The road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began.... Lord of the Rings Online is about to celebrate it's third birthday. In celebration of this great achievement, Turbine is temporarily lowering the cost of it's monthly subscription fee from April 26th till June 30th. In order to benefit from the reduced price you must select either a three, six, or twelve month subscription at a rate of $9.99 a month instead of the usual $14.99.

As an added bonus to all players Turbine will also be increasing the rare item drop for monsters and each player will have a skill that reduces the price of vendor goods by 20%.

If you are a user of Steam, you can get and find information about the updated client here.

The new Steam UI is here, which enhances the way you already buy and play games, adding more info about the things that matter — getting games, playing them with friends, and staying current in the gaming world.

 I just updated and if nothing else, it looks slicker.

For those that are now in the StarCraft 2 beta test, you will now be downloading patch 9 when you login to Battle.net.  This update also includes the Galaxy Map Editor.  Here are the notes (click the read more link at the bottom if you don't see the full list...there are tons of notes):

StarCraft II Beta - Patch 9 (0.11.0.15097) General

• The StarCraft II Editor is now available!
  • Players will now be able to begin creating trigger maps in preparation for map publishing which will be made available in an upcoming beta patch.
• Achievements & Decals are now live!
  • Players will now be able to earn achievements, browse the list of available achievements, and view achievements earned by friends.
  • Players will be able to highlight favorite achievements in their Showcase.
  • Earning certain achievements will unlock portrait and decal rewards.
• The updated Homepage now includes a Recent Broadcasts panel and a News & Community panel.
• A new Match History page is now available which will allow players to browse and filter their last 1,000 games played.
• A new Community page is now available which features an in-game version of RSS news feeds.
• A new Friends-of-Friends feature has been added, which allows players to easily find and connect with more real life friends on Battle.net through existing friends.
• Additional friends' presence details are now available from the Friends' list.
• Improvements have been made on the Voice Chat system in game.
  • Please use the new voice chat and provide feedback via the StarCraft II beta forums.
• The score screen now features a new graph tab.
• The art for many parts of the user interface has been updated.
• Hotkey templates have been added.
  • In the gameplay options menu select from standard name based hotkeys for right and left-handed players, grid based hotkeys for right, and left-handed players, and classic StarCraft keys.
• Several hotkeys have been changed to avoid conflicts with the "Select All Warpgates" UI button:
  • The Set Worker Rally Point has been changed from W to R.
  • Build Sensor Tower has been changed from W to N.
  • Terran Infantry Weapons have been changed from W to E.
  • Terran Vehicle Weapons have been changed from W to E.
  • Weapon Refit has been changed from W to R.
  • Burrow has been changed from W to R.
  • Spawn Larva has been changed from R to V.
  • Neural Parasite has been changed from R to E.

Read more...

MekTek has announced that the free release of MechWarrior 4 has been approved by Microsoft Legal. Whoo hoo!!