Wretched Hag
Equivalent of the Queen of Pain in DotA

Succubus
Equivalent of the Bane Elemental in DotA

For those interested, the full changeset is as follows:

Version 0.1.39
————–

General:
- Added PSR and clan information to the in-game player stats screen
- Changed requirements for Remake vote to pass
* It now requires the total number of players minus 2 to vote yes. If less than 4 people are voting, it requires
* If more than 4 people are voting, (total players – 2) votes are required to pass. If more than 2 people are voting, (total players – 1) votes required. Otherwise, 100% required to pass.
- Restricted game data not relevant to a players’ team
* This will prevent map hacks from working in HoN
- Fixed several effects showing up through the fog of war
- Updated Portuguese translation

New heroes:
- Wretched Hag, based on DOTA’s Akasha, the Queen of Pain
- Succubus, based on DOTA’s Bane Elemental

General Gameplay:
- Added team-based skills, Demonic Fortification for Hellbourne and Fortification of Sol for Legion
* These skills are accessed by clicking on any team structure then clicking on the corresponding button in the info pane in the lower right of the screen
* These skills share a global cool down time. Anyone on the team may activate them, but then they go into cool down for everyone
* When used, these skills apply +9999 armor to all allied structures

Arachna:
- Slightly increased visual size of the Spiderling
- Fixed a bug causing Spider Sting to not hit stealth units if they go stealth before the projectile hits them

Behemoth:
- Fixed some issues with fissure not impacting properly on higher level terrain or impacting units standing near the behemoth

Magmus:
- Added more detailed cast effects to Eruption and modified the animation. It should now be clearer when Magmus starts this skill

Pebbles:
- Reworked Chuck, it should now deal its damage consistently
- Units affected by Chuck will now take double the damage from Stalagmites
- Chuck will no longer be greyed out when no valid units are nearby to throw
- Reworked Stalagmites to properly delay based on distance
- Stalagmites now has a 600 base cast range, to match its DOTA counter-part
* Enlarge still increases the range of this skill by 50/100/150, making the maximum range now 750, from 700

Pestilence:
- Fixed a bug causing Swarm to not hit stealth units if they go stealth before the projectile hits them

Swiftblade:
- Swift Slashes will no longer hit siege units or gadgets

Bug fixes:
- Fixed a missing icon for Kongor’s Cheese

The site isn’t allowing open registration at the moment, but you can get on a waiting list…but you can get around some aspects of the waiting list as stated by the JamLegend FAQs:

How It Works

JamLegend is a Flash game with the number keys 1-5 (and function keys F1-F5) bound to their corresponding positions on the fret board. Like Guitar Hero, dots approach the bottom in time with the music and you must hold the appropriate number(s) in and strum. How? With the Enter key, of course!

You have two primary modes of play: Jam Style and Chill Style…shown here:

Playing the game can be odd depending on your keyboard. If you have a beefy enough keyboard where the function keys are evenly spaced (unlike one of my keyboards) you shouldn’t have much trouble with Jam Style.

My favorite method for play, however, has been using my Wii Guitar on my Mac thanks to DarwiinRemote. :D

The Music

The site’s slogan is “The free way to play the songs you love” is a little misleading. JamLegend is a new site with a small user base at the moment and little buy-in from big name stars. So…the appropriate slogan for now is “The free way to play the songs you will soon love because this site is freaking awesome”.

Are the songs bad? Definitely no. I hadn’t heard of any of the bands prior to playing around with JamLegend. Am I bummed that the songs aren’t from my favorite bands? No…I actually like a number of the artists. Blue Judy being one of my favorites – an Indie Rock Band from LA – and Double Stamp – another Indie Rock Band from Claremont, CA.

JamLegend does a nifty job displaying the songs that are currently popular (although this feature will become better as the user base grows), as well as bubbling new songs in front of your face. In addition to listing top songs, you can search and browse the site for specific genres, artists, and songs. Good times!

The Social Side

Similar to the Guitar Hero stat site that came with Guitar Hero III, JamLegend lists your bests, averages, global rankings, etc. You can add friends, challenge them to duels, or have massive guitar showdowns with large numbers of players. As an additional cool thing, you can earn groupies by completing Achievements. Groupies serve no real purpose at this time save for bragging rights but in the future that may change!

Where Its Heading

In its current state, JamLegend is a pretty ballsy free web application. There are some things coming down the pipe, however, that will make it that much cooler.

Music: If adoption of this game picks up, we could very easily see some larger named bands put their music out for play. Heck, the All American Rejects song Gives You Hell is pending track creation. Awesome.

More Instruments: JamLegend claims they are working on additional playable instruments! They are planning on adding keyboard, drums, bass, and (due to popular request)… cowbell.

Thoughts

This game will very easily become my mobile Guitar Hero fix (and soon to be Rock Band fix once the new instruments are implemented). The JamLegend site is gorgeous. The game is very well implemented. The music is good. I <3 it.

Blizzard has had a splash screen that changed daily for the past 5 days, today was its final day and I was extremely surprised to see that it revealed what has long been rumored…Diablo 3! This is exciting news!

The graphical announcement looks freaking awesome and I look forward to the link on the announcement to actually go to the Diablo site rather than a broken page! w000000t!

Note: YouTube doesn’t do the videos much justice as the quality is lacking. To see the videos in all their glory, check the StarCraft II website

I became as giddy as a school girl when I found out that Blizzard had announced the much rumored and anticipated StarCraft II! As of now, while the game is still shrouded in Blizzard mystery (unannounced launch date, lack of details on planned game features, etc), the game is far along enough to provide some seriously stunning gameplay videos.

A few things are known about the game thus far: The 3 races that we know and love will be returning (Protoss, Zerg, and Terran). The way Blizzard words the FAQs leaves them open for adding a new playable race, however…that’d be nifty. What it would be is anybodies’ guess. Secondly, we know that Blizzard is stepping it up a notch with collision detection and how units interact with each other. What we see in the gameplay videos made me drool like an excited bull mastiff. Before I get to those, here’s the game announcement on the official site:

Gameplay Video 1 of 4

Gameplay Video 2 of 4

Gameplay Video 3 of 4

Gameplay Video 4 of 4

EatPoopUCat is the name of the game. Funny name? Yeah, well this game goes by many. You may know this game as: Fax Machine; The Paper Game; Pictophone; The Picture Sentence Game; The Sentence Game; Paper Telephone; Sentence Picture; Telephone Pictionary; Descriptionary; Writesy Drawsy; Cricket Cricket I’m On Fire; or Moneyduck.

The game works like so: Someone comes up with a sentence or phrase. That phrase goes to another person who draws a picture of the phrase. That picture goes to the next person who writes a phrase to the picture (without seeing the first phrase). Rinse and repeat. The web-based game works the same, you type a phrase in a box and hit submit, or you draw right on the site or upload a picture from your compy. Easy as that! Here’s an example result of a game I participated in:

Phrase 1:For your children, go straight to the wall and jump it like a gazelle

Phrase 2: It was a bright sunny day and kids were playing in the frontyard

Phrase 3: Outside the bar, Phil was roughed up by some plug-uglies who beaned him in the head with a volleyball.

Phrase 4: If the beer and power cords don’t get you, the low flying soccer balls surely will.

Final Phrase:He has 3 choises: Drink 2 Beers, throw Frisbee-pizzas or be a human bridge for the electricity.

It’s pretty cool how the phrases/pictures change as it gets passed from person to person. In addition to the ability to do the above, each ‘story’ can be commented on and rated. Plus, for pictures or interpretations you can give “kudos” to the author/artist. Oh! And as you participate in different threads, you can keep tabs on the statuses of those strips that you have done.

Lastly, for those of you that are Web 2.0 geeks, the site is Ajaxified with a combination of Google Web Toolkit, Amazon S3, and Amazon EC2, along with an in browser drawing utility that uses the Canvas element. Pretty snazzy. I’ve already wasted a great deal of time in the evenings on this site and many more to come!

==[Heroes]==

• Centaur Warchief -> Changed Return from 60/30 melee/range to 50/50
• Obsidian Destroyer -> Improved cast animation a little
• Tormented Soul -> Pulse Nova no longer triggers Essence Aura
• Shadow Fiend -> Reduced Shadowraze AOE
• Axe -> Lowered manacost and cooldown on Battle Hunger
• Spectre -> Reduced area that is used to check if a hero is alone with Desolate
• Sven -> Improved Toughness Aura
• Phantom Assassin -> Improved Blink Strike range per level
• Butcher -> Hook now properly interrupts channeling
• Nerubian Weaver -> Watchers no longer have spell immunity
• Geomancer -> Geomancer clones now gain 40% of any attribute bonuses the primary has
• Crystal Maiden -> Fixed Brilliance Aura to properly stack with Ring of Basilius
• Priestess of the Moon -> Slightly reduced collision area on Elune’s Arrow
• Magnataur -> Cooldown on Reverse Polarity no longer increases per level
• Nerubian Assassin -> Slightly improved Mana Burn cast range at higher levels
• Troll Warlord -> Level 4 Berserker Rage gives a little more movement speed
• Bristleback -> Lowered movement speed by 5 and put a cap on how much Quill Spray can stack up to late game
• Venomancer -> Plague Wards now give less gold and cost slightly less mana
• SyllaBear -> When you summon Spirit Bear and it is already summoned, it no longer wastes the cooldown doing nothing, it errors properly
• Crystal Maiden -> Improved Brilliance Aura a bit
• Phantom Lancer -> Changed Spirit Lance projectile model
• Lord of Olympia -> Hero icon changed
• Ursa Warrior -> Enrage icon changed
• Vengeful Spirit -> Added a visual effect to Netherswap
• Lord of Olympia -> Added a new visual effect for Static Field
• Juggernaut -> Added a new visual effect to Omnislash
• Axe -> Added a new visual effect for when Culling Blade’s deathblow activates (86864)
• Bane Elemental -> Added a visual effect to Brain Sap
• Spirit Bear -> Entangle doesn’t work on roshan anymore
• Keeper of the Light -> Liberated Souls and Ignis Fatuus will now show attack projectile
• Dragon Knight -> Updated Elder Form tooltip to mention that it gives movement speed boost
• Added new icons for Berserker Call, Conversion, Glaives of Wisdom, Detonate, Light Strike Array, Synergy (thx snork, Black_tan, K_Prime, Mihai, L()RK@N_15, Amadi and switch)
• Axe -> Improved hero animation when casting Culling Blade

==[Items]==

• Added new item -> Hood of Defiance
• Added new item -> Assault Cuirass
• Added new item -> Bloodstone (can be disassembled, heal inspired by topic (116735)
• Satanic -> Active ability changed
• Helm of Iron Will -> Increased hp regen to +3 (from +2)
• Divine Rapier -> Now it can be manually dropped
• Vladmir’s Offering -> Bonus damage is an aura now(only on melee heroes, not creeps)
• Battle Fury -> Cleave AOE from 200 to 225
• Mekansm -> Mekansm heal stack restriction can no longer be overridden by buckler
• Ring of Basilius -> Ring of Basilius can be clicked to switch it back and forth between a version that has armor affecting creeps and one that doesn’t
• Eul’s Scepter of Divinity -> Nerfed cooldown on Cyclone
• Butterfly -> Butterfly from 25/25/25/25 to 30/30/30/30 and recipe from 1400 to 1800
• Necronomicon -> Lowered mana burn a bit
• Bottle -> When bottle with rune expires due to time, it uses the rune instead of wasting it (122057)
• Ancient Tango of Essifation -> Removed cooldown when buying tangos
• Sentry and Observer wards -> Changed a bit
• Reduced cooldown on buying all other items
• Mjollnir -> Changed icon to the one suggested on the forums (102574)
• Gem & Sentry Wards -> Improved tooltips for new players (118074)
• Ancient Tango of Essifation -> Added buff icon
• Necronomicon -> Improved tooltip on level 3 Necronomicon
• Updated Buriza and Crystalis tooltips to list critical chance
• Removed Lumber from recipes, now it does not list it as a requirement and gives you a proper error

==[Game Modes & Commmands]==

• Adjusted starting gold in -rd to give you the same amount you’d have when the creeps come out in regular pick game (right now it is a little less than normal)
• Enabled POTM/Warlock/Alchemist in -lm and Warlock in -rd
• Added -om(onlymid) due to popular demand to disable creepspawn and tower vulnerability everywhere but middle
• Added -powerup and -neutrals to single player commands
• Added -nd (no death timer) and -lives xx (maximum lives) as optional commands after -dm is activated
• Added a -fleshstr command for Pudge to view how much str you gained from the ability
• Added -deathon/off (-don/off) that toggles on and off a new death timer to show you your respawn without needing to open the scoreboard
• -cson now places the k/d in the multiboard title
• -showdeny is enabled by default for observers
• Siege units are now properly added to your -cs
• Weather commands are now user specific, so you can have rain while your ally has snow and the others have nothing
• Added an extra blank line before -ma output, to help readability when used near other commands

==[Map & Misc Changes/Fixes]==

• Changed the way Aegis and Roshan work. Aegis is now a Roshan drop (a 1-charge ankh basically). You cannot create it manually. Roshan starts out weaker without melee return. He respawns stronger and bigger every 10 minutes
• Added a new secret shop containing limited items (only stout and helm of iron will for now) to the top left and bottom right areas
• Changed Range creep quantity upgrade from 60min to 45min. Siege follows this as well. Melee creeps quantity upgrade frequency changed to a few minutes sooner than usual
• Implemented a sound for when creeps spawn for the first time (75198)
• Chicken/Crow can no longer sell items (has been abused in long games to sell for money to buyback. The sellback price on recipes is only intended to be that high to help against misclicks)
• Removed internal usage of lumber resource
• Notification is sent when an observer leaves the game
• Added a game timer in the top interface
• Fog of War is removed when a team wins (111691)
• Illusion from runes lasts a little longer now (40->60)
• Removed internal usage of food resource
• Added cooldown to neutral creep ability tooltips
• When a player leaves, the leaver hero name is written after the player’s name
• Fixed Infernal duration typo on Rain of Chaos
• Fixed a typo in the Overgrowth damage
• Fixed First Blood being displayed in white if sp is on and observers are present
• Fixed Observer Ward buff saying Sentry Ward (123887)
• Fixed a bug in -sp that causes observer board to be removed
• Fixed a typo on the number of targets on level 3 Forked Lightning
• Fixed bugs with Aegis on Meepo
• Fixed Echo Slam damage doing less than advertised (7 less)
• Fixed a typo in level 3 Spirit Bear HP
• Changed all Brilliance Aura values from percentages to numbers since it isn’t really a percentage (it always worked like this, just the tooltips were misleading)
• Fixed Treant and Druid sound set (79352)
• Fixed a bug with Shadowraze killing wards
• Fixed some minor control issues with Timewalk

Aso Brain Games is a site built by a couple of competent developers from the Netherlands. They’ve coded an excellent Java version of Catan that allows you to play solo or multiplayer; basic ‘Catan’ or ‘Cities and Knights of Catan’. To avoid copyright violation, the game has been renamed to Xplorers.

If you’re on the hunt for an online Catan game…
Aso Brain Games is all you need :)

Also, if you’re a fan of Carcasonne, they’ve got that game as well…dubbed “Toulouse.”

Along with the main game, you can buy a number of expansions that will really changed the game! The Americanized expansions are: Seafarers of Catan, Cities and Knights of Catan, 5-6 Players Basic, 5-6 Players Seafarers, 5-6 Players Cities and Knights. One thing that sucks in that regard is the fact that if you buy the 5-6 Player Basic expansion and the Cities and Knights Expansion…well, to play 5-6 player Cities and Knights, you need to buy another box…5-6 Player Cities and Knights. It gets a little expensive, but well worth it!

If you have the chance to try this game out…do so. Don’t be daunted by the rules as they seem complex at first, but they really are simplistic. You’ll thank me later.