MMORPG.com's Bill Murphy writes this week's list, taking a look at five current MMOs in development that may just surprise MMO fans.

It used to be that we could count ourselves lucky and check for the coming of the End of Days when more than one new offering to the MMO genre released in a single year. These days, we see a handful or more come and go in that same timeframe. But often all the glory is left to the games who can afford a robust advertising budget. In the spirit of rooting for the little guys, here's a list of games that may come up and bite us in the collective rear end this year... should they make their proposed release dates.

#5 Allods Online

It's not too often in this gaming world that "Free-to-Play" and "Quality" are uttered in the same sentence, and yet that's exactly what the makers of Allods Online are hoping to change. From Astrum Nival, a Russian developer that's been in the business for ages, Allods seeks to combine the quality of a triple-A MMORPG with the value of the F2P market. Based on the cult-favorite Rage of Mages series, Allods Online sports impressive visuals (though they may be reminiscent of a certain game), a blend of Sci-Fi and Fantasy trappings, a unique aerial combat mechanic for warring factions, mini-game based professions, and the no-NDA beta has the blogosphere abuzz with anticipation.

Read Five MMOs That May Surprise You.

NCsoft has announced that the 14-day free trials for Lineage II have returned. The free trial limits characters to reaching level 40 on up to three characters, but will, of course, save your data so that you can continue the same character(s) should you decide to subscribe.

The trial is hassle free, requiring no credit card details. Simply download, sign up, and play!

Get started here!

MMORPG.com columnist Justin Webb writes this week's article on difficulty in games, looking back at a past where games were just... harder.

This week I have mostly been playing Demon’s Souls. In addition to its mischievously placed apostrophe, it’s also astonishingly hard.

Its learning curve is more like a learning crevasse, where every mistake is rewarded by being flung flailing into the abyss. Some of the design decisions in the first level are astonishing:

• You can’t exit the level without beating it.
• Every time you die, you must start the level again… and all the monsters respawn.
• Many monsters can kill you in one hit if they get the drop on you.
• Every time you die, you drop all your souls – the game’s xp and currency. If you die again without picking up those souls, they are gone for good.
• You start out in human form. If you die, you turn into a spirit with reduced stats and half as many hit points. To resurrect, you must finish the level.
• It can take a good 15 minutes to fight your way back to your dropped souls.
• There is a “go left/go right” decision halfway through the first level, where going right takes you to a monster that is unkillable.
• After finishing the first level, to be able to level up, you must talk to an NPC who is hidden so well that you will want to tear your face off.
• It has a PvP mode where other players can “break into” your game and hunt you down and kill you.

Read That's What She Said.

MMORPG.com has been given 2000 special event keys for Bright Shadow. These keys are just for new registered players. If you use this key and level your characters to at least level 15 by February 28 you will be entered to win prizes!

GET YOUR SPECIAL OFFER KEY AT THIS LINK!

According to Electronic Arts' investors report, Realtime Worlds' cops-n-robbers themed MMOG, All Points Bulletin, will not be making its Q1 2010 release date. Instead, EA's report lists APB in EA's Q2 2011 fiscal year, or Q3 2010.

While this news is certainly unfortunate for those of us out there looking forward to the game, delays are all too common in the MMOG genre.

[Thanks Fanita for the tip!]

Sony Online Entertainment has announced that over eight million unique users have registered to play their kids MMOG, Free Realms. The Festival of Hearts, this year's Valentine's Day event in Free Realms, was also announced today, and is set to kick off sometime this week.

The Festival of Hearts event will run all throughout February and will consist of "themed events, daily social activities and storyline quests that incorporate traditional items and rewards which embody the holiday: hearts, candies, forget-me-not cards, flowers, love potions and more."

The event will also introduce numerous new pets to the Marketplace including the Hippo, Tiger, Beetle, Groundhog and Owl.

View the original announcement here.

Not long ago we reported on the record-shattering $330,000 purchase of the Crystal Palace property in First Planet Company's Planet Calypso. Today, we bring news of the sale of yet another high-ticket item, this time, a unique virtual egg, which has sold for $69,000.

Jon "NEVERDIE" Jacobs (the former record holder for the largest virtual property purchase) put the egg up for public auction, and ended up selling it to David "Deathifier" Storey for the low price of only $69,000! Mr. Jacobs acquired the egg in 2006 for $10,000, which has apparently turned out to be quite the worthwhile investment!

What is truly maddening about this story is the fact that no one knows what is inside this egg, and its contents could turn out to be completely worthless or something truly amazing. Quite the price for such a gamble!

The original announcement can be viewed here.

The Bullroarer test server is now host to the Volume III, Book I update for The Lord of the Rings Online.

You can view the preliminary patch notes here.

Guilds and guild leaders have a unique perspective on the world of MMORPGs. Today, Sean Stalzer answers a number of questions for the guild that he leads known as The Syndicate.

MMORPG.com:

For those who don't know tell us about The Syndicate and your achievements.

Sean Stalzer:

The Syndicate was founded in Feb 1996. We currently have about 625 active, adult members (average age is 33years old). We had a 99.98% retention rate last calendar year. We began as a community focused on Friendship, Loyalty, Team Focus and what we call Guild First as our core values. Those same core values still define us today but we are a far cry different from what we were back then. Some of our more milestone achievements include: Years of charitable work for Youth Opportunity Unlimited, The American Cancer Society as well as major support for deployed service men and women. The Syndicate maintains a strong commitment to giving back to the community both within the games we play and in the real world. The first online community to Trademark its name. The first online community to obtain corporate sponsorship. The first to have a book published about our guild. Legend of The Syndicate details the first 10 years of our history. We established an annual conference and will be hosting our 9th one this year that will be attended by 200+ Syndicate members and a number of VIP guests. Featured in the MMO film Second Skin which was created by Pure West. It is actually available on Netflix on demand now which is a cool, recent development. We have been working with Prima Games for years to develop more comprehensive strategy guides to give the customer more value for their dollar. In 2009 we established a branch of our guild that is its own Studio of Prima Games. We have done numerous consulting engagements with MMO developers. We have a number of strong relationships that exist today and are helping to shape the future of MMO games. So while we started as a team of friends focused on playing online games, we have developed into something we didn't imagine possible back in 1996. We have achieved a number of unique success stories that no other group can claim. We continue to seek out new ways to make the overall MMO experience, for all players, better and more fun.

Read Guild Perspective: The Syndicate.

Former Pirates of the Burning Sea players (account must have been closed and inactive since January 22nd, 2008) have been invited back to the game for a free month, which kicked off on February 5th, and will end on March 5th at 11:59 PM PST.

Surely no coincidence, this latest offering comes hot on the heels of the launch of version 1.22 last week, which among other things, consolidated the playerbase into two remaining servers.

View the original announcement here.

MMORPG.com is pleased to present these three new screenshots from the upcoming MMORPG, Mytheon.

Read Exclusive Screenshots, Week 2.

Version 1.06 of Age of Conan finally went live last Friday, bringing new Guild Renown, and token systems to Age of Conan. The update also introduces a new Tier 3 raid instance to the game, and rounds out with an Assassin revamp, as well as a crowd control balance-pass.

Get the full rundown by reading the patch notes here.

[Thanks Thorgrimm!]

Aion player Cerafina asks about the status of fort timers in this month's Eye on Community letter, and receives some pretty positive results!

Aion Community Manager Andrew "Tamat" Beegle reveals that NCsoft has compared their internal data to their player survey data and will be making a change to Aion's fort capture timers. The new timer will be extended to one hour, up from its original half hour window:

We’ve taken the data collected from the in-game survey and compared it to our internal server statistics. Based on these factors, our decision is to “keep the enemy on their heels.” Next week we will be changing the capture timer to one hour, which is twice the amount of time it is currently set to.

Our goal in the original change was to increase the difficulty of these battles and reduce the amount of time players needed to dedicate for the event. We believe that the new timer achieves a good balance, but that doesn’t rule out future reevaluations. We will be closely monitoring activity in the Abyss after the timer change is implemented to make sure that the battle rages on without any new negative side effects!

Read Februrary's Eye on Community here.

MMORPG.com writer Bill Murphy takes this look at what NetDevil's Jumpgate Evolution has to learn from its predecessors in the sci-fi MMO market.

Jumpgate: Evolution is sort of a re-launching/re-imagining of the original Jumpgate which NetDevil released all the way back on September 25th, 2001. Never quite a blockbuster success, Jumpgate still has a loyal following to this day, and obviously the staff at NetDevil have a passion for the IP. Later this year (at least we hope so), published by Gazillion, NetDevil will unleash their new spaceflight MMO unto the public. A lot has changed in the industry since 2001, and NetDevil themselves have launched and closed another online offering in that time. And with the game still pretty under wraps, here are some of the major things we hope the developers keep in mind while crafting Jumpgate: Evolution.

Read What JGE Can Learn from Sci-Fi Games.

MMORPG.com's Richard Aihoshi writes this article about the way that games have changed over the past decade and speaks to three distinguished developers who share their thoughts on the decade's most notable developments and happenings.

Can it really be a decade already since we entered the new millennium? There are times when that doesn't seem possible, but when we look at how much the massively multiplayer landscape has grown and changed, it can feel like a tremendous amount has happened, far more than we might expect in only 10 years.

As we entered 2000, the dotcom explosion had already happened. In fact, the dotbomb period had hit. The first phase of the MMOG era had begun less than three years prior with the release of Ultima Online in 1997. EverQuest was a baby, in service for less than a year, and Asheron's Call was a mere newborn, less than a month old. Those were the only three prominent live titles.

Read The MMOG Landscape in the 2000s.

MMORPG.com's Free Zone columnist Richard Aihoshi takes a look at the recent downsizing at Red 5 Studios, Star Trek Online and more in this week's article.

Will 5 and 9 add up to F2P?

Late last month, Red 5 Studios issued a brief press release confirming what had been rumored for some time, that it was headed for a downsizing. The statement didn't provide anything at all in terms of details. It said only that there had been a restructuring involving "additional investment from a strategic partner in the online games industry", that some people had chosen to leave, and that others had been let go. A quick glimpse at the company's website shows 32 pictures of staff. I never counted before, but I'd wager there used to be at least 50 or 60.

Last week, Reuters reported that Chinese publisher The9 has invested in two developers, one being Red 5. The information was attributed to a company source, but it has yet to be confirmed. Coincidentally, Red 5 was formed about five years ago by former senior members of the World of Warcraft team including Mark Kern and Bill Petras, while The9 operated the game in China until it lost the license to NetEase in mid-2009.

Read 5, 9, F2P, a Million and More.

How to explain the Sith Inquisitor?

I could tell you that the Sith Inquisitor is the Emperor Palpatine to the Sith Warrior’s Darth Vader, but that sells it short. The archetype is just inspiration. It’s not the destination, or the road we take to get there, but the guide. The Sith Inquisitor is Raistlin. The Sith Inquisitor is Lucifer. The Sith Inquisitor is Julius Caesar. The Sith Inquisitor is what you make him.

When we set out to build our game, we knew we needed more than one Sith class. The original trilogy only has two Sith in it, but they couldn’t be more different: the heavily armored brutal physicality of Darth Vader compared to the frail but immensely powerful Emperor Palpatine. When we extend our inspiration to Episodes I-III and The Clone Wars cartoons, Count Dooku, Darth Maul, and Asajj Ventress further expand our concept of what a Sith can be. Is a Sith a lithe quick fighter who uses the Force to enhance his/her physical combat prowess, a calculating deceiver adept at Lightsaber duels, or a master manipulator and amasser of dark side secrets? Does a Sith use one lightsaber, two Lightsabers, or a dual-bladed Lightsaber? Having multiple Sith classes allows us to embrace all of those Sith inspirations, instead of having one Sith class that was the jack-of-all-trades and the master of none.
 

Check out the story here.

Every Friday during the month of February, the team from Earthrise will provide us with three new screenshots from their upcoming MMO.

Check out the new images, here.

In December the folks behind the popular MMORPG Dofus, released a major update to their game and dubbed it: Dofus 2.0. Today, MMORPG.com's Garrett Fuller asks a few questions of Lead Designer Mathieu Bourgain.

MMORPG.com:

What is the single biggest change for players with DOFUS 2.0?

Mathieu Bourgain:

The game is supported by a new graphic engine based on Action Script 3 and the latest Adobe Air technology, and the server and client code have been completely rewritten to offer a wealth of detail and an unparalleled gaming experience. DOFUS 2.0 features a free to play section, along with a varied subscription model which allows gamers the flexibility to play as they like. DOFUS 2.0 is a rewrite of the original server code, client code, and graphic engine from the original DOFUS. After 5 years of existence, we felt like it was time to give the game a fresh look. The interface system and tutorial has also been completely redesigned.

Read the Dofus 2.0 Interview.