Regular kids celebrate their birthday with a party that has an over-rich cake, lots of screaming toddlers and maybe a creepy clown. But how do you celebrate the fifth birthday of the biggest subscription-based MMO game in the world? Because that's exactly what's happening today to Blizzard's World of Warcraft.

Yep, after years of development and months of free beta testing it was five years ago today on November 23, 2004 that Blizzard finally launched the game for paying customers. Even though MMOs had been around for a number of years before World of Warcraft, the launch of Blizzard's game was the beginning of a new era as literally millions of players decided to fork over a monthly fee to play, fight and socialize in the fantasy world of Azeroth. In fact it's safe to say the genre's history could be split into two parts: BWOW (Before World of Warcraft) and AWOW (After World of Warcraft).

Naturally our sister site WoW.com is celebrating the fifth anniversary as well and even has some cool giveaways they will be giving their readers over the next few days. Make sure you head over their way to partake in some birthday goodness. And stay away from the creepy party clown.

Yet another game developer is closing its doors thank to the currently poor worldwide economic situation. According to this Babel Fish-translated news story, the Amsterdam-based game outsourcing company Streamline Studios has filed for bankruptcy. It has now closed its offices and laid off its remaining employees. Streamline helped out with the development of artwork and other assets for game titles like Unreal Tournament 3, Gears of War and many others.

In an interview with Gamesindustry.biz, the company's co-founder Hector Fernandez admits that Streamline, which had over 50 employees at the beginning of the year, was looking to weather the economic storm. However several long term contracts with game publishers "started falling by the wayside" in 2009 and one of their biggest clients shut down this year. All of that combined with the weakness in the US dollar made business too hard for the company to stay afloat.

However Fernandez seems like he believes Streamline will come back, saying that, " . . . all of its workings will continue to live on. We're basically taking a step back, reassessing the situation, and then essentially beginning our re-invention." Even Streamline's company web site, even though it's basically a placeholder design, is actually filled with holiday cheer as you can see above. As usual with these situation we hope Streamline's former employees land on their feet.

On the surface, an announcement about a upcoming zombie-based MMO from one of the founding members of the team that made Guild Wars would make PC gamers jump for joy. But you can stop your jumping, folks, because we have some bad news. That seemingly dream PC game prospect . . . isn't coming to the PC at all.

That's right. The newly announced Undead Labs, a Seattle-based games studio founded by ArenaNet co-founder Jeff Strain, has announced its plans to make a zombie-based massively multiplayer game . . . for consoles. And just for consoles. In their "Rude Q&A" on the company's web site (their version of an FAQ page), Strain states, "There are scores of MMOs on the PC. There are very few on the console, and exactly zero developed specifically for the console." He adds, "Nobody wants to see a PC MMO ported to console, with a hybridized design attempting to appeal equally to all players."

While we agree that the console space has not been well served by the MMO genre the prospect of having consoles get a freakin' zombie MMO before the PC, and made by people who actually know what they are doing in this space, still hurts us. A lot.

A few weeks ago, Sid Meier announced plans to bring a version of his Civilization strategy game series to Facebook. But has the game's publisher 2K Games decided to shut down preliminary plans to adapt the Civilization franchise to a full-fledged MMO? It's looking like that's very possible. The blog site n3rfed.com has some evidence that such a project was in the works but was recently canceled.

The site points to LinkedIn online profiles from two members of the now apparently defunct (and previously not officially announced) 2K Austin development studio. The dev team was on the small side (just ten members according to one of the team members) and was shut down in October after working on a prototype MMO "of an existing franchise" for a little over a year.

While that franchise is never actually named, one of the former 2K Austin team members states in his LinkedIn profile that the the team "developed the overall design of the city layouts throughout the various ages of history". That certainly sounds like a Civ-type game to us. Big Download has emailed 2K Games to see if they care to comment on this story.

[Via Blue's News]

In perhaps the least surprising news item for the past week, Valve's zombie co-op shooter sequel Left 4 Dead 2 climbed up to the top spot on Steam's top 10 sales list. The list, based on revenues, shows that despite the first game in the series being released just over a year ago there's still an audience for even more infected shooting action.

Infinity Ward's controversial military shooter Modern Warfare 2 secured the number two spot on Steam's sales list while the regular and special edition versions of BioWare's fantasy RPG Dragon Age: Origins made the third and fourth positions on the list, respectively:

1. Left 4 Dead 2 - Valve
2. Modern Warfare 2 - Infinity Ward/Activision
3. Dragon Age Origins - BioWare/EA
4. Dragon Age Origins Digital Deluxe Edition - BioWare/EA
5. Borderlands - Gearbox Software/2K Games
6. Torchlight - Runic Games
7. Frontlines: Fuel of War - Kaos Studios/THQ
8. Crysis Maximum Edition - Crytek/EA
9. Overlord Complete Pack - Triumph Studios/Codemasters
10. Counter-Strike Source - Valve

Last week Capcom made some announcements concerning future downloadable content for their hit action game Resident Evil 5. The extra content will consist of two extra episodes for the game as well as new costumes and a new Mercenaries Reborn gameplay mode. There will also be a Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition that will ship in 2010 with the original game and all of the DLC in one package.

Sounds pretty awesome, right? However, the DLC and Gold Edition announcements were for the Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles. So what does that mean for the PC version that was just released last September? G4TV put that question to Capcom and got back the sobering response, "No plans for PC at this point." That doesn't entirely shut the door on the subject but at the moment it looks like PC owners of Resident Evil 5 might have to do without all those cool console extras.

Don't you want to feel the ride of a zombie jockey on top of your playable character? We answer that question with, "Who wouldn't?" Yes, we know that's answering a question with another question. What of it? Besides you still want the chance to experience this feeling for yourself, don't you?

Well, if you enter and win one of the five Steam download codes we are giving away for Left 4 Dead 2 you will have the sweet, sweet pleasure of being able to play Valve's zombie co-op shooter sequel. That includes being able to have that jockey jump on your character and have him guide you to near-certain doom. If you are eligible to win, you still have time to enter. Head over to the official contest web page by 11:59 pm Eastern time tonight to get your entry in. Good luck.

The pace of new PC game releases has slowed with many titles this week making their US debut exclusively via download:

Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter: Croteam steps up with this graphical revamp of their 2001 released first person shooter. Now you can see giant bulls and headless men with bombs charging at you with lots more polygons via Croteam's Serious Engine 3. This game is a Steam download exclusive.

Was the past week good for you? It certainly was good for us. As usual Big Download had a bunch of exclusive feautures, news items and downloads for any PC gaming fan. Let's take a look back at the last seven days:
Exclusive Features

• Left 4 Dead 2: Check out our review of the PC version of Valve's shooter. Plus you still have time to win one of five Steam download codes for the full game.
• Interviews: This week we chatted with the creator of the upcoming 8-bit version of Left 4 Dead along with the COO of Reality Gap about the new free-to-play title Battleswarm.
• Mac Monday: This week we focus on two Mac games: Drawn: The Painted Tower and New Star Soccer 2010.
• Boot Disk: This week our retro games feature looks at Interplay's Fallout 2.
• Big Ideas: Our weekly look at game themes examines what, if anything, could be considered taboo in games.
• All You Need To Know: Our weekly 411 on a game titles gives you the info you need on Assassin's Creed 2.
• Freeware Friday: Our popular look at free PC games checks out the browser-based Captain Forever.

This coming week is going to be a bit different simply because the US Thanksgiving holiday will effectively cut a lot of gaming news out of the equation. But those sneaky Canadians at BioWare are apparently plotting to do announce something in the next few days concerning Mass Effect 2.

The upcoming sci-fi RPG's official Facebook page has a post from BioWare's Chris Priestly who mentions that he's been so preoccupied with "meetings and 'secret stuff'" that he hasn't had much time with Mass Effect 2. But then he adds, "Still with the coming surprise for next week on the ME2 website, I'm sure fans will forgive me for no update." Hmmmmm. Could it be an announcement of the game's first downloadable content package? A demo, perhaps? Or maybe that the game comes with free money? We shouldn't have long to find out.

[Via VG247.com]

Geeze . . . The PC version of Modern Warfare 2 can't catch a break. After all the controversy over no dedicated servers, the high price tag for the first person shooter and THAT SCENE in the game comes yet another talking point. This time it centers around Steam banning CD keys for the Infinity Ward-Activision game that have been identified as coming from "grey market" sources.

These sources are usually online web sites based in Asia that obtain CD keys for a discount through likely dubious means and then sell them for a profit to anyone. However, Activision and Steam do not consider them to be legitimate locations to buy the game. A post on Steam's message board by a Steam/Valve rep states, "In the future, you should only buy unopened retail boxed copies from legitimate retailers or purchase via legitimate digital download services." So if you see a site that offers up a CD key for the game for a "deal", be warned that Steam might reject it.

[Via Voodoo Extreme]

Pandemic Studios' life as a separate game development studio came to a swift end earlier this week with the reveal that its owner Electronic Arts was shutting down their Santa Monica-based offices and laying off 200 of its workers. While EA has said the Pandemic brand name and its franchises will live on, the last game to come from their original offices will be the WWII action title The Saboteur.

Late on Friday, the dev studio's community manager posted on their message boards that " . . . . The Saboteur has officially gone "GOLD" on all 3 planned platforms (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 & PC)." The game is still scheduled for a December 8 release date here in the US (Europeans get the game a few days earlier on December 4). As the community manager admits, "This has been a very difficult week for Pandemic Studios, but does not change the fact that a team of amazing people worked very hard to make The Saboteur a great game that fans will be able to enjoy this holiday season." We are hoping the last game from their studio is good as well even if EA seems intent on not giving it a big marketing push.

[Via Joystiq]

As usual, Valve is quick to respond with issues found in their PC game releases. On Saturday they issued their first major patch for their zombie co-op shooter sequel Left 4 Dead 2. The update, which is of course automatically issued via Steam, fixes a number of problems that have shown up since the game's launch on Tuesday.

You can check out the full release notes on the Steam web site but a couple of the notable bug fixes include fixing some problems in the game's matchmaking system along with patching a performance issue "when rendering lots of decals, notably when fighting tanks with shotguns." You can expect to see lots more updates for the game in the coming months.

Ironclad Games' next micro-expansion for their hit space-based RTS game Sins of a Solar Empire, titled Diplomacy, is about to begin its first beta test. A note on the game's official web site has announced that the first beta release of Diplomacy will begin sometime on Monday. While the beta won't be feature complete nor "fun" to actually play (as per publisher Stardock's warning about their beta tests) it will go live for anyone who has pre-ordered the $9.99 expansion.

As we reported during PAX 2009, this will be the final micro-expansion for Sins of a Solar Empire with the final version to be released sometime this spring. Plans for a third micro-expansion have been canceled but it looks like Ironclad and Stardock have major future plans for the game franchise.

As you prepare to shop and give presents to your family and friends you may want to give those gifts a certain special something. Valve's online store has some newly available holiday greeting cards that should give your gift giving efforts some extra "oomph."

The three sets of cards cover Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2 and the new Left 4 Dead 2 (which you can see above). The cards have that weird humor theme that always seems to creep up in Valve projects (we especially like the Spitter card in the Left 4 Dead 2 set). Of course there's also lots of t-shirts and other items in the online store that would be perfect for any Valve fan for the holidays (we want the Midnight Riders tour shirt please).