The latest Dev Blog from Flying Lab Studios looks at the problems involved when players repeat missions in the middle of a story arc in Pirates of the Burning Sea.

When we create big mission arcs, we design them to be a fun, engaging, and most importantly, a linear experience. We want players to get a sense of story and to do something interesting. We also want to reward players who accomplish the goals for those missions. This changes when people farm missions, though. They’re participating in a kind of experience that’s not fun and not really what we had in mind when we put those missions in place.

Playing a mission over and over isn’t really the problem by itself, even though it isn’t what we originally intended. Even gaining a lot of money per hour by playing it over and over isn’t the problem.

Read more here.

Mythic has announced changes to recent token cost adjustments for the Invader armor set. Players are advised to wait until the next fix has been implemented before buying the armor set.

As a result of player feedback regarding the recent token cost adjustments to the Invader armor set, we will be making the follow adjustments. (PLEASE NOTE: These changes are not yet implemented. Please watch the Herald for information concerning the implementation of these changes.):

* Existing Invader Crests will be replaced with an item that can convert into TWO normal Invader Crests.

Due to this change, we would suggest that players refrain from purchasing their Invader armor pieces until this has been implemented. We will not be able to refund any Invader Crests spent prior to this fix.

It is important to note that Invader armor is the primary reward for successfully breaking into and flipping a capital city into a captured state. We will always want the majority of players to earn these rewards by participating in this content. As we move forward, we will continue to work with our players to find better ways to ensure that access to this level of content is more reliable, even on underpopulated servers or underdog realms.

Read more here.

Cryptic Studios has posted a supplemental log to the 2387 edition of their Path to 2409 lore series, which details the events of the Star Trek universe leading up to the year 2409 when STO takes place.

Commander Suran, once captain of the warbird Soterus, now lives as a gentleman farmer on the planet Talvath. Talvath has recently petitioned for Federation protection, which is what brings me here to interview him. He is the highest ranking military officer on the planet, and has indeed become something of an elder statesman. His intimate knowledge of Romulan politics, and involvement within definitive political events dating back to the conflict with Praetor Shinzon, makes him an even more important source of information. He smiles at me, offering me a glass of water as we sit on the porch of his sprawling ranch.

I know why you’re here. [he tilts his own glass at me] Oh, you may say it’s to gather information and determine whether your Federation will accept us. But you have all the same questions everyone else does.

What questions would those be?

Read more here.

The first round of BlizzCon tickets have sold out according to Blizzard, but fans need not worry, the next round of ticket sales begins on May 30th.

The initial allotment of tickets for BlizzCon 2009 has now been sold out. If you weren’t able to get tickets this time, you’ll have a second chance on Saturday, May 30, as another batch will go on sale then. Coverage of the gaming festival will also be offered by DIRECTV as a Pay Per View event, available both via satellite and Internet stream.

Read more here.

Funcom has published the latest newsletter for Age of Conan, with this month's content focusing on the game's one year anniversary since launch.

Time to celebrate! This week Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures celebrates one year of operation, and you have been cordially invited to this week's Hyborian celebrations. To celebrate this magnificent event, the court of Conan has prepared some exciting gifts that will be freely distributed out to all Hyborians.

Read more here.

The folks at The Warlords have announced that they will begin holding regular PK tournaments in the game on a weekly and monthly basis.

To revive the militarism tradition of the Manchu and select the elite warriors, the Qing Court will host the regular PK Tournaments starting from May 17th.

There will be tournaments on every Sunday and the first day of each month, namely Weekly PK Tournament and Monthly PK Tournament. Each tournament is divided into 3 groups: Civilian, Soldier, and Veteran, participants can apply according to their levels.

In PK Tournaments, you will experience an intensive battle royal against your peers, and the last one standing will be the winner, to obtain various rewards and honor. Among the rewards, the Qing court has prepared the robust steeds for the heroes/heroines. With these loyal steeds, you can travel the Middle Kingdom swiftly, and wipe out those bloody rebels for the empire.

Read more here.

Bioware has posted their second holorecord entry by the Keeper of the Jedi Archives, Master Gnost-Dural (voiced by Lance Henriksen) which details the events around the Mandalorian Blockade.

As part of his accounting of recent events in the galaxy’s timeline, Master Gnost-Dural, Keeper of the Jedi Archives, has entered a new holorecord on the subject of the Mandalorian Blockade.

BTC 7 - A Mandalorian blockade is positioned along the Republic’s primary trade route resulting in famine and unrest amongst the colonies. A daring smuggler known as Hylo Visz attempts the unthinkable, to take down the intimidating fleet of Mandalorian ships and deliver the much needed goods to the people of Coruscant.

Read more here.

Aventurine has posted the patch notes for the latest update to Darkfall.

Skills

• Skill gain has increased significantly in all melee skills
• Skill progression in archery has been increased significantly
• You are now required to hit a valid target to gain skill in archery
• Skilling up in magic has been increased significantly
• Skill progression in spells requires the caster to hit a valid target
• Number of successful hits required to reach surging mode again with spells has been extremely reduced
• Knockback, Seize and Whirlwind have been modified and skill gain has increased

Gameplay / Fixes

• Small adjustments made to melee reach depending on character race
• Corrected spells that would skill up rigor without dealing damage
• Corrected a problem some players had while buying skills and starter weapons from vendors
• Corrected an issue in auto optimization
• Fogginess of environments has been reduced
• Various client side issues have been corrected
• Clan Mines/Quarries/Groves/etc now start out at 25% capacity and their regrowth rate has been increased
• Clan Guard Tower damage had been slightly increased

Read more here.

The folks at EverQuest II have announced another Hot Zone weekend running from May 15th to the 18th.

We're having another 'Hot Zone' weekend! Starting Friday afternoon and ending Monday morning there will be an experience boost on the following zones.

Greater Faydark, Butcherblock Mountains, Steamfont Mountains, Lesser Faydark, and Loping Plains.

Read more here.

Cryptic Studios has posted an introduction to the alien race known as the Qularr in the form of a journal entry by Dr. Silverback.

The Qularr have attacked Millennium City! And here I am, on Monster Island, when I should be helping at home! I’ve been completely unable to reach the Champions. My readings indicate that the building was struck by some sort of attack a few hours ago. In fact, that attack seems to have been the kicking off point for the Qularr invasion… So many questions! How badly was the building damaged? Were all of the Champions there? Are my friends even still alive? And how did the Qularr know to attack there? Clearly the Qularr have some external source of information.

The fortunate thing about being on Monster Island, however, is that I have access to Takashi Toru, the world’s foremost expert on the Qularr. He’s been studying them and the artifacts they left behind during the attack of 1965.

Read more here.

Mythic has announced that the 1.3 update for Warhammer Online is now in the public test server.

Welcome to the first stage of the 1.3 Public Test! It’s an exciting time for WAR and this patch is massive. We're going to need your help more than ever to dive into every nook and cranny and leave no rock unturned as we get 1.3 ship-shape and ready for prime time!

This first segment will focus on the Combat & Careers changes we have in store, while some careers are impacted more than other there are a number of changes that impact everyone and its very important we get your experience from playing and testing them in a live environment with other players.

In addition to the C&C changes the mechanic for gathering resources and unlocking the Tomb Kings zones will also be in place, while we're not taking focus feedback on it at this time we'll have a bug forum available and encourage you to discuss your experiences in the General Feedback forum until its time to actually test it out.

Read more here.

The folks at Metaplace have announced that the virtual world / game development platform has entered open beta.

Last night at the in-game party in Metaplace Central, company-head and project-lead Raph Koster announced that the virtual world / game development platform, Metaplace, will be entering into Open Beta today as part of their “soft launch”. Metaplace, for those of you who are unaware, is a virtual world that allows users to create their own worlds within it. Users can create anything from social spaces, to small puzzle games, to more complex games, and even full-scale MMOs. While the latter most hasn’t been done just yet, there are projects set up to actually complete a game of that scale.

Metaplace runs in a browser. Just about any browser will do, as long as it runs Flash. It is also cross-platform compatible, although there are some problems with 64bit Linux and Flash 10 – really more the fault of Adobe than Metaplace, as near as I can tell. Currently, everything does run in a 2D environment, with the ability to display worlds in isometric, side-scrolling, or top-down view points. The platform is powerful enough that if you wanted to, you could theoretically create your own 3D engine through it, and even your own client software.

Read more here.

IGG has posted details about the Duel King Event in Voyage Century Online.

In a game like Voyage Century, full to brim with challenges, intense rivalry and competition, do you have what it takes to seize your place in history? We will see! Today, the folks at Voyage Century will hold the Duel King event, are you ready to stand and fight?

Participants must be at the church when the GM will teleport them to the arena. If they haven’t shown up on time, they will be disqualified. Players will not be able to PK during this time either.

Participants will be divided into 2 teams, Team A and B according to their sign up order. Odd numbers belong to Team A, and even numbers belong to Team B. Our GM will announce the team lists and give them the Team A and B titles. The titles will be deleted after the end of the event.

Each team must stand on one side of the arena. On each side of the arena 3 Magic Lamp Giants will spawn. Each team can either kill all of the players on the other team, or kill the 3 Magic Lamp Giants that spawned with the other team. (PVP functions will be restored after the GM announces the start of the event)

Kill all of the Magic Lamp Giants from the other team or kill all of the players from the other team.

Read more here.

TQ has posted a preview of the Steed Syetem that will be coming to Conquer Online with the game's Raiding Clans expansion.

Upon its release in 2003, Conquer Online has been constantly evolving with loyal players' suggestions and our design team's hard-work. Now CO has become a thriving and diverse online community for all players from different parts of the planet! For Conquer's 6th anniversary, the TQ team has prepared for our community a brand-new expansion, Raiding Clans. As the title indicates, the soul feature of the expansion is the mount, the Steed System! Soon adventurers will be able to travel with their trusty steeds, as they ride headlong into battle!

Read more here.

SOE has posted a preview of Game Update 52: Monument and Might, which will soon be available in EverQuest II.

GU #52, Monumnet and Might, will be heading to Test soon. With the expanded schedule (and bigger updates) content will be on Test longer and we really look forward to your input! Here's a quick look at some of the new content coming with Monument and Might.

In April, Rothgar gave us a sneak peek at player written books. These will be included in the update, along with Research Assistants to help you upgrade your spells and combat arts.

Read more here.

The latest dev blog out of CCP looks at target changes in after the latest patch to EVE Online.

In Apocrypha, we made a couple of adjustments to the overview, one of which was probably more obvious and the other less so.

The obvious one was the fact that, if you hold down control, it now freezes the overview in place in addition to letting you target whatever you click. This has hopefully brought an end to death-by-targeting-the-wrong-thing-because-the-overview-moved, which makes many people rightly annoyed.

The possibly less-obvious change was a review and adjustment of some of the default overview settings. The old defaults have been around for a long time, and a lot of the decisions made about them were based around older tutorials that have since been revised or removed. This is the reason why they included sentry guns but not stargates, for example.

Read more here.

Frogster has announced that Runes of Magic now boasts more than 1 million players in Europe and North America.

Frogster announces today that the online role play game Runes of Magic has now reached over a million registered users in Europe and the United States. In less than one year after announcing the game, the Berlin based publisher has been able to reach a further important milestone in the marketing of its multi-award-winning MMORPG.

“We at Frogster have been looking for a real hit title for two years and are happy to have found one this last year with Runes of Magic.” Summed up Andreas Weidenhaupt, Chief Licensing Officer of Frogster Interactive Pictures AG and CEO of Frogster Online Gaming GmbH. “We are convinced that with the up-coming offering of additional language versions we will achieve further strong growth in Europe.” Weidenhaupt continued. The Berlin based publisher plans to release at least two further localised versions this year. In addition to this, the already announced Korean version is to appear in association with Frogster Asia, as well as a Russian version in a cooperative partnership with Game Factory Interactive.

Read more here.

IGG has announced that the House Party expansion for Angels Online is now available.

House Party, the new edition for Angels Online, is almost here. When the new edition arrives, there will be 16 brand new jungle and desert maps and many new monsters for Angels to explore and challenge. Because this new version includes so much new content, the update patch must be manually downloaded.

After the update this week, players may find some of the new edition content already in the game, however, these new functions are not available yet.

Read more here.

Turbine has announced that they are holding a motivational poster contest where players are asked to create DDO themed motivational posters.

Turbine is hosting a Motivational Poster contest! We want to see your most inspirational DDO-themed motivational posters; we’ll provide the title and the template, you provide the image and caption! Make them as serious or as funny as you like. The winners will receive a custom forum title on the DDO forums (“The Motivator”), and their posters will be featured in DDO.com’s new Motivational Poster gallery! Each week we’ll be looking for a different theme for the posters.
This week’s category is: Classes!

Read more here.

IGG has posted a guide to enchanting in Zu Online which references Wolverine for some reason.

In early February, the Enchanting system enabling players to enchant their equipment using Spars was added to Zu Online (http://zu.igg.com). However, players have been finding out that getting these “Spars” is not as easy as they thought. Some have even complained that “it’s quite difficult”. Well, we’ve come up with an “X-Weapon Plan” to help players get the Spars they need. Look to the Item Mall and you’ll see were re-introducing Medium Attacking Spars and Medium Defensive Spars.

When seeing a player who is wearing equipment which has been enchanted to the rank of several moons, most people say “Wow, cool!” These are the players that make Zu Online such an intense place to prove your skills in battle. They are the true warriors of Zu.

The Enchanting function increases the attack power and defense of equipment. Equipment that has been successfully enchanted will have a star level indicator to show the extent of it’s enhancement from the Enchanting. Also, the equipment will take on a much more shiny appearance that clearly shows that you take great pride in having the best equipment available.

However, only the luckiest players can get the best equipment. Enchanting does not guarantee a 100% success rate either. When the equipment is enchanted unsuccessfully, its star level will go down. So, be cautious when enchanting 5+ star level equipment. After all, who said enchanting, or refining for that matter was easy?

Read more here.