Today, World of Warcraft; tomorrow, Guild Wars, Hellgate: London and Half-Life 2. That's what Blue Orb has in mind for the SwitchBlade software solution, which allows gamers to play WoW using an Xbox 360 controller. Blue Orb has also tweaked their SwitchBlade software with regards to WoW, so if you're interested in knowing what Blue Orb has planned for the future, the full article awaits, after the jump.

If you've stuck through our previous coverage on how you can play Blizzard's World of Warcraft on the Xbox 360 console, then we've got more insider information on how the SwitchBlade software package works. In an interview with the VP of Business Development for Blue Orb, Inc., the company behind SwitchBlade, Aaron Levin talks about how the software works and the company's plans for the future.

Check out more details of the SwitchBlade software after the jump!

Less gamers are clocking in hours to spend time playing PC games online, according to Xfire's latest report. Numbers began to drop since August. Xfire senior director of marketing Frederic Descamps believes there's a very apparent reason behind this - many tried to finish the fight, while others continue to play Bungie Studios' Halo 3 on the Microsoft Xbox 360 instead of their PC gaming rigs.

More details at the full article!

The Xfire chat for MMORPG Hellgate: London took place yesterday as expected and the fine folks from Flagship Studios has been very accommodating. The game has been officially launched and despite some early problems, the overall feedback from the community has been positive.

A lot of questions were raised but some that caught our attention include the problems of players with Hellgate: London's seemingly limited environment. Flagship Studios CEO Bill Roper took the question and reminded everyone about the patch:

Believe it or not, there are more diverse areas in Hellgate: London than there were in Diablo II. Think about the second Act in D2. Sand. Lots of Sand. And a star chamber. And then some underground sand. We do a lot more to diversify our acts, and the patch that is available on day one (well, today) goes a long way to theming acts better so that you can get a better feel for that diversity.

When asked about the MMORPG'ss plans on guild systems, Flagship's Senior Community Manager Kaiser Hwang explained that the guild system has already been introduced with Patch 0. The official added that while they have a lot of unique ideas of their own regarding the feature, they would want to hear what the community wants.

Aside from already mentioned, the chat covered a lot of all other things including game design, marketing efforts, future plans, and whatnot. To read the whole transcript of the chat session, click the Read link below.

If Tabula Rasa has their special "Kill General British" event this week, those waiting for Hellgate: London also have something to look forward to. With the launch of Flagship Studios' MMORPG for the PC, the devs are inviting all of you Xfire users to an exclusive chat this Wednesday - right when the game finally hits shelves this week.

Via Xfire network, you can bombard the devs with anything and everything about Hellgate: London. We suggest that, right at this point, you guys might already want to start asking them all about making the game into a franchise. Hey, Flagship CEO Bill Roper will be in the chatrooms, and he did mention that they wanted sequels, books, and comics, all revolving around their latest title. Here's the rest of the devs that you get to interact with on Halloween:

• Aletheia Simonson, Art Producer
• Bill Manegold, Game Programmer
• Amir Ebrahimi, Graphics Programmer
• Guy Somberg, Audio and Gameplay Programmer
• The Xfire Community

This online event is also to promote the in-game Xfire Voice Chat feature. As some of you might recall, Xfire is lending its service to support in-game chatting in Hellgate: London.

The Xfire chat is to be held on Wednesday, October 31, 10:00 p.m. GMT / 11:00 p.m. CET. Just log on to your Xfire account and you can join in the chat.

From Blue Orb, Inc. comes Switchblade, a software package that brings a fully-configured Xbox 360 controller interface to any PC game. The first game supported by Switchblade is Blizzard's World of Warcraft.

The application comes with preconfigured key bindings that map the Xbox 360 controller's buttons to the most commonly used controls in World of Warcraft. Users can also reconfigure the button mappings to cater to their own personal playing styles. Switchblade works with both wired and wireless Xbox 360 controllers.

The best thing about Blue Orb's Switchblade is that it's downloadable for free at Xfire.com. Support for Blizzard's insanely popular MMORPG is also just the tip of the iceberg. Future versions of the application will include support for a wide range of PC games as well as support for additional controller types.

Watch the video below for a look at installing and configuring Switchblade for use in World of Warcraft.

Xfire's just finished tallying up their 8-million strong user base's daily play time for the month of September. And given that school started for the said month for territories across Europe and the US, we're looking at an overall decrease in playtime for the instant messaging service's top MMORPGs and FPS.

Blizzard's World of Warcraft suffered an 18 percent drop, with competing titles like ArenaNet's Guild Wars, Joymax Co.Ltd.'s  Silkroad Online experiencing 13 percent and 27 percent decreases in their population's overall play time respectively. Other major games like Wizet's Maple Story, AeonSoft's Flyff, CCP Games' Eve Online, and Turbine, Inc.'s  Lord of the Rings Online remained unchanged.

Similar trends were reported for Xfire's multiplayer FPS community. Top games like Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 2 Multiplayer lost 12 percent, and Valve Software's Counter-Strike Source lost 18 percent of their population's play time. Other frequently played FPS games for the month include Digital Illusions CE's Battlefield 2, Splash Damage's Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, and Counter-Strike 1.6.

 

One of the guys over at Xfire.com named Artaxs was at the recent BlizzCon 2007 and was able to play demo versions of the World of Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King and StarCraft 2. More importantly, Artaxs had a chat with some of the community managers regarding the latest developments for the MMO expansion.

Before we get to that one though, let us first talk about the much-anticipated sequel to the real time strategy game that captured the hearts of PC gamers last decade. According to Artaxs, he was able to play as Terran in StarCraft 2. No one is talking about release dates yet, though. As always, Blizzard said that the game will be released when it's ready.

Regarding the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, Artaxs learned that Northrend will not be entirely covered with ice as the developers didn't want to commit another "Kalimdor mistake" - miles and miles of desert that's quite boring, to really be honest about it. Furthermore, the opening zone is going to be a coastal area bordered by a Sequoia and Redwood forest to the north.

There's also a new profession known as inscribing. Flying mounts will be available to level 75 or 78 players. Artaxs said that Blizzard wants to keep players grounded for a while to be more familiar with the new locations.

 

Cancer and World of Warcraft - they seem to fit perfectly together. Back in May, a cancer patient had his dreams realized thanks to the WoW community. Today, right at this very moment, a valiant player is going through the ordeal of playing 120 hours straight to collect money for cancer research.

Going by the name Cowiee, this WoW citizen posted on the official WoW Europe forum about the mission to play non-stop for 120 hours. Success of this, as she (yes, she) claims, will garner around US$ 350 from sponsors.

Anyone can contact this heroic gamer on Xfire (account is "indigos"), or in WoW. Cowiee, an alliance rogue playing on Magtheridon, gets our salutations and support for saving others. May she be successful in her endeavors, and may no harm come to her through her efforts.

 

A lot of buzz has been going around the World of Warcraft community regarding the upcoming Guild Banks and integrated voice chat. Both features are something that some players (myself included) feel should have been included in the game from the start.

Still, it's nice to know that both features have already been given the green light and are slated for implementation. When? Well, the details on this were sketchy but thankfully Blizzard Poster/Forum Moderator Drysc took some time to clarify details about it. Don't expect an ETA though, just a few tidbits regarding the features.

Details are still sparse as both features are still under development.

The guild bank is a centralized place where a guild can store items outside of personal bank space. Guild Masters will be able to apply access levels to the different ranks of their guild members, effectively allowing them to mark specific portions of the guild bank accessible by specific ranks.

Voice chat will allow in-game voice chat without the need of an outside program, it's all neatly built into the game. You'll be able to see who is talking by indicators in the UI, and while someone is talking the volume of game sounds/music will be lowered.

Does this mean we can do away with Ventrillo or Xfire (VoIP software) and other third party apps for voice chat? I would have to say that the integrated voice chat feature will probably be a little buggy when it first comes out so we may have to still use our old programs 'til the in-game voice chat is properly working.

The same can probably be said about the Guild Banks, so don't even try to put valuable stuff during the first few months of its implementation.