9 year old Caine Monroy spent his summer building an elaborate cardboard arcade inside his dad’s used auto parts store, and invited the world to play.

The short film eventually went viral. The director of the film setup a website and college fund for Caine. The first time I looked the fund had raised $75,000 out of the $25,000 goal. They have since modified the goal to $250,000 which goes to the Goldhirsh Foundation, to help more kids like Caine. The meter now reads $200,000 out of $250,000. When you see the film you can’t help but want to donate a few bucks for this kid’s future. You can also now buy a staff T-shirt. Might have to nab me one of those.

The newest MMO we are playing is called Tera. It is an action MMO, similar to Vindictus, or Dragon Nest, and a tiny bit Global Agenda (though it’s fantasy not sci-fi).

Right now there is an early-start where people can play before the official launch if they pre-order. This also comes with friend codes, where your friends can try the game for free until launch.

Our codes aren’t being used, so anyone who reads this I encourage to nab one and give it a try, so far this game is a lot of fun. Most surprising for myself was how incredibly smooth the engine is for how detailed the graphics are. They must have spent a lot of time optimizing the game for performance, something a lot of companies don’t bother with these days.

So at the time of this post EDIT, you can play for free for the next 20 hours. It’s a fairly large download, so if you want to do this free trial, don’t hesitate.

RKCM6C5PKKHKWDN7ALF4WTTXX
AE45CCNKP6YCPKTMKTN77R5JG
FTH94ELCHTJME3KGWH599JPCK

There are 4 Duluthians on the Freeholds server if you decide to try it.

After three years of waiting the sequel is approaching. Now we can light our ember torches with the help of up to 8 friends – [citation needed] compared with Diablo III which only allows up to 4 [citation needed].

Looking at the screenshots and videos got my heart beating a little faster. Like an addict who knows he’s about to get a fix… I did not get that same feeling with D3. I’m honestly looking forward to this game more than I am D3, even more so for the Torchlight MMO which might take another few years.

If you pre-order you get a copy of the original Torchlight, and if you already have it you get a gift-able copy.
- Steam Preorder : http://store.steampowered.com/app/200710/
- Runic Games : http://www.torchlight2game.com/

This is pretty sweet.

If I’m ever in Europe…

http://www.pathofexile.com/publicweekend/

runforyourlives.com

This is a 5k obstacle course race.. with zombies!

Participants can sign up as either a runner or a zombie. If you choose zombie they do the makeup for you and you choose to be a sprinting or shambling(or crawling) zombie. The runners have flags around their waist that you grab to eliminate them from the race. Prizes and such are awarded. Medals, shirts, etc.

The race is going to be held in 11 different states and will be coming to my home state(MN) on July 2nd.

I’m hoping/planning to go be a zombie.

http://store.steampowered.com/mobile

If I’m correct I think it’d be best to have a game ready. Maybe this will motivate me to finally learn java…

- 8 bit MMO
- the entire game is 39 MB
- free to play
- on steam
- hardcore
- hack’n'slash
- co-op

You login and your first character is a wizard.
You play the wizard until you die and it R.I.P.

There is no “vendor” so there is no selling items.
You can trade or sell them to other players.
Drop them.
Or most often, they disappear with your corpse.
There is a very small vault that you can put good items in if you want to keep them for your (inevitable) future characters.

When you hit level 5 wizard (trivially easy) you unlock priest.
When you hit level 5 priest (trivially easy) you unlock archer.
You continue this until you have all 5 base classes unlocked ( Rogue / Archer / Wizard / Priest / Warrior )
The next classes require things like : Assassin = level 20 rogue + level 20 wizard.

Every class has a specialty skill that uses MP. For example the priest can heal all friendlies within a short distance. The rogue can stealth for 3 seconds and continue attacking for the duration. Etc etc.

Everyone on the server is in the same “party”. Everyone on your screen will get quest credit and loot rights to anything that dies in that area.
What this means for us is with enough people, we can run around doing the quests and level up very quickly since we are working as a team and not as lone wolfs.

The God spawns random bosses as “quests”. Kill the boss, complete the quest. Eventually the God, Oryx (yes that’s right), “runs out of enemies” to defend him. When this occurs all players on the map are summoned to his castle for a battle royale. Ideally with the players winning. When I got to this stage a stray projectile one-shot me due to my level and health.

And that essentially is the whole game.

I can’t say it would be fun long term, but I definitely think it would make for an enjoyable Moodle Monday or two, if only for the challenge of seeing how far we can get using a little strategy.