Stronghold Kingdoms

This is another free MMO that has been keeping us busy lately. If you have played any of the games from Zynga then this style will be very familiar to you. You need to build buildings but each building takes time to build. The buildings will then build even while your offline. Warning: Very Adictive

If you want to team up with us, we are on World 4 in the 'Norfolk' region. 

World Of Tanks

If you haven't had a chance to check out World Of Tanks, I would highly recommend you do so. It's a free MMO where you fight other people in tanks to get money to buy better tanks. Such a simple idea and yet so fun! There is a few of us playing it now. 

Website Tutorial: GamersArmory.net

Is 'Free' a dirty word?

More and more these days, developers are embracing the 'Free to play' business model and it seems that this trend is only set to grow. Now this isn't exactly breaking news but I bring it up now because I believe we are somewhat on the tip of the wave as far as the 'free' ride goes. An example of what I mean is League of Legends, they have been pumping out a steady stream of champions to keep the money flowing in but have produced very little (one extra map at the moment) in the way of extra content and they are not the only ones using microtransactions to produce an income. There is at least half a dozen MMORPG's that are in the same boat. 

My concern is that with more and more free to play games every day are we about to see a flood of spam, normally reserved for the retail sector, in our beloved games? I fear that we are already past the point of no return and very soon game developers will be in a position where it's more profitable to pump out monetised upgrades in games then it will be to make a really good game in the first place. We have to look no further than Battlefield 3 to see this in action and very soon Call of Duty will have a subscription service available. 

There is many 'arcade' style websites that have free flash games, with ads plastered all over them as well. 

The list goes on and on. So, how long will this trend continue and where is it leading?

I believe that blizzard has already given us a glimpse of what is to come. Instead of taking the time and effort to continue pumping out add ons and then charge people for it they are simply going to let the people do all the work for them, in sense. Diablo 3 is set to have a 'real money' action house, where player can use money to purchase in game items from other players. Basically they are going to make an in game "eBay" and i'm sure there is already a number of other developers drooling over the idea right now. 

So is it all doom and gloom? Probably not, but don't expect these so called 'free' games to actually be free any time soon!

Website Update

Hey all,

I have spent some time upgrading the website. At the moment there is still a number of features missing and I'm sure there may be some issues that I haven't found yet. It was important to upgrade to keep the back end current. This upgrade will help me keep this site running more smoothly because all the built in components can now be kept up to date with the click of a button. Before this I had to manually install every update for every component. 

The Community section seems to be working as expected. I haven't migrated all the old data sorry! But as far as I know nothing massively important was left behind. (I think)

The Shop is not working as it should. This is because we are using a shopping cart so new there isn't a good way to import products yet. So I'll let you all know when it's up and running again.

The old site - you can still access the old site by going to www.gamersarmory.net/v2 I will leave this running for a while just in case anyone wants any of the old information before it gets turned off. 

AX3