All Posts by Szark

Cryptic Studios has posted an interview with Champions Online mission programmer Ben Foxworthy, where he talks about the upcoming superhero MMO and his role on the project.

Today we learn more about Ben Foxworthy, one of the mission programmers working on Champions Online.

Q: What do you do on Champions Online?
A: I'm the newest programmer on the Champions Online mission team. I work on a lot of the gameplay features that make up the content of Champions Online – things like missions, contacts, NPC spawning, world interaction and other fun stuff. I also work on editors that the designers use to make our missions and zone content, and I support the designers by helping them use our tech effectively.

Read more here.

IGG has announced that eligible accounts in Tales of Pirates will be rewarded with Item Mall points as part of IGG's second anniversary.

To celebrate IGG's 2-year anniversary, Tales of Pirate wants to hold a special event to give something back to their players for their continuing support. During the event, all players who meet the following requirements will receive 30 Item Mall points for totally free:

1. Accounts must include at least one character above level 41 (including Level 41)
2. The character must reach Level 41 before the maintenance on June 4th

Read more here.

IGG has announced a series of events in Angels Online in honor of upcoming Beijing  Olympics and to celebrate IGG's second anniversary.

Angels Online is a cute-style MMORPG brought to you by IGG. Over the past 6 months, AO has steadily attracted attention from online gamers, boosted by the recent release of a new edition Eden.

As a reward to our players, and in celebration of the upcoming IGG anniversary and Beijing Olympics, the AO team will be holding a series of events to make this a summer not to forget.

Read more here.

In this week's question of the week on the Earthrise forums takes a deeper look at the games lore and factions.

This week we'll look into the lore of Earthrise and introduce you to just some of the "organizations" in the world that players will be able to aid in their ambitious plans. By doing favors for these organizations, players are able to gain access to "design technology" that these specific organizations have a monopoly on. Players can in turn, apply this technology to items, creating unique, powerful, and highly-sought after creations.

Alpha Sisterhood. This organization is comprised of female scientists, who train their minds and emotions through consuming training to achieve the ability to control energy currents with a psychomorphic interface. Their studies over emotive interfaces have allowed them to create a new direction in armament, called Cybermentalism. Their goal is to achieve a new level of evolution, falling in line with the Continoma politics.

Seeyen - A subculture of people with incredible psionic gift, the Seeyen have chosen a life of seclusion far from the prying eyes of the rest of the citizens in a village located at the western beach of the island. While they cooperate with Continoma, they do so only to ensure their comfort and security. They are aware that for Continoma their village is a test bed of studying the psionic potential of the human mind.

Read more here.

Turbine has posted the release notes for Module 7: The Way of the Monk, the recently launched content expansion for Dungeons and Dragons Online.

The marketplace tent is gone, destroyed in a hail of fiendish magic that left a crater in its wake. While the devils of Shavarath have been pushed back to their home plane, remnants of their army remain. Amidst the chaos of the invasion, monks have arrived to turn the tide.

Of Special Note:

• Monks have been added to the game as a new playable class! Read more about them in the Dev Diary!
• Class trainers will now teach characters of any level, and will warn you if you are about to multi-class. When multi-classing, they will warn you if your ability scores are too low to cast all spells that class receives.
• Two new raids have been added to the game! The forces of the devils Shavarath stand before the assembled guilds of Stormreach! Players must battle raid bosses from Velah to the The Pit Fiend to collect the keys needed to win the race to unlock the raid for the entire server. Take the battle to Suulomades, a General of the armies that attacked the city during the invasion. Battle Xy’zzy, the Hound of Xoriat, and crush the invaders once and for all! Read more about the event here.
• Once a day quests have been added to the game. These daily quests provide adventuring opportunity for low level adventurers. Collect trophies from vanquished monsters, hunt down rare monsters and collect bounties!
• Players can now create their own chat channels! Read more about how to make use of them here.

Read more here.

IGG has announced the launch of a new server and a new patch for Zu Online.

The Zu Online Team announced that a new server GHOST had gone live and is now available to players. It gives players the opportunity to begin their adventure on a fresh, untouched version of Zu world.

With the launching of GHOST, the Playing Games to Get Bone event is underway, in which players are able to obtain lots of Bone and share in the happiness together. In addition, to celebrate IGG’s 2nd Anniversary, more special events are available now.

Meanwhile they announced that the new 1.4.07 Patch has been released on June 2nd with new online events added.

Read more here.

Acclaim Games has announced the launch of the new European server for 9Dragons.

 

Los Angeles, CA (June 3, 2008) – Acclaim Games officially launches the new European server called Bardo Euro for 9Dragons, a FREE TO PLAY martial arts Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) for PC.  With the new physical servers in place, Acclaim will offer European players an improved game experience, with better connections, less lag and greater reliability. 

The staff at Acclaim Games has been working on this for some time in response to the requests of its European players and is finally able to offer this enhancement to the 9Dragons experience.  With the official launch of the Bardo server, 9Dragons is now poised to be the #1 martial arts MMO in Europe. 

“The 9Dragons European server is great news for our European players who can now get the best possible game service quality and lower latency,” said Howard Marks, Acclaim CEO. 

To commemorate this great occasion, Acclaim will be running several special events between June 3 and June 9, including several days of bonus Exp events, special Monster Spawn events and scheduled PvP battles with the game masters. In addition, magnificent in-game fireworks displays will mark the occasion, lighting up the sky at random times. A 3-day 30% item discount will also kick off the first weekend with huge savings on popular in-game items designed to enhance gameplay, such as elixirs, healing herbs, and premium packages. 

In 9Dragons, you can rise from a beggar on the streets to a master of Kung Fu as you train with some of the greatest masters of ancient China.  Players have the option of joining one of 6 starter clans: Shaolin, Wu-Tang Clan and The League of Beggars are loyal to The Imperial Emperor of China, while The Brotherhood of Thieves, Heavenly Demon, and Sacred Flower Clan (for women only) are opposed to his rule.  Players are taught their clan’s unique kung fu style, mastering various techniques as they progress throughout the game, and ultimately fight for the honor and destiny of their chosen clan. 

Read more here.

Video Games Live has announced a series of concerts around the world, including several at gaming events such as the Leipzig Games Convention, Gen Con Indy, and San Diego Comic-Con.

Los Angeles, CA – June 4, 2008 --  Continuing its blockbuster award-winning world tour and coming off a major industry achievement of selling out its debut performance on Broadway in New York City, Video Games Live is proud to announce 50 shows in its effort to confirm to the world how culturally significant and artistic video games have become.

The Video Games Live tour created in 2002 by renowned video game composers Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall, has become the top selling game concert in the world having already performed to more than 200,000 people around the globe including the U.S., Canada, England, Mexico, Brazil, New Zealand, Spain and Korea.  To date, Video Games Live has performed across five different continents and has held over 40 record-breaking shows since last summer.  In addition to their touring success, EMI Classics will be releasing the Video Games Live album (entitled Video Games Live: Volume One) worldwide this summer.

Read more here.

The folks at Florensia have announced that their third round of closed beta testing will most likely begin on June 9th, and MMORPG.com will be offering a number of Florensia beta keys so enthusiastic players can get in on the action

Dear players,

we would like to inform you that the patches we created together with Netts are almost done. We are currently planning to launch the new client on June 9 in the late afternoon (Time zones / UTC+2 Central European Summer Time) so that we can probably open the servers for the CB 3 on June 10 (late afternoon / early evening UTC+2) for a week plus one or two days.

Read more here.

SOE has posted a guide to choosing servers in EverQuest II, now that their Living Legacy event is up and running, and allowing players with inactive accounts to play for free until July 31st.

Welcome back to EverQuest II! It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

Now that you’re back, you have the tough choice of either hopping right back in with your favorite old character, or starting a new one. And if you decide to start a new one, you might be wondering which server is best for you to play on. We hope this guide will help you make that decision.

If you have friends who are currently playing, then great! Start up a new character on their server and before long you’ll be grouping with the best of them.

If you’re coming back solo, or with a group of friends who aren’t already playing, you have a few options to consider before choosing a server.

Read more here.

Blizzard has announced the commencement of the second round of the World of Warcraft Arena Tournament's qualification rounds.

Phase 1 of the 2008 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament's second qualification round has begun. Tournament participants have two weeks to hone their strategies, experiment with various team compositions, and practice their teamwork. To track the progress of your team and those of your competition, please visit the World of Warcraft Armory and select the Coliseum 1 battlegroup. For more information on the tournament, please visit our Arena Tournament information page. Good luck, and may the best teams be left standing!

Read more here.

Snagwiremedia.com is reporting that the Sci-Fi channel has announced plans to create an MMO based on and in conjunction with a new show.

In a fairly bold (and quite possibly stupid) move, the Sci-Fi Channel has announced plans to use missions and campaigns of players in their own developed MMO to shape and guide a new 'ongoing' television show.  They hope to have the project up and ready to air by 2010, as they work with game developer Trion World Network to create 'the ultimate merging of the TV and gaming mediums.'

Read more here.

Cryptic Studios has updated the Champions Online page with a new piece of lore taking place in a place called Snake Gulch.

Howdy, partners! Welcome to the Snake Gulch Dude Ranch!

My name is Belle Steele, and I'll be your guide to all there is to see and do in the Wild West!

My daddy's a fella by the name of Tyrell Donaldson, and he created Snake Gulch to give all your tourist folk a chance to play the 1864 way! But since it ain't 1864 no more, he made some … accommodations for modern technology.

I'll let you in on our little secret: All the residents of Snake Gulch are robots. Yep, robots. My daddy made 'em, and they're something to see! The sheriff 'round these parts has got more than a tin star, he's got a whole dang tin body!

Read more here.

NCsoft is reporting that Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa is currently having a server issue as both The Orion and Cassiopeia are down while the company investigates and tries to solve the problem.

June 3, 2008 - The Orion and Cassiopeia servers are down. We are investigating the reasons behind the outage and hope to have these servers back up and running as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.

Read more here.

Christopher Rabideau, the Producer for EA Mythic's Dark Age of Camelot has posted a new letter to player on the DAoC Herald.

Hello Dark Age of Camelot and fellow Players,

Many of you have already participated in the new server poll we have been conducting to gauge interest in what we are calling the ‘Origins’ server ruleset, also referred to as an ‘Old Frontiers’ server. I would like to thank everyone who has participated so far, as well as thank those who have provided the incredible amount of constructive feedback we have received through the Herald and through the various message forums relevant to DAoC. My team and I were pleasantly surprised by how much interest this poll has generated. The poll is still available to the public on the Herald, and we are still watching its results with great interest.

Read the rest here.

Last night saw the launch of a new build of Flying Lab Software's Pirates of the Burning Sea and the team has provided us with some info:

The latest version of build 1.4 will be published to Testbed this evening. This build fixes a couple critical bugs related to keybindings and addresses an issue that was responsible for the client crashes experienced by some users.

The good news is that we will be enabling character copies to Testbed once build 1.4.36.0 has been tested and deployed to our live servers during Wednesday’s maintenance window.

Any changes to that schedule will be communicated via a front page news post.

We appreciate your patience, and look forward to activating character copies in the very near future.

Read more here.

Elf Online has announced a new summer leveling event.

Elf Online (http://elf.happymmo.com/) creates a fantasy world for the child deep inside everyone’s hearts. As the arrival of summer vacation is here, Elf Online is pleased to hold a leveling event special caters for this summer to grant some gifts to celebrate this joyful moment. Let’s have a hilarious and spectacular summer!

The leveling event will last from June 1st to July 1st. During this one month period, all players whom reach the required level will gain generous rewards in Elf Online (http://elf.happymmo.com/).

Players who meet the requirements for the rewards may contact us via Live Support. After our GMs have verified your personal information, we will trade you your rewards in game.

Read more here.

Stargate Worlds has announced that the Spanish Community for their upcoming MMORPG has reached over 10,000 posts.

Stargate Worlds Forum prides itself on being multi-language friendly. This week our very special Spanish community has just reached 10,000 posts!

"I'm proud to tell you that the Spanish Community has reached today the incredible number of 10.000 posts," said moderator Rojo19. "It's a happy day for us, we've been growing day after day and every week the number of active users in our community also grows."

The official forum also supports the languages of German, French, Russian, Czech, and many more! Check out our Other Language Forums section and contribute your special skills!

Congratulations again to our Spanish community!

More on SGW here.

The folks at NCsoft's Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa have released a new Feedback Friday for our readng enjoyment.

Welcome to this week’s Feedback Friday. Currently, we are in the second week of working on Deployment 10 and adding our final touches to Deployment 9 (which should be on PTS soon!). In this week’s Feedback Friday we’ll talk about a new map on PTS, Clan Lockboxes, and a good old-fashion patch note preview.

Read more here.

Age of Conan fans seem to bea  rabid lot, and the band Linkin Purpz is no exception, having written a song about AoC.

We have great fans, we already knew that for years now, but sometimes even the wildest expectations are not wild enough as it seems.

We present you the fan song from Linkin Purpz, a german Metall band who wrote this song over the last four weeks, to show the world how much Age of Conan rocks their world.

Many thanks to Linkin Purpz, your song has been well received and we rock to it at least daily (promise!) ;)

Check out the song here.