So, I have been playing the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King beta for for some time now. I took a break for a few weeks, after they moved around the arms tree for warriors, and decided to come back when I saw that they had removed the speed nerf from the highly anticipated fury warrior 51 point talent, Titan’s Grip.

For those who don’t know, Titan’s Grip would allow a warrior to duel wield two hand weapons. When originally announced, TG came with a speed penalty, but warriors had the option to spec additional points into it to reduce the speed debuff. Blizzard then changed their mind, moving TG down one level, making it a 51 point talent with no penalty — but the fun didn’t stop there. Read more…

If you did what I did and pre-ordered a copy of SOCOM: Confrontation at GameSpot, you were lucky enough to get a passcode for the Public Beta that launched last Friday, September 5th.

If you were even luckier, you were actually able to get online and play the game. Read more…

Wanna play Battlefield Heroes? Sure ya do. We tried it a few weeks ago, and we totally dug it. Well, don’t get your knickers in a bunch - DICE is planning to launch a closed beta soon enough, but this’ll be a “closed” beta in the Gmail or Facebook sense, meaning they want as many people to be in it as possible. Says Executive Producer Ben Cousins:

We’re going to have a very large closed beta almost to the point where every hardcore gamer in the world will probably be able to get a key if they want to - it would just be within a closed beta so that we can control the size of it to a degree.

Cousins says they aren’t expecting to have a huge splash release, but that they’ll have built up a large player base by the time the game leaves beta.

Source: GamesIndustry.biz

A member of the Official Sony PlayStation message board got tired of waiting for his invite to the Home Beta (originally scheduled to go out yesterday) and decided to take matters into his own hands by calling up the all knowing customer support team for some answers.

The first rep he spoke to (call recording here) stated that if he applied via email, per the company’s instructions, that he would be finding out soon, and then adding that “it should be arriving today.”

While this news may sound good for those who genuinely want to believe, he tried back again, this time getting a different rep (call recording here) who responded by saying that the company doesn’t tell them those things and that he should check the site for answers. Give that girl a Klondike bar.

Source: boardsus.playstation.com (via: feedonps3.com)

People, please! What is all the fighting about? There’s plenty of keys to go around! And by plenty of keys, I mean there’s only one. Okay, commence fighting.

This just in: In some epiphany of clarity (and insanity, surely) EA/FilePlanet have decided that they’d like more people in on the Red Alert 3 beta. If you’re a long-time fan of Command and Conquer or just someone who has a minute interest in real-time strategy games, go for it — you have nothing to lose. But hurry! It looks like it’s on a first come, first serve basis. All you have to do is click here and sign up for a free FilePlanet account and you’ll have your key (maybe). The only downside is that you have to wait in the atrocious download queue… and that supplies are limited and possibly already gone. Good luck!

EA opens the door to its Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning beta on September 7th, and those wanting in will have to pre-order a copy of the title.

Those already in the closed beta are good to go, but everyone else will need to hit up one of the select retailers, including Amazon.com, Best Buy, GameStop, Circuit City, and several others listed here.

Hit the jump for the full press release. Read more…

Calling all gamers: we have a situation on the internet, all units respond.

All Points Bulletin, the MMO from UK developers Realtime Worlds – the people behind Crackdown, that game that you bought for the Halo 3 beta – is accepting email addresses in preparation for beta testing. Read more…

Want into the Resistance 2 Beta program? Well, if you live in the US, you will be able to log into the PSN, buy episode three of Qore (Sony’s online monthly subscription based programming) for $2.99, watch some advertisements, and boom — you are cleared for Resistance 2 Beta action.

Of course, according to Insomniac’s Community Manager, James Stevenson, this is only one of the many ways you will be able to get into the beta. However, as he explains on myresistance.net, their will be a pre-order option that will allow the earliest form of access, but that has yet to be announced.

Stevenson’s clarification of the Beta announcement is available below. Read more…

Two things: Do you play World of Warcraft? Do you live in Europe? If you answered yes to both of those things, then I have some good news for you after the jump. Read more…

Pixel counters at the ready!  There’s been some debate over the final rendering resolution of Metal Gear Solid 4.  Screenshot pixel counting has been hazy, so the first sign of a possible resolution is found in the launch of the Metal Gear Online Beta.  The Beta has now begun in Europe (yes it’s up, go and play!) and the results are in. Read more…

The long awaited beta for Metal Gear Online is finally upon us, but for some unfortunate people the codes supplied to access the beta are invalid.
Read more…

Over the next couple of weeks things will function as usual on the PlayStation Store, but no new downloads will be made available as Sony is in the middle of updating the store’s interface. Read more…

Indie developer Silverlode Interactive accosted me outside the press room at GDC to show me their new MMORTS (Massively Multiplayer Online Real-Time Strategy) game, SAGA. The game looks interesting enough, and given the fact that it’s essentially free, it very well may be worth your time. I checked out the beta yesterday, and I have to say that I have no idea what I’m doing. There seemed to be plenty of people who did, however, so maybe I just missed something.

Either way, SAGA has just entered open beta for the public, so you can give the game a shot for yourself. Full press release after you click the link at the end of this sentence… wait for it… okay, now! Read more…

After reporting the revelation that Playstation 1 games could now be played on PSP’s via remote play, they can now be played on Apple’s iPhone, though the touch-screen controls could take some time getting used to. Read more…

Ok, the good ol’ boys (and girls) over at Infinity Ward have made the single player beta for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare available for everyone to download on the PC. It is approximately 1.37 GB, so if you want to download it, make sure you have a fast internet connection — or just set it, and forget it, like the Ronco Rotisserie.

After my download was complete, I fired up the self-extracting executable. In about 10 minutes or so, I was up and running. You enter the game, and it wants you to create a profile. No biggie, we’ve see this before. You click on “Play Demo” and then your mission starts.

You start off as a Marine, and while the mission is loading, you get an aerial overview of the terrain ahead. This is a much better use of the loading time than the note you read while waiting for COD2 to load, plus it’s pretty fun to watch. Read more…

Neon soldiers have no place on the battlefield…

After playing the Call of Duty 4 Beta until our fingers bled, we decided to bounce a few questions off of Infinity Ward’s Associate Producer Pete Blumel.

One topic that was mentioned a lot during our time online was “spawn protection”, specifically whether or not it would be in the game. We asked Pete and he mentioned that “spawning is part of the beta test.” This is good news for those that constantly found themselves getting ambushed shortly after spawning into a map. Read more…