Turbine's released some screenshots from the upcoming update 4: Sentinels.

“Sentinels” follows a story line that involves House Deneith, Searing Heights, a new kind of undead and a nefarious band of pirates led by the infamous Captain Tew (usually seen with his beloved pet, Ratty).

You can check out all the pics in the gallery, here.

Ok, we've wiped out all the bad guys leading up to this quest.

The Herald of the Emerald Claw requires your assistance in stopping Brother Nerezza and obtaining the Twisted Apocrypha. You must discover the treacherous path through the Shadow Crypt to defeat Brother Nerezza.

We actually tried this last week and failed miserably. Well, not miserably, but ... badly.

The quest is a magical maze - everytime you go through a hallway, you may or may not end up in a room you were aiming at. There are a total of 8 keys (12 if you want more loot) you have to gather, to unlock the final boss room. You can end up in a different room each time, or the same room. It appears to be completely random...which makes for a long quest. At the end, you get a nasty surprise.

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Samir Sirka of the Silver Flame has entrusted you with the responsibility of defeating the mummy guardian, Nsu. Enter the Tomb of the Shadow King and extinguish all light to awaken the mummy, but beware the dark is the source of his power.

Wow. Lots of running around on this quest. Had to go to multiple locations and turn out the lights, fighting shadow wargs, shadow mages, shadow gargoyles, invisible stalkers (those are fun). When we finally got the lights turned out, we had to find the bad guy and lead him to a room where we had to throw some switches at just the right time to turn on this really bright light. Only then could we fight him. If it was dark, we couldn't hit him for squat.

We had to leave one person in the trap, one person up top on one switch, and I got to run up, hit the other switch at the same time, jump down, fight till the lights went out, find the ladder, and repeat.

We managed to do it, tho.

All that's left is the shadow crypt, now that we got rid of all the mummies.

Next in the series, and only one more to go. It's slow going when you can only get together for a few hours on a saturday, but then...back in the day, we used to play Pencil and Paper (yeah, we were wimps, and used pencils) once a week on Saturday nights...where was I?

Oh, yeah. The tomb.

The Warforged, Xaeon Penthrax of the Silver Flame, enlists your help to enter the Tomb of the Shadow Lord and defeat the Mummy, Nebtawi. Heed Xaeon's advice: don't go along and do not lose sight of your party.

This was a tomb filled with switches and shadows. It took a while, but we made our way through, and beat the bad guy. Of course, we're 2-3 levels above the quest level, and we're playing on casual, so it wasn't horrendously tough, either.

The Shadow King might be, tho...

Turbine, Inc. announced today that Dungeons & Dragons Online®: Eberron Unlimited™the world’s best free-to-play massively multiplayer online role playing game has already attracted over one million new players since its September 2009 launch. The massive influx of new players has been across all of the various consumer plans available. DDO Unlimited’s paid subscriber base has more than doubled, while at the same time players are transacting in the new DDO store at three times the industry average, growing the franchise’s revenue over 500% since its launch in September.

DDO Unlimited is a free-to-play MMORPG which delivers heart-pounding gameplay featuring the industry’s best combat system, a massive world with state-of-the-art graphics and gameplay, and a rich set of features that until now could only be found in premium subscription-based MMOs. DDO Unlimited offers an innovative new pricing model that allows players to download and play for free, purchasing adventure packs, items, and account services a la carte from the new DDO Store, or to subscribe to get unlimited access to all of the game’s content. Players can download and play DDO Unlimited for free by visiting http://www.ddo.com.

“The response from players to DDO Unlimited has been nothing short of phenomenal,” said Jim Crowley, president and CEO of Turbine, Inc. “We’ve known all along how great this game is and by implementing an innovative new model that put the players in charge of how they pay and play DDO Unlimited, we’ve successfully expanded our reach and injected new energy into the game. Without a doubt, DDO Unlimited is a hit!”

“The launch of DDO Unlimited has been a huge success and has really taken the game to a new level,” said Fernando Paiz, Executive Producer of DDO Unlimited. “As we celebrate our 4th birthday, the game has never been better and we’re just getting started with more adventure packs, more store items, and other innovative features coming in the major updates we have planned throughout 2010.”

Well, I found the Anniversary dudette, and decided to give the easter egg hunting quest a shot. I had 15 tokens on my main, so at the worst, I could say I tried.

Basically, she grants you "Sight" which lets you find these glowing eggs scattered all around the Marketplace. For 3 minutes. The more eggs you find, the greater your 'egg aura' becomes, and the better your gift is. It took me 15 tries, but I finally got the last tier of aura. You have to jump on building rooftops, run around very nook and cranny looking for copper, silver, and gold eggs.

Loot wise, almost everything I got went on the auction hall. I kept the diplomacy +10 helm, tho

Maybe I'll run this on the other guys. It got old after a while - as I said, I'm not a platformer, so jumping and climbing and whatnot in a short amount of time really isn't my thing.

Had a little time this weekend, and I thought I'd check out the Ice Games in the Harbor. One big block of ice, with jumps and...

a guy who'll sell you ice skates for game coins, which you get by doing jumps with the ice skates. Well, not having any coins yet (obviously), I stepped out onto the ice block, and began to slide around. I managed to almost make it over to the first ramp, after falling down 4 times.

After that, I just fell off.

And gave up. This type of activity isn't a 'game' to me, it's a chore, so I will be leaving this content behind.

For the anniversary event, I got some tokens that I have to turn in to someone, who may or may not be somewhere in the Marketplace. I prefer the Jester model, where he's in a specific place.

So, there's another piece of content I won't be doing. Rather disappointing, actually.

Got a chance to do a little gaming this past weekend, and though we didn't do any of the update 3 specific stuff, like Ice Ramp Jumping (think Sonic the Hedgehog meets the Winter Olympics, in DnD), we did get some dungeon crawling in!

First, Stromvauld's Mine.

Laird Stromvauld's engineers have gone missing. After two parties failed to return from their expeditions, no one has been willing to enter the mine to discern their whereabouts. Unwilling to write his men off, Stromvauld has hired you to search for any traces of the engineers missing within the mine.

The place was overrun by drow - that's why they all went missing. Drow fighters, drow wizards, drow clerics, drow scorpions...yeesh. And all but one of the engineers was dead, sadly.

After that depressing event, we decided to visit the Necropolis. Nothing like a good old fashioned crypt to cheer you up!

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