-playing game playable on most browsers. It's free to play for either minutes or hours a day, and players can jump right into an action-packed fantasy world of myth and magic filled with hundreds of monsters, weapons, armor and items.

Patch 2.0.10 finally goes live. It came together with the World of Warcraft's scheduled maintenance and is now available for download (if you didn't get the forced update.)

Anyway, we've come to anticipate continuation of the great wailing and gnashing of teeth before the patch. It looks like the Druids and the Mages are the hardest hit, or at least the noisiest. Druids got a hotfix earlier today though that might alleviate the pain a bit.

Here's the list of the changes:

General

• Some logic was fixed in the "Natural Remedies" quest so that Pathaleon the Calculator's Image will always spawn during the ritual.
• Goliathon and his shardlings can no longer be pulled to nearby areas that have guards.
• More fixes implemented in the "It's a Fel Reaver, But With Heart" quest to keep the Scrapped Fel Reaver from breaking.
• The Orb of the Blackwhelp and Hallowed Wands can no longer be used in combat, and the transformation will be canceled if the player receives damage.
• The Scrap Reaver in Netherstorm repairs reduced from 10,000 health to 8,500 health over 10 seconds.
• Battle of the Crimson Watch
• Illidari Mind Breaker has been weakened.
• Illidari Highlords can now be CC'ed but not Charmed.

For the full list of changes, click on Full Article.

Download: World of Warcraft patch 2.0.10

Do we mean battlegrounds with no enemies? Not in that sense, no. The idea originating from Paladinsucks (quite a catchy name isn't it?) actually suggests that the two sides in World of Warcraft's Battlegrounds could no longer be faction-specific.

He reasons out that because both factions have class equivalents in the other side, members of the Horde and Alliance could join up with each other in either side of the battle. Now before your faction loyalists start serving his head on a silver platter, let's get his side out here first.

The main reasons he suggested the dropping of faction discriminate joining are:

• Because more often than not, WoW players are "goody-goodies," joining the side of the Alliance rather than balancing out the battle by going "for the Horde!"
• Queue times for entering an active battleground session would shorten considerably.
• After-Battleground sessions wouldn't be global chat ranting over how band the battleground map was laid out, or some other little excuse for just being plain beaten.

Now he's ideas are very general. A character of a faction can join any side to balance the game, but upon entering the character would be "deceptively adapted" to look like the side it joined. Humans become Undead or Dwarves turn into Trolls (wait, from short-stocky to tall and skinny?) - you know, like the power of the Orb of Deception.

While there's a good purpose for it, the idea itself is already gaining a lot of heat. Aside from the loyalists, some people aren't exactly sure if they want to be instantly transformed into something other than what they already look like.

But there have been a few people who agree to the idea, albeit with certain ideas of their own. To those people, let's try not to get carried away: Blizzard takes a long time to fix bugs and are still at work on some Arena material. Battleground issues will probably be attended to some other time.

Click on the "Read" link below view his and other people's ideas for WoW Battlegrounds.

For those of you who've been keeping an eye on the weekend updates that Dungeons and Dragons Online's been churning out, you might notice that there's a 12-day gap between this update and the one before it. Well, Raven over at DDO site noticed too, and while there's no explanation for this lag yet, they're apologizing for the unscheduled break. Now, on the to updates.

The Bestiary's been updated again among other things, and we'll be looking at new material for nasties like the Monarch Scorpion, Gargoyle,  and Ochre Jelly. Also included are updates to items like the Lodestone, Moonstone, and Stellar Orb, as well as updates on quests like Garl's Tomb.  For further details on the other updates, like spells, click on the read link below.

For those of still getting your bearings in Guild Wars, take note that it's a PvP-focused MMORPG, hence a lot of the action takes place not against some evil, malevolent, elder god taking over the game's world, but rather against your fellow gamers, though they're probably no less evil and malevolent than the aforementioned elder-god.

With that detail drop-kicked out of the way, the most prevalent character build in-game are geared for PvP combat. In line with this, the game offers pre-fab character classes, with pre-set attributes, pre-set primary profession skills, and open slots for secondary profession skills. And of course, you'll have to find/craft your own weapons and armor - didn't think the devs would make this that easy, did you?

After you've decided on a character to play, up ahead is the list playable character classes, along with their six primary profession skills, a basic strategy guide per character, and a recommendation for your secondary skills once you unlock them. Remember your Sun Tzu: "Know thy enemy, know thyself."

The full article awaits after the jump!

Though we're unable to cover it, Ashen Empires Halloween events turned out to be a wonderful success like the others. Last Sunday in fact, an all-time high online user count was set on its Heroes server. That indeed was a good day for the people of fantasy world Dransik. In case however you're thinking that is all for this MMO, we're telling you, you are gravely mistaken.

Developer Iron Will Games just gave out exciting news for the game's sequel, The Sands of Creation. Accordingly, the upcoming expansion will allow players to advance up to level 110. Character specialization skills will begin to be available at level 106. This latest addition gives players more opportunity to customize their characters. However, characters past level 105 will no longer receive orb increases.

Level 106
A) Health of the Ogre (Increases Max Base Hit Points)
B) Stamina of the Bull (Increases Max Base Stamina Pool)
C) Capacity of a Packmule (Increases Max Base Carrying Capacity)
Level 107
A) Speed of the Viper (Increases Base Attack Speed)
B) Wizard's Haste (Reduces Spell Cast Time)
C) Crafter's Precision (Lowers Crafting Failure Rate)
Level 108
A) Giant's Hammer (Increases Melee/Ranged Damage)
B) Mana of the Arch Wizard (Spell Stamina Cost Reduced)
C) Resistance of the Diseased Snake (Increases Resistance to Disease and Poison)
Level 109
A) Magic Shield (Increased Resistance to Spells)
B) ManaStorm (Increases Spell Damage)
C) Arch Crafter's Precision (Lowers Crafting Failure Rate, stacks with level 107C)
Level 110
A) Health of the Dragon (Increases Max Base Hit Points, stacks with level 106A)
B) Criminal's Folly (Increases Alignment Gain Recovery)
C) BackPack of the Packmule (Increases Backpack Size to 32 Slots)

Whoever says Final Fantasy XI is boring will get what he deserves. With the upcoming version update to the Treasures of Aht Urhgan, there will be a lot of new and exciting features to look forward, to such as notorious monsters and trying battlefields.

Why notorious, you ask? Let's just say that with the update, a high notorious monster (HNM) is going to be added to the beastman strongholds, and it's not something you'll easily beat.

A new feature implemented in the game is the accumulative magic resistance effect. This will be implemented on monsters with strength readings of "impossible to gauge." This feature will certainly affect the monsters and other players in the game, but the developers made sure that the effect (on black mages, magic users and on monsters) will not be major.

A notorious monster when repeatedly hit with several spells (black magic, white magic, magical blue magic, ninjutsu, to name a few) will accumulatively build magic resistance. (Bahamut in "The Wyrmking Descends" quest and Diabolos in the "Waking Dreams" quest had both been given stronger accumulative magic resistance compared to other monsters.)

Several new battlefields have also been scheduled for certain Treasures of Aht Urhgan areas which you'll be able to attempt using your Imperial Standing credits. Players will be able to make an attempt once or twice a week, or as often as they want to depending on their credits.

Game developers Square Enix are making sure that these new battlefields will be more accessible to players compared to other events like the orb battles.

The exact date of this scheduled update has not yet been disclosed, but expect us to deliver the latest news on Final Fantasy: Treasures of Aht Urhgan.