EGR

You know you live in 2012 when:

07/01/2012 00:00:00

Cleaning up after dinner means getting the fast food bags out of your car.

Every commercial on television has a website address at the bottom of the screen.

Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons. (R. Buckminster Fuller)

Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn't have the first thirty or more years of your life, is cause for panic and turning around to go get it.

Someone asks you what languages you know, and you reply French, Esperanto and C.

Using cash, instead of credit or debit, to make a purchase is a hassle and takes planning.

You 'beep' your son when it's time to eat. He emails from his bedroom, "What's for dinner?"

You buy a computer and six months later it's out of date and sells for half what you paid.

You carry an 4 gig flash drive to and from work.

You chat several times a day with a stranger from South Africa, but you haven't spoken with your next door neighbor yet this year.

You check the ingredients on a can of chicken noodle soup to see if it contains Echinacea.

You consider second-day air delivery painfully slow.

You get an extra phone line so you can get phone calls.

You have a list of fifteen phone numbers to reach your family of three.

You hear the word 'Scuzzy' and the first thing you think of is not an adjective.

You just tried to enter your password on the microwave.

You look at a movie trailer and think, "I have that font."

You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home.

You rig up elaborate mechanisms to do really basic tasks.

Your daughter sells Girl Scout Cookies via her web site.

Your dining room table is now your flat filing cabinet.

Your grandmother asks for a JPEG of your newborn so she can create a screen saver.

Your idea of being organized is multiple-colored Post-it notes.

Your reason for not staying in touch with some family members is that they do not have e-mail.

taken from: www.dennydavis.net

If Operating systems ran the airlines

29/12/2011 00:00:00

Some nerd humour for the end of 2011:

If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines...

UNIX Airways

Everyone brings one piece of the plane along when they come to the airport. They all go out on the runway and put the plane together piece by piece, arguing non-stop about what kind of plane they are supposed to be building.

Air DOS

Everybody pushes the airplane until it glides, then they jump on and let the plane coast until it hits the ground again. Then they push again, jump on again, and so on...

Mac Airlines

All the stewards, captains, baggage handlers, and ticket agents look and act exactly the same. Every time you ask questions about details, you are gently but firmly told that you don't need to know, don't want to know, and everything will be done for you without your ever having to know, so just shut up.

Windows Air

The terminal is pretty and colourful, with friendly stewards, easy baggage check and boarding, and a smooth take-off. After about 10 minutes in the air, the plane explodes with no warning whatsoever.

Windows NT Air

Just like Windows Air, but costs more, uses much bigger planes, and takes out all the other aircraft within a 40-mile radius when it explodes.

Windows XP Air

You turn up at the airport,which is under contract to only allow XP Air planes. All the aircraft are identical, brightly coloured and three times as big as they need to be. The signs are huge and all point the same way. Whichever way you go, someone pops up dressed in a cloak and pointed hat insisting you follow him. Your luggage and clothes are taken off you and replaced with an XP Air suit and suitcase identical to everyone around you as this is included in the exorbitant ticket cost. The aircraft will not take off until you have signed a contract. The inflight entertainment promised turns out to be the same Mickey Mouse cartoon repeated over and over again. You have to phone your travel agent before you can have a meal or drink. You are searched regularly throughout the flight. If you go to the toilet twice or more you get charged for a new ticket. No matter what destination you booked you will always end up crash landing at Whistler in Canada.

Linux Air

Disgruntled employees of all the other OS airlines decide to start their own airline. They build the planes, ticket counters, and pave the runways themselves. They charge a small fee to cover the cost of printing the ticket, but you can also download and print the ticket yourself.

When you board the plane, you are given a seat, four bolts, a wrench and a copy of the seat-HOWTO.html. Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is very comfortable, the plane leaves and arrives on time without a single problem, the in-flight meal is wonderful. You try to tell customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but all they can say is, "You had to do what with the seat?"

Flash tutorial : Parralax Scrolling

04/12/2011 00:00:00

EuroGR are going to be concentrating on creating some games in the next few months. To help the team learn and perhaps to help other aspiring developers we're going to be uploading some tutorials of things we come across when learning about games design.

As a test of this we've uploaded the first video which is a demonstration of a parralax scrolling effect which you can recreate yourself by following the video

I'd appreciate any comments on things we could do to improve future videos or requests for game techniques you'd like to learn about in future

Bill Gates portrait in Minecraft

13/11/2011 00:00:00

I decided to try my luck at doing some art in Minecraft and the results arent too bad. turns out that there are a lot less colours in the game than you first think.

If anyone wants to download the map to inspect the picture of Bill themselves here is the link:

Bill Gates Minecraft Art

Minecraft Timelapse

07/11/2011 00:00:00

Sometimes you come across something that takes your breath away. This timelapse of a minecraft project on a french sever is one of them. The sheer effort and planning that must have gone into this is mind boggling. I'd love to sit down and chat with the makers of this to get a glimpse at how they even started planning for this.

Pixle Physics

01/11/2011 00:00:00

Physics based puzzles games have always been popular with gamers of all demographics. Theres something about items in games behaving exactly like they would in real life that gives the game that little edge over everything else. It must be the added realism that allows the user to get more immersed in what is going on and not want to leave the game for a little bit longer.

Pixle Physics is no exception. Each level contains blocks of different sizes stacked on platforms. Your task is to fire projectiles at the blocks and knock them off the platform. Points are awarded for all blocks knocked down and taken away for knocking down “bad” red blocks. The puzzle element comes in the form of having to figure out the right power and trajectory of your shot. There is also a choice of different sized projectiles. The advantage of a bigger ball is more momentum which increases the chance of sending those blocks flying off the screen. However this extra power comes at the cost of points once the score is counted.

Judging by how even the simplest of physics games (such as this one) are popular its a surprise that there aren't more of them. There are only a handful released each month and few of them do anything ground breaking. One reason this may be is that the mathematics required to code the game is a barrier to entry that casual developers cant overcome. There are hundreds if not thousands of tutorials about making games online that any good student can follow and use to create half decent games. However the maths required to figure out trajectories, gravity, momentum, friction and make sure everything is obeying Newtons laws of physics is a lot harder than simple algebra. The coding has to be pretty accurate as anything that doesn't behave like the user expects will ruin the illusion and bring the player out of their immersion bubble.

It's a shame that Pixle physics doesn't expand on any gameplay elements that have been done before. There are potentially many things that can be thrown into the game such as a wider variety of blocks, perhaps some rope physics or walls that cause blocks to bounce or even gels that cause other blocks to stick. These extra feature however would all require more maths coding which might take the production time of these simple flash games up by weeks if not months. If all you want is a simple puzzle game then this wont leave you disappointed.

Hints and Tips :

as a general rule if you knock the bottom blocks out of a structure the others should fall down

the platforms are slippy, you don't need as much force as you initially think to make blocks side off

If you get stuck on a level try firing your ball in random directions to see if anything happens that inspires you

Click here to play Pixle Physics

If you enjoyed this game you may also enjoy these other free puzzle games:
Factory Balls 4
Test Subject Blue

Binga

25/10/2011 00:00:00

Games like Binga always confuse me because I can never figure out their target market. They have casual features which appeal to bored housewives, they are also simple and user friendly which appeals to the children's market and they have high scores and timed sections which appeal to the competitive element of more hardcore gamers. At first this makes it sound like a super new game which anyone can play. That is unless you start realising that it is a prime example of the phrase “Jack of all trades, master of none”.

Binga is at heart a point and click puzzle game. You are presented with one screen after the other with various objectives you need to complete to move onto the next level. Some of the puzzles are easy whilst others are slightly more obscure and require you to do some investigation to figure out. If you get stuck on any puzzle you always have the option of reverting to the tried and tested method of clicking everywhere on the screen until something happens. A technique made famous by the old fashioned point and click adventure games which had puzzles so obscure and removed from reality that this brute force approach to puzzle solving was your only sensible choice at times (I'm looking at you Monkey Island!)

The competitive element comes in the form of a timer which counts the entire length it takes you to complete all the puzzles which is designed to give the game some replayability. Certain things such as the combination locks change each time you play so you have to re-solve each screen as oppose to just remembering the answer from last time. However once you've figured out the strategy for finding the answer the challenge becomes more about being able to move your mouse fast rather than any sort of cognitive action.

The game is presented in a clean and crisp way with nice images and good background music that shows the game was made by a studio as oppose to a bedroom developer. This makes it seem like even more of a shame that the game is so short. The shortness was probably intended however as the game is never shy to point out that the developers have a range of other games for you to play.

In summary this is a well put together little puzzle game that you can pick up if you have 10 minutes spare in your afternoon. It will distract you enough to take your mind away from whatever work you're avoiding but don't expect to remember much about it later on that same day.

Hints and Tips:

If you get stuck on a puzzle try clicking on all items on the screen to see if any of them react.

Look out for the small differences between objects that otherwise look identical.

Try re-reading the instructions. You may have been doing the wrong thing all along.

Click here to play Binga

If you enjoyed this game you may also enjoy these other free puzzle games:
Factory Balls 4
Test Subject Blue

Running Men

19/10/2011 00:00:00

A Satire Against Corporations - By Whitney Markee

This game is definitely not for the faint of heart. Play as a manager in training to "help/force" your "workers/guinea pigs" to "survive/obey". Without guidance, the yellow suited, brainwashed employees will fall to their grisly deaths with a chilling scream. Although, this isn't necessarily a bad thing because these men are mindlessly obeying the managers every word, or single word, “RUN”. Only a few employees totally refuse to mindlessly obey, but the upper management deals harshly with those who insist on thinking for themselves. Basically, the player is able to spend some time in the corporate world where no is allowed to think besides the managers and these managers have a cult like control over their employees. It is time to learn how to use this mind control.

The object of the game is to get the workers from door A to door B without killing them. In essence its a clone of the old lemmings games from the Amiga. To succeed the player must adjust the platforms so that the worker will run over or bounce over any holes, saws, and other obstacles to get onto the next platform. This sounds simple enough, but this puzzle game is actually quite challenging. The first few levels aren't too mentally taxing, but it gets progressively harder. By the time the manager in training is guiding the workers through the last level, there are sure to be a hundred or so that didn't make it. There is an infinite amount of lives, so it's alright to lose a couple hundred men in training. What makes the game so challenging is that there are multiple different kinds of platforms. Some of them slide to the left to right, while others have to be pulled out right before the worker runs across it or else the platform retract back into the wall and the worker will fall.

The only really negative thing about the game is the music, which doesn't change throughout the eighteen levels. It is repetitive, much like the mindless workers task which can be classed as consistent and neat, but it can lull the player to sleep. Another minor annoyance is that the player cannot make the worker stop running or slow him down. This is a problem in the levels with the moving saws. Sometimes it is impossible for the worker not to die. No careful timing can save him from a rotating saw.

Tips for Beating the Game

Timing is the biggest thing to get down. If the platforms are pulled away from you a second to early or too late, then the man in the yellow suit will fall to his death. They have to be pulled out in perfect timing for the man to get across.

Sometimes it is useful to just sit back and watch the route the worker chooses before figuring out the solution for him

Click here to play Running Men

If you enjoyed this game you may also enjoy these other free action games:
Granny Strikes Back
Zomgies 2

Desert Oasis Survival

17/10/2011 00:00:00

One thing Ive noticed on Youtube is that commentated videos seem to get a lot more hits than non-comentated one. So Ive taken the leap of faith and put my voice on a Minecraft "lets-play" to test the reaction.

I'd love to receive all feedback (good or bad) so I can figure out if its worth carrying on with fewer commentated videos or stick with the current strategy of lots of quick non-voiced ones.

The map is a typical survival scenario I found on the Minecraft forums. You start on a small map with limited resources. The aim is to complete all 82 tasks. I've pasted all 82 in the description on the Youtube video but for the impatient heres the first 15:

Make a two-story house with a basement

Make a sugar-cane farm

Make an automated cacti farm

Make twenty bookshelves

Find the dungeon

Make a diamond block

Make a gold block

Make an iron block

Make five TNT

Go to the nether

Make an dungeon trap

Get a stack of glowstone dust

Make a red brick fire-place (with netherrack)

Make three cakes

Stunt Crazy

11/10/2011 00:00:00

Destroy Everything - by Whitney Markee

So maybe you have had the opportunity to play as a stunt man before, but never like this. Become the best stunt man in the animated world. Get shot out of cannons, chewed up by giant piranha plants, and bounce your way into the skies as you try to collect all the reels of film and destroy everything from graves to bunnies. Do all this while driving a collection of fun cars, making money, gaining fame points, and controlling where the crowds riot. Who said stunt men did most of their work behind the scenes?

The main object of each level is to collect all the reels of films which are scattered around the levels. Additional points may be gained by destroying things, flipping in the air, flying high, flying out of the level and much more. Furthermore, extra money may be collected that is just lying around the course. There are some aspects of the vehicles that may be customized or improved upon to help you destroy everything. These things include the engine, rocket fuel, rocket power, missiles, "crash bomb" and weight. Each of these items may be improved five times. Without upgrading the cars, there is no way to get all the reels in the latter levels. One neat aspect of the game is that after each level is complete, you can see how well each movie did at the box office and why. If the stunts are really bad, people will riot against you and you will lose fame points. If the stunts in the movies were good, then you gain fame points. Fame points unlock levels in regular mode and stadiums in stunt mode. The stunt mode is fun as it allows you to test and trial things without fear of wrecking a film. You choose a course, stadium, and what to sell and at what price to sell it at. Then the aim is to impress the crowd and make a lot of money. Some other notable aspects of the game are the simple controls, cheery music and fun graphics and animation.

The only negative thing about the game is that it is not very challenging. The levels are fun, but most of them are extremely easy to get top scores in. Only a couple levels are a challenge and require you to replay them.

Hints and Tips:

Remember to visit the garage periodically and upgrade your car. It will be difficult to get a high score without doing so.

If you miss a certain aspect of a new level, such as you can get the piranha plant to spit you out or once you get stuck to a plant you're pretty much done, you can always go back and replay a level to get all the reels.

Click here to play Stunt Crazy

If you enjoyed this game you may also enjoy these other free action games:
Battle Beavers
Steamlands

Minecraft : How to build a windmill

09/10/2011 00:00:00

How to make a windmill in Minecraft:

Step 1: Find some flat land of suitable size, somewhere surrounded by grass helps the mill look more realistic when its finished. Although feel free to ignore this step and build your mill in a volcano.

Step 2: Start the base of the windmill by building a 10x10 square.

Step 3: Make this first shape 5 blocks tall.

Step 4: Seal off this first section with a roof.

Step 5: Decide which side of this box will be the front and build a door there.

Step 6: Remove the grass inside the first section and replace it with a suitable material for a floor. Wood will do but you can also experiment with different coloured wool.

Step 7: Make a set of stairs breaking out of the ground floor section.

Step 8: Build up another two blocks all around your structure.

Step 9: Build a new box shape on top of what you already have with dimensions 8x8x5 (WxLxH).

Step 10: On top of this build a third box of dimensions 6x6x5.

Step 11: Finally build a forth box on top with dimensions 4x4x5.

Step 12: Carefully take out the corners of all the box shapes you've made so far.

Step 13: Replace these blocks with a darker material, unprocessed wood is suitable. This gives the windmill a nice detail and stops it looking like one big bland box.

Step 14: Position a few blocks coming out of the top of the mill, These are what the blades will be attached to

Step 15: Using a coloured wool build 4 symmetrical blades. Make them at least 10 blocks long

Step 16: Take out the middle section of your wool blades.

Step 17: Replace these removed parts with a fence post. This gives the blades a more solid feel and helps make it look more authentic from a distance

Step 18: Head back inside and build a balcony attached to the 2nd box shape we built earlier. Decorate this with items such as a picnic table and BBQ.

Step 19: Add a series of ladders leading up to the top of your mill.

Step 20: If you want you can add torches around the place to help keep it free from zombies at night or just so it looks nicer.

Step 21: Create a window from the 2nd box we build earlier looking out onto the balcony.

Step 22: If you haven't already done so you can build some support columns form the balcony, These don't do anything apart from make the mill look more realistic.

Step 23: Head back inside and build the mechanism for milling wheat. The main components you need to create for this are a long shaft leading from the top where the blades are down to the bottom where you should put two flat surfaces to grind the wheat between. Unfortunately Minecraft doesn't have the ability to make large mechanical contraptions like this actually work so you'll need to use your imagination a bit here.

Step 24: As a finishing touch you can build a quaint garden next to your mill. If you're feeling up to it you could also start a giant wheat farm next door.

Check out my other guides on cool things to build in Minecraft:

Pirate Ship
Backgammon Board

Granny Strikes Back

05/10/2011 00:00:00

Who Says that Granny’s Need Help Crossing the Street - by Whitney Markee

So Granny decided to move to the middle of nowhere. That means there is nothing to worry about right? You couldn't be more Wrong! Aliens have crashed and need jelly to repair their ship. To get this rare commodity, they have built an army of evil snowmen. Little do the aliens know, Granny used to be a secret agent. Help Granny slaughter the waves of alien snowmen as they come to kill her, destroy her house, and eat her jelly. Don’t worry that Granny no longer has her guns; she is skilled enough to kill these attackers with homegrown vegetables!

The game is a unique tower defense game. The protagonist is Granny, a reclusive grandma living somewhere in the arctic. The weapons are vegetables. Each vegetable is like a different type of gun. For example, tomatoes are explosives, pees are machine guns, potatoes are lasers and so on. Granny also has a collection of defense mechanisms she can quickly build around her winter bungalow. She has female snowmen to lure the aliens, angry moles who throw rocks, wells which fling water and freeze the enemy and cellars that supply granny with special powers. She is thoroughly prepared for this battle even though she though she retired from the secret service. The game is quirky and fun. It never gets old killing snowmen. In addition, the game also gives the player an option on which types of controls they prefer. It doesn't seem like a big feature but very few flash games have a different choice of controls.

The most negative thing about the game is that the first mode is too easy. It gives the player a good grasp of the game, but it is almost impossible to die. The harder modes are more slightly more challenging. Also, there are some believability issues with the game. It has the potential to have such a fun story line, but Granny is growing vegetables in the snow. Not only are they growing, but depending on how Granny is leveled up, they grow quickly and with a little bit of water, quicker without freezing. Even in the most bizarre circumstance, such as evil alien snowmen and ex-secret agent grandmother, this seems odd.

Hints and Tips:

Open all the boxes and treasure chests. The more money you get, the more defenses that you can buy. In the long run this will make it easier to level up Granny.

Look at the objectives before each level. The more of them you meet, the quicker Granny levels up.

If you're short on cash for upgrades you can replay old levels

Click here to play Granny Strikes Back

If you enjoyed this game you may also enjoy these other free strategy games:
Learn to Fly
Steamlands

Minecraft Art

30/09/2011 00:00:00

If you love Minecraft then we love you!

I've come across a talented fan who's put a lot of effort into fan art for the game. his blog can be found here: Teddanator

The site is full of cute Minecraft images such as comics and potential wallpapers. I've had a browse and put my favourite to the Left of this article. It's basically a pretty accurate description of Minecraft 1.8 (visit the site for a full size version) I cant wait for 1.9 when those villages get filled with NPC's, fingers crossed that the final version of Minecraft even has more interactive characters that perhaps start adventures or quests for rare items.

If any other Minecraft fans want a mention here feel free to send me a message at bigbmxdave2@hotmail.com

Wonderputt

27/09/2011 00:00:00

Miniature Golf with a Whole New Set of Elements - by Whitney Markee

Most miniature golf players are submitted to the elements of the great outdoors, such as heat, wind, rain, cold and insects. For those who are not a fan of nature, this flash game has found a way to overcome these unpleasant conditions while giving each player an optimal gulfing experience. Enjoy this not so simple game of miniature golf, without ever leaving the computer. Putt through the snow, hills, lakes, submarines, and much more. Just don’t let the ball sink into the water or fall off the edge or a turn will be wasted and points will be lost.

The rules of the game are that of basic miniature golf. The controls are simple. Just move the mouse closer or farther away from the ball and then click. The ball will go the direction that the arrow is pointing. The courses are not as simple as the controls. The different courses are definitely the best part of the game. Not only is there a wide variety of different courses, but the player is able to watch the ball travel from one course to another and watch the upcoming course be built. Cows, space ships, and submarine disassembly are part of the building process. The animation and courses are fun. They create a very out of this world feel, which adds excitement to the game as well as providing a break inbetween holes for the user to rest a little. The game gets progressively harder. In the beginning, the player can rely on luck. In the later courses, it is almost pure strategy and skill. Points are something to consider while building a strategy. The more hits it takes you to putt the ball the lower your score.

One negative thing about the game is how long it takes the ball to settle after it is hit. On some courses it is realistic and doesn’t roll around too long. On other courses, where almost no part of the green is even, the ball rolls back and forth across the grass for what seems like forever. This forces the player to wait a long time between hits which ends up feeling very frustrating. The music matches the sense of wonder that the courses create, but it starts feeling very monotonous after a while.

Hints and Tips:

The key to getting a hole in one is power and angle. The sooner these two things are mastered, the higher your overall score will be

Remember that the least amount of putts equals the highest score.

Click here to play Wonderputt

If you enjoyed this game you may also enjoy these other free strategy games:
Test subject blue
Steamlands

This is what Minecraft was created for

26/09/2011 00:00:00

You've got to take your hat off to a game that has such an incredible sandbox element to it that it can be used to recreate other games.

This video got about 500,000 views in the first 2 days it was released and then seems to have been forgotten, The amount of imagination that needed to exist in the creators head at the start of the project means it deserves a lot more than that!

Minecraft : How to build a pirate ship

24/09/2011 00:00:00

How to make a pirate ship in Minecraft

step 1: Find a suitable body of water to build your ship in, the bigger the water and bigger you can make your ship.

step 2: Swim to the bottom and create a column up to the surface. This is needed to give us the ability to create our ship in the middle of the water.

Step 3: build one strip of blocks 3 blocks under the water and 25 blocks across. Any wood based material in Minecraft is suitable however you could make a variety of different themed boats if you wished by trying different coloured blocks.

Step 4: Destroy the original support column, we now have horizontal row of blocks floating in the water to build upon.

Step 5: Start expanding the hull by building 3 rows across the original 1 row.

Step 6: Expand the hull further by building a row of 5 blocks across the 3 we build in the previous step. This row should have broken the surface of the water.

Step 7: Hollow out your hull into a “V” shape, the reason for filling in the hull originally is to force all the water out, make sure not to break the ends as this will flood your boat.

Step 8: Build another layer on top that goes out by 1 block and up by 2.

Step 9: Close off this bottom part of your boat by filling in the ends and adding a ceiling. It may seem bare at the moment but we will return to it later.

Step 10: Start building the middle section of the ship by going 1 block outwards and 4 upwards.

Step 11: Close off the middle section with a ceiling and then close off the sides this will plunge it into darkness until we add some lighting.

Step 12: Add an opening in the ceiling of the middle section and build some stairs leading out onto what will be the main deck of the ship.

Step 13: Build some cabins in the middle section for your crew to sleep in and spend their spare time.

Step 14: Hard working pirates love their grub, if you have room you can build a canteen to fill up the rest of the space in the middle of your ship.

Step 15: Start decorating the rooms, my cabins have 2 beds, a bookcase, a shelf, a painting and 2 chests but feel free to set yours up to suit your pirates.

Step 16: Create a stairway from the middle down into the original lower parts of the ship we built in parts 1-5.

Step 17: Fill the lower section of the ship with chests to hold all your pirate booty, you can add lighting if you want or keep it dark for a more authentic creepy pirate feel.

Step 18: To add a personal touch to your ship place name plates on all the cabin doors with your pirates names.

Step 19: Decorate any left over space in the middle of your ship, add things like lighting and windows to make the place feel cosier.

Step 20: Back on the top deck add a perimeter 1 block out to prevent any sailors going overboard during rough seas.

Step 21: At the back of the ship start constructing your own cabin, ideally this should be much bigger and grander than the other pirates bunks down below.

Step 22: Decorate your cabin, fill it with items like bookshelves, art, a fancy carpet and anything else you think a captain deserves.

Step 23: Start building the mast, build a tall middle mast with 2 branches coming off. The 1st branch will be where the sail starts and the 2nd branch where it ends

Step 24: Add the sail, try to build it with a curve so that it gives the impression of having wind behind it. You will probably fall off a lot doing this section, build a ladder up the centre of the mast to quickly get back up.

Step 25: Right at the top of the mast build a small crows nest so your pirates can keep an eye out for land and other ships to plunder.

Step 26: Start building out the front of the deck to give your ship a pointed face. This is another part of the build that will involve you falling overboard accidentally. It may be worth building a ladder back up onto your ship.

Start 27: Add some stairs from the deck onto what is your captains cabin. This will be the location of the command deck.

Step 28: Decorate the command deck. Unfortunately Minecraft doesn’t have many things that can represent a wheel but replacing it with levers gives the ship a slight steampunk feel.

Step 29: Decorate your deck. If you use your imagination most blocks can be turned into something with a nautical theme.

Step 30: Add a figurehead to the front of the ship. You can spend time building a large one or just use the jack o' lantern.

Step 31: No pirates ship is complete without a plank to force your enemies to walk off. Cut out a hole in the side of the ship and make it as long as you want.

Battle Beavers

20/09/2011 00:00:00

War of the Beavers - by Whitney Markee

Ever look at a beaver and wonder what it does besides building cute dams up rivers? Well it’s time to find out. Follow Bold, the beaver hero, through a multitude of battles in this fun RPG. Conquer other beavers, pirates, knights and eventually Bold’s arch nemesis in this epic adventure.

The game certainly isn’t simple for a flash game, but it isn’t too complicated if you have the patience to learn the ins and outs of the game. The player may level up Bold’s attributes as well as his equipment. When certain equipment is worn, it may add or take away from Bold’s attributes. Strangely, the world’s currency is pinecones. These pinecones may be used at Otto’s shop between missions. Not a lot of pinecones fall, but luckily most of the items in the shop only cost a few hundred pinecones. The game’s controls are easy to use. If the player wishes, he or she can upgrade the beaver to be quite agile, which the controls also assist with. The basic layout of the game is interesting enough to attract the player’s attention, but the best part of the game is the story line. It is told through a series of comics between levels. Not only is it a fun way to get the back-story, but it is detailed enough to make the battles seem like more than just mindless fighting and serves as a good break to prevent battle fatigue. The music definitely adds to the battles and makes them seem more exciting and dangerous. Bold has an infinite amount of lives, so dying is not much of a problem. He even gets to keep the items, pinecones, and points if he dies in battle.

One of the few negative things about the game is that Bold cannot sell old equipment. If Bold dies enough, he will eventually earn enough money to buy new equipment. It’s not impossible to earn money, it is just a little inconvenient. It is pretty obvious what most of the attributes do, but there are two that are a little vague and are not explained, vitality and luck. If the player puts points in them, there is no immediate effect. This is unusual for the game and prevents them being used by players which seems like a shame. If points are added to any other attributes, the effects can be seen immediately.

Hints and Tips:

When choosing equipment, make sure to consider which of Bold’s attributes are weak.

When Bold is out numbered, try to separate the group of enemies by fleeing or using magic.

Click here to play Battle Beavers

If you enjoyed this game you may also enjoy these other free action games:
Zomgies 2
Gunbot

Minecraft - creating a backgammon board

17/09/2011 00:00:00

How to build a backgammon board in Minecraft:

step 1: Find yourself an area as flat as you can that is at least 40x16 blocks. It doesn’t have to be perfectly flat as you can always fill in holes or knock down bumps as you go along.

step 2: Use wooden blocks or any other suitable material to make the 40x16 outside edge of the board, most backgammon boards are made from wood although you can make a cool looking board by using more metallic colours.

step 3: Start making the points from one corner, make sure to alternate between black and white. Two rows of 3 blocks followed by 2 single blocks makes a good triangle, unfortunately Minecraft triangles always look a bit square unless you attempt to create a much larger backgammon board.

Step 4: After the 6th point we need to create a bar across the middle which separates the two sides of the board and would contain any hit checkers in a real game of backgammon, you should use the same material for this as you used for the outside of the board to keep things consistent.

Step 5: Now is a good time to go over your playing area and make sure the surface is level by filling in holes or knocking down mounds, the choice of material here doesn’t matter as it wont be visible once we have created the board. After the board is level go back to creating the points till you have made all 24.

Step 6: The remaining area in the board should now be filled in with a uniform material, use wooden planks to keep with the wooden theme of the project.

Step 7: Choose two cloth colours to use as checkers, there are various standard choices such as blue and red which as common in real backgammon boards, you should avoid using black and white for the checkers as they would blend in too easily with the points on the board.

Step 8: Place the checkers how you wish, both teams have 15 checkers each if none have been taken off yet, If you want to depict a game being played you can place checkers on the bar or off the board completely as if the players have began bearing off.

Step 9: As a finishing touch use two blocks of redstone ore to create dice, it may look weird close up but from a distance they look authentic.

Minecraft doesn’t yet have a way of generating random numbers so if you were to use this board to play a real game against someone you would need to use real world dice to roll the numbers, but apart from that you could have a multiplayer game using this board by destroying checkers and building new ones where you have moved.

Learn to Fly

13/09/2011 00:00:00

Tale of a Penguin’s Ego - By Whitney Markee

Most people know that penguins cannot fly, but apparently, nobody told this penguin that fact. He is determined to spend some time soaring through the sky like his more feathered friends. A failed flight attempt lands this stubborn penguin a room in a hospital in Antarctica. During his abundance of free time, he finds out that the world knows of his failed attempt to fly and rates it worst than the dodo's attempt. This infuriates the penguin. He leaps out of the window eager to get back to his work. He is more determined than ever to learn to fly. But the little bird has learned from his mistakes, he now uses a stuffed penguin as his test subject.

The object of the game is to teach the penguin how to fly. To do this, there are a variety of different conditions and mechanisms that the player may employ. Some examples are the use of hand gliders, sleds, different ramp lengths and heights, jet propelled engines, and different types of weights for destruction (This penguin loves destruction!) Snowmen, snow mounds, rocky hills, and icebergs and the final wall are his targets. The player receives extra points for destroying these objects. Other ways to accumulate points are setting new records for altitude, destruction, duration, speed, and distance. There are certain preset records that the player also gains extra points for beating. The controls are simple, the arrow keys guide the stuffed penguin and the spacebar activates the rocket. Another plus is that the graphics are fun. During his flights, the penguin passes angry, drooling, and happy clouds.

The only bad thing about the game is that sometimes it can be difficult to gain money to upgrade the equipment. If the player chooses a few wrong upgrades then he or she will be forced to attempt to fly for low sums of money repeatedly. Then at a certain point, money is obsolete because every flight rewards an insane amount of money.

Hints and tips:

Learn which types of flights are awarded the most money. Challenges always give the most, but at different points in the game, it may be best to use distance or destruction to earn money.

Get familiar with the jet pack and when it is best to use it. Some examples are right after leaving the ramp or after destroying an object to get back in the air or midflight. This changes with different types of gliders.

Remember to flip through the pages of the upgrade book. The prices aren't necessarily in order.

Click here to play Learn to Fly

If you enjoyed this game you may also enjoy these other free action games:
Steamlands
Haunted Suburb

Crazy Mammoths

06/09/2011 00:00:00

Extinct Racers - By Whitney Markee

Have you ever wanted to pretend to be a wooly mammoth and then slide down a snowy slope whilst trapped in a giant block of ice? Well here is your chance. Slide past igloos, penguins, and snow-covered trees, while hoping over other ice cubed mammoths and try to be the first mammoth through the checkpoints. There is no need to defrost your vehicle, or mammoth before this race.

The game premise is very simple. All the player has to do is jump over the other mammoths and jump to prevent the other mammoth from passing him or her. Occasionally, the ground shifts backward, giving the player in last place a chance to catch up. The mammoth that is in first position the longest, or at least in first place at the most check points, wins the race. The game gets more difficult with each level. One impressive aspect of the game is that each mammoth has its own special abilities and handicaps. Some mammoths can jump higher than others, while other mammoths have more speed and power. The player must adjust to each mammoth in order to conquer Championship Mode. There are two other modes in the game, Challenge Mode and Four Player Mode. In Challenge Mode, the player needs to pass the most check points in a row to win. In Four Player Mode, the player is allowed to choose which four mammoths race, but other than that, it is exactly like challenge mode.

Even though there are slight variations between the different game modes there are times when the action is too monotonous. The challenge is there, but after a while the game becomes a bit boring. Nothing new is added. Just slide down the hill. Also, there is no music to stimulate the player. The only sound is that of a mammoth sliding through the snow and the chime of a bell at each check point. The background is a little sparse, with mostly pure blue and white. A little more color and sound would definitely add to the excitement of the game.

Hints and Tips:

Figure out not only what your mammoth's abilities are, but also the other mammoth's abilities early in the race. For example: if you know a certain racer cannot jump high, then he will be easier to block and you can spend less time defending his attacks.

Figure out when it is easier to pass under a mammoth or over a mammoth. This will vary depending on who you are racing.

Click here to play Crazy Mammoths

If you enjoyed this game you may also enjoy these other free action games:

Shadow Rising Unleashed
Zomgies 2

If you build it they will come

05/09/2011 00:00:00

One of my favourite types of posts is those which announce new features and projects for EuroGR, without them any site would quickly go stale.

EuroGR are going to start producing some more flash games in the up and coming months. We created a few small games roughly one year ago and they are still being played and bringing visitors to this page, due to this I've decided to reform a team and create a handful of new games, bigger and better than the last ones.

The games will still be free to play and hopefully fun, the only difference is that with a years extra experience dealing with the flash industry they will be much more impressive. If you have any talents you feel would help create an epic flash game feel free to contact me on bigbmxdave2@hotmail.com and I'll gladly try and find a place for you on the team. A lot of people don't realise just how much effort goes into making a game, as such any talents related to music, pixel art, storyline, comedy, coding, level design, puzzle creation are very sought after.

Happy gaming!

Donut Empire

30/08/2011 00:00:00

Building your empire, one donut at a time - by EuroGRDave

One thing I remember from my early game playing days in the 90's is that there were a lot more business sim style games. Theme park, theme hospital, sim city, transport tycoon. These games had sequels and imitators but the emphasis in gaming during the 00's went more towards ultra realistic graphics and only recently seems to have changed to games from Independent studios concentrating more on gameplay than visuals. Both trends seemed to overlook the fun you can have from building a working business from the ground up.

Fortunately for the nostalgic side of me there seem to be a few tycoon style games emerging in the flash game market. One of these which came out recently is Donut Empire. The aim of the game is to customise your donut stall in such a way that it attracts more customers which in turn allow you to upgrade your empire with fancy features such as seating and heating.

The game reminds me of the minigame in theme park where you could build burger and drinks stands and then individually set the price and ingredient levels such as salt or sugar. It does seem a bit of a shame that so many years on flash games are only at the stage of complexity where they are matching minigames from the Amiga but I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and see this is the start of something much bigger which will perhaps mean new generations of gamers can experience the full joy of the 90's games via their Browsers.

The graphics are very well put together and its obvious that the developer used trained artists and didn't simply attempt to hack together some random graphics which all too often is the downfall of new flash games made by a single person. The sound is ok but a bit random, at times I thought I had accidentally opened a new browser somewhere as the sudden music change didn't fit the tone of the game and my brain assumed it must have been coming from a popup somewhere. But like most looping music it fades into the background once you play enough.

Hints and Tips:

Make sure the pay attention during the initial tutorial, the game is simple at first glance but has a lot of intricate settings

play around with altering 1 thing at a time to see what its affect is on customers, once you feel you have a decent knowledge of the donut industry start your mission again and put it all into good use together.

Experiment with which upgrades are worth their money, some of them attract more customers for what they cost than others.

Click here to play Donut Empire

If you enjoyed this game you may also enjoy these other free games:
Steamlands
Biogems

Ninja in Yeovil

29/08/2011 00:00:00

England gets its own Ninja, The Jury is still out on the mental stability of this guy but as long as the residents feel protected im sure he'll have lots of fans.

"A self-styled 'ninja' is patrolling the streets of Yeovil in a bid to make the town a safer place. Martial arts expert and father-of-two Ken Andre, 33, also known as Shadow, has been monitoring the streets of the Somerset town for the past six years. Clinton Rogers reports."

Click here to see the full article and video

Test Subject Blue

23/08/2011 00:00:00

A World of Blue, Science, and Struggling Enzymes by Whitney Markee

Test Subject Blue is a fun puzzle game. The game follows many of the same principles of the more complex puzzle game "Portal". It is also the first in a series of games. In this flash game, the main character, an enzyme named Blue, is a test subject of Xend Industries. The scientist injects the blob into a portable vial at the start of each level. The portals in each level are already set. The way Blue enters portals, dictates the direction that he comes out of the coordinating portal. The goal is to get both gold microchips. The one not in a vial, must be retrieved first. When this microchip is retrieved, the chip in the vial is released. Once Blue reaches this chip, the level is complete and Blue is graded by the scientist, who has been watching Blue through the window of the maze. Each day this scientist tests Blue with a new level. A confusing concept at first but easy to figure out after a few practice levels.

This game isn't easy, which is definitely a plus. While Blue tries to use the portals to reach his goal, he encounters other challenges such as villainous orange enzymes, traps that explode when touched, and even gets shot at by robot cannons in the walls of the maze. To combat these obstacles, all Blue can do is jump, dodge, time his portal entries, and occasionally shoot back. Each level is more complex than the one before and almost all the levels introduce some sort of new obstacle that the previous level did not have. It would be difficult to get bored whilst working your way through this. The controls in the game are simple; use the arrow keys to move Blue and hit your space bar to jump. This helps the player nimbly guide Blue around these obstacles. The easy controls are surprising with the complex story line, but go well with the cute animation. The ending of the game is great as well.

One negative aspect of the game is Blue’s Cannon. It is easy to use, but it isn’t effective against most of the things Blue encounters. It cannot disarm bombs or damage cannons that are shooting at you. It can only be used to kill one type of "bad guy", the orange enzymes, and to hit the switches that temporarily turn off the portals. Hints and Tips:

As the levels become more difficult, timing is key. The player not only has to time the bullets while entering the portal, but he or she also has to time the incoming bullets on the other side of the portal.

Keep in mind the variables which are used to calculate the score. This includes, how many times Blue dies, how many bad enzymes are killed, and how quickly the level is completed.

Remember that the beams fired from Blues cannon can hurt him. Be cautious when firing into a portal.

Click here to play Test Subject Blue

If you enjoyed this game you may also enjoy these other free Puzzle games:
Steamlands
Doodle God 2

Steamlands

16/08/2011 00:00:00

Steampunk with Legos by Whitney Markee

So what can one do with a steam tank, lego like blocks, guns, and cannons in a war wrecked Europe? Build steam tanks and fight pirates of course. Become a mercenary tank commander and defend villages, the royal family, and scavenge for parts for your steam tank in the New Britannia.

One of the nice things about the game is that the tank is completely customizable. You can arrange your blocks around the steam room however you wish. The blocks come in different sizes and are made of different materials. The blocks should be strategically arranged to protect the driver, cargo, and passengers. The blocks can even be rearranged mid battle with little difficulty. This comes in handy when you fail to miss a weak spot. In addition, a big part of the game is placing the guns and cannons on the steam tank. Some of them need steam power to work; so there are limitations on where they can be placed. Some types of guns are also more effective if placed in specific locations and not randomly scattered around. Guns and blocks can be picked up as the tank goes through the level. Some are just lying around, while others fall from destroyed enemy tanks. There are also opportunities to repair the tank between battles. If you get stuck on a particular level, the game allows you to skip it and go back to it later.

There are a few downsides to the game. One of them is the controls. The game does a good job describing the controls and giving the player hints. Moving the tank forward and reversing isn't so bad once you get the hang of it. The tricky part is firing the guns. The controls are less than desirable and it is difficult to get all the guns to fire in unison. Also, while the guns are firing, the driver cannot fix the tank or throw coal.

Hints and Tips:

Rearrange the steam tank. If you notice a weak spot, add a few more blocks. Make sure the guns are placed where they can effectively damage the enemy tank.

Talk to the shop keeper. Some of the things he/she tells you is worthless town gossip, but some of it helps you to beat the upcoming level. It is definitely worth the money.

Look for the enemy's weak spots and then rearrange your guns to hit these spots if necessary. Taking out the enemies’ guns first can be useful strategy.

Click here to play The steamlands

If you enjoyed this game you may also enjoy these other free Strategy games:
Zomgies 2
Haunted Suburb

Youtube channel reaches 10,000 views

15/08/2011 00:00:00

The EuroGR youtube channel reached 10,000 views this week. Considering it's only been around for a few weeks this is an amazing achievement. The channel is taking shape nicely and so far is mostly game guides and walkthroughs. The aim is to create a comprehensive collection of tutorials for hundreds and maybe thousands of games which not only act as a guide for anyone stuck in the game but also as a way for potential buyers to check out a game before they make a purchase.

I'll be posting some more guides up soon and letting anyone who's interested know soon, however the next big view mark we're aiming for is 100,000 views, fingers crossed we'll reach that before the end of the year.

Guten Tag

15/08/2011 00:00:00

Hello to our German readers. Our friends over at Fettspielen.de have reviewed one of the original EuroGR flash games. Some of our long time community members may remember almost a year ago when we released Charlie Chicks Adventure as a trial into the flash game making scene. The game is still getting daily plays and we are set to reach almost 40,000 plays soon.

Whilst we always encourage people to visit good sites such as Fettspielen we should point out that it is an entirely German site so if you don't speak German you may struggle to figure out whats going on.

Click here for the review

Or Click here to play Charlie Chicks Adventure

The I of IT

10/08/2011 00:00:00

A Game In First Person, by Whitney Markee

The "I of It" is an unarguably unique game. The "t" says, “bah,” and abandons "I". Now "I" has a goal; to be reunited with "t". The British narrator flawlessly narrates I’s quest. He even narrates the transitions between scenes with more transitions. On this quest, "I" encounters several obstacles, such as blocks, changes in gravity, "Elewaitors", spikes and flying bombs. To overcome these obstructions, "I" can alter its size, fall, and hook onto other blocks. "I" even gets to fly while dangling from a balloon.

The puzzles aren't overly complex or challenging, but it's creative and fun. It isn't too easy either. There are even a few spots that will make most players scratch their heads and tempt them to use the built in walkthrough. Each scene is a different type of puzzle or a more complex version of the previous one. This helps keep the player from getting bored. According to what the situation calls for, "I" can shrink and grow. This technique is used in most of the puzzles and is usually coupled with timing.

The music, like the rest of the game is fun and quirky. There is even a brief moment of elevator music while "I" is in what the narrator calls the "Elewaiter". The narrator's sarcasm blends seamlessly with the quirky music. He even mocks I’s deaths and encourages "I" to continue to try and get through the scene. The mostly black and white background ties in with the music and narrator as well. The controls are simple. They consist of just the arrows, which is nice. The ending is so unfunny that it is funny. You'll have to play the game to figure out why "I" is now "i" and "t" is now "T".

The only negative aspect in the game is that it is a bit short. It does such a good job of drawing the player in, so that he or she wants to know more of the story. The ending is appropriate, but it would be nice to know what the abstract characters, "I" and "T", think of each other and each other's change.

Hints and Tips:

If you get stuck, try having I dangle from the far side of the blocks on the screen. This often solves the problem.

When bombs are around, be quick. "I" only has so much time to reach the blocks and then shrink before exploding.

If you are still stuck, there is always the walkthrough.

Click here to play The I of It

If you enjoyed this game you may also enjoy these other free Puzzle games:
Paper Cannon 2
Connect It

Rotate your owl

03/08/2011 00:00:00

That scientist is staying way too straight faced for a job like his.

Zomgies 2

02/08/2011 00:00:00

Fighting for a Good Night's Sleep by Whitney Markee

Working the night shift is bound to give you strange dreams. You never know what you will encounter on your way to work. Some nights, you may encounter a hoard of green creatures with their lips sticking out called "zomgies". These no longer human creatures bite and eventually rip your head off as you try to kill them all. But don't be scared. Instead have some fun. Like the hero (or victim) of the game says while sprinting down the street, egging the zomgies on, this would make an awesome game.

The game certainly isn’t easy, but it is fun. It is even more difficult than the first Zomgies. The most notable differences between the two games is the graphics and the way you aim. These changes are definitely both great additions to the format. As you progress through the different levels and unlock more weapons, the game becomes even more challenging. But don't worry about dying, the main character is delighted to fight these flesh eating creatures and have the same nightmare over and over again. There is a multitude of weapons to destroy the creatures with; from flame throwers to machine guns. This keeps the game interesting. As you progress through the levels, new species of zombies appear. There are the larger Zomgies, who don’t die as easily, the jumpers, who literally leap across your screen, the evil babies, and a few others. All this adds depth and entertainment to the game. Another notable thing is the dark yet bold colors of the background. Everything is dark except the Zomgies. This makes the game very aesthetically pleasing. The music is kind of fun too although it seems to blend into the background a bit too easily.

The most negative aspect of the game is the controls. If you don’t have a gaming set up, or good mouse, it can be very difficult. Another minor flaw is that the purpose of the antidotes is never really explained. Luckily, this is not too big of a deal since you can always go back to levels you have already beaten so you can collect them all and beat the game fully.

Hints and Tips:

Take full advantage of the car when you have it. It is much easier to get across the level and collect antidotes with it than on foot.

Experiment with different weapons on different types of Zomgies. Some weapons are better at killing different types of zomgies.

The easiest way to get through each level is to zig zag across the street while shooting. Not only will the zomgies bunch up, which makes them easier to explode, but it will help prevent the jumpers from getting you.

Barrels are the most effective way to kill zomgies. Shoot lots of them.

Click here to play Marching Zombies for free

If you enjoyed this game you may also enjoy these other free action games:
Haunted Suburb
Skinny

Empire Avenue

26/07/2011 00:00:00

EuroGR have become part of Empire Avenue

For anyone unaware its an attempt to turn social media into a game similiar to the stock market. People and companies list themselves on site and their "value" rises/falls based on how they use social media such as blogging, facebook, youtube or twitter.

Hopefully it'll be an easy way to meet others interested in gaming and be able to arrange some cool new intersite features. If anyone here uses the site feel free to invest or send a tip over for any companies expected to rise.

Marching Zombies

26/07/2011 00:00:00

Bejeweled with Zombies and Guns by Whitney Markee

Have you ever wasted a few hours playing Bejeweled? Ever get bored of staring at the tacky shiny gems? Wish there was more excitement and strategy? If so, perhaps Marching Zombies might interest you. No more trying to match sparkling jewels you cannot touch, but instead, match skulls, swords, anvils and shields. Of course that is still a bit simple so add a horde of zombies trying to break into your house.

These challenging villains are not the typical George A. Romero zombies, but they are still slow moving and entertaining. They march forward, destroying shacks in the woods wearing police uniforms with chainsaws, clubs, and other intimidating weapons. They even toss random junk to try to bring down the structures. The faster symbols are matched, the more the zombies slow down and die. Which adds the challenge to the game. If you cannot match fast enough, you can always click on a heart to kill the zombie currently leading the group. If there are not enough hearts to stop them all, then you can always rely on your weapons. Purchase weapons such as bazookas, chainsaws, or land mines. If that is still not enough to stop the zombies then it is time to buy a fan or building repair kit.

The biggest problem with the game is that there is no crash course or instructions on how to play it tacticly. The basic Bejeweled part is pretty self explanatory, but how to kill the zombies, purchase weapons, and what forge points are (how they are earned and what they do) is a little more complex. With time, most of these hazy factors of the game can be figured out, but it would still be nice to have a slight overview before starting to play. The game has minimal story line. While matches are being made, it is clear the pseudo zombies are trying to destroy man made structures, which pigs retreat from, and get to the main house, but it would be more interesting to get more of a feel for the setting.

Hints and Tips:

Use weapons and building fix kits sparingly. To use them you need forge points, which accumulate slowly as matches are made.

Save the hearts for when you get stuck. They kill instantly and will save you in an emergency.

Experiment with different weapons and whether to take a more defensive or offensive approach early in the game. It is much harder to experiment in the later levels.

Click here to play Marching Zombies for free

If you enjoyed this game you may also enjoy these other free action games:
Gunbot
10800 Zombies

Haunted Suburb

19/07/2011 00:00:00

The Steam Punk Ghostbusters - by Whitney Markee

Zombies, ghosts, robots and giant insects are taking over the suburbs. This time, don’t call Ghost Busters or your local pest control man; call the steam punk characters, Otis and Franceska, to save the neighborhood. Choose your favorite character and set up a variety of towers and traps for these undead and unhuman creatures to fall, waddle, or drive into in this desktop tower defense game.

The graphics and animation are unique for a flash game. The bold shades of green and off kilter houses are similar to the animation in shows such as “Invader Zim.” The dark, but colorful world is attractive. Most of the monsters don’t say much, which is fine, but the one that does speak is amusing. The sumo zombies sometimes call for women or puppies as the waddle up the streets. If you get bored or antsy of waiting for the next wave, you can always fast forward, which is nice. The game doesn’t start off easy, but it does get progressively harder and fast forwarding can make it more difficult. The steam punk duo starts saving neighborhoods that are just chilling and then progress to neighborhoods that are creepy and then neighborhoods that are just plain horrifying. Every few levels, the number of wavess of monsters that must be defeated increases. With each new level, the map of the neighborhood gets more difficult to protect, e.g. the houses are rearranged, natural barriers are removed, roads are removed and rearranged, and there are less spots to place towers. If you are looking for a challenge, you have found one.

The one major fault or glitch in the game is that the next wave button does not always work. Although the game is definitely a challenge, it is extremely slow moving. Most of the weapons or towers are quite fun, but the pulse tower doesn’t do much until upgraded, which can be slightly inconvenient when you are trying to set up traps around the neighborhood..

Hints and Tips:

Open a gate to direct the monsters to a certain house, usually the one furthest from the start.

Place lots of towers where the monsters spawn to destroy them before they get a chance to get close to the houses.

Figure out which towers you think are the most effective and upgrade. Upgrade the tower a few times if you can.

Don’t forget to place carnivorous plants and ghost vortexes. Place the carnivorous plants at the houses where you leave the gates open most. Unfortunately, you don’t gain any ectoplasm when the carnivorous plants finish off a zombie. Keep that in mind if you need new towers or to upgrade existing ones.

Click here to play Haunted Suburb for free

If you enjoyed this game you may also enjoy these other free puzzle games:
Zombie Dolls
10800 Zombies

Paper Cannon 2

12/07/2011 00:00:00

Working On Graph Paper by Whitney Markee

Angry Birds minus the birds, the green pigs, and the slingshot-add cannon! more violence, and one eyed pink and green alien bunnies or as the game calls them, "creatures". The twist is you can’t blow up the innocents, or the pink alien bunnies, as your cannonball flies over and bounces off the roughly drawn obstacles. These aliens are your friends. The greens ones are infected and must be eliminated; green fluff and all. When you shoot them, they delightfully explode with a flying eye and fluff filled bang.

The graphics help set the game apart from similar games. Everything is sketched with blue ink. The only things colored in are the platforms that move when force is applied, the aliens, and the cannonballs. Despite having infinite ammunition, the game gets harder with each level as the pink creatures constantly place themselves in harm’s way.

The controls are simple. They are even simpler than Paper Cannon 1 if you play it on easy. Just move the mouse to aim and then click to shoot. With enough force, the cannon bounces around the screen like a rogue pinball until it explodes. The whole game is easier than Paper Cannon 1, which could be considered a plus. There are no moving platforms in the early levels. This allows you to get more of a feel of working with the weapon. Too often games throw players in at the deep-end which means they cant fully understand the more complex parts later on in the game as they haven't had a chance to master and basics.

The only negative aspect of the game is the walkthrough which is located in the toolbar. It shows you a video of every shot you need to make. When you get stuck, which you eventually will, it just feels like cheating. Since the walkthrough is linked to the game, perhaps it could be switched out with tips or something less revealing. The walkthrough isn’t any help if you are playing on hard.

Tips for beating the game:

Remember, even though you do have an endless arsenal of cannons, with each shot fired your score decreases.

If playing on easy, the closer the mouse is to the cannon, the less force it will shoot with. That of course is coupled with the farther the mouse is away from the cannon, the more force it shoots with. Keep this in mind when aiming for the bunnies.

If playing on hard, the longer the left mouse button is held down, the more force the cannon will be shot with. Practice this in the early levels while the game is still easy.

You can bounce the cannon balls off each other.

Since the score decreases with each shot, it is good to consider restarting when you figure out your shots to save points or even going back and replaying a level while it is still fresh in your mind.

Click here to play Paper Cannon 2 for free

If you enjoyed this game you may also enjoy these other free puzzle games:
Confuse Box
Doodle God 2

feel unappreciated at work?

10/07/2011 00:00:00

Had to share this image I got sent via e-mail earlier this week. Just goes to show that however unappreciated you feel at work you probably get a lot more attention from your co-workers than the guy in the story.

Funnier still is the new health and safety policy you know will come around due to this where workers are encouraged to actively check each other for signs of life!

Little Samurai

05/07/2011 00:00:00

Little Samurai - Teletubby with a Sword - By Whitney Markee

Be afraid of the Japanese Teletubby Ninja who runs across Japan with his samurai sword. Not only is he nauseatingly cute, to the point of almost being disgusting, but he also speaks baby "babble" instead of Japanese. At least he befriends a grizzly bear and dragon instead of a giggling sun in his first ten minutes of fame.

One of the few good things about the game is that the controls are simple-point and click. The background is usually pretty interesting and a little scary. It helps one cope with the cute ninja. Admittedly, it is kind of amusing to watch the guards and Japanese citizens run away in pain or occasionally become pleased because of Little Samurai’s hijinks.

These amusing pranks don’t negate the fact that the game is extremely short and easy. No challenge. If that doesn’t bother you then there is still a good chance the main character will. He "babbles", a lot! Before he rides off into the next scene, he emits a Japanese character or heart. Most of the final battle is a video. It would be more fun to play more, but at least the battle seems exciting until you beat it. At which point, the only threatening and not cute villain, the evil wizard ninja, cries.

From an art perspective the game is very pleasant to look at, it has a nice consistent colour palate that creates some pretty landscapes, the animation is also top quality. You can tell the the game was made by a team of people and not by a single developer trying to do everything which all too often results in a very mediocre game.

This is one of a few basic flash games that Ive played recently, It's one of those ideas that on paper doesn't sound like it'll work. a game with absolutely no skill or puzzle solving that has no repeatability value, but it seems that this is just the sort of game people want to play in their spare time. Perhaps it provides a calm and relaxing atmosphere that requires no mental power at all that some people want after a hard days work.

Tips for beating the game:

The game is pretty simple. If stuck, run your mouse across the screen until it transforms from an arrow to a finger.

The last action is usually something your samurai does, so if you're stuck try clicking on yourself to finish the level

Click here to play Little Samurai for free

If you enjoyed this game you may also enjoy these other free puzzle games:
Desktop Tower Defense
Anbot

Zombie Driver

03/07/2011 00:00:00

Ever Wonder what the original Grand Theft Auto would be like if the civilians were replaced by zombies? Well the developers of Zombie Driver certainly did!

This is another of the games in the indie bundle steam brought out a while ago and some guides and tutorials have been made for anyone wanting to see some footage before deciding the invest. The game isn't going to win any awards but that doesnt mean it isnt worth the few quid it costs to buy it from steam. You can see a runthrough of the first level with the secondary mission goal completed in the attached youtube clip.

Or if you still want to race but dont want to pay for a game you can get your fix with the following free flash games:
Monster Truck Trials
Demolish Truck 2

Skinny

28/06/2011 00:00:00

Skinny - An Obedient Robot in a Not So Obedient World - By Whitney Markee

Skinny is a delightful blend of the movie Coraline and the game Limbo, rolled into a short flash game. The game starts with the main character, a shadowy robot named Skinny, looking for his son’s marbles. After his son’s marbles have been returned, Skinny looks for the batteries stolen from mother’s children by a strange little boy named Felix. As the game continues and gradually becomes more difficult, it is up to you and Skinny to figure out who the real antagonist is and who is the hero.

“Dad! Look! The dolphins are jumping out of the clouds!” One of the “children” says after you return its batteries. The children are an interesting and creative aspect of the game. Some of the things they say before and after their batteries are returned is a little twisted and a little amusing, much like the game Coma, which is created by the same developers. The music and graphics also help make the game enjoyable. The music is fun and quirky, just like the sayings of the children. The graphics and world are impressive. The black and green colour scheme, helps to create the unnatural world that the player finds themselves in. The strong storyline adds to the creation of this world. There is not only an air of mystery, but also something sinister about this world that mother has created.

The graphics and story line are also negative features of the game. Every once in a while the game’s controls freeze up. The controls make the game a little more difficult than it needs to be. For how basic and few they are, it would be simpler to use the arrow keys. The story line turns into a negative at the end. The game stops, with no conclusion, leaving the player wondering who the real villain is and what lies in the next part of the game that does not exist yet.

A few tips for beating the game:

Listen for the spiders. They make a unique sound. It will save you a lot of time not having to steal your batteries back from them.

Watch which crystals inactivate which lasers, and for how long. If you’re not careful, you can get stuck when the laser returns.

Practice double jumping a lot. You will need to be good at it by the end of the game.

Click here to play Skinny for free

If you enjoyed this game you may also enjoy these other shooting based flash games:
Gunbot
10800 Zombies

Machinarium walkthrough on youtube

25/06/2011 00:00:00

After Pointing and clicking our way through a vivid steam-punk world EuroGR can finally unveil its walkthrough for the cute point and click adventure game "Machinarium"

This award winning game cant fail to charm anyone who tries it. The walkthroughs are split into small puzzle segments to try and avoid accidentally giving away spoilers for anyone trying to complete the game with minimal help.

There is also picture aid to the last couple of puzzles for anyone who wants extra help which can be found here

For anyone who doesnt own the game but still wants to checkout the youtube channel you can follow this link: View The EuroGR youtube channel

Zombie Dolls

21/06/2011 00:00:00

Zombie Dolls - So Fun to Kill - by Whitney Markee

Zombie Dolls is an addictive and amusing game. Hours can easily be lost hiding behind barricades shooting, beating, boomeranging, and exploding these adorable zombies as they try to overrun your house. If you like simple zombie shooting games or are in search of a zombie game that isn't too graphic, then this game is for you.

The best part of the game is definitely the zombies themselves. The assortment of zombie dolls, such as pirates, angry zombie dolls, and ninja zombie dolls, keep the game interesting and challenging. They even try to fly over your barricades dangling from balloons. The wide variety of weapons also adds to the challenge.

Some zombies can only be killed with certain weapons. You have to figure out which weapons are effective against which type of zombies. Then you have to learn how to defend yourself against their collection of attacks. Sometimes repairing the barricades and rapidly shooting does not cut it. As you become more proficient at killing zombies, you can focus on other things like how they often scream “Oh, no,” when shot. It kind of makes you feel bad for killing them. The feeling does not last long though as they continue to try to invade your house.

One flaw in the game is the way you earn money. If you shoot certain zombies they drop coins. Sometimes those coins will float up into your bank account instantaneously, other times it takes to the end of the round or the coins are never added to your bank account. This makes it very difficult to purchase new weapons, especially when the max you get for beating a level is ten coins and the weapons average a couple hundred coins each. If you don’t have the right weapon to beat a level, you might be stuck there for a long time as you try to save up for one you can beat it with.

A few tips for beating the game-

Become familiar with each weapon and which type of zombie it is meant to kill. Once you are familiar with this, remember to toggle between weapons so your barricades won’t be destroyed.

Consider whether you want a better defense or offense early. You won’t be able to procure enough money to make both strong.

If you get stuck, change your strategy and maybe strengthen your barricades a little or upgrade your weapon. Remember, ninjas can dodge most bullets.

Click here to play Zombie Dolls for free

If you enjoyed this game you may also enjoy these other shooting based flash games:
Gunbot
Sharp Trigger

Indie Galore on Steam

18/06/2011 00:00:00

Steam is known for its sales every week but this week has got to be one of the best. They've created two indie game packages and are selling them for a massive 80% discount. The games on offer are:

Indie Variety pack:

A.R.E.S. Extinction Agenda

Atom Zombie Smasher

Capsized

Machinarium

Swords and Soldiers HD

Indie Action pack:

AaAaAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity

Gridrunner Evolution

Metal Drift

Starscape

Zombie Driver

EuroGR have bought both these packages so expect to see guides/tutorials/gameplay footage on the youtube channel shortly.

Doodle God 2

14/06/2011 00:00:00

Doodle God 2- Much of the Same - by Whitney Markee

If you enjoyed Doodle God 1, then you’ll enjoy the sequel. The first portion of the game is almost identical to Doodle God 1. The most notable difference between the two games is that instead of creating 115 elements within 14 groups, you now have to create 196 elements within 21 groups. A few elements from first Doodle God are removed and some elements are added from Doodle Devil.

I loved the continuation of the sayings of some great figures in history such as Shakespeare, Siddhartha Gautama, and Coleridge each time an element is created. If the element is not humorous, the quote that accompanies its creation almost always is. Of course, there are some elements that you can’t help but love to create. A few of my favorites are alcoholic + ship = pirate or firearm + vodka = Russian roulette. Although some of the new elements are humorous and witty, creating them can be frustrating. The game gets confusing in the third episode. In which elements that previously could not be combined, now must be combined to beat the game.

Overall the game is enjoyable. The new features and elements add enough to the game to make fans of the original Doodle God and even Doodle Devil come back for more. If you’re new to the series, you won’t be lost starting mid series. The rules of the game may sound simple, but don’t start playing Doodle God 2 unless you are looking for a challenge. It is not as easy as it sounds!

A Few Tips for beating the game

- Develop a system early on for discovering new elements. It is tedious, but in the end, when there are literally hundreds of different possible combinations, it will save you a lot of time. One possibility is each time a new element is discovered, go back and mechanically try to combine it with all previously discovered elements.

Another Tip is in the third episode, don’t forget to try and combine elements that previously could not be merged. Of course, whenever you get stuck, the game has the single light bulb in the toolbar, which brings up two categories. With the right combination, at least two elements may be combined to create a new element.

If that seems like cheating and you want more of a challenge, there is the new double light bulb, which tells you an element you have to create. It is up to you to figure out how to create it.

Click here to play Doodle God 2 for free

If you enjoyed this game you may also enjoy these other puzzles based flash games:
Spitfire: 1940
Papas Burgeria

Looking for New Talent

05/06/2011 00:00:00

EuroGR is on the lookout for new members to its writing team.

In order to bring more regular content to the site we require more vibrant writers who are interested in the world of gaming and keen to delve into new releases and explore the "behind the scenes" aspect of gaming.

We are currently looking for anyone willing to review flash games on a weekly basis however if you have something else in mind that you wish to review we are always open to new ideas and discussions.

There have been several applicants so far and each will be writing a review in the coming days to be published on the site, if everything goes well everyone can expect lots of lovely new features on EuroGR for everyone to enjoy

If you feel that you enjoy gaming and writing about it feel free to contact me at bigbmxdave2@hotmail.com and you can have a go at writing a review of a game. Alongside flash game reviewers we are also looking for a sociable person able to conduct interviews with games developers and professional gamers as well as another person willing to look after the community side of EuroGR by looking after the forums and our players and perhaps organising a few fun evenings that everyone can take part in.

If anyone needs any inspiration you can sample some previous articles about flash games on this site:

Gold Carnival - Devious gold making tactics

01/06/2011 00:00:00

I'm glad that after being away from World of Warcraft for a few months that I can come back and the amazing JMTC blogging carnival is still around and as vibrant as ever. A big welcome from EuroGR to anyone visiting from the JMTC community for this article.

Now as the topic of this months carnival is “devious gold making tactics” I got thinking about anything devious I did back in Wotlk. Whenever I was on late at night I had a lovely route I used to take that took my past the nests of these 4 creatures:

Leaping Hatchling

Darting Hatchling

Razormaw Hatchling

Ravasaur Hatchling

Each one was contained in a nest that spawned 3-4x a day. If I was lucky I could come across all 4 nests in one run and sell them on the AH for 2-3k Now I'd say this is a little bit devious as its not something too many people are aware of, especially people on late at night. I was able to do this for a long time and make a considerable amount

Now when Cata came out it brought flying in the old world which made visiting all these nests so much easier

Firstly the Leaping hatchling, this little fellow can be found in the northern barrens and can be frequently found by lucky new characters who are leveling in that area. He sells for 300g on my realm currently

Next is the Darting Hatchling who can be found in the northern area of Dustswallow marsh, as this area is slightly less visited the pet can fetch 450-500g.

Further south in the Un'Goro crater is the best find, the Ravasaur Hatchling, This one is hidden amongst the trees and bushes and is easy to miss. Because hes hard to spot the price on the auction house is 2500-3000g. There are also reports that the nest is on a slower respawn timer than the other 4. Its worth flying out of your way a little bit to check the locations for this one

Lastly over in the Wetlands is the Razormaw hatchling tucked away in a little cave. Finding him can get you 300g.

One thing to consider is that if you take time out of your regular activities to search for these you wont find them every time and your gold/hour rate won't be too impressive. What you should aim for instead is to remind yourself every time you're in those areas to pop in and check on the nests. This can happen several times if you are training your archaeology. As digsites are located all over the old world you're bound to pass un-goro and the wetlands several times on your search for artefacts and finding one of these nests is sure to make your day a happy one. Whats even better is if you do one sweep and find all four!

EuroGR is on youtube

31/05/2011 00:00:00

Over the last two weeks EuroGR have been setting up its own youtube channel, the channel aims to be an archive of gameplay videos and guides however as a general rule anything thats game related is welcome on it. Currently we have footage and reviews of games such as :

Sim City 4

Fortix 2

Plants Vs Zombies

Team Fortress 2

World of Warcraft

Lume

Inside a star filled sky

The main aim of the channel is to both give gamers an insight into games before they purchase them and help out those who have already bought the game but want to view challenges from a different angle.

Currently there are two projects the EuroGR crowd are actively engaged in on the youtube channel, The first being to upload 1000 videos. (A big task but im sure we'll get there) And the second project being to create an individual video for every companion pet in World of warcraft, there are currently 198 so even though its a mini-project its going to take a lot of effort, especially for some of the rare pets.

We would appreciate any support viewers can give and would be especially grateful for anyone who is interested enough in the channel to subscribe to it.

View The EuroGR youtube channel

Spitfire : 1940

10/04/2011 00:00:00

Not what it appears
I started playing this game because I wanted to see how well flash could handle simulating flying physics. I was then pretty confused to find out that this game involves absolutely no flying at all. Instead its more of an economy/numbers game. You spend your time assigning tasks and deciding what to construct and at the end of each turn your planes go out and do the fighting for you.

Tactics
The overall aim of the game is to destroy 300 of the enemies planes without losing 2 cities. There are however a lot of choices you have to make. If you create too many planes you might not have enough pilots to fly them. If you create too many spies you may not have enough men gathering metal to create new planes. The whole game is based around finely tuning your production.

Gambling with spies
The spy/intelligence feature is an interesting one in this game. During each turn you get various information about where the enemy will strike. If you have enough spies you will receive 100% of this information and will be able to setup your troops accordingly, however as your Intel power decreases you receive information with blanked out areas, for example you could be faced with the decision of sending half your troops to protect London and the other half to protect the Northwest, or send all your planes to one site and hope you get lucky. This feature makes spies an important part of the game and not just a luxury.

Get a good start or play catchup
The secret to this game revolves around getting a good start and not having to play catch up. If you start off strong and don't lose too many planes you wont find yourself wondering how on earth to defend the 6 attacks heading your way with 2 planes and half a disgruntled pilot.

Tips:

Invest in recruiters in the early stages

don't be afraid to completely ignore some raids, early on in the game the damage done is minimal and nothing that cant be fixed up by your builders

If you find yourself with too few planes to properly defend raids it may be worth not defending at all for a turn or two till you build up a decent size airforce, as long as you have builders on hand to repair the damage done.

Click here to play Spitfire:1940 for free

10800 Zombies

03/04/2011 00:00:00

This game has taken the flash games design motto of keeping things simple and easy to play and shoved it through a blender, set it on fire and then nuked it from orbit!

Do not play this game unless you fancy a challenge! the game is beatable, but not by everyone. Now that you've been warned and expect lots of death (by yourself and the zombies) we can get on with the review:

the game is in essence a simple pixelated platformer, make your way through the maze of platforms to the end and shoot all the zombies with an array of weapons. The game features a variety of weapons, enemies and secret rooms, all the sorts of things that we've come to expect from platformers. How this game differs is in the way the zombies come at you. These aren't your typical slow, groaning “house of the dead” type. These monsters come at you from all angles and at speed. Take into account the way the visible area of the screen is reduced to mimic being in the dark and only seeing using a flash light and you need some fighter-pilot type reactions to avoid taking damage.

Each level takes the form of a maze of platforms with a door at the end that you have to navigate to,. Every few levels you reach a boss which will probably chew you up and fart you out a few times before you even start to figure out how to beat him. Some may see this sudden forced level repetition as a challenge, others may find it slightly annoying

along the way you will unlock various other characters for doing things like reaching milestone levels or finding secret areas or even completing the entire game using just the weakest weapon. These new characters with only slightly varied traits seem a bit like a failed attempt to extend the longevity of the game. I'm sure the game designers thought the different characters would produce an alternate style of play from gamers, however there are only really 2 tactics that can be considered sensible in this game. The first being to shoot everything that moves, and the 2nd being slightly harder but involving knowing where the exits from playing the levels before and just jumping and dodging your way to them avoiding touching anything that moves.

The graphics and sound are ok, nothing to shout about but not bad. The pixelated art style seems to work well and keeps things running smoothly whilst the music does an ok job of creating an ambience whilst staying in the background.

Overall its a game that I recommend trying as you will be able to figure out if you want to play it till the end within the first 5 minutes of gameplay.

Tips:

if you have your pistol out spam bullets as you move forward, your bullets travel further than the screen edge and allow you to kill enemies before you see them

learn level layouts, you will be repeating them a lot and knowing where to go saves a lot of time

when you die you keep the guns/ammo you had on death. Use this to set yourself up for harder areas

when fighting the bosses try anything you can think of, a lot of the time there is no obvious way to win so experiment until their health starts dropping.

Click here to play 10800 Zombies for free

Papas Burgeria

15/03/2011 00:00:00

“Welcome to Goodburger, home of the Goodburger, may I take your order?”

Ever wanted to flip burgers all day for a low wage?
Me neither! Doesn't stop this game being fun though.

Papas Burgeria can best be described as a memory / puzzle / timing game carefully hidden in a bun. You are the only staff member in charge of running a burger shop by taking customers orders, making sure their burgers are cooked perfectly and assembling their very specific and custom made burgers. It sounds easy enough, but after playing this game for a while I can very much say that it isn't.

Learning curve
The game starts with a very nice and friendly tutorial, a single customer makes a sensible order and you are shown how to complete the order. Very quickly however you get several customers coming at you in rapid succession and most people will start to find it very challenging

Harder than the real thing
There are times in the game when you've got to make sure the new customers aren't standing in line too long, remember the cooking stages of 3-4 individual burgers and carefully stack several unimaginable unhealthy burgers for a tubby man called big Pauly. I've never had proper experience of working in a burger restaurant but at times it seems that this game is harder than the real deal. (awaits mass of angry e-mails from burger chain employees)

smooth graphics
The graphics work well and have had a lot of polish put onto them to give the game a smooth and almost tactile feel. The smoothness of a game is always important however it becomes extra important in a game with so much timing required by players such as this one. If the graphics didn't load quickly or navigating them was hard the game would totally fall apart and become very frustrating to play

upgrade shop
The game revolves around making the best burgers possible in order to get bigger tips from the customers, the better the burger the bigger the tip, over time the customers who you serve well reward you with bigger tips. These tips are then used to purchase shop upgrades such as posters to keep customers happy whilst they wait or a timer to help prevent you overcooking burgers.

Tips

Throw 2 or 3 burgers onto the fryer before the 1st customer comes in. This gives you a few seconds advantage at the start which can stop queues building up and causing you havoc during the level

try and memorise at least a few customers orders so as soon as you see them come in the shop you can plan ahead e.g. big Pauly always has a triple cheese burger with mayo

If you find yourself with a few spare seconds take a look at the next burger to be made and get it ready up to the point the burger is needed. These extra few seconds gained add up quickly

Don't aim for 100% perfect burgers all the time, anything above 90% is enough to keep the customers happy and make them give you good tips (how many times do you remember getting a burger that was 100% identical to the one advertised in real life? Never!)

Click here to play Papas Burgeria for free

Gunbot

14/03/2011 00:00:00

Imagine Rayman if he was a cowboy. That's the best way to describe this action packed shooter.

The game is a platform shooter where You're a futuristic cowboy/robot. The basic goal of each level is to get to the wooden sign post at the end, at the end of each of the 3 worlds there is a boss who's special abilities you need to learn in order to beat him. however there are various obstacles in your quest to reach this boss such as jumping puzzles and an army of bad guys with many different ways to harm you. There are also things to collect such as money to buy upgrades with and stars hidden around each level to collect for bonuses

The upgrade system
This is pretty standard in that collecting coins through the missions grants you the ability to purchase better guns and shield upgrades. There is also a premium shop that lets you purchase ingame weapons for real world cash however the game is easily beatable without any of these premium upgrades. As you gain experience for killing enemies you will also level up your character and unlock special abilities which allow you to either navigate the map easier or dodge incoming threats.

graphics
the game features some very nice cartoonesque graphics and beautiful parallax scrolling. I was expecting different graphics for each world however there's usually so much happening on the screen at once that the backdrop of each level isn't really that noticeable.

Difficulty
The game has a nice learning curve. New enemies get introduced one at a time and the player has lots of practise dispatching them individually before being presented by hordes of them. One thing that may seem tricky at the start is the dual controls. You move the character using the WASD keys and aim using the mouse. The game is very forgiving with the controls though. Your projectiles are massive and its hard to miss, especially with some of the later guns which can fill the screen with your shots. There is also a double jump skill you learn at level 3 which prevents you from missing too many jumps. Conveniently you can gain a “Fire Fury” skill which acts like a napalm strike on the whole of the screen killing everything in sight. This comes in handy if you've accidentally fallen off a ledge and found yourself surrounded.

tips

Slow and steady wins the race – rushing forward usually leaves you surrounded by enemies unable to shoot them all at once. If you move more slowly through each level you will be able to clear the enemies in a more orderly fashion and dodge whatever they throw at you

invest in a shield with a gold bonus early – this gives you more gold in the long run for better upgrades. Shields also give you more hit points which stops you dying after the first 2 hits.

Reload often – not much worse than getting killed because you ran into a fight with 1 bullet left

Click here to play Gunbot for free

Goblins of Fuselight

14/12/2010 00:00:00

A lot of the succesful gold makers in WoW have a special route set out that they take every now and then which visits various remote vendors which sell limited items. The aim is to gather these hard to get vendor items and resell them on the auction house at much inflated prices. These tend to sell mostly because of the laziness of other people to travel to these far away places for one item for a quest or profession. However if you have a route set-up of these and buy several of these hard to get items you can make a pretty good income from your travels.

It'll take a few weeks for new routes to be established and people can create the most efficient ones. Mostly because we'll need to wait for the markets to settle down to decide which items are profitable and in high demand and which ones will just end up clogging your bank tabs up.

One potential stop off on the route are the new villages of Fuselight and Fuselight-by-the-sea. Two goblin based places that have sprung up on the east side of the badlands. There is no real reason for anyone who was already level 80 when Cata was released to go visit the place as it is mainly a zone for people leveling in badlands who are level 35-45

The reason for this is that there are 2 engineering vendors, one in each village. Both of these stock limited engineering items as well as 4 schematics:
Blue Firework
EZ-Throw Dynamite II
Green Firework
Red Firework
This isn't the only place to get these schematics from however with the renewed interested in World of Warcraft they might still end up as profitable investments.

First day of Cata

07/12/2010 00:00:00

I've just come off after my first 3 hours of the new Cataclysm expansion and Ive got to say that im very pleased with the game so far.

I've explored the underwater world a bit and got my own seahorse mount which was a very nice gift from my new aquatic friends. I then got my flying license and went for a nosey around the previously unreachable areas of Azeroth. It felt really weird seeing all the familiar places but from different angles.

I was them pleasantly amused by a singing sunflower companion pet that I asked how to get one myself. This resulted in me giving the Blizz team a thumbs up for incorporating a plants vs zombies minigame :). I hear Ive also got a peggle minigame to look forward to.

My plan to fish and cook my way to profit is starting with my spending some time looking for the new fish. It's going to take me a while to remember all their new names. It'll also take me a while to earn enough cooking points for all the recipes. Hopefully there will be the equivalent of the "water logged recipe" to speed things along.

One point specifically related to gold making (this is meant to be a gold blog after all) is that the rare recipe for deviate delight in the Barrens has become a very frequent drop. There are rumours that is is a bug that will be fixed soon. If you have a bit of spare time it may be worth picking up a few of these just in case the rumours are true and they start selling for 500g-1500g on your server.

EGR grow bigger and bigger

01/12/2010 00:00:00

Like a fat kid given too many pies EGR need to invest in some bigger pants.

There is now so much content on the site that we have to invest in a bigger server package. Instead of this leading to early death through obesity (still with the fat kid metaphor) It now means that EGR can host 4x more content than before. This means that everyone can look forward to more services from the site. More minigames in the games section and hopefully a lot more clan pages.

Making gold in Cataclysm

30/11/2010 00:00:00

Last Post before Cataclysm is released! I hope you're all as excited as me.

This months Carnival topic was what things people will be doing when Cataclysm is released to make gold. I've had my first week of Cataclysm planned for a long time now. It may sound boring to some people but I intend to dive straight into the fishing and cooking content.

Before you all start questioning my sanity and asking how I could possibly consider fishing when there is so much new content to explore let me explain my logic.

At the start there are going to be some very dedicated raiders who will be trying their hardest to be the realm first to complete various dungeons/raids and end game content. These people will be willing to throw as much gold as they have at their quest. My original idea would be to quickly grind out the 10,000 catches required to get the new fish feast – Seafood Magnifique. However my plan was rudely interrupted when I found out that these were bound to the chef.

This does not mean that all is lost though. All the other recipes and buffs will still be in demand by other raiders and during the first few weeks there is going to be little competition in terms of prices on the auction house which will allow me and other chefs to set our own prices. A good resource for learning about the new fish in Catalysm is Els Anglin which I recommend to any budding fisherman.

Similar to Wrath the new recipes will be available by earning tokens from daily quests which are now found from Robby Flay (stormwind) or Marogg (ogrimmar). This also means that's dedicated chefs hold on various recipe markets will be easier to hold onto until people start earning their own daily cooking tokens.

Another Item I shall be after is the brand new fishing bag. A 36 slot bag designed to hold fish and various fishing items. I'm not sure it will result in much more profit but it will certainly make long fishing trips a bit easier. Currently this item can only be made by Engineers. So might be time to call in some favours with guild friends.

Cooking and fishing will not be all of what I will be doing. I will also be exploring the world like mad, trying the new dungeons, visiting the new zones. One of the principles I work with when trying to make gold is that knowledge is power. You can come up with a few theories ahead of time about what will make profit in Cataclysm but the best thing to do is learn everything you can about the new items and systems and try out as many informed strategies as you can.

if you have any plans for making gold during the start of Cataclysm feel free to share them on our Forums

Worthy Causes

23/11/2010 00:00:00

I'm choosing this week to highlight a great cause. The guys at Wow Marathon Have decided to organise a massive WoW gaming session when Cataclysm comes out. They will race to become the first level 85 character on public realms. This is no easy task as they will be up against many professional gaming teams who will also be after the same achievement.

What makes this event special is that the whole thing will be broadcast and all money raised via this stunt will go to a worthy charity.It's well worth checking out their page for details of the event and the various giveaways and contests they will be running during it.

Preparing for Cataclysm

16/11/2010 00:00:00

Blizzard have announced the release date for Cataclysm as December 7th, This doesn't give us much time to prepare. I'm currently writing an article detailing what I'm going to be doing when Cata first comes out. However its always a good idea to construct your own plan based on all the information you have.

Since the Beta came out there have been a host of excellent resources dedicated to highlighting any changes that will most likely be made once Cata goes live. Below is a list of links to various sites and blogs detailing aspects of Cata that the community know or suspect. Take a read through a few. Think about how the changes relate to the economy and think of what you can do now to prepare for it so that you can profit from it straight away whilst everyone else is still learning.

wowwiki
wowhead
mmo-champion
warcraftecon
wowcataclysminfo
wow-cataclysm
wowblues
mmorpgfocus
cataclysmfrontlines

Knowledge equals power

Meet the Voice Actors - part 1

14/11/2010 00:00:00

Ever wanted to see what the voice actors in TF2 actually looked like? Well now you can

Warning - illusions may be shattered

The Heavy

The Engineer

Spy and Pyro

Not what you thought they'd look like?

How to be really annoying on the Auction house

09/11/2010 00:00:00

If you really want to annoy some people on the auction house there no quicker way to do so than waiting until they post and then undercut them with your products by 1 copper. You might as well walk up to their house, take a dump on their doorstep and when they open the door slap them in the face.

The main benefit of this is that your products are now the cheapest on the auction house. That is as long as you are undercutting the current cheapest and no one undercuts you any time soon. Undercutting by one copper also seems very personal. If you undercut by large amounts it just seems like you are trying to be the cheapest on the market. By undercutting someone by one copper you are personally attacking someone's price and specifically aiming to stop them getting sales. As a result people could take this one of two ways. First they could decide that they do not want the hassle and move markets. Or they could decide to fight back and start undercutting you.

Then we come to the downsides, firstly the fees that you will incur if you get into an undercutting war with someone, if you take your items on and off constantly you will be paying the auction house fee and these will start cutting deeply into your profit margins.

The second downside is a much more prominent one, and that is the amount of time you lose by having to camp the auction house and relist items. If you find this sort of competition fun then go ahead. However I really don't see this being more profitable than expanding the markets you deal with, gathering or crafting things, or generally just learning about WoW some more.

Overall I think this is one of those tactics that looks good at first glance but eventually people realise that the costs fair outweigh the benefits, sure you may end up driving a bit of your competition out of the market. But there's nothing stopping them from moving into another market you work in, or even coming back after a short break. There's even the possibility that your undercutting annoys them so much they start posting at a loss just to stop your items selling but not low enough to make buying them out and reselling an option.

Recap

02/11/2010 00:00:00

I'm sure there are a few people hanging around this site from JMTC who are wondering where this blog came from and what its about. It doesn't get featured on any blog rolls and most people have never heard of it. When I first started writing gold guides it was mainly a way for me to keep track of my findings as I was learning about all aspects of WoW. I had hoped that my articles would help a few people earn some more gold, however at the start my articles were being read by a handful of people at most. Now that the website is more established and my articles get a few thousand views I feel it may be time to recap and highlight a few previous articles that may benefit some new readers.

Mining in the old world
This is one of the first articles I ever published. I know a lot of you are thinking of writing your own blogs one day but dont think you can put together an interesting article. Well take a look at this one, its nothing fancy but it has everything it needs to be useful to others. So dont worry about filling your articles with jokes and puns (those will come later). If you want to start your own blog just start with the basics, find a gold making theory and test it. Then analyise the results and share it with the world.

Crabbing
This is one of my favourite articles as it shows you don't need to be a fully geared level 80 to start making decent amounts of gold. This is an easily accessible spot that is rarely occupied.

Fish feasts
A while ago I did an epic saga of articles, I took apart the fish feast and wrote 1 article in each of the fish involved, 1 article on the spices and this summary article to conclude it all. Either take a look at this final article or if you're interested check out the previous 4 articles for the in depth analysis on how to make the most out of this dish.

Why you struggle to make gold
In the real world I do a lot of traveling for work which means I may be away from my computer for a large period of time and unable to do a proper experiment to write about. When this happens I tend to think of anything I can write about that concerns the WoW economy in general. This article looks at various reasons why people struggle to make as much gold as they want and I believe it holds some information that will be relevant even in the year 2050 when WoW might be on its 20th update!

Feel free to browse any of the old articles and remember to post your opinions on the forums, either say what you liked or didn't like about an article or perhaps suggest a topic for a future post.

Golden Joystick awards 2010

30/10/2010 00:00:00

the 28th Golden Joystick awards were held recently. This contest is probably the most sought after in the gaming industry and to win here means youve made a really amazing game. To check out the full details you can head over to the Golden Joystick site

Or if you just want to know the winners here's a summary:

The Action/Adventure Game Of The Year in association with Nuts
Winner: Assassin's Creed II
Runners Up: Batman: Arkham Asylum, Red Dead Redemption

Download Game Of The Year in association with Green Man Gaming
Winner: Plants vs. Zombies
Runners Up: Battlefield 1943, Call of Duty: World At War: ZOMBIES

Fighting Game Of The Year in association with Official Nintendo Magazine
Winner: Street Fighter IV
Runners Up: Tekken 6, Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny

Music Game Of The Year in association with Total Film
Winner: Guitar Hero 5
Runners Up: DJ Hero, The Beatles: Rock Band

The One To Watch in association with MSN
Winner: Call of Duty: Black Ops
Runners Up: Fallout: New Vegas, Star Wars: The Old Republic

Online Game Of The Year in association with CVG
Winner: League of Legends
Runners Up: Aion: The Tower Of Eternity, Farmville

Portable Game Of The Year in association with Habbo
Winner: Pokémon Heart Gold/Soul Silver
Runners Up: Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines, Plants vs. Zombies

Puzzle Game Of The Year in association with NGamer
Winner: World of Goo
Runners Up: Professor Layton and Pandora's Box, Scribblenauts

Racing Game Of The Year in association with T3
Winner: Forza Motorsport 3
Runners Up: Need For Speed: Shift. Colin McRae: Dirt 2

RPG Of The Year in association with GamesRadar
Winner: Mass Effect 2
Runners Up: Fallout 3: Game Of The Year Edition, Final Fantasy XIII

Shooter Of The Year in association with IGN Game On
Winner: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Runners Up: Bad Company 2, Left 4 Dead 2

Soundtrack Of The Year in association with Metal Hammer
Winner: Final Fantasy XIII
Runners Up: Brutal Legend, Assassin's Creed 2

Sports Game Of The Year in association with Mousebreaker
Winner: FIFA 10
Runners Up: Wii Sports Resort, Skate 3

Strategy Game Of The Year in association with PC Gamer
Winner: Plants vs. Zombies
Runners Up: The Sims 3, Age of Empires III: Collection

UK Developer Of The Year in association with Edge
Winner: Jagex
Runners Up: Rockstar North,

Blizzcon

27/10/2010 00:00:00

With Blizzcon over for this year I thought I'd post one of the reviews here. The Telegraph did a basic run down of what happened over at the big event:

It’s a wrap: BlizzCon, Blizzard’s annual fan-festival, is over for another year, and it was a lot of fun. We saw countless cosplayers parading around in their fantastical finery, some of the finest e-sports professionals duke it out before packed auditoriums and we got hands-on time with Blizzard’s upcoming dungeon hack-and-slasher, Diablo ....Click here to read more

If any of you have come across an interesting report on this years blizzcon or even attended/watched the event yourself we'd love to have you post your opinions over at the forum.

Mistakes on the Auction house

26/10/2010 00:00:00

A big welcome to anyone who came here via Marckos fantastic site JMTC. I hope you enjoy my article and maybe even perhaps spot some phrases that youve said that have stopped you trying a new gold making strategy. If so the best I can hope for is that my article makes you stop putting off looking at new areas of WoW and diving right in to make money straight away.

As always if you want to voice your opinion please do so at our ever growing forums we really would love to hear from all of you.

Its been a while now since I started looking at the Auction house seriously and trying to make large amounts of gold. I had a little think today about what mistakes I've made over my journey so far. I had a hard time thinking of any trades that made a loss for me, most of them were just typos of me being dim and failing to double check things. After realising that most areas of the market I had tried to profit from had been successful for me it dawned on me. My biggest mistake was not trying things soon enough. I'm going to give you a few excuses that I remember giving to myself when I came across a new part of the market that potentially could make me more gold. All of these became profitable once I got round to it. So if you see yourself coming up with any of the following excuses then take a step back and think about whether there is a serious reason you shouldn't try something, or whether you're just being scared or lazy.

“I don't have any of the recipes/designs/plans” - This put me off going into Jewel crafting for a while. I figured that I wouldn't be able to compete with the guys who had all the cuts and that they would instantly try to take me out. However starting out with just a few cuts and building up slowly worked out massively in my favour as it allowed me to focus on knowing how each cut sold and it taught me the jewellery market at a slow but steady pace. If I had somehow managed to get all the cuts before I attempted selling jewels I imagine I would have been very quickly overwhelmed and given up.

“It hardly makes any gold” - I get this a lot when I read random articles online. It's usually someone's recommendation for something to search for in the auction house that is very rarely posted but when it is can be flipped for a few hundred gold profit. I usually tend to think that all the effort I spend looking for it won't be worth the final sale price once I do find it. However this was before I learnt how to use the snatch list. Now I just stick everything on there and forget about it.

“Nobody's going to buy that” - If it's white, someone will buy it. Many times after you've spent a bit of time grinding a spot you'll end up with various items you've never come across before. To you they're worthless and for ages I used to just sell them to the vendor as I didn't want to waste an AH listing price on them. However I've slowly come to realise that everything with a use will sell eventually. There are lazy people everywhere who love having things given to them quickly and cheaply on the AH as oppose to farming it themselves. Take advantage of them.

“That looks complicated” - I've said this one loads of times, yet every single time I've finally gotten round to learning about a new market I've realised that it was so easy I could have done it from the first day I heard about it. With the amount of guides and experienced traders you can find on the internet now there is no reason for you to stay away from something because it looks too complicated.

If you have your own story about making mistakes when you were new to WoW feel free to share them on our forum

World of Warcraft Economy

19/10/2010 00:00:00

Welcome back readers. Here for your perusal I present the second article comparing the real world economy with the one in WoW. This week we look at how the two are dissimilar

Taxes
The real world is full of them, Taxes, Levies, Stamp duty. Whatever they're called you can't escape them. In the World of Warcraft the only real tax is the either the initial listing fee or the final 5% deduction depending on whether your goods sell or not. The biggest difference however is why these exist. In the real world taxes are there either make people richer or create pools of money with which groups like the government can buy things for the collective public. In WoW these costs are there to prevent abuse of the AH. Imagine if posting was free. Everyone would start posting random products for 100x their price in the hope that some “mug” would buy it by not knowing its real price or misclick and buy the product accidentally. Even if 1 in 100 of these crazy priced items sold a lot of people would go ahead and post as they wouldn't feel like they are losing anything on the unsold items. This would lead to the amount of items listed to rise massively and slow down the whole AH with annoying trades. The reason the neutral auction house auction fee is higher is to prevent abuse of cross-faction trading. However as a lot of blogs will tell you, even with this higher fee you can still make a lot of profit from it.

Quality of goods
In the real world if your competitors are beating you there is always the option of putting a bit more effort into your goods and going for the more quality focused markets. Or you could go the other way and create lots of cheap low quality products and sell at a low price. In World of Warcraft items do not have different levels of quality. This means that one of the only things competitors have to make themselves different is price.

can change at any time
Most countries have a level of democracy which affects how economical decisions are made. There are votes and processes designed to make the system fair. Even if some of them are flawed they still make the processes drag out. In comparison WoW is a dictatorship. Blizzard have total control over how things work. If they wanted they could change any aspect of the game without consulting with players and they could do it without any warning. These changes work both for good and bad depending on who you are and how willing you are to adapt.

No Banks
Despite all their bad press banks help the economies of the world massively. They make cash flow much easier and can provide loans. If you come up with a good idea for a business then banks will fund it in return for interest on the loan. If you come up with a good investment opportunity in WoW you're pretty much on your own. Unless you have some very trusting friends you will need to raise all the money yourself. This means the super rich in WoW have a lot more power than the poor. Personally I would like to see a feature in WoW where players or guilds could form banks with the option to give loans to other players and have some sort of inbuilt system to track the loans as well as some sort of enforceable payback schemes.

The WoW economy (similarities)

12/10/2010 00:00:00

I'm a bit hesitant to post specific gold making strategies that might disappear once Cataclysm comes out. So instead I'm going to do a 2 part article about the similarities that World of Warcraft has with the real world economy. This article has a few similarities between the two.

Supply and demand:
One of the basic and more powerful of rules that affect the price of items. The more supply there is of an item the lower the price goes. This could be seen with the recent change that allowed honour points to be changed to gems. Overnight the supply of gems went up and just as quickly the average price plummeted. Much to the annoyance of people holding large stocks of these gems. The other part of the rule is that as Demand goes up the price goes up. This is due to more and more people trying to get hold of a limited material. If you read my previous article about stocking up on Stranglekelp for Cataclysm I am predicting an increase in demand for this herb and therefore there should be a rise in its price.

more people equals more competition:
If you find a gold making strategy and are the only one utilising it then keep it to yourself for as long as you can. In the real world if someone has a monopoly on a product or service then they are usually able to charge as much as people are willing to pay for it. Once other people enter this market the profit margins of both parties goes down. At first they don't mind losing out on a bit of profit in order to undercut their competitors. However if this goes on for a while then eventually both parties will end up selling their products or services for minimal profit. The more competitors in the market the quicker the price will fall. This can be seen in WoW by watching what happens when various tips and tactics are put into circulation. For example a few months ago people were reporting massive profits from the jewelcrafting profession. This lead to lots of people writing guides about jewelcrafting and lots of people changing profession to take advantage of them. As such you will now find most jewelcrafters complaining that they are barely making a profit from their cuts these days and only the very best and committed can make any serious profit from the profession.

greed/fear:
Two of the most basic human emotions. Even though WoW is just a game it still has signs of most human emotions. You can see examples of greed when someone finds a rare item and starts advertising it in trade chat. Usually the first price they ask for is way over the average. It takes a lot of trade chat advertising before people start offering prices more likely to appeal to a wider range of buyers. Fear can be demonstrated most recently by the price of primordial saronites. The price should naturally have been going down due to increased supply. As people geared up more and got better at ICC they would be bringing more saronites into existence. However if you kept an eye on the price you would have noticed something about the rate at which the price fell. For weeks it was slowly going down 10-50g a week on most servers from about 1500g – 1000g. Once it broke the 1000g mark people started to panic and feared that the item in their backpack worth 1000g would very soon be worthless. This caused an increase in people selling saronites in trade chat and a massive plummet in its price at 2-3x the speed it had been falling at previously.

Inflation:
In the real world inflation is a natural process in which the price of items goes up. This may at first seem like a way for the shops to make us poor however is actually a cause of the average income of people going up and therefore the shops are simply adjusting their prices to reflect that (note that is a very simplified view of inflation). In WoW there is a steady inflation due to things like people being able to get into higher level dungeons or getting better at making gold. However there is also a big inflation jump during every expansion as players are exposed to a load of new monsters and quests which yield much more gold than before. So in Cataclysm expect to see new weapons and items being sold for much more than their pre-Cata counterparts, even after the initial mayhem when the price of things is being sorted in the markets.

Here are just four similarities I came up with. There are many more, if you have any that you've thought of and wish to share them then feel free to do so on our forums. EuroGR forums

Worlds most expensive seaweed

05/10/2010 00:00:00

I first came across Stranglekelp when I was around lvl 40 as it seemed to sell for more than most plants picked via herbalism (which I was levelling at the time). They sold for close triple what some of the other herbs I could pick sold for. So upon discovering them I thought I had stumbled upon a goldmine. I was then very disappointed when I found out that these things are such a pain to farm. They exist on the shores and in the lakes all across Azeroth. As anyone who has tried farming in water will tell you there is a massive decrease in items gathered per hour due to the reduced movement speed whilst swimming and navigating in the 3rd dimension.

This article however isn't a farming recommendation. Its a stockpiling tip for Cataclysm. Currently this herb is used for various alchemy creations and results in various pigments when milling. However when Cataclysm comes they will have a new function, Fish food! but my initial gut feeling is that it will be everyone who has any interest in the current non-combat pets, which is a massive portion of the players.

The next step comes at setting a buyout price. These things sell at 2g-2.5g each, I've set them onto my snatch list for 3g. Now one warning note. These things could shoot up so high in price that farmers or bots jump onto them and start pumping them onto the auction house like there's no tomorrow. This will heavily affect the price and stop you offloading your stocks at the massive profits you're aiming for. However with a buy price of 3g I still feel that even with an influx of farmers these things will still net me a nice profit.

For more info about the new aquariums you can visit the best source for all things fish related in Wow over at: Els Anglin and if you have any comments feel free to voice them over on our forums at EGR forums

Interview with our tech department

03/10/2010 00:00:00

I'm sure a large percentage of people who enjoy games or using computers have considered what it would be like to have I.T. as their profession. To try and answer this question we managed to drag the EGR tech department (one guy going by the name of Colonel Mustard) away from his desk to talk to us about his day job as a programmer.

Good evening. Could you give us your official job title and a brief description of what you do
I'm a web developer, and I work for a large publishing company in London on a number of different websites

How did you get involved in this type of work?
I've had an interest in computers for as long as I can remember, so when it came to deciding on what to study in further education computing seemed an obvious choice to me. I got lucky with a work placement during my University studies and landed myself a permanent role which is where I am now

Have you found using computers to be any different if you are using them for pleasure or for work?
When programming at home I have more time to work with technologies of my choice. Also browsing the web can become a different experience when you're a web developer, as you understand why things are done the way they are. So when a site breaks you can often pinpoint the bad/lazy programming that caused it.

Is it a challenge to keep up to date with advances in IT that may affect your work?
Yes, I think in that respect being a web developer is one of the most challenging jobs out there. There is such a vast range of technologies being used, and you have to understand everything from the front end to the databases. Most jobs however focus on a smaller subset of technology, often supplied by a single vendor such as Microsoft, which makes it a bit easier

Is much of your time dedicated to training and learning new things? or do you cover enough of the same topics each day that this isn't necessary?
Well I do try to keep as up to date as possible with the fundamental languages and the things I work with a lot, as I feel that I like to have a complete understanding of them. There are other things that seem to come and go, often like fashion in the software world. I try to get an understanding of these, but I don't spend too much time focusing on something that I don't think I'm going to use much. I probably spend a few minutes a day reading blogs and articles covering a wide range of things. I particularly like the Microsoft blogs as they provide a good insight into the development of some languages.

What opportunities for advancing exist in the job? in terms of climbing the career ladder.
There are a number of directions in which to progress. The main directions you can go are either towards a more people-oriented position such as team management, or a more technical role such as a software architect. There are many more opportunities, for instance a good company CIO will often have a programming background.

What would you recommend to people currently at school who are looking at this or a similar career?
Don't study maths! I was told it was necessary for a career in computing, but they were wrong. You can study maths if you want, I'm sure it will get you far, it just isn't mandatory. It can help to get a degree in a computing-related subject, but often the course content won't be hugely relevant, it's just a way into the industry. Try to be sure it's what you want to do, as a lot of people give it a go and find they just aren't naturally good at software development.

with this being an EGR the interview wouldn't be complete without some mention of gaming. Are you currently playing anything?
I like to play Insurgency occasionally, and a bit of TF2 every now and then. I'm against giving WoW a go as I'm scared it'll consume my life for the next decade if I do. I'm also currently contemplating playing Oblivion again as I started playing it when I was younger and never got round to finishing it. I used to play a huge amount of CS:Source, and was in a couple of clans a few years ago.

Do you have an all time favourite game?
That probably has to be the half-life series, especially HL2. The success of the series doesn't surprise me. It's one of the few games I've played more than once. My favourite online game has to be CS:Source

It does seem that Valve always produce top notch games, what do you think it is about them that other games companies find hard to emulate?
that's a difficult question! Maybe it's because they really seem to understand their audience and take the time to properly design games. Too many modern games seem to be a graphics showcase with little in the way of gameplay. Then you get games such as Battlefield 2 which seems to have been rushed, constantly crashing before a patch was released.

Lastly, are you able to give us a quick sneak preview on what you're working on for EGR?
Well hopefully in the near future we'll have a more visually appealing site. It's something that's been on my mind for a while. Front end styling isn't my strong point, but I think I have some good ideas. I am also busy working on both the “TF2 tactician” and “WoW tactician” which will allow users to build a large collaborative database of guides and tactics for the games they play. There is also a very snazzy CMS running behind the site which cannot be seen by the users but is being developed to allow easier posting of articles and updates and in the future will allow regular guest posts to be made by anyone wanting to try their hand at a bit of games journalism. Those are the features I'm currently concentrating on coding and testing, there are also plans in the not too distant future to provide more functionality to the front page in the form of a calendar filled with gaming related events and various media players on the front page containing things like frag videos or just the latest virals.

Thank you for your time, I hope these answers have helped some people decide whether a career in software development is something they wish to pursue. Are there any final thoughts you wish to leave us with?
Yeah! Don't ever bother with IE 6! Some of our biggest customers are various government bodies, and most of them happen to be stuck in the past with this monstrosity of a browser which makes my job that little bit more difficult.

Harvest time for Morrowgrain

28/09/2010 00:00:00

Anyone who has ever visited the Un'Goro crater will know that there is a load of rubbish on the floor that gets collected by new players in the vague hope that they've stumbled upon something worthwhile. However unless they come across the Ravasaur Hatchling they are very unlikely to get more than a few silver for their troubles.

What I want to look at today is how with a bit of preparation you can make a nice profit using the Un'Goro soil that is found all over the zone.

First thing we need to do is head over to Darnassus and complete the quest chain ending in “Morrowgrain research” The quest involves a bit of flying back and forth from Darnassus to Un'Goro so be prepared to have a tea break or two during the flights. Once you have completed the quest chain you are able to use the Evergreen pouch whenever you want.

The pouch allows you to grow as much Morrowgrain as you want and is mostly there for getting reputation points with Darnassus. However the Morrowgrain can be sold on the auction house silly amounts of profit. This is a new item I've recently added to my gold making strategy and have sold 12 stacks in 3 weeks at a price of 80g per stack or 4g per Morrowgrain. On my server Un'Goro soil sells for 15s a piece and the seed sells for 10s from the vendor making the combined price of the ingredients 40s for a product that sells for 10 times that price!

There is one catch however. You wont increase your gold ten fold as some of the Morrowgrain comes out mutated and unusable. Sources online vary but the general rule of thumb is that anywhere between 30-50% of your seeds will yield Morrowgrain. This percentage is higher for those who have herbalism as a profession but is still high enough to be profitable for those without.

Another thing to note is that as well as people buying these for reputation they are also used as a reagent in making the Cenarian herb bag which makes marketing them to tailors an option for further profits, however the price tailors are prepared to pay will be heavily influenced by the price of the herb bags on your server and the availability of bigger bags.

This leaves us with nothing more to do but go do the quest chain, add Un'Goro soil to our snatch lists and stock up on seeds then sit back and wait for the gold to start rolling in!

If you wish to discuss anything in this post feel free to make your opinion heard over at the forums Morrowgrain Thread

Growing forum

23/09/2010 00:00:00

Another landmark has been reached on the forums, a few days ago we passed the 200 post mark. The great news is that it took half the time to go from 100-200 as it did to go for 0-100. I think logic lets me state that the forums are now twice as good as they used to be!

Not only has the forum grown in popularity but its recently got a nifty new function. If you wish to embed youtube videos into a post you can do so by adding [youtube][/youtube] tags around it. Either that or press the youtube button which now appears on the formatting bar for the tags to be inserted automatically.

As well as new forum features we have a "getting sponsored" link in the menu bar. If any of you of anyone who runs a guild or a clan or any collection of people interested in gaming then feel free to spam them that link and try to get them in contact with me (bigbmxdave@hotmail.com) and hopefully we can find I place for them in EGR.

To celebrate the new forum function heres a video of how the EGR admins get to work at the EGR offices everday ...probably.

Brewfest and services ...Hic!

21/09/2010 00:00:00

Brewfest is here! I'm sure many of you are celebrating by getting drunk in real life just as much as you are ingame. One of the main reasons I love holidays is that if you are prepared you can make a lot of gold during them. I was however struggling to find anyway to profit from Brewfest, there's no quests that require items I could sell. There's nothing I could gain with the tokens that I could sell. I couldn't even sell the drops from Coren Direbrew. I couldn't even disenchant the drops from Coren Direbrew. I was almost about to give up when I had a brainwave, there was one way to profit from Brewfest.

If you are a Paladin you could take this opportunity to sell "Hand of Protection! Going for the [drunken stupor] achievement I probably died about 30 times, and faced a repair bill of about 300 gold. I would have more than happily paid a Paladin 20-40g to cast the ability on me as I jumped from somewhere. Walking around near the brewfest locations you can spot someone jumping to their death every few minutes so for a Paladin willing to stand at a peak and yell his services this might be a very profitable experience. Unfortunately I don't have a Paladin character myself so was unable to test out the exact gold/hour this might make. So instead I had a think about the other services that can be offered in WoW

Dungeon runs for lower characters
Many lower level characters are willing to pay for higher levels to run them through dungeons. Either to power level them or because they are twinks and want certain boss drops that they would struggle to get at their current level. Most people offer 10-40g per run of a dungeon depending on its size however its not uncommon to be offered 100-400g per hour. The rate you get mostly depends on how big the dungeon is and how rich/eager the player is.

Honour grinding
similar to the above run there are lower level characters who are willing to pay for help getting exalted with various factions. Twice this week I've seen level 1 characters asking for a higher level to help them grind rep with Timbermaw hold so that they could purchase the Furbolg medicine pouch. A level 1 does not have a chance of killing anything in that area so they require a higher level to help them. The going rate for this is similar to dungeon runs however could be made more profitable by taking more than one twink along with you. It is also worth attempting these runs if you need the reputation yourself.

Taxi with your mount
Ever wish you could earn back some of the gold you used to buy those multi-seater mounts of yours? It is possible to charge people who don't own fast mounts a small fare to take them around the place. This option is probably one of the least profitable on this list however might become more viable once Catacylsm comes out and all the new Worgen/Goblin players want lifts around Azeroth on a flying mount that doesn't use the insanely inefficient flight paths of the NPC flightmasters.

Farming
This one counts as a service if you go out to farm premade orders. I used to fish up certain fish for someone else before I decided to get into cooking myself. This was before I really cared much about gold making in WoW and I just fished because I enjoyed it. You should be able to find people to farm for pretty easily by advertising what you're willing to do in trade chat. Just make sure you're being offered a fair price for your products.

Working with your professions
This is probably the one you come across most often ingame. You see people advertising their professions (mostly jewelcrafters) and offering to make things using your materials for 5-20g tip. This method is OK if you're doing it to level up your profession. However don't expect many people to be looking for you to make them anything designed for level 1-79 characters. Even if you are at a full 450 skill level for a profession this method is very inefficient due to how long it takes to do each job. If you include advertising time and travel time you are probably doing 1 job every 5-15 minutes which caps your maximum gold per hour somewhere around the 100g mark on a good day.

Rent a disenchanter
During most dungeon runs you'll pick up several green/blue drops. Some of these are sellable on the auction house for a nice profit. The majority however end up given to the vendor, that is unless you can disenchant them. As of a few patches ago if you have a disenchater in your group all the group members get the option to disenchant when something drops. This is a new theory but I'm sure there are people out there who do solo dungeon runs who are willing to pay 50-100g an hour for an afk enchanter to be in the dungeon with them. The customer gets to earn 2x or 3x as much from their green drops whilst the enchanter gets to make money whilst being afk and doing other work on their pc.

Mage portals
A prime example of being able to make money from other peoples laziness. As a mage its wise to keep an eye out for people in trade chat offering 10-30g for a portal to places such as Dalaran because their hearthstone is on cooldown. If you are feeling generous you can travel with the player and offer them a series of portals for them to quickly complete a quest chain with. However remember to keep an eye on your own travel time and expenses as they seriously hinder your gold per hour.

Casino
This is a bit of a controversial one. I've only ever seen this tried twice so I'm going to assume that is isn't too successful. First time was a character in IF offering a simple dice game, you pay him 100g, do a /roll and if you get over 55 you'd get double your money. The two main reasons I think he failed on this was that first of all people wouldn't trust him to pay them if they won, and secondly it's very easy to see that you have less than a 50% chance of winning.
The second example was a level 1 character selling “red ribboned gift” boxes for 5g advertising that the value of certain goods you could get from it was more than 5g. Almost like a tombola. This one mostly likely failed because its easy to see that it was in the sellers best interests to wrap up lots of low value gifts.

laser show
I'll end the list with this funny one. There is one guy who uses multi-accounts to put on laser displays with his mages for tips. If you want to watch him you can see his youtube video here:

So there you have a list of 10 services your character can offer the other players of Azeroth. They aren't all insanely profitable but we've all got to remember that we're here to have fun as well as get rich. Go give some of these a go and hopefully you'll have a laugh and meet some new and interesting people as well as earning yourself some gold on the side.

Anybody want to clean my balls?

14/09/2010 00:00:00

To readers from JustMyTwoCopper : Firstly thankyou for visiting. Secondly let me give a few reasons why I chose this as my favourite "niche" method of gold:

Hardly anyone else does it

It can be done by low levels

The materials gained by it will always be needed by other players

It's scalable (wait till you have more grime-encrusted objects before visiting Gnomeragan)

You can set your own proit/hour by changing the price on your snatch list (higher gold/hour settings will take longer to be fufiled)

Hopefully you'll gain something from reading this article, even if it is just a reason to visit some old world content. If you do enjoy reading it or have your own opinion on the subject then feel free to share your views on the Gold blog forum

The new Alliance quest chains came out this week in what can only be described as a warm up to Cataclysm. The gnomes have finally pulled their finger out and are amassing in numbers to sort Gnomeragan out once and for all.

Whilst doing this quest chain I got a little bit lost in the tunnels and found the entrance to the old level 30ish Gnomeregan dungeon. This reminded me of a farming experiment I've always wanted to run. In this dungeon most of the mobs can drop a “grime-encrusted object”. You take this piece of mud to the canteen area in the instance and clean it up using the machines provided. In the resulting gift boxes are various things from grey rocks to ores and gems. Because its a lvl 30 area the value of these aren't massive but because the grime-encrusted objects are such a common drop it might add up to a nice amount.

The biggest challenge doing this was finding my way around the place, It's a very maze like dungeon with a lot of opportunities to double back on yourself. It took me 31 minutes to make my way down to the final boss, picking up all the obvious mobs and bosses along the way and then finding my way back to the canteen for the cleaning process.

Once I had disenchanted all the greens the total value of drops in that run was 125g (helped a lot by the dropping of a security pass which sold for 24g). On top of this I picked up 36 grime-encrusted objects which once cleaned produced 66.8g worth of materials. That gave the total run a value of 191.8g, we can double it to give the rough hourly rate of running this dungeon and find that Gnomeragan farming yields approximately 382.6g/hr. I was almost disappointed by this low number until I had a brainwave.

The average value of the grime-encrusted objects was (66.8/36) = 1.86g, on my server their average auction house price is 14s. If I add these onto my snatch list for about 50s, then wait till I have a few hundred of them, I can make one bulk run to the canteen in Gnomeregan and at least triple my investments.

This gold making method has all the makings of a classic, Its profitable because of other peoples laziness and/or lack of knowledge. It involves materials which will always be needed, and best of all it can be done by any character that is able to navigate through a level 30 dungeon.

If you wish to comment on this article feel free to do so over at the Gold blog forum

Other team is full of babies!

13/09/2010 00:00:00

Everyone should check out this awesome frag video courtesy of CtM, badass kills and smooth editing, what more could you want from a TF2 clip?

Frag videos aside I would like to take this opportunity to announce the upcoming "TF2 tactician" feature. Some of you may have noticed that the old TF2 strategy page has disappeared. In its place will be a much neater and more efficient media player that will be embedded onto everyones clan page. It will allow users to browse a categorised list of tutorials and strategy guides for their class or for certain maps. Best of all is the news that the list of videos in the TF2 tactician will be user editable, allowing the very latest tips to be shared amongst the community as soon as they come out. The tactician is currently in in development as I type this and will hopefully be rolled out very soon.

Making gold in the first few weeks of Cataclysm

07/09/2010 00:00:00

When Cataclsym first comes out there is going to be a lot of chaos on the markets, the value of everything will change. These price changes might be temporary but for the first few weeks the value of every item in WoW will be up for debate. I've made a list of four options you have for the first 1-4 weeks of Cataclysm of methods for making gold that have a very high chance of making you insanely rich.

Battleground honour:

There's a very good chance that the new gems will be available to buy via honour points. The top end gems will be in very high demand for raiders looking to get every single advantage they can in the new raids. So not only will the value of honour go up, but you'll also be earning more honour per kill due to battling in higher level areas.

New professions:

There are two new professions appearing with Cataclysm, if you dedicate your time entirely to power levelling one of both of these you will probably enjoy a few weeks being the only person stocking certain items and being able to set whatever prices you want. It is only when other players start competing in your market that the regular rules of supply and demand start coming into effect.

Reputation items:

Items that grant instant reputation with factions are always in hot demand. This is especially true at the start of expansions when people are too busy doing all the new activities to grind various quests of farm themselves. The vast majority of people look at reputation items and try to save money by farming them themselves, however this rarely lasts more than a couple of hours before people give up and decide they'd just prefer to pay extortionate rates for someone else to farm. For someone willing to figure out the new methods of gaining reputation with any new factions there will be a massive market full of rich people willing to save their own time by buying your items.

Fishing/Cooking:

This is the option I will probably take. There will be a mad rush at the start of guilds looking to get “server firsts” by downing certain bosses. This urgency will result in them taking every single buff food they can find. If you are one of the first people to start selling the new “fish feast” you will have all your stock bought out as soon as you list it for a massive markup. This extra need to buy group buffs wont dissipate too quickly either due to the new guild bonuses. More than ever guilds will be trying to do as many runs as quickly as possible to increase the benefits to their members.

So whatever you decide to do during the start of the expansion its always beneficial to have a plan and have a little think about it beforehand to maximise your profits.

How to turn 1000g into 2000g for the gold blog carnival

31/08/2010 00:00:00

This months gold blog questions asks how people would go about reaching 2000 gold from 1000 gold. A lot of gold bloggers have already posted an answer to this question on their various blogs however it seems they have mostly answered the question “how do I make gold” as opposed to working with the 1000g to 2000g limitations.

The issue with starting with 1000g is that it isn't enough to run my usual daily routines. My snatch list for example usually in me buying 4-6k of stock every day. This amount also means that flipping high value items isn't viable. There are a few pets and rare recipes worth 1500-2000g that I would buy up if I saw someone advertising them for 1000g in trade chat. However if I did that in this challenge I would run a very high risk of not being able to sell that item or being victim to a market crash that causes the item to devalue below what I originally paid for it.

What we need to look for is items/trades that carry low risk and low-medium reward. Items that result in instant profit such as those items that sell to a vendor for higher than you paid for them are also a bonus in this situation.

As a jewel crafter the first thing I would do is scan the AH for all the uncommon gems that can be prospected via Saronite ore that sell for under 2g, then buy all the crystallised earth for under 1g. All these can be combined to create jewellery that vendors for over 3g, resulting in instant profit. (A more indepth look at this in a later article). This can be estimated to earn 20g-100g profit every time and can be done 2-3 times a day, it all depends on how often the miners on your server put stuff on the auction house.

Next I would run a vendor scan and have a look at markets I know have a large turnover and regularly have items which are posted undervalued. Specifically the leather market. Light leather, heavy leather and knothide leather are all items that have been selling at roughly the same price for the past 6 months on my server. This allows me to set up a mini snatch list for these three items with a price roughly 25-50% less than they usually sell for. This can make a profit of 10-200g depending on how many people decided to farm leather on your server that day.

My next step would be to venture out of the city and go visit a few pet vendors. These are scattered across the old world of Azeroth, Outland and Northrend. Surprisingly the ones in Dalaran can sometimes be the ones that fetch the most profit. I'm not sure about the explanation to that but the only thing I can think of is that the older pet vendors are more well known and used than the Dalaran ones because they have been around for longer despite Dalaran being one of the most populated cities.

The above three tactics would be expected to turn 1000g into 2000g in roughly 1-2 weeks. However if that isn't quick enough there is always the option of putting on some music and farming for a bit. If you are aware of the various prices for herbs and ores on your server you should be able to find a spot that earns 400-600g per hour. If you are patient enough there is also the option of fishing. Personally I love travelling the shores and lakes of Northrend fishing the pools. I know this method isn't appealing for everyone but if you take a look at my previous articles you can see that there are various fish related recipes that result in 500-800g per hour.

So whilst there are an almost infinite way to turn 1000g into 2000g I reckon following the motto “slow and steady wins the race” is the best option. If a player has 10-100k gold then they can start branching out into more exotic methods. However it is always a good idea to have some basic bread and butter type trades that they know well enough to be able to fall back on during times when the market becomes crazy for various reasons.

A great big shout out to anyone who came here because of Marckos fantastic carnival, if that is the reason you arrived here I would love to hear your opinions on either this specific article or any of the others on this site on our forums at EGR forum

New head of TF2 for EGR

30/08/2010 00:00:00

Let me be the first to congratulate Guin on becoming the first ever "Head of TF2" for EGR. As a growing community we will always need fresh new talent to help with the running of things and with expansion. Guin has very kindly volunteered his services and has been placed in charge of all things TF2 related.

Now players looking to talk about anything server related can contact Guin himself alongside Bigbmxdave and M3TRJ. All admins are available to contact on the forums via these same names or if you prefer to talk via msn we can be added via our e-mail address: bigbmxdave@hotmail.com and guin@hotmail.de

This new position will also be brining with it some interesting and exciting new changes to how EGR are involved with TF2 in the up coming months. If you have any suggestions as always feel free to voice your opinion on the forums.

Why people struggle to make gold

24/08/2010 00:00:00

A lot of people seem to have trouble making as much gold as they want. It also seems that a lot of people read gold blogs and then get disheartened when a short while later they still don't have as much as they expected. This has made me think and compile a short list of common reasons why people may be failing to achieve their goals.

Patience
Don't expect to hit the gold cap within days or even weeks. Even the very top 1% of gold earners only make a few thousand gold a day. If you look in your ingame statistics you can see how much your character earns every day. Instead of aiming to get it to 5k a day set a more reasonable target. Perhaps aim to raise your income by 20g a day.

Research
Some people expect massive results from a market without fully understanding how it works and all its possibilities. One big example of this is the many people who have read about the saronite shuffle and assumed that the exact figures given in whatever article they've read are accurate and work on their server. This leads to people buying saronite at unprofitable prices and losing money as well as wasting a lot of time. Addons such as auctioneer are a big help with your research as they can help you keep track of average prices for items over a period of time. It is also worth using websites such as wowhead to search for items you are selling to check what other uses they have and whether you could make more money selling them to a different market.

Diversity
Two main issues with this one. Firstly its no good making items that sell for 100g profit if you can only sell one of them a week. Secondly if your business consists of selling only a few items then you are more susceptible to market changes than you want to be. Blizzard release pretty big changes on a regular basis. Recently its been the ability to trade honour for gems which causes a massive increase of supply. If you spread your business over several markets then changes like this will only lower your daily income rate slightly.

Competition
Perhaps the reason you cant make enough gold to satisfy your greed is that the other people selling the same items as you are better at it than you. Its nothing to be ashamed of, if you are a casual player who plays for an hour in the evenings then don't be surprised if you are constantly being undercut and the price of your raw materials drops low enough for it not to be worth your time. In this situation don't be afraid of trying a new market. Perhaps the new market will make you richer and wiser and give you the ability to come back to your original market with new powers and dominate it yourself.

Spending
This one seems a bit too obvious. You aren't going to have a lot of gold in your bags if you've just bought epic flying for you and everyone of your friends. However this isn't a bad thing. Gold is there to be spent and enjoyed. I know a lot of people aim for the gold cap of 214k but if they don't have some fun along the way then I'm sure they are going to struggle to stay motivated.

Snatch list Schmatch list

17/08/2010 00:00:00

I recently reinstalled everything on my pc and forgot to backup the database that my AH tool had acquired over the past few months. Not only was this annoying as I now had to let my scan run several times over a few days before I could trust it was giving me semi-accurate price information, but it also meant that my snatch list had gone.

My old snatch list had about 100 items on it. Most of which I had put on there and then forgot about. This now meant that I had the hard task of figuring out what was on there, why It was there, and what price I had set it up to buyout on. After a few days I've got 19 items on the list and thought I'd share them with you all to maybe help a few of you start up your own snatch list or even give the experienced auctioneers some ideas for things to add to theirs.

Eternal Earth – 4g
Bloodstone – 2g
Sun crystal – 2g
Chalcedony – 2g
Huge citrine – 2g
Cardinal ruby – 101g
Knothide leather – 1.2g
Light leather – 15s
Medium leather – 25s
Adamantite ore – 1.8g
Heavy knothide leather – 4g
Chunk o' Mammoth – 2.1g
Saronite ore – 70s
Crystallized earth – 40s
Imperial Manta ray – 1.5g
Iceweb spider silk – 2g
Heavy leather – 65s
Northern spices – 25s
Chilled meat – 10s

As you can see I still have a long way to go to reach the glory of the old list. The items I have so far fall into three broad categories. The first one is jewelcrafting. I don't have all the designs yet but I'm happy to work with what I've got, and have explored a range of possibilities to find crafting tactics that make profit all of the time.

The second category is leathers. I had skinning before I dropped it for jewelcrafting. During my skinning time I did notice that the leather prices did drop down massively at certain times (when farmers or bored players did a big dump) but the price would always return to a relatively stable place. This allows me to set up these snatch prices and sell everything I pick up at a fixed price a few days later.

The third category is cooking supplies. There are certain foods (mostly raid buffs) that allow you to have a huge markup on them by cooking them or adding spices.

One big note is that the prices I have shown make a profit on my server. On your server you will have to check out your specific market and find your own snatch price otherwise you risk losing a lot of your hard earned gold.

If you have any questions about my list so far or have any suggestions for what I could add to it then feel free to head over to the EuroGR forums and post in the WoW section.

HOLY MOLY!

16/08/2010 00:00:00

After years of waiting Valve have finally anounced item trading!

http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/08/11/next-tf2-update-adds-trading-new-game-mode/

The good type of Twighlight

02/08/2010 00:00:00

What EGR have learned this week : Over in Silithus are some ugly looking dudes, kill them and make a crazy amount of gold.

The people I'm talking about are the “Twilight” mobs. There are several camps of these dotted around Silithus all with decent concentrations. When killing these it's best to find two camps close to each other and once you've wiped out one do the same to the second one, hopefully by the time you've wiped out the second all the mobs in the first will have respawned.

These mobs a random selection of items but the ones we are most interested in are the encrypted twilight texts and the Twilight cultists robe/mantle/cowl armour set. The texts are handed in via a quest to gain rep with the Cenarion circle. I've read reports of them being sold for anything up to 8g each. On my server I managed to sell then for 4g40s each. The armour sets are used to conjure up mobs from the wind stones. I only ever used the lesser wind stones as they only use up one armour set and drop the Abyssal crest as well as some other goodies. It is also recommended that you do not save up all your armour to use these wind stones at one go near the end of your game time as the stones have a roughly 5 minute respawn time so you would end up doing a lot of waiting.

One other thing to note is that there is an elite spawn in the area called the Twilight prophet who patrols near the north and can drop 7-10 of the encrypted texts when you kill her.

Here are the results of 30 minutes gaming:

Travelers backpack x1 = 9g

Elemental water x1 = 2g

Encrypted Twilight text x55 = 242g

Abyssal crest x6 = 109.08G

Runecloth x143 = 34.32g

A pretty impressive rate of 838g/hr. The Major downside of this is that selling the texts and Abyssal crystals can be a bit hit or miss depending on your server. Being exalted with the Cenarion circle doesn't provide access to too many new items, mostly a few designs and plans so you might have to wait a few days to sell all these encrypted texts. The good news is that they are free to list on the AH so you aren't losing your earning rate by relisting them a few times.

A big hello to everyone from the JMTC site and the blogging carnival

02/08/2010 00:00:00

Glad to see some of you decided to come take a look at my style of gold blog. I mostly try to do indepth analysis of very specific gold making techniques with a bit of number crunching and no exaggeration to try and make thing seem better than they are. If you've come to read the epic 5 article series about the Fish feast then just scroll down, they are the latest articles on this site. Also feel free to book mark this site and check back every Tuesday for the latest blog post or join the forum and chat or comment about anything youve seen here so far.

I'd also like to give a big thankyou to Markco for organising this whole thing.

The Last Supper

02/08/2010 00:00:00

So we've finally come to the end of our epic fish feast Journey. From the ghostly lake Indu'le to the tropical climates of Sholzar Basin. In my bag sit 200 Musselback sculpin, 200 Glacial salmon, 200 Nettlefish and 100 Northern spices purchased from the auction house. In just a matter of minutes I will turn all of it into 100 fish feasts, a task that even Captain Birdseye would be impressed by.

First a little about the fish feast. Everyones who raids will have come across them. It is a dish set down on the floor by a cook in the group and everyone is able to tuck in. It serves two main purposes. The first is to get everyones health and mana up after a wipe and the second is to provide a buff to all players in the group who eat it.. The buff gained gives +80 attack power, +46 spellpower and +40 stamina. This doesn't seem like much when faced with enemies like the Lich King, but you easily see its benefits when all 25 members in a raid have eaten and it becomes a +2000 Attack power , +1150 Spell power and +1000 Stamina buff.

Over the last few months the supply of fish feasts in the auction house has risen steadily. This was pretty much expected and a result of more people now having the required cooking and fishing skills needed to make it. There are also more people looking for things to do in WoW that don't involve raiding or questing as a lot of players get bored doing the same raids over and over again and look for other things to occupy their time with.

The surprising and unexpected detail is the price that fish feasts have dropped to. Using prices in the past 4 articles we can add up the value of all the raw materials : 1x Northern spices = 50s 2x Nettlefish = 2g62s 2x Glacial salmon = 2g52s 2x Musselback Sculpin = 1g70s

That gives us a total of 7g34s if you were to buy all the materials from the auction house. Looking at the average price of Fish feasts today we see a disappointingly low price of 7g68s. After you factor in Auction house sales fees and listing fees from items that don't sell we can see that there isn't any gold to be made in buying the raw materials and reselling the finished product.

This knowledge however is very useful for those people who fish for the ingredients themselves. A lot of guilds have at least one person who makes fish feasts for guild runs, a lot of the time this person also has the mentality of “whilst I'm fishing for the guild I'll stick around for a few minutes longer, catch some extra fish to make some spare fish feasts with and sell them on the auction house for profit.”If you are that person then I highly urge you to stop that now. There is a much more profitable way to utilise your fishing.

If you've been reading my previous articles you'll know that I fished up enough ingredients to make 100 fish feasts. If I had gone ahead and put all these on the auction house I would have made 768g – 50g for the spices and – 38g40s for the auction house fee. This would have given me a profit of 679g60s. But what if I had cooked the fish individually and listed them on the auction house?

200 Glacial salmon turned into Firecracker salmon = 522g 200 Musselback sculpin sold raw = 170g 200 Nettlefish= 262g

the total value now comes to 954g, if we take away the cost of spices to make the Firecracker salmon and 5% auction house fee we get 806g. This gives over 100g more profit than selling the items as fish feasts. This isn't amazing but it leads us onto the next point. Don't bother fishing for the unprofitable fish.

Instead of fishing for Musselback sculpin and Nettlefish stay with the Glacial salmon, so instead of 200 of each fish you caught 600 Glacial salmon in exactly the same amount of time. Your profit now turns into: 600 Glacial salmon turned into Firecracker salmon = 1566g

take away 300g for spices and 5% fees you're left with 1187g profit, this is a major step up from the paltry 679g fee we were earning previously.

Conclusion: So five articles later we have done our research and come to a conclusion. Don't make fish feasts. Fish as much as you want, but make sure you are catching fish that you can sell for a big amount on the auction house. Then if you actually need fish feasts for your own personal use or to help your guild you can use the money to buy them from the people who haven't read this article and have lots of gold left over for your own use.

Happy fishing!

Spice must flow

02/08/2010 00:00:00

Northern spices are an interesting and weird topic. Adding them to your recipes can make items worth a fortune or worthless. Personally I think the most interesting thing about it is its supply and demand and how its value has changed since its introduction.

All Northern spices come as a reward from doing the Northrend cooking daily and I feel Blizzard were very clever with setting it up. Imagine if the only thing you could buy with the daily cooking tokens were the recipes. What would happen is the first few weeks the expansion came out all the cooks of Northrend would have happily earned all their recipes and cooked a few dishes. But then what? Cooks would have only been able to make a handful of dishes with their daily spice rations (the spice from the reward bag and the spice bought with cooking tokens after that). This measly amount of daily spice would have resulted in all good buff foods being so rare that most people wouldn't have bothered with them. Imagine being expected to pay 50g for a +40 haste rating buff.

The clever thing that Blizzard did was introduce the chefs hat with accompanying achievement and title for the meta achievement as well as a fair amount of gold and reputation with the Kirin Tor for doing this daily. All these extra benefits mean that its not just chefs who do it. Bored people do it for gold. People who want a discount on Kirin Tor items do it for the reputation. People after achievement points do it for the some of the cooking achievements. But best of all, who doesn't want an awesome new hat? All these non-cooks doing this daily means that there is usually a very healthy supply of Northren spices on the auction house for enterprising people to make a profit from.

To put a price on the spices I took the first 10 recipes from my cooking list that consist of one raw ingredient and northern spices, then figured out what value we were adding by cooking them.

Worg haunch – Blackened Worg steak / 0.59 – 0.72 / +0.13G Moonglow Cuttlefish – Cuttlesteak / 0.17 – 6.38 / +6.21G Dragonfin Angelfish – Angelfish filet / 3.64 – 3.77 / 0.13G Rhino meat – Hearty rhino / 1.72 – 3.43 / +1.71G Imperial Manta ray – Manta steak / 1.56 – 2.96 / +1.40G Chunk O' Mammoth(2) – Mega Mammoth meal / 4.37 – 4.03 / - +0.34G Rhino meat(2) – Mighty Rhino dogs / 3.43 – 3.72 / +0.29G Bonescale snapper(3) – Snapper extreme / 1.69 – 1.77 / +0.08G Chunk O' Mammoth – Spiced Mammoth treats / 2.18G – 3.60 / +1.42G Worm meat(2) – Spiced Worm burger / 0.57 – 1.02 / +0.45G

As you can see there is a wide range of reactions to adding Northern spices to things. Seeing as we're all shrewed gold making players we are going to disregard all the recipes that lose value and concentrate on those that make a decent return: Cuttlesteak = 6.21G Hearty Rhino = 1.71G Imperial Manta steak = 1.40G Spiced Mammoth treats = 1.42G

This averages out at the spices adding 2.68G to each recipe. Obviously these prices will vary from server to server, however the recipes that make profit and those which don't should remain pretty constant. So how do we make gold with this information? The Simple answer is just to put Northern spices on your snatch list. It's on my list for 35 silver, however I'm sure you can make profit from it at prices of over 1G as long as you have a very busy server with a lot of raiders and demand for buff food. Once your snatch list comes up with lots of cheap spices buy them out and take a look at the raw materials required for making the above recipes. There are the 4 recipes listed above, however that was from only looking at 10 originally, I'm sure there are many more to be found if you sat down for an hour and went through them all. Cook up all your ingredients and relist on AH. Easy profit without having to leave your city!d!

Dont get stung by the Nettlefish

27/07/2010 00:00:00

I know a few of you may be getting a bit sick of fish related topics but bare with me. This is the 3rd installment into my epic fish feast experiment and we move onto the final fish required to cook it. Nettlefish are found in Wintergrasp, Ulduar, Dragonblight but most of all in Sholzar Basin. A lot of guides about this fish suggest going into the heart of Sholzar basin where the fishing quest for the ghostfish takes place. Whilst it is true that this spot usually has around 3 pools they do not respawn fast enough to be classed as an efficient place to catch them.

There are two sensible options for routes to take. One is to start off at rivers heart and work your way down one of its 4 tributaries. The second option is the one I used and involves starting at the northern end of Sholzar Basin at Bittertide lake. The lake is big enough to provide enough pools for an average speed fisherman to constantly loop around it. If you are finding the pools aren't spawning quick enough for you then you always have the option of following the southern tributary that leads to Rivers Heart as it usually contains 2-3 pools. The main reason I decided to do my route around the lake is that my character is a miner and at the west end of the lake are 3 mining nodes which could at any time spawn some tasty titanium ore or some rich saronite deposits.

Fishing up 200 of these beauties took 104 minutes and came with 81g worth of materials and Pygmy Suckerfish. Now when we look at selling the fish and its cooked variants we come to a bit of a disappointing conclusion. Not only does the raw fish sell for less than the other two fish used in the fish feast but once we add northern spices it actually loses value.

The raw fish goes for 1g31s on my server ( if you can find any buyers). Adding some tasty Northren spices turns it into Spicey blue Nettlefish and comes with a decent +40 critical rating and +4- stamina bonus. Unfortunately not many people value the critical rating over other buffs and the value of the cooked fish is around 1g9s. Unless you intend to use this food on yourself in raids or are leveling your cooking skills there is very little reason to cook this fish. Which is a bit of a shame for those who spend a lot of time farming items like saronite ore in Sholzar Basin and might have appreciated a break from the grind.

Thats the end of the individual fishing parts of the fish feast epic article set. Next we cover Northern spices and how it can be used to line your pockets with lots of lovely greedy goblin gold!

EGR Update News

26/07/2010 00:00:00

EGR likes to keep its gaming members up to date on any changes or plans. Hopefully allowing gamers to be involved in the growth of the site will keep it fun and interesting for them to use.

The biggest news is the success of the weekly Tuesday gold blog. Several other websites have agreed to host the blog with links back to EGR. This increases each articles readership from a few hundred readers to a few thousand. All this extra attention will eventually mean that more people come to the EGR site and get involved in things like the forum and our clans/guilds.

Next up we have the introduction of individual clan pages for everyone EGR sponsor. The TF2 versions have been created and can be seen under the "sponsored clans" link at the top of the page. These pages are designed to be editable by the clan leaders and include information such as the current team roster and up comming matches. There are versions of these pages being built for WoW guilds, so keep your eyes peeled for them.

We are also on the lookout for any new guilds or clans that are interested in sponsorship. Ideally we would like 4 TF2 clans and about 10 WoW guilds as we would be able to sustain all of them with our current setup. If you know anyone who might be interested feel free to send me an e-mail at bigbmxdave2@hotmail.com or make a post on the forum and someone will get back to you.

Until next time, Happy gaming!

Prawn Connery

20/07/2010 00:00:00

The next item on the ingredients list for a fish feast is the prawn-esque Musselback Sculpin. These fish are found in several regions of Northrend however the best place by far to catch them is Lake Kum'uya which is just south of Amber ledge in the Borean tundra. This lake has several pools which respawn fast enough that you always have one to head for. The advantage of this tight concentration of pools is that you save yourself a lot of traveling time and therefore increase your hourly earning rate.

There are a few mobs around the lake that may attack your peaceful fishing trip but because this is a starting area of Northrend they shouldn't be an issue to a level 80 character.

For this experiment I fished till I had caught exactly 200 Sculpins which took 90 minutes. During that time I also fished up materials and suckerfish worth a total of 100g. As per last week I am keeping my 200 Sculpins to turn into fish feasts for a later article, however we can look at the other options you have for selling these.

If sold raw these go for 85s each on my server which is a very low price considering that last weeks Glacial Salmon went for 1g26s each. The only explanation I can come up with is that more of the Nothrend fishing dailies send fishermen to areas where the Sculpin can be caught. A lot of fishermen doing the dailies like to catch a few fish to sell on the AH whilst they are doing the daily and this results in a higher supply. As anyone with a basic understanding of economics knows: higher supply = lower price.

The other two options you have involves cooking the fish into either Grilled Sculpin for a +60 attack power and +40 stamina buff. Or by adding spices you can make the better Poached Northren Sculpin which gives +80 attack and +40 stamina. I however highly recommend not cooking these fish if you intend to make a profit. The Poached Northren Sculpin is listed on my AH tool as selling for 14s each. This would mean you lose 71s of value per fish by adding spices and cooking it. However the most likely outcome is that none of the cooked fish will sell at all and you'll be stuck with a bag full of stinky fish.

The reason for the poor saleability of this product is that there are much better consumables for people to use if they are after a boost in DPS. According to www.maxdps.com for a hunter (my main character) this fish gives a DPS boost of +29.86 which is exactly the same as the fish feast which feeds an entire raid as oppose to one person. For people wanting a DPS boost without sharing their fish with the raid there is also the option of buying the Blackened Dragonfin which is just as easy to make as the Poached Northren Sculpin but provides a +38.74 DPS boost.

For those interested in the hourly rate if selling these fish raw the maths would be (200*85s=170g). Add on the 101g for other things you catch whilst fishing for these and you get a total of 271G. Divide that by 90 minutes and times by 60 you get a pretty feeble 180g/hr

Similar to last week I also ended up helping a new fisherman. Whilst I was moving around the lake fishing the pools I noticed there was a level 70 sitting in the middle casting into open water. After about half an hour I took a break from fishing and decided to say hello to him and asked what he was up to. It turned out this was his first character and the only reason he'd come to Northrend was to try and fish the turtle mount. I explained to him that it could only be caught from pools. Showed him what pools looked like and that he should try to get the weather-beaten journal which would give him the fish tracking ability. He was so happy to get this help that he offered me all the stacks of fish he'd just caught in the lake. I refused as it was mostly junk fish but the moral of the story still exists. Help others and they'll probably try to help you back.

White whale, holy grail

13/07/2010 00:00:00

I have started a longer term project than usual to look at fish feasts and see how profitable it is to try to manufacture them for sale to other guilds either by fishing for the ingredients yourself or playing the auction house.

First ingredient we'll look at is Glacial salmon. The best place to fish these is in Grizzly hills in Northrend, because they come in pools they can also be fished from a fishing skill of 1. The route I took was to start just below Zeb Halak, follow the river east to the logging camps which always had a nice amount of pools waiting for me, then follow the river all the way south to where it meets the sea at Venture bay and back up the stream that heads to Drak Tharon keep to start the circuit again. This last bit of river does have fish pools in it however they aren't Glacial salmon pools so were ignored by me.

I fished until I had caught exactly 200 Salmon which ended up being at the 85 minute mark and roughly 3 circuits of the route described above. Alongside the salmon I had fished up 132 Pygmy suckerfish and a various assortment of crafting materials from the crates (Borean leather scraps, cobalt ore, frostweave cloth). All these non-salmon items sold for a total of 89G at auction.

Now looking at the fish themselves. I kept all mine for the fish feast experiment I will post the results of in a few weeks time. However if you wish to sell them directly you have two options.

The first one is selling them raw. These would be bought by people who are levelling their cooking skill or by people wishing to make their own fish feasts and who don't have time to fish for themselves. On my server Glacial salmon go for 1g26 each which would make a total sale price of 252G

The other option is to utilise the power of spices to make Firecracker Salmon. This is a raid buff food that gives a nice +46 spell power and +40 stamina. The extra ingredient needed to make these is Northern spices and recently these have been plummeting in price so fast that I am now picking up batches of 100 for 15 silver per spice. So you start with a fish that is worth 1g26, you add 15 silver worth of spice and hey presto, the finished product is now worth 2g61.

This however is not as simple as it looks. The Firecracker salmon sell much more slowly than the raw Glacial Salmon. This means that if you do decide to cook your fish you're going to have to be prepared to only post 2-3 stacks on the AH at a time to avoid flooding the market. You also need to be prepared for any AH competition which could very quickly drive down the price of this slow selling buff food.

The end result of selling the cooked version would end up at a price of 581g (firecracker salmon + mats caught – spices bought). This is over the 85 minute trip. The hourly rate would then work out as 410g/hr.

There is also a lesson to be learnt about politeness that I found whilst fishing in the Grizzly hills for this. For the most part you can expect to have the entire river to yourself when fishing for these. The Salmon can be caught elsewhere and there are no fishing quests that require being in this area. However after about 30 minutes of fishing I found myself trying to land by the same pools as another character. Because he was level 80 I assumed he was after the same fish as me, either as buffs for himself or fish feasts so I resigned myself to sharing the pools with him and lowering my fish caught per hour rate. After a few minutes of this I decided to say hello and actually ask him what he was up to. It turned out he was new to fishing and was only here to raise his fishing skill. I then spent a short while explaining that if he wanted to raise his skill via pools then there were better concentrations in places like the south sea. He thanked me for my help and flew off, leaving me to once again fish the whole of the Grizzly Hills by myself. So happy endings all round.

Not all that glitters is gold, sometimes it's crabs

06/07/2010 00:00:00

I honestly didn't expect this spot to make any gold at all. I read of a spot on the coast of Westfall Northwest of the Jangolode mine (pictured above) that has crabs which respawn almost instantly after dieing. These crabs are only level 14 so any high level players in the area are fully capable of causing a mass crab genocide.

My first thoughts were “who cares if you can kill a million of these things an hour, if they don't drop anything useful then its pointless”. Luckily to my surprise when I put my 30 minutes worth of farming up on the AH it had all sold within 48 hours at decent rates. The only reason I can think of that these things sold so well is that there are a lot of people currently levelling cooking or lower level hunters who don't want to try to get their own food.

The main things that drop are ingredients for 3 recipes as well as the occasional small lustrous pearl from the clams. The crabs do drop some coins and green gears but they are such tiny amounts that it wasn't worth me count (I estimate I earned about 1-2g from it all). There is however the option of bringing along a disenchanter next time to try and make something useful from these drops.

There is also a rare spawning elite called Brack that walks by who is worth killing if you see him.

The above data was from 30 minutes of farming. The mobs aren't close enough for me to AOE effectively so instead I stood in the middle of the site and as a hunter kept shooting any that came into range. The bodies don't disappear unless they've been left unlooted for roughly 5 minutes so I was able to shoot about 50 before looting them all in one go to save time. As you can see on my server this spot results in a nice 290g/hr which isn't bad for killing level 14's by the sea.

Neopets interview with Kat

02/07/2010 00:00:00

This week we Interview Kat, a long term player of Neopets who has been with the site almost since it started and has seen all the major changes and how it has affect the Neo-communities.

How long have you been playing Neopets? My first account was lost to the mists of time, I started playing when I was about 14, then started up seriously again nearly 4 years ago

How long did it take you to become a neomillionare? About half a month.

What methods do you think helped the most to reach your goal of one million NP? Playing games that I knew I could get 1000NPs per play on without any effort, sniping with the SSW and doing the free dailies.

Would you be able to suggest and of those games to players who are just starting out? Sure: Bouncy supreme: it might take a few goes to get the idea of it, but you can get 1000NPs for less than 1minute of play. Same with Petpet cannonball. Fashion fever - 900NPs for pretty much nothing Whack a cass is very easy if you time it right. KQ, you always get something, and the NPs to time ratio is very good As for the dailies, there are many lists available, just search the web

Name one thing you love and one thing you hate about Neopets. I love - KQ I hate - how fast the Pound boards go

What motivates you to keep playing after such a long time? My goal of earning and owning a Draik and getting all of my dream pets.

What other pets are you after? Desert Uni, Darigan Eyrie, Halloween Hissi, Plushie Hissi and a couple of Royals.

What do you think have been the biggest changes to Neopets since you started playing? The advent of Neocash, paying money to play. The whole customisation thing, it's really changed the whole value of pets, as unconverted ones are rare and coveted. The changes to the pound are good though, you can adopt any of the three pets on the screen rather than having to search for them after seeing them.

Do you feel the introduction of things like Neocash and more adverts was a good move for Neopets when it changed management? I think it's created a lot more revenue, and would compete with a lot more of the paying market for online communities, but I think it might push out the poorer people. Personally I don't really use Neocash, but I can see why people would like it.

If you could change one thing about Neopets what would it be? I'd halve the price of Draiks, and I'd seriously make it a freezable offence to quit KQ when you're losing.

How often do you play KQ and are you any good? I play as often as I can, with lots of different people. It amounts to a few times per day, and I think I'm good for the speed of my computer, people with very speedy connections beat me :/ But I think I'm pretty good

Do you think KQ gives those with faster computers an unfair advantage when it comes to earning NP? I think it might, but there's so many people who just play for the NPs, or play games with their friends. A faster computer is an advantage in the minigames, for sure.

What do you feel was your biggest mistake when trying to become a neomillionare? Thinking it would happen overnight. You have to have patience and determination and not feel guilty when you make a massive snipe.

If you could go back in time and give yourself one tip when starting Neopets what would it be? Start saving straight away! Make goals and stick to them. And for goodness sake, create well-named pets! It might sound cool to own a pet called Zeus_the_almighty_pwnful_god, but if you ever want to trade it you'll be stuck!

Ha! Thats a great name. Do you play any other games besides Neopets? I play Bejewelled a lot....I'm kinda addicted!

Do you think you'll still be playing Neopets in 5 years time? I think so - I might be older, but I'll still be young at heart.

Well thankyou for the interview Kat, some good answers there. You're Welcome.

The big 100

28/06/2010 00:00:00

The EGR forums have reached 100 posts. This is a great sign of big things to come. Forums are very hard to start and this milestone just gives us at EGR and you players more reassurance that we are going to be around for a long long time

To join in one of the discussions going on in the forum head over to www.eurogr.com/forums/

Schools out for summer!

22/06/2010 00:00:00

The Midsummer fire festival is upon us and I've had to push all my other articles back to fit this one. I wasn't expecting to make any gold from this monthly event as when I first looked at it I couldn't find anything to sell for profit during it. However I was then told by a friend that the bonfire honour/desecration quests grant a decent amount of reward gold (and exp if you're under 80).

As alliance I am able to honour 40 flames for 6g63 each (total of 265g20s) and desecrate 38 filthy horde bonfires for 13g23s each (total of 502g74s) Giving a grand total of 767g94s if you were to do them all.

I timed myself for two hours starting at Ironforge, heading south to Stranglethorn vale checking each bonfire along the way and then flying back up and doing all the bonfires north of the Dwarf capital. Coincidently it took me exactly the two hours to visit every bonfire in the eastern kingdoms and netted me a total of 266g31 (This included doing a bit of juggling in Ironforge at the start) which results in an hourly earning rate of 133g15s.

This low hourly earning rate does however come with 3 rather large “buts”:

1 – I also earned 191 burning blossoms along the way which will help me buy a new pet;

2 – I did not take the most optimal route at all. If a guide were made to reaching these bonfires as fast as possible using hearthstones and flight paths I'm sure the hourly rate could be doubled with ease;

3 – Next year if the event is run in a similar fashion you will be able to fly directly to each bonfire as the Cataclysm expansion will have been out for a while and allowed flying mounts in the old school kingdoms. This will save loads of time by not having to follow the bat shit insane flight paths that the game currently has.

I'm new here, what are the tacs?

01/06/2010 00:00:00

When people hit lvl 80 and start doing heroics it is mostly for the daily 2 frost emblems and the triumphs emblems for their tier 9 gear. I have yet to come across any sort of information about how much gold is made from running through random heroic dungeons. So this week I tried to find the figure out for myself.

In one day I ran through 10 random heroics all found using the dungeon finder tool. This meant I got my fair share of people disconnecting, arguments about people not holding aggro or not healing enough and the odd wipe or two. I took the option to disenchant items when I could as enchanting supplies are far easier to sell than greens at this level as well as often being more profitable.

I also assigned a gold value to the emblems of triumph. Emblems can be turned into either Runed orbs, crusader orbs or frozen orbs if the player doesn't need them for gear. With crusader orbs going for 110g on my server and requiring 15 emblems that puts the value of each emblem of triumph at 7.33g

I got a pretty good random selection of all the dungeons and was pretty surprised how much they all varied in terms of gold/hr and emblems/hour. However it does seem to come down a lot to how lucky you get with the greed roles in each dungeon.

247G may not seem like anything to get excited about but if you've just turned lvl 80 then your main goal in heroics would be to hope for some good gear drops. Now making 247G/hr as your secondary objective seems like a very good return on your time after all.

It may be the case that doing random dungeons may be the best option for someone who is aiming at amassing lots of gold and has just reached lvl 80. Not only will you be earning some startup money but you will also be gearing yourself up to improve your efficiency at other gold making strategies.

Interview with Robin Walker

31/05/2010 00:00:00

EGR can't claim to have conducted this interview but it has so much information in it we thought we'd link you all to it anyway. Kritzkast were lucky enough to secure an interview with Valves own Robin Walker, the man behind games such as TF2 and Half Life. The interview is so big that we couldn't post it on this page for fear of engulfing it with his answers. If you are interested in reading the entire thing please visit http://www.kritzkast.com/?page_id=521.

Lovely sweaty trolls

25/05/2010 00:00:00

I follow a few gold making blogs as a way of finding out new farming spots or gold making methods. Recently I noticed that more than one had suggested a place in Grizzly hills called Drakil'Jin Ruins. The argument behind it being a good farming spot is that the mobs are close together and have a quick respawn time whilst dropping lots of sacred mojo. So off I went to give it a try.

One good thing about this spot is that even though there were 3-4 other people there whilst I was farming there were still enough trolls to go around. Not many spots can sustain that many people at once. After 1 hour of killing trolls and wolves here are the results:

I tried listing the greens and Mojo on the AH but they didn't do too well so I had to sell almost everything to vendors. The problem with lvl 80 greens such as the ones dropped here is that nobody needs them. At lvl 80 it is too easy to get into a random dungeon or heroic and get a full set of blue armour without too much hassle. As for the Mojo it is only a reagent for 1 thing so demand is pretty low. However the vendor price of 50s per Mojo isn't terrible.

If you do decide to try this spot for a bit and find other people farming it too then you can always stray a bit away from the ruins and down to the beach as there are more trolls there that seem to be ignored by most of the other farmers.

Thou shall have a fishy on a little dishy

18/05/2010 00:00:00

WoTLK brought with it a load of new fish for the fisherman of Azeroth to catch. Most of these can be cooked into foods that not only heal mana and health but give one or two stat buffs for an entire hour. As such a lot of these fish are very valuable. One of the major downsides to fishing in Northrend is that you need a high fishing skill or lots of lures to be successful and as getting to fishing skill 450 takes roughly 4,000 casts there are a lot of people who do not bother leveling it. This means that anyone who does have the patience for fishing can find themselves with some very profitable opportunities.

This week we'll focus on the imperial manta ray. These can be fished from any part of the sea surrounding Northrend but you'll catch many more per hour by specifically looking for their pools. I find that starting at Valiance keep and flying along the southern coast all the way to the Tuskar village of Kamagua at Howling Fjord will bring you across more than enough of these fish. From an one hour trip I gathered 138 manta rays. However the pools also tend to bring up a lot of pygmy suckerfish which sell well to people leveling alchemy. You also find a few crates which yield various material goodies.

Imperial manta rays sell for about 1.9G on my server if sold raw, But if you've been doing your cooking dailies and have the recipe for baked manta steak you can almost double their value by simply adding northern spices which fortunately have been tumbling down in price. Below is the chart of what everyone was sold for after the fish had been cooked.

As you can see this gives us a fantastic earning rate of 542 gold per hour. The price of the spices was given at 50s each, however I expect that to drop even lower in the coming months. One other thing to note is that whilst earning 542g/hr might seem fantastic I wouldn't recommend doing it too much because whilst there is demand for this buff food it isn't unlimited and if you over fish and oversaturate the market you're very likely to be left with bags of smelly rotten fish and no one to use them.

Interview with Hannah

13/05/2010 00:00:00

This weeks interview is a little bit different, whether you love it or hate it Neopets is here to stay, it is one of the biggest gaming sites on the internet and according to certain sources the 2nd stickiest. All of this means that there is a lot of pressure on the Neopets team to keep producing high quality games.

We have Hannah (Polynomialc) with us today who is a neomillionare and hopefully will share a few tips and ideas with us about how we can be as succesfful as her in Neopets.

Hello Hannah, where are you from and how long have you been playing Neopets?Hi there, I'm from Florida and I've been playing Neopets on and off for about 6 years. I played when I was younger and recently rediscovered the site about 2 years ago.

What made you start?I first heard about it from a friend, I enjoyed the fact there was a selection of free games on a safe site.

Do you have a favourite Neopet?Definitely! I love Aishas but I also have a soft spot for Cybunny's ^-^

Name one thing you love and one thing you hate about Neopets. I love the Neopets economy, its interesting to watch it change and grow. There are a wide variety of games to choose from and the Neopets team are always working on releasing new events and items The thing I hate most about Neopets is their lack of customer support if something goes wrong and the fact that they can be a little too strict with their rules.

How long ago did you become a Neomillionare?Shortly after I started playing again.

How did you do it?Mainly through restocking, the stock market, and occasionally reselling.

Do you have any tips to give to aspiring Neomillionares?My only suggestion would be to save! If you spend you're NP as fast as you earn them you'll always be broke.

Which shops have you found best to restock at?Stamps, Neohome stuff, bakery goods, books, stuff like that.

What games do you find best for earning lots of NP?It depends, considering the Neopoint ratio changes every month. I've found the slots to be pretty profitable, but of course that's all luck!

Interesting choice, I wasn't aware the slots had a profitable payout in the long run.Scorchy slots, I'm cheap and not too concerned if I have a big losing streak as the stakes don't get to high.

What do you feel have been the biggest changes in Neopets since you start playing?Neopets was sold to Viacom and they took a more business like approach to running the site. Pets can now wear clothes and have different artwork. You can buy clothes for your pet, Neohome items and other things with real money at the NC mall. Some things have changed for the better, whilst others haven't.

What do you think of KeyQuest?It can be very profitable, and very monotonous. The prizes aren't quite as good as they used to be, but they still give out the occasional paintbrush or map piece.

Do you play any other games?I don't play many other online games however I own a few consoles and love playing games such as Pokemon, Disgaea and some FPS games like CoD or Halo. I have a Nintendo Wii but most games for that suck. I think the only Wii game I've ever liked is Twilight princess.

Ok, well thanks for taking part in this interview.It was a pleasure.

High Ho, High Ho, it's off to vanilla we go

11/05/2010 00:00:00

I've come across a few gold making blogs online that claim one way to make a decent income is going back to the old areas of Azeroth and gathering low level materials. The theory behind this being that when players create new characters they don't want to repeat the grind of levelling some new professions so are willing to pay decent rates at the AH for the materials needed.

Grabbing a pickaxe I headed out to Dun Morogh to give this theory a try. There are various maps you can find of the most efficient mining routes around but as ores are mostly found in mountainous areas you can't go far wrong by simple running around the outside of most maps with the “find mineral” tracker enabled.

I mined for 60 minutes and the above picture shows the contents of my bag. There were a few treasure chests along the way in the various caves around Dun Morogh but because it's such a low level area most of the items went to the junk pile and were off loaded at the nearest vendor. I also smelted roughly half of the copper ores into copper bars in an attempt at not flooding the market of either material. All the items sold within 48 hours and below you can see the income from my trip around Dun Morogh.

167G /hr really isn't an impressive total so I wouldn't recommend this to anyone looking for maximum return on their time. It may be worth keeping an eye out on the price of copper though. There is always the possibility of Blizzard introducing a new use for copper with the Cataclysm patch expected later this year. If this is the case and the value of copper ore or the bars rises to somewhere around the 2-3g mark then it may be worth taking a few trips around one of the starting areas for a bit of mining.

Profiting from Children's Week

05/05/2010 00:00:00

With the arrival of children week came a multitude of bad adoptive parents looking for the [Bad Example] achievement which requires you to eat a variety of bad foods in front of your orphan. One of these being the delicious chocolate cake. Like most people I went to the AH to see what the cooks of Azeroth were charging for the cake and found that the prices ranged from 60G at the start of the event to 25g 3 days later. I then priced up the individual ingredients on the AH and found that buying everything myself and cooking it would cost me 27g, so I bought an already made cake and watched my starving orphan cry as I ate it in front of him.

A short while later curiosity got the better of me and I wanted to know just how much profit people were making from these 25g cakes. The answer was “a lot”, (I'll show the figures later). The two main reasons these cakes were being sold at such a mark-up was that: 1 – Not everyone had the cake recipe which is a somewhat rare drop from the outland cooking quest. 2 – People are too lazy to fly to each of the vendors to pick up the ingredients themselves.

The two ingredients that aren't sold by vendors were the small eggs and the mageroyal. The small eggs however proved very easy to collect as there are mobs that have a 100% chance of dropping 1-2 at a time and are only lvl 6. The mageroyal however proved to be a bit of a pain as I don't have herbalism and therefore would have to pay the overinflated prices on the AH.

So if making one cake yourself wasn't worth the time, maybe making them in bulk is? I wasn't too sure of the demand for the cakes this far into the event so decided to just make 10. Flying around and getting all the ingredients (including killing about 60 mobs for the eggs) took roughly 40 minutes. I've listed what I paid for all the items below:

8x10 simple flour = 20s (25b each)
4x10 ice cold milk = 50s (1s25b each)
4x10 mild spices = 4s (10b each)
8x10 small egg = free (15-20 minutes killing mobs)
1x10 flask of port = 15s (1s 50b each)
3x10 mageroyal = 93g (bought on AH for an average price of 3.1g)

In total it cost me 93G 89S to make 10 cakes, at 25g they were the cheapest on the AH and within 24 hours 8 of them had sold. Once the other 2 sell I'll have made 237.5g (250g-5% AH cut) whilst using 93.89g of raw goods which gives me a profit of 143.61G for 45 minutes work. This equates to an hourly earning rate of 180G/hr

Not bad, but far from good. However there is a big lesson to be learnt here about getting in on things early. I did this experiment 3-4 days after the children's week event had started. Imagine if I had planned this a week before the start and aimed at being a big supplier. I would have been able to buy mageroyal at its regular price (roughly 80s) instead of the 3g+ price it shot up to this week. Making 20 or 30 cakes would only take a slightly longer time (45-50 minutes). I would also have been able to start selling the cakes as the event started for the much higher price of 60G. If everything goes right a well prepared cook would be able to make 1000g-1800g for an hours work if he has planned well ahead, whilst the Johnny come lately's have to make do with their 180g/hr.

Interview with Proton

19/04/2010 00:00:00

Here is the second in our series of interviews aimed at giving people an inside look at clan life. This weeks answers come courtesy of aQtheR, one of the minds behind the Proton TF2 team.

What's your name and Where are you from?My name is Marius, and I'm from Norway.

How long have you been playing TF2?I think I bought it on the 10th of December 2009.

What made you decide to start playing in a clan? My friend Exitium wanted me to start playing TF2 that we could make a clan together.

What's you're favourite TF2 class and why?Gosh, I'm not sure if I have one favourite.

You can pick more than one if you wantI like playing Sniper, Medic and Soldier, I'm not sure why, but they're some of the funnier classes.

What's your favourite Loadout for soldier?I like the normal rocket launcher, gunboats, equalizer and the stainless steel pot hat. (I've got two of them)

What do you think of the latest update that gives players a bunny hat and new pistol skins if they purchase the new Sam and Max game?I'm not sure, the bunny hats are awesome but the skins are really ugly.

Would you like the option to purchase more hats in the future?Yeah, sure.

What have you found to be the main difference between playing by yourself and playing in a clan?When I'm in a clan match, everything is so serious. I need to do all right things at the right time. When I'm playing by myself I can go mess around and have lots of fun.

So you prefer playing in public matches?Well it depends, it's fun playing in clan matches but I prefer public games.

What's been the most difficult aspect of helping to run Proton?Recruiting. It's very hard trying to find suitable players for the clan.

Name one thing you love about TF2 and one thing you hateI need a few seconds to think now. I love the Heavy's comments, they're so funny. And one thing I hate. Eyelander and Chargin Targe maybe.

You're not alone in your hatred of Demoknights!^^.

What's your favourite game of all time?I used to love Battlefield 2. Then it was Tf2 and I like MW2 as well. I think TF2 wins overall.

So you're a big fan of First person shooters? Are there any other genres you enjoy?Hmm, No.

Where do you see Proton in 1 years time?I hope we are more active than we are now, but to be honest I think we may all have moved on.

Ok. That's all the questions I have for you Marius. Thanks for taking part.No problem. Thank you for Sponsoring us.

Ready or not, Here I come!

16/04/2010 00:00:00

Here at EGR we love all games equally. This week in an attempt to merge the old favourite kids game of Hide and Seek with a modern video game one of the EGR admins has been taking screenshots of himself hiding around the various landscapes of the World of Warcraft. Now you the reader have the task of being the seeker and trying to figure out where he was hiding. The contest winner will be announced on Sunday the 25th as the person with the most correct locations guessed and will receive the princely sum of 250G to treat themselves for their keen eye and WoW Geography knowledge.

The screenshots can be found here.

Happy gaming.

Noble Gardeners

10/04/2010 00:00:00

I hope everyone's had a good easter and managed to finish off all their noble garden achievements before tomorrow when the event closes. I'm sure I'll see some of you in game flaunting off your brand new titles.

EGR would also like to give a big welcome to The Sovereignity. They are a friendly bunch of guys who love all things WoW related and im sure the rest of the EGR community will give them a big welcome in game and on the forums.

For those who haven't heard the great news, EGR now have their very own Ventrilo server. Communication is usually a deciding factor during organised gaming which decides which team is victorious and which team probably need a bit more practise. Hopefully the Ventrilo server will help all of EGR's gamers get an edge over their opposition.

The IP of the vent server is : voice400.inx-gaming.co.uk and the port is : 8770 Anyone can join the server and hang out in the public room as all the clans have their own private rooms they can use during matches.

Prancin' aboot with ya' heads full o' eyeballs!

31/03/2010 00:00:00

One of the best ways to improve at gaming and most things in general is to watch the pros do it. Even better if they tell you what is going on in their minds as they pull of the sometimes mind blowing moves that made them famous. So to aid all you budding demomen out there EGR have gathered a small collection of demoman videos to help you with blowing up the enemy team whilst trying to keep that remaining eye of yours.

Onwards and Upwards

30/03/2010 00:00:00

As EGR are still a very new community we are constantly tweaking ourselves to try and find the gaming niches that we best occupy. One of the major changes is the removal of the public TF2 server. This isn't a loss as much as a change as the server is going to be replaced with another TF2 private clan server. This hopefully means that we can attract more clans without any risk of overfilling the servers.

The second major change is that EGR are starting to get interest from WoW guilds. This means players can expect to see some very in depth articles and guides relating to the Warcraft world popping up on the site.

Lastly we're proud to announce to introduction of a very large Ventrillo server for use by all EGR community members. The server's main purpose will be to aid communication in TF2 clan matches and WoW raids. There will however be a water cooler chat room for anyone who is just bored and wants a chat with either an EGR admin or other members of the community. Details of the Ventrillo server will appear very shortly.

Question Time with CtM

24/03/2010 00:00:00

In an effort to get to know what makes people in the gaming community tick EGR will be hosting a series of interviews with various people in various sectors of the gaming industry to try and give everyone else a better idea of what goes on behind the scenes.

This weeks interview comes courtesy of Guin, one of the leaders of EGRs very own sponsored clan [CtM].

What's your name and Where are you from? Well, my name is Alex and I'm from Germany

How long have you been playing TF2? I think a bit more than half a year.

What's your favourite class and why? I really like the Demoman. He's the guy who's always drunk and plays with bombs. Also I like the Scottish accent.

What did you think of the new Demoman weapons that were released not long ago? To be honest, I think I'll always stick to the good old sticky launcher. The shield/sword or shield/bottle combination is funny too, but mostly not that effective. the Scottish resistance is cool too, but only for defensive play, and that's just not my style. If it was I'd probably prefer the Engi, but I don't.

How long have you been with CtM? It has been about 5 months I think. We don't have many members because we are very picky, And to be honest I didn't really play TF2 that much the last two weeks, but that's another story.

What's been your favourite part of being in a clan? Well it's very cool to be in a small clan like this because you get to know the people better and every single one is in my friends list. I really enjoy playing in a team and it gives you a great advantage if you know the players who you are playing with.

What do you think has been the hardest part of helping to run a clan? Running a clan has many aspects. For example you need to meet people who want to be in a clan like yours. Then we, as a clan, are very picky with our testing and things like that, so it always takes a good amount of time to get people into the clan. Another aspect is that you want the people to have fun in your clan and play together. All of this takes a lot of time but it's worth it.

What would you say is your favourite game of all time? If I had to decide on one game it would definitely be TF2. It's just got the perfect mix of serious/casual gameplay that an fps game needs and it is really funny. The graphics are cool and I really like all the characters. It's like every single one of them has an own personality. Outside of TF2 I really like almost every other genre like other shooters, third person shooters, platformers like Super Mario, beat'em ups like streetfighter, RPGs like diablo 2 or fallout, the Zelda series, real time strategy like Warcraft 3 and Starcraft and many other games. So yes, TF2 is number one. But maybe one time it will be Diablo 3 (looking forward to it).

What do you imagine CtM will be doing in one years' time? I think CtM will still exist, maybe having grown or shrunk, but I will definitely be in it. Maybe we won't just play TF2 but other games too. The other option is that CtM doesn't exist anymore and we have some other ideas, but I doubt that will happen.

OK Alex, thanks for that, thats all the questions I've got for now.OK and thank you.

TF2 Update

23/03/2010 00:00:00

I'm sure everyone is at least a little bit excited over the recent TF2 update in which valve decided that it would implement community made models into the game. Valve have been using community made maps and making them official for a long time now, but this is the first time that weapon ideas and hats have been used.

For those of you who haven't seen them yet here is a picture of all the new items released in this update:

Personally I've got my fingers crossed for that surgeons mask.

Great beginnings

22/03/2010 00:00:00

European Games Radar is already over a month old and has seen steady growth right from the start. The 24/7 dustbowl server has started to acquire some regular players and has started to see some heated high skill battles between red and blu.

The clan server is being used more frequently thanks to the two fantastic clans [CtM] and Proton. Both clans contain a great bunch of players and look set to expand in their own ways. Special thanks goes out from EGR to:

[CtM]

Guin
CPK
Beefsteak
spycrab
worm
xantu
van voyce

Proton

Exitium
Phthisis
Venefixuz
Mini Me
DJ ronningen <3<3
Tehzonc

I'll take the opportunity to remind everyone of the stats package that is incorporated into the server which tracks all players and allows them to see very details analysis of their play. Ingame this can be accessed by typing /skill however in order to view the full details you can go to http://egr.gameme.com/ and see a wide variety of information.

The dustbowl server also have the ability to let players listen to the FragFM radio station ingame by typing !radio. The station plays a wide range of music by several different DJs.

Last thing to mention is this fantastic new site complete with forum. I encourage everyone to register and start posting their own ideas and views or give opinions about current discussions. Perhaps even give advice about play or critique something you've seen in the tips section.