After explaining the fishing feature for the upcoming The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar expansion, Book 13: Doom of the Last-King, we bring you the latest developer diary which takes on the Orc Defiler. It also includes some stuff about the new Monster Play. More details after the jump.

After getting a glimpse of Tabula Rasa's weapons and equipment, it's high time to meet the creatures who'll most likely be the unwilling victims of your target practice. We've heard about them in the past, but seeing what they actually look like would help us strategize when we enter the world of Tabula Rasa.

They're quite a mean bunch, but you'd have to watch out for Light Benders who happen to be the Bane's stealth units. Be careful when you go deep in the forests of Foreas as this is where the tree-dwelling carnivourous predator called The Lurker lives. The Warnet and the Xanx may look a tad like your favorite seafood, but that doesn't mean they're not lethal. Warnet are flying creatures, while Xanx are agressive parasitical arachnid who's has nothing else in mind but to defend their nests.

Rounding up the creatures list are the following:

• Howler - as the name suggests, these creatures use energy to propel their voice, which empowers the Bane forces, but at the same time causing terror to enemy forces.
• Flare Gasher  - cracks its prey's hardened shells using extremely high-pitched sonic attack.
• Maw - a worm that disguises as a large bush/flower when it hunts its prey
• Amoeboid - vomits a ball of slime that jams weapons used by its enemies
• Penal Robots of Ariek - ordered to maintain discipline in the penal colonies on Ariekie; self-repairing
• Brann - came from a once-thriving society destroyed by the Bane.

   

 
More creatures await after the jump!

Over at Gamasutra, the winners of the Quantum Leap Awards for role-playing games have finally been announced. They have gone on to ask game industry professionals to cast their votes as to which RPG, on any platform ever created, "has brought the genre forward in the biggest way". In that same sense, voters were posed with the question: "Which role playing game over the entire history of the genre do you think has made the biggest 'quantum leap', and why?"

Well, the votes have been cast, and the top five have been named. But since five is such a small number, one can't help but give out honorable mentions to other game titles which have helped the genre and the industry.

Want to find out who these honorable mentions are and which games are held in high esteem by RPG experts? Read on, and find out!

Read the full article after the Jump!

  

"Depths" quest series in House Deneith now gets an update, and for all Dungeons and Dragons Online fans, there's a whole lot of new stuff in store for you. The update includes a new list of bestiary, NPCs, Quests, and Zones.

An incomplete list of updated Bestiary includes Lesser Violet Slime, Skeleton, Lesser Gray Ooze, Argor Soulbane, Black Widow, Zombie,  Troglodyte, Gray Ooze, Hobgoblin Infiltrator, Wolf, Hobgoblin Slayer, Hobgoblin Witch Doctor, Troll and many more.  The update gives you more info about the Level, Type of monster, Classification, Habitat, Weak vs. (weapon), Feats and Spells effective against a particular monster, and its special abilities.

The updated NPCs includes Giggs Elorreathi, Scholes of Vedykar, Keane d'Deneith, and Neville Stormhammer. This gives you the Type, Zone, and Description of the Quest.

The updated Quests let you on new stuff for The Depths of Despair, The Depths of Darkness, The Depths of Discord and The Depths of Doom. Here, you get a chance to read more about the Rating, Start NPC, Starting Zone, Starting Level, Length, Temp Access to (the database), and Related Monsters. There's more about Objectives, Opt. Objectives, Factions Raised, Related Zones, Related Quests, Effective Feats, and Effective Spells as well. 

The updated Zones for all the updated Quests above give you hints about  the Level, Type (of gameplay/location), Bordering City Areas, Dungeons (in the particular Quest), Zone Information, Description, and the Map of the particular Quest.

  

The World of Warcraft v1.9.3 patch has gone live on all realms today. It's not that exciting of a patch, as I still can't make a Gnome Paladin like I could in EverQuest 2. The main thing that will affect you due to this patch is that you will need to scroll through and accept the EULA, yet again. But, some of the highlights include full compatibility for Mac computers, Slice and Dice never misses for rogues (!), increased difficulty to remain out of combat while fighting bosses in Molten Core, and spawn reduction in Zul'Gruub. Maintenance is scheduled to be completed at 11:00am PST.

Full patch notes after the jump.