Sony Online Entertainment launched a 48-hour Steam sale on their Landmark Founder's Packs yesterday. According to the official forums (as well as reddit and Twitter), this sale left a bitter taste in some people's mouths.

When it comes to controversial topics such as this (especially as an active member in SOE's gaming community), I try to be fair and see it from both sides of the coin. Sometimes we need to take a deep breath and put down the pitchfork for a moment, while other times we are completely justified in feeling wronged and slighted. Unfortunately, this sale seems to fall in a grey area no matter how I look at it.

The world’s largest eSports tournament ever, The International, just concluded on July 21st. It was a spectacle on many levels; whether it be a sold out arena, the massive prize pool, or the level of competition, the tournament was truly massive and an achievement in many different ways. With the dust finally settled a single question has arisen: why does this tournament matter? The unpacking of this question is simple, but it also speaks volumes about the gaming community as a whole.

I woke up this morning to find many of the high-profile community members within my twitter circle, expressing disdain and disappointment at Blizzard Entertainment's Rob Pardo, for statements quoted in a recent Polygon article that questioned the lack of 'socially relevant content' in games, e.g. the lack of female protagonists and the sexualization of female characters.

Opinion: The champagne has been drunk; the party poppers have been brushed away. We've waved goodbye to yet another year of MMO gaming awards, hung up our tired tuxedoes and ball gowns and moved on to anticipating the year of gaming goodness to come.

It's during this period of limbo, where 2012 has barely finished and 2013 hasn’t really started, that we tend to reflect on the year. The awards themselves are a great starting point - handing out accolades to big success stories or critical darlings. But the badges and trophies are just the tip of a far greater MMO iceberg, with commercial winners and losers chosen by a fickle army of genre fans who are slowly changing direction.

We've given out our awards again this year, as have GameBreaker, Massively and MMORPG.com. Almost universally, critics and fans alike have chosen Guild Wars 2 for a slew of awards, from Game of Year, to being recognized for superb music and art direction. Likewise, Planetside 2 picked up awards for delivering a superb mass-combat shooter and very reasonable free-to-play implementation.

Editorial: When I first heard about Star Wars: The Old Republic moving to Free-to-Play, I cheered BioWare on for making a smart move. As it became increasingly squashed under the weight of a number of summer releases, the switch to free would breathe new life into the game just as Christmas approached. At least, that was the theory.

What actually happened was an onslaught of concern and criticism over what would generously be described as “overly aggressive monetization”. When patch 1.5 went live on the public test server, and we were able to try out life as a free-to-play newcomer, I was stunned. Lower XP rates and no rested XP? No ability to hide an equipped helm? Only two hotkey bars?