With the speed at which news comes out in the gaming industry we sometimes miss important or news worthy things. Some of these things we want to talk about in a way that was both easy for you guys and allows us to get all the facts together as some of these stories develop quickly.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War  Loot Crates

So to be fair this announcement happened on 8/4/17 and I’m a little late to talking about it but it’s something that I feel should be brought up and talked about.  Monolith Productions announced and detailed in some detail how their single player game Middle-earth: Shadow of war the sequel to their 2014 game Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor was going to contain a Market  and Loot Chests, War Chests, XP Boosts and Bundles. Now I had to go double check that there was not some sort of multiplayer potion of the game added for the sequel and there was not.

Loot Crate items

This is still for all intents and proposes a single player game. So there is two type of currency Mirian and Gold. The Mirian is the in game currency that you acquire by playing the game normally and the Gold is acquired by either getting a little bit through playing or by spending real money.  Now you may be thinking to yourself that since this is a single player game that these items you can get are only cosmetic, and I’m here to tell you that’s not true in the slightest.  Here is a rundown of the things you can get in these  chests:

• Loot Chests contain Gear (weapons and armor) of varying rarity. Equipping and upgrading these weapons and armor enhance Talion’s character abilities. Loot Chests can also contain XP Boosts that help level up Talion faster.
• War Chests provide Orc Followers of varying rarity to help forge a strong army. They can also contain Training Orders to level up and customize Orc Followers.

So these chests have straight up advantages to the player and they aren’t even trying to hide it. To read the full announcement head on over to their community page.

Wiggin’s thoughts on the subject: So I only recently got around to playing the original game Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and while it wasn’t really my cup of tea I can see the appeal of the game and understand why it was so well received. I am flabbergasted at the sequel of a single player game containing Loot Crates. I know that development of games is not a cheap endeavor these days but this feels so gross and insulting to a potential customer that any ideas of why this was added to the game quickly turn into the publisher being greedy and wanting to milk every single penny out of a potentially great franchise.  I can only hope that with enough outcry that the people responsible for running a single player game with loot crates sees the errors of their ways and quickly does away with them before the franchise is forever thrown into the pit never to be seen again.

Rise of Nations coming to the Windows Store and Steam with cross-play

So it seems that an old Microsoft game from 2003 is coming to the Windows Store and Steam and will support cross play between Steam and the Windows Store.

Windows Central reported on August 18th 2017 that ”  A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that they worked with Steam itself to enable cross-play between both networks, indicating the end of a huge barrier to the Windows 10 Store’s viability as a PC distribution method: “The “Rise of Nations” team worked with teams from Steam and Xbox Live to ensure cross-play capabilities will be available for fans.”” Indicating that other games that did not support cross play was the result of server incompatibility issues that have now been rectified.

Wiggin’s thoughts on the subject: Now this to me seems really strange. The reason for that is that there have been  a handful of games that have come out that have severely suffered on the Windows Store because the player base was so small. In a couple of cases if there was cross play support from the start those games would have flourished on the Windows Store.  I can only hope that this “fix” is a fix for all games that are released on the Windows Store and Steam and that we no longer have to wonder if I can play with my friends who choose to buy things from the Windows Store.