This Week in Gaming - November 14-21st

Each Monday I plan to cover the past week's latest news surrounding the world of gaming, including major tournament results, headline gaming news & headlines and notable games releases and updates. (I'm aware that there was no TWiG last week as I was bogged down trying to finalise BFB)

Gaming News

Massively, the developers behind the incredibly popular MOBA title League of Legends, announced this week that they had surpassed 11 million active players - more than World of Warcraft's 10.3 million. The free-to-play business model has been a huge success and has enticed over 30 million registered players. All of the major information can be found in this infographic. One number in particular stands out is that at peak times there are over 1.3 million concurrent players, eclipsing Skyrim by over 400%!

EA is back in the news for all the wrong reasons, again, as they are being taken to court over broken promises related to Battlefield 3. EA had promised PS3 owners a free copy of Battlefield 1943 when they ordered Battlefield 3 and did not deliver. When confused customers confronted EA via twitter, EA responded by saying "In lieu of 1943 being available on disk for PS3 customers, EA has made all BF3 expansions available early to PS3 customers." Reasonable, perhaps, had they not already announced that same news back in September, meaning that it was in lieu of nothing and EA was merely trying to take the heat off of their back. While it might seem an insignificant issue to moan about, it's just another piece of bad press for Electronic Arts - and it won't end there. The publisher is being taken to court by 'Edelson McGuire', who this week filed a class action suit against EA on behalf of PS3 owners. The crux allegation being that EA "misled and profited from thousands of their customers by making a promise that they could not, and never intended, to keep".

eSports

The final instalment of the MLG Pro Circuit finished yesterday as MLG Providence wowed audiences worldwide with some of the StarCraft II and League of Legends gaming seen in 2011. In the Starcraft II tournament, Leenock went on an outstanding run to stun the community and take home 1st place and $50,000. Full SC2 results can be seen here in the newspost by Noorgrin. In the League of Legends competition, Team SoloMid came from the Loser Bracket to over-turn Epik Gaming in the Grand Final. TSM won 3 straight games to win the and earn themselves $15,000.


Notable Releases

Released a week last Friday, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim took PC gamers by storm by offering one the finest single player experiences to be found in years. The RPG has smashed records on it's way to number 2 in the years' list of best sellers. Players take to the vast open-world of Skyrim and are free to roam, doing virtually as they please - take down the Dragon's and save the world, rob an old woman of her cabbages, or cast Fury on a Mother and watch her beat her husband half to death? The world is your oyster and freedom is the name of the game. As I wrote in my column earlier this week, Skyrim is not without it's problems but as hentai so rightly pointed out, they really are insignificant in the grand scheme of things and Skyrim will remain one of the best single player experiences for anyone for years to come. Skyrim boasts a whopping 95/100 on MetaCritic.

The other major release in the past fortnight was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Activision's latest instalment in the Call of Duty series destroyed all previous records and was the highest grossing entertainment launch ever. The game has been heavily criticised for it's number of regressions and stagnation in the FPS genre but that won't bother Activision and chances are, if you liked the previous titles, you'll like this one just fine too. MW3 is currently scoring 80/100 on MetaCritic but it's worth noting that the User Review box shows a score of 2.0. If you're reading this article then there is a good chance that you already know everything about the Call of Duty series, so there really is very little I can say.

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