MMORPG.com is pleased to bring you yet another contest in the month of September!  We have partnered with Codemasters to give away 10 pre-order packs of Archlord which will also include the retail version of the game when it releases.  This contest will run from today until October 8th at 9PM EDT.

You can get details on the pre-order package at this link: http://www.archlordgame.com/preorder.php

As with all of our contests, the more days you login to MMORPG.com the greater your chances of winning! (see official rules for details).

Ready to enter?  CLICK HERE!

MMORPG.com is please to present our second new contest for September!  We have teamed up with Zboard to bring you a giveaway for four Zboard keyboards with the Guild Wars Factions keyset along with a retail copy of Guild Wars Factions!

This contest will run from Sept 6, 2006 through Oct 5, 2006.

As with all of our contests, the more days you login to MMORPG.com, the better your odds of winning!  (see official contest rules for details)

Ready to enter?  Click here!

MMORPG.com is proud to announce that we have partnered with Acclaim in order to bring another exciting beta contest to our members!

From now until October 1, 2006 @ 9PM EDT we will be taking entries into our 9Dragons 200 Beta Contest.  Entering this contest you will have a chance to win a beta test account for the upcoming fantasy game 9Dragons being published by Acclaim.

As with all of our contests, the more days you login to MMORPG.com the greater your chances of winning! (see official rules for details)

Are you ready to enter?  Click here!

We are just getting ready for the #2 drawing.  We gave an extra hour because we had a technical difficulty yesterday that kept people from claiming for about 60 minutes after the drawing.

Good luck to you all...

(and for the record we almost always have to redraw, if not many times.  It is rare that all prizes get claimed the first round)

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Originally posted by StarElder
Am I going crazy or have I seen lots of concept art in the "screenshots" you have here at mmorpg.com?

I can understand the need for screenshots for released games, but why the rest?  Concept art is only natural to be what's around for a game that is "In Developement".  As for the games that are in beta testing...well the company should decide that, because of NDAs and such.

Not trying to flame or anything, just wondering why some concept art is accepted while this companies isn't.  Is it because it was pointed out by many people?

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We may have concept art in our screen galleries.  But we would never list a game based on these.  We require in-game screens to list a game, but of course we may add other artwork to the gallery after that that is not officially a "screen shot" - we don't have concept art galleries so it is the only place to put them.

Note the case here is that the "screens" we were sent are actually using a default world that game with their 3D engine.  There was even a post in thier own forums where a user downloaded the same engine package and rendered his own view of "their city" using the samples in the package.

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Originally posted by darwa
Thanks for the reply admin.

No matter how highly I think of the developers and the game they're promising, that was a naughty move.

I'm unable to locate their forum here though. Divergence is currently not mentioned in your gamelist.

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You cannot locate their forum on MMORPG.com because they are no longer on our list.  Again, a very small number of games have ever had a forum here before they were on our list (STO and SGW might be the only two ever but don't quote me on that since we handed over these duties to Dana & Jon a few months ago).

And agreed, that was a naughty move

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Originally posted by darwa
How come it's not listed in 'under development'?

They've got as much concept art as stargate worlds.

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We do not yet list Stargate Worlds (we do have a forum for it, but it is not on our game list).  With certain high-profile games we will create a forum to let our users discuss it.  This is usually based off high demand from our user base to have a place to discuss a game that is not listed.

To be officially listed at MMORPG.com you must meet these requirements: http://www.mmorpg.com/faq.cfm/showFaq/4

This would be the first time a company has attempted to pass off renders or concepts and assure us they were "in game" screen shots.  One of the renders even appears to have had a fake UI imposed over it.

Given the deceit that took place with Divergence we may never feature that title at MMORPG.com - this still remains to be figured out...if they can show us real undenyable proof that a game exists we will add them back - but we are going to need something like a demo or video of gameplay, etc.

MMORPG.com has just been given another 1,000 beta keys for Pirate King Online to give to our members!  The first 1,000 went really fast so act fast to get one out of this batch!

LINK TO PROMO: http://www.mmorpg.com/pk_promo.cfm

MMORPG.com is very happy to announce that we have been authorized to hand out exactly 1,000 beta keys to our registered members for Pirate King Online!

These are going out on a first come, first serve basis so act fast!

LINK: http://www.mmorpg.com/pk_promo.cfm

Codemasters has released new mount videos today.  There are seperate videos for Humans, Orcs and Elves.  Enjoy!

HUMAN MOUNTS:

Codemasters has released two new videos highlighting PvP combat in RF Online.

The first video:

The next video shows even more PvP action:

It is now our understanding that the legal threats being sent to MMORPG.com and other websites on behalf of CyberJoueurs were in fact fake emails being sent from an unauthorized and at this time unknown source.

We have been in contact with CyberJoueurs and will be aiding them in the investigation as to who is responsible for all of this.

We have restored Graal Online to our game list and fourms and we apologize to all of those affected by the brief outage of the entry on our site.

Codemasters recently released a new preview video showing mounts in ArchLord.  Sit back and enjoy as you are taken through the various mounts that are available within ArchLord, including a sneak preview of the ArchLord dragon mount!

We would like to announce that we have partnered with HanbitSoft to bring you another cool contest offer.  From now until September 8, 2006 @ 9PM EST we will be taking entries from our members to win one of 500 prizes for Tantra Online.  The prize is a 50 "Taney" card which can be used to acquire in game goodies.

To enter this contest just click here!

We recently received this video from Sigil/SOE highlighting some of the hot features in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.  In it you will see flying mounts, a flying city, never-before-seen zones, combat and player-owned boats!

MMORPG.com is pleased to announce that from now until Sept 5, 2006 all of our members can enter to win a free 60 day account for EVE Online - the acclaimed sci-fi space MMORPG by CCP Games. 

We will be giving out a total of 25 accounts.  As with all of our contests, the more days you login to MMORPG.com the better your odds of winning! (see official rules for details).

Ready to enter?  Click here!

Ah yes mmorpg.net - I almost got to purchase that one too but lost it to the folks at IGE/Ogaming   Live and learn - LOL.

Well, good news I hope.  Our programmer has made some changes to our forums on both the client and server side that should eliminate the dreaded double posting problem.

We would love to know if you guys see any more of this!

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Originally posted by Ulujain

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Originally posted by Admin

That pretty much sums it up. I am not a big fan of canned code - especially open source can code. From day one I setout to make MMORPG.com something unique and different from all the other "php puke" sites that plague the Internet today. I have always idolized sites like GameSpot that went the extra mile to design truely unique layouts and UI's and not use the boring "all site desinations are found down the 10 mile long list of links at the left" concept.
I honestly do not think this site would be anywhere near as successful as it is if we went the route of tossing together a bunch of code fragments from other devs. I think people sense something original and different about MMORPG.com and so they come back. Is it perfect, no...of course not, but we are working on it continuously and we are proud that we are able to do that and build the site around our needs and the needs of our community.

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The all sites are a long-list down the left thing is HTML and web design and has zero to do with the underlying technology.

I agree with you re: the canned site CMS look a lot of gaming sites have, but there's some wonderfully laid out and clean sites written in PHP too (Gamebanshee, for instance).

Although I'm sure you know the "rules of the WWW", let me give them anyway. Nobody cares about you or your website; they care about what they can find here. Information is king, content is queen. The job of any designer is to facilitate that. Mess with it, and they leave, never to return.

Yeah, you've made a unique site and it has jack squat to do with CFMX and MS SQL. It's your game list that sets you apart from the 45 billion other gaming sites out there. I'm not sure any other site has an idenitical concept. So, applause for that one.

But I still think CFMX is shite for forums.

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Ya, actually the post you quoted was replying to another topic from our CFMX/PHP discussion.  Some people were asking why we just didn't use some canned forum system and that was basically my answer.  Any language can be used to create just about anything web based (given the simplicity of 99% of web apps) but we just happened to select CFMX, as did the 6th largest site on the Internet  - MySpace.com.

I have seen some great custom PHP sites, and also seen some great things done with canned packages.  It is just not my thing.  The driving force behind the creation of MMORPG.com was to try and develop all the unique features (forums, game list, contest system, etc).  Honestly at the time I was just making a place that I could bring in some fellow gamers to chat about games and list the MMORPGs out there to help people find them (at the time there were about 10!) - what was to follow still amazes me to this day.

Basically I think there is nothing wrong with PHP.  Thinking CFMX is not suitable for forums is an opinion you are entitled to...I just disagree with it ;-)  Our forums have some issues but that is not a problem with CFMX - it is a problem with our code - which we continue to work on.

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Originally posted by shae

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Originally posted by joshuaPhiil

why was it coded it from scratch when theres peobably tons of software you can but that functions smooth as silk

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That can be said for just about the entire site really, I'm sure it would just as easy for them to have some cookie cutter php set up that did everything for them and they will still the point of the website accross to everyone.

Who knows why they decided to go this way, only the admins could really answer that one, but there's something to be said for controling the environment with which you promote yourself, having something unique, something that can be costumized to your needs without having to run to the original developers.

I'm sure they have tons of reason better then that but just some small benefits I can see outright.

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That pretty much sums it up.  I am not a big fan of canned code - especially open source can code.  From day one I setout to make MMORPG.com something unique and different from all the other "php puke" sites that plague the Internet today.  I have always idolized sites like GameSpot that went the extra mile to design truely unique layouts and UI's and not use the boring "all site desinations are found down the 10 mile long list of links at the left" concept.

I honestly do not think this site would be anywhere near as successful as it is if we went the route of tossing together a bunch of code fragments from other devs.  I think people sense something original and different about MMORPG.com and so they come back.  Is it perfect, no...of course not, but we are working on it continuously and we are proud that we are able to do that and build the site around our needs and the needs of our community.

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Originally posted by Ulujain

PHP, python, perl, lisp, etc, are both low-level languages AND scripting lingos. Not sure why you think there's a difference, unless years of doing <CFFOO> and <CFBAR> have engendered that into you.

Re: CFMX, what about CF's initial price and market share though? You say you develop for ASP; if I were you, I'd go do that, 'cos from everything I've read and seen, CFMX is a dying concern. Essentially anything it can do, ASP can do faster, better and cheaper. Then again, so can PHP but there's that open-source stigma that the suits in charge frown on.

Unless I'm sadly mistaken (a possibility), CFMX is quietly dying a slow death.

Yes, I agree with you re: double posts in a pooled DB environment, but I was under the impression this site lived on its own box?

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My definition of "script language" is probably not official, but I always used to to reference languages that still have to be interpreted and compiled before ran through a processor (ie the .php or .cfm file you create is compiled as the page is requested and then passed to the proccessor for output - granted there is likely some caching taking place).  Admittedly I have not looked into PHP for a few years now - but the last I looked it did not compile its code into a executable - before .NET the only real way to do this was to write your own CGI apps in something like C/C++ and have your web server call the resulting exe (i built a few sites this way back in the day).

I hear ya though - I think CFMX might have a dim future, but its savior might be the easy integration with Flash Comm Server and some of the high end multimedia applications (given its ownership by Adobe the creators of Flash, Dreamweaver, CFMX, etc). 

At this point it just does not make sense for us to change up our backend - the cost would be staggering and as I stated before - I don't think there is anything we are doing here at MMORPG.com that CFMX is not capable of handling.  If that changes we would likely integrate said feature as a webservice via .NET.