The MMORPG industry is ever growing, with many new titles being added to the genre each year. I consider myself to be a veteran MMO player, but I know there are many more people out there, with experience vastly superior to mine.

I want to delve into the last 10 years of the industry and find out what makes it tick, what has changed, and if the framework is still the same, so join me, after the break! Read more… »

Today developer Vogster Entertainment announced that its recently released MMO shooter CrimeCraft will be receiving a revamped subscription model.

Said to arrive later this month, the updated payment plan offers gamers an unlimited free trial that contains the “major features of the game.” Vogster has yet to state what features will be disabled in the free version.

To see the other payment plans, hit the jump. Read more… »

Today developer Turbine announced that its upcoming digital expansion for The Lord of the Rings Online, dubbed “Siege of Mirkwood,” will arrive December 1. In the same press release, Turbine also unveiled The Lord of the Rings Online Adventurer’s Pack.

For those of you who don’t know, the Siege of Mirkwood expansion will raise the level cap to 65 as well as open up new areas to explore east of the Misty Mountains. The digital expansion will also add new raids and a new “skirmishes” mode, which acts like a randomized instance generator. The Siege of Mirkwood expansion is currently priced at $19.99.

To find out what the Adventurer’s Pack is and to see what deals Turbine is offering, hit the jump. Read more… »

Yesterday (Monday the 28th of September) a new thread arrived in Star Wars: The Old Republic’s official forums that implicated a link that appeared on an RSS feed on some members computers: a beta testing event. I have been reading up on this, and this morning the thread was over 270 pages long, with no sign of a developer making an announcement whether this information was correct or a hoax.

Today, it was confirmed when an official page arrived on Bio Ware’s website! Unfortunately for some, there are requirements for people to be able to become a beta tester with SW: TOR.
Read more… »

Every so often, an addictive game comes along and swallows us whole. For some, it’s Call of Duty: World at War’s zombie mode. For others, it’s Wii Sports Resort, and for the few, the proud, and the nerdy, its a little ol’ genre known as MMOs.

These games come and go by the droves. They range from sci-fi to fantasy; from free to play to $15 a month; from casual to hardcore; and from a full $50 entry cost to browser based affairs. But all of them have one thing in common: they’re timesinks. For the socially sane, MMOs are squeezed in after work, and before dinner with the kids, or after the wife goes to sleep (cough, cough). Should you choose to take the road less traveled and let an MMO dominate your life, say goodbye to your significant other, your social life, and your job.

So who is the new kid in town? What devilish fiend is attempting to lure you into his van with candy, and take you on a vacation that never ends? This month, its NCSoft’s Aion. Read more… »

It seems like NCSoft was quick to act in regards to their launch day jitters, as a new patch is set to go live today that will address the main queue blockage problem: private vendors refusing to log off, and simply setting up a player-made shop to avoid being booted from the game indefinitely.

The new patch sees to it that if you leave a private shop up for more than 30 minutes, you’ll automatically be logged out of the game.

Read more… »

It appears that the virtual world can be just as pricey as reality if you want to have the very best in Second Life. Linden Lab, developer of the extremely popular MMO, has released specific information regarding in-game sales figures, stating that gamers have spent over $1 billion in “digital goods”.

But Linden Lab didn’t stop there; the developer also claimed that their title has “the largest virtual economy in the industry”, and that they are seeing $50 million every month in user-to-user spending.

Read more… »

Aion already appears to be getting off to questionable start, not only with our previously reported epic queues, but now players are being banned for merely joking about gold sales.

Below is a copy/paste of the email banned Aion player Redmoons sent us.

Read more… »

Well, Aion is technically here, and it’s not looking good so far. The official forums are flooded with complaints over insanely large queues for an event that was supposed to allow people that pre-ordered the game to play two days early with a pre-claimed character.

While this is fairly typical of MMOs (and this isn’t even technically a true launch), it seems like NCSoft wasn’t able to meet the initial demand despite pre-order and pre-registration statistics they had far in advance. Whether this problem will carry over to launch day come this Tuesday is yet to be seen. Read more… »

Somehow, someway, you’ve played either Crackdown, GTA IV, or Saints Row 2. Whether or not you liked them is a different story (I wasn’t too impressed with Crackdown), but at the very least, you can enjoy this brand new trailer for Real Time Worlds’ free to play MMO.

I think the best part about this game is how you can recreate a Tango & Cash tandem cop team with the fully customizable avatar system. If anyone wants to be Cash, let me know: he’s still available! Read more… »

As most of the MMO players amongst you know, the recently Westernized Aion opens its servers for pre-purchased customers on September 20 (tomorrow!) for North American, Australian and New Zealand players.

It was announced a few days ago that NCSoft had decided to listen to the large Oceanic community and create a server with a GMT+10 timezone, so AU/NZ/SP players could participate in events and endgame raid schedules! The server, Nezekan, is currently available for character selection and will be active on launch.

A couple of members from the local Aion Oceanic community have asked us to spread the word – If you’re an Aussie, choose Nezekan!

Read more… »

Today Turbine, Inc. relaunched Dungeon & Dragons Online, scrapping the previous pay-to-play model in favor of a free-to-play one. In celebration of this, Turbine has released a new trailer letting  soon-to-be adventurers know what to expect when they enter the world of  Ebberon.

Taking gamers to the continent of Xen’drik in the Ebberon campaign setting, DDO provides players with a massively multiplayer version of the classic table-top Dungeons and Dragons gameplay. Although DDO follows the revised edition of D&D 3.5 rule-set, several changes were made due to differences in the dynamics between the media of computer game combat and tabletop gaming. For example, combat is done in real-time in DDO, as opposed to turn base in the table-top game. Don’t let this scare you away though. I’ve been a huge fan of pen and paper D&D since I was a kid and I’m having a blast with DDO.

For the official relaunch trailer and more info on DDO hit the jump. Read more… »