We have some exciting news for you today; no Blizzard didn’t announce the released date for Diablo 3 and no, neither did ArenaNet for GW2. MMOCrunch is moving to LoreHound.com!

It’s actually a reunion of sorts as the owner of LoreHound was one of our original staff writers here, iTZKooPA.  We are once again combining forces to form Voltron…I mean a new and improved LoreHound.com!

This will be our last update here on MMOCrunch and we will be shutting the site down permanently sometime early next week once LoreHound has been updated. So I invite all our readers to come over to LoreHound to continue to read our ramblings.

I was happy to find out today that both Firefall and Reddit.com were going to shutdown their sites, and in Firefalls case its beta testing, on Jan 18th to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act. I decided I must do something as well and will be canceling my SWTOR account after my pre-paid subscription comes to an end regardless of how I feel about the game, unless EA reverses its stance on SOPA. Neutrality is not good enough, EA must publicly state they are against both laws.  I will also be boycotting all gaming companies that support the Act which according to Reddit include the following:

• EA
• Capcom
• Microsoft (Not anymore)
• Nintendo
• Sony
• Sega
• THQ
• Square Enix
• Take Two
• Ubisoft
• Nival

Below is a great video that explains what SOPA is meant to do and what it will actually do. In essence it will allow any company to shutdown any website they “claim” are breaking their copyrights. I put claim in quotes because there is no due process or even a notification given to the website with the violation. The company also doesn’t actually have to prove they own the copyright.

A recent example was when Universal Media Group was able to shutdown MegaUpload because of a free song upload by various artist including P. Diddy, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, and others. The song was to protest SOPA and did not violate any copyrights, however just the request by UMG was enough to shutdown the site. Keep in mind MegaUpload is not some small website like MMOCrunch or many others, it’s the 72nd largest website in the world. Also keep in mind they were able to do this NOW and SOPA or PIPA have not even become laws yet. So just imagine what will start once these laws pass.

SOPA is not only supported by gaming companies, but by the movie and music industry as well, which in the past have had no problem suing 12 year old girls for downloading a song. So shutting down a website will probably mean even less to them. SOPA is the death of internet freedom and creativity and I hope you all will do your own protest or boycott in support of stopping SOPA and PIPA (Protect IP Act).

RockPaperShotgun also has a complete list.

With December now upon us, it’s time for us to take a look back at 2011 and recognize the outstanding accomplishments made by the games we love to play.

While this is MMOCrunch’s fourth year covering MMO gaming, this is our first ever MMO Awards presentation, so we’re a bit excited. Hopefully you guys will agree with many of our decisions, but even if you don’t we’d love to hear some of your picks.

Continue below to find out our picks for the best MMO games of 2011 and who won the best MMORPG of the year award.

Most Anticipated MMO for 2012

Guild Wars 2 is undoubtedly the most anticipate MMO game coming out in 2012 or at least it is here at MMOCrunch. ArenaNet seems to be one of the few MMO developers out there that aren’t following the trends, so we’re are very excited to see what they come up with in GW2.

Runners Up:

• The Secret World
• PlanetSide 2
• TERA

Best MOBA 2011

2011 has been a huge year for RiotGames and League of Legends as they have seen their player base explode in the second half of this year and for good reason. League of Legends is the best MOBA game out there today and while others came close, none made the cut.

Runners Up:

• Heroes of Newerth

Best MMO Shooter 2011

World of Tanks as been rolling along since it launched in April of 2011 and has quickly become the game to play if you want to blow sh*t up. With the addition of Clan Wars, World of Tanks gives players a second layer of MMO strategic combat to consider as players fight for control for power and territory.

Runners Up:

• Fallen Earth
• Global Agenda

Best PvP 2011

Eve Online might have had a bumpy road in 2011, but their PvP system remains the place to be for the best PvP combat in any MMO game today. With the recent launch of it’s latest expansion Crucible, Eve Online is back to the basics, improving the core of its game-play mechanics and is our choice for the best MMO PvP for 2011.

Runners Up:

• Darkfall
• Warhammer Online

Best Free-to-Play MMORPG 2011

This was a close race as there have been so many games that switched from subscription to free-to-play in 2011, but in the end Lord of the Rings Online came out victorious. While the release of the Rise of Isengard expansion wasn’t all it could be, Turbine responded quickly with additional updates and content and it is our Best Free-to-Play MMORPG for 2011.

Runners Up:

• DC Universe Online
• Everquest II
• Age of Conan

Best New MMORPG 2011

While 2011 might have been a record year for the amount of MMO games released, only two really stuck out to us with RIFT coming out victorious. RIFT has seen a great first year with the fastest content updates around, constantly improving and adding on to an already great MMORPG.

Runners Up:

• DC Universe Online

Best MMORPG 2011

It looks like RIFT not only took Best New MMORPG, but also Best MMORPG for 2011 out of the gate in its first year of release and why not? RIFT has had a great first year, tons of content updates and one of the smoothest game launches I’ve seen. However it was by no means won by a landslide as it just edged out World of Warcraft for the win. We listed SWTOR as a runner up because many of us have already played it during the betas and we feel it’ll be a serious contender in 2012. Since its release will technically be in 2011, we decided to give it some acknowledgement.

Runners Up:

• World of Warcraft
• Lord of the Rings Online
• Star Wars: The Old Republic

That damn instance finder is so hot right now (I don’t know, Zoolander just gOt into my head so I had to) that Turbine has decided to add one for Lord of the Rings Online in their upcoming Update 5 content update.

Along with the instance finder, update 5 will continue the Epic Book story-line focusing on Theodren and will introduce 5 new dungeons which will take place in near or within the Tower of Orthanc leading up to Saruman.

Three of the new dungeons will be 3-man, one 6-man and one 12-man raid where players will confront Saruman himself. Along with the new dungeons there will also be new instance gear sets and raid sets.

Good news for players who weren’t all to pleased with the content from the recently released expansion Rise of Isengard, which only included one new dungeon raid.

It seems the Dungeon/Instance finder is catching on as RIFT also recently added one and WoW recently expanded theirs to include raids. Good news for solo players, not so much for role-players.

Today was a big day for CCP, the developer behind Eve Online, as they not only released a public apology to their fan base for the whole Incarna/Captain’s Quarters/Virtual Store fiasco, but also announced their plans for a winter expansion.  The expansion, which is planned for 2011, will help alleviate players concerns about the direction Eve Online is heading by completely refocusing the Eve development teams on Eve’s core gameplay: spaceships.

The winter expansion’s goals will be to introduce improvements to warfare and PvP, which will include, but are not limited to the following:

• Hybrid weapons balancing
• Factional warfare
• Assault ships
• Capital ship balancing
• New T2 modules
• Starbase logistics management
• New EWAR-Drones
• T2 Rigs manufacturing
• Ship spinning
• New font
• More captains quarters
• Time dilation

Good new for Eve Online fans who were upset about the direction Eve was heading over the last few months. It seems CCP is not all talk and is following up their words with real action. Can we all be friends again?

Today Blizzard released details as to how Valor Points will be effected by the upcoming World of Warcraft 4.3 patch. Changes included how they are obtained as well as what items can be purchased with them.

Valor Point changes:

• Looking for Dungeon — 150 VP per run, with a cap of seven runs per week. All Cataclysm heroic dungeons introduced in 4.0, 4.1, and 4.3, will provide 150 Valor per run.
• Looking for Raid — 250 VP per run, with a cap of 500 per week. The 4.3 raid, Dragon Soul, will be split into two separate raids for the Raid Finder. While individual bosses do not drop Valor when using the Raid Finder, you will receive 250 Valor for completing each Dragon Soul raid. Each boss will only drop loot for you once per week, but you will continue to get the 250 Valor for completing each Raid Finder raid, up to the 500 cap.
• 10 player raid boss — 115 VP. There are nine bosses per week, counting Baradin Hold.
• 25 player raid boss — 135 VP. There are nine bosses per week, counting Baradin Hold.
• Valor Points cap at 1000 per week.

The main goal with these changes to to move Valor Points back to their original intent of being a currency reward as a consolation prize. Blizzard stated to two main reasons were,

to make it less frustrating when you keep having bad luck getting an item you want from a particular boss, and to help encourage you to keep fighting bosses (and helping out the rest of your group) even if that particular boss didn’t drop anything for your character in particular.

As stated previously the Raid Finder will provide players with a lower difficulty setting  for the Dragon Soul raids, so inturn they’ll offer a lower ilvl of gear. The normal 10 and 25 raids will drop ilvl 397, with the final Deathwing encounters dropping ilvl403. For Heroic, that will be upped to 410 and 416 respectively.

Blizzard is rolling out their newest feature, the Raid Finder, similar to their Dungeon Finder, that will allow players to quickly organize pick-up raids. When the Raid Finder launches with patch 4.3, it will only be available to use on the Dragon Soul raid (25 players) where players will battle against Deathwing. However I’m sure in the future this will be expanded to including more and more raids in the future.

The Raid Finder will introduce a new difficulty level, which is easier than normal or Heroic and will reward players with lesser drops and rewards. In fact, players will not be able to use the Raid Finder to access the higher difficulty tiers so those will still need to be manually organized with friends or guildmates.

Since the announcement I’ve read some negative posts in the MMO blogosphere about how the new Raid Finder feature is making World of Warcraft less social or how it won’t be very useful, but I can’t say I agree with either author. If anything the Raid Finder will make players more social, joining in on raids they normally wouldn’t have if they happen to be a solo player or in a small guild.

As for not being useful, the Raid Finder’s greatest benefit is that it will allow players to practice Raids much more often in pick-up groups. Then when they run the Raid in normal or Heroic with their friends or guild, they’ll already know what they should be doing. Half the problem with running raids is people don’t know what to because they’ve never ran it before. So this will give players a lot more practice, plus there is no instance lock when using Raid Finder, so you can really run it as often as you like.

I personally love this feature and think every MMO should implement a Raid finder. I’ve always been a solo player or part of a small guild where it was difficult to get enough people to run raids, but with the Raid Finder this solves those problems and still allows Raiding guilds to keep their higher level items and rewards. Kudos to Blizzard on a stellar idea and implementation.

Today we’re happy to announced that we have four closed beta keys to Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of Neverwinter on Facebook that we will be giving away to readers within the next 24 hours.

For a chance to win, simply comment here stating why you want a Heroes of Neverwinter closed beta key, then tomorrow we will select our four favorite answers and send them a key. Winners will be contacted via email, so make sure to use a valid email address.

Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of Neverwinter brings the beloved lore, ruleset and legacy of Dungeons & Dragons to the Facebook platform. This engaging mix of bite-sized play sessions, top notch RPG gameplay, viral dynamics, and extended features promises to deliver the deepest RPG experience ever seen on the platform.

Update: The four lucky winners have been selected and are

• Dad
• Bre
• Lord Sicarius
• Michael

Congratulations!  If you don’t see the email, check your spam folder or contact us.

The day you’ve all been waiting for is here. Today we announce the winner of our Star Wars: The Old Republic collectors editions giveaway sponsored by MMORaid, a new social MMO news sites.

One lucky member in the top 25 user list (actually 2-27 since the top 2 are MMORaid staff) was selected using a random number generator and that lucky number was 19, belonging to the user Hayd4y. Congratulations! You should have received an email to your registered email address with instructions on how to redeem the prize.  If you did not, please check your spam folder or post here.

MMOCrunch and MMORaid would like to thank everyone that entered. Perhaps we’ll run another contest for GW2

MMOCrunch is proud to announce today its partnership with Overwolf Ltd to bring you the MMOCrunch Overwolf Client.

Overwolf, for those of you not familiar with it, is a social media tool that allows gamers to stay connected while in-game with any PC game. Check your Facebook page or email, upload videos, chat, or even browse the web. Overwolf keeps you connected. No longer do you need to alt-tab to your desktop if you want to check an online quest map or need some info from about gear or raids.

MMOCrunch Overwolf Features

• Facebook – Complete Facebook integration. While in-game players can be keep up to date and post by having their Facebook feed open or one click away if you like a clutter free screen.
• Video Recording – Completed a Raid or found an Epic item and want to tell the world? Overwolf allows players to record and take screenshots of their gameplay which can then easily be shared on Facebook or any other social media site.
• Web Browser – A full working browser is included so no longer do players need to Alt-Tab out of the game to check a browser window.  Need help with a quest or just want to check our some gear or item information? Just open up your in-game browser and check what you need to on the fly.
• Instant Messenger Chat - Chat with your friends while in-game seemlessly, no longer will you miss IM messages because your completing a three  hour raid.  Currently Overwolf only supports MSN chat, however additional IM services will be offered in the future such as AIM.
• Widgets - New features and widget will be added in the future so Overwolf will only get better. Currently Overwolf has widgets for Twitter, Youtube, Skype, Gmail, Yahoo mail, and many more.
• Free – All this and more is offered completely free.

Download Overwolf Here