The latest Reclamation Tuesday is up on the official website.  This week the team covers housing, guild systems, and a new bit of lore.  There are links to some forums of interest, and an item on the recent VGXtreme Radio interview of Stone.

Click here for the official Reclamation website.

We just just received word that the latest expansion for AO title "Alien Invasion" has just gone gold.  It should be on store shelves on September 1, 2004.  Here is the official press release:

Durham, USA - August 10, 2004 - Funcom announces that Anarchy Online - Alien Invasion has gone gold. The forthcoming Anarchy Online expansion pack is packed with fun and innovative features, bringing the finest sci-fi MMORPG on the market a huge step forward. "With this expansion we seek to further strengthen the sci-fi aspects of Anarchy Online," said Game Director Marius Enge, "Not only that, we have filled the expansion pack to the brim with unique and fast-paced action features, as well as a host of socially orientated features like player-made towns and guild houses. I believe that the combined package of Alien Invasion and the original AO will further cement our reputation as the ultimate sci-fi MMORPG" Funcom is also implementing a brand new beginner experience with the coming of Alien Invasion. The new sci-fi orientated beginner playfield lowers the entrance barrier into the world of Anarchy Online, allowing everyone a more entertaining beginner experience. New action features: Repel massive world-spanning invasions by a ferocious alien race Provoke alien city invasions! Experience epic large-scale warfare for entire guilds! Attack and board alien spaceships Discover and utilize powerful alien weapons, armor, technology and perks Challenge yourself on numerous new quests Experience a brand new beginner area New social features: Build epic cities with powerful benefits Construct towering guild houses Decorate cities with extra fixtures Set up your own player-controlled shops Access revised tradeskill interface and item search tool Dress up in a wide array exciting new social clothes Rule the sky in futuristic flying vehicles The expansion pack will include the full version of Anarchy Online, Anarchy Online - Notum Wars and Anarchy Online ? Alien Invasion, as well as 30 days of included gametime for new accounts. Suggested retail price is 29.95 USD \ EUR. Customers who pre-order Alien Invasion prior to launch are entitled to 10 exclusive and hilarious Leet pets. More information on pre-order program, eligible partners and images can be found on www.anarchy-online.com\preorder

Located at the north end of the Barrens, Bathory Row consists of the piers and warehouses of the Barrens wharfs. The warehouses are shabby and dilapidated, with broken windows and graffiti in great evidence. They are always surrounded by cargo containers waiting to be loaded or unloaded from the ships that call on this port, but the traffic is sparse, and many of the containers have been resting in their stacks for years.

Also discussed are the Bathory Boys, a gang of thugs who control Bathory Row, and their leader, Cerulean.

The update may be found at the official Matrix Online site.

EverQuest Lead Designer Shawn Lord has posted a letter to the community on the official EverQuest website.  In it, he discusses development and how communication with the players has made the game better:

During the recent changes to the Alternate Advancement system we can see one example of how our team's constant communication with you, our player base, can positively impact the game. In changing the way that Alternate Advancement works on our end, we affected over 300 different abilities. These changes had plenty of potential for disaster. Yet, with your help we were able to spot and address few issues that popped up almost immediately. Having less than a dozen issues pop up during the reintegration of a system that affects hundreds of thousands of players in literally hundreds of different ways is a major success. Your help and patience made that possible. Thank you! It's changes like these that will enable us to keep EverQuest growing strong for years to come.

For the entire article, you may click here. 

Follow this link to visit the official EverQuest website.

The media section of the official Everquest II site has been updated with 12 new screenshots and 12 new artist's concepts of the town of Qeynos.

 
Screens

Concept Art

Click here for all the screens and here for all the concept art.

You may visit the official Everquest II site at this link.

ArenaNet and NCSoft issued a press release this afternoon announcing the Guild Wars beta. In news sure to delight gamers everywhere, we've revealed our plans for an upcoming Guild Wars World Preview Event which will take place October 29th through 31st.

For fans waiting to experience Guild Wars, or hoping to revisit the game world after our E3 for Everyone Event, this is your chance! Guild Wars will enter its beta period immediately following the Preview Event, as outlined in the press release. Find all the details here.

Anyone and everyone who has been wanting to show off their artistic creativity with in-game skins now have the chance to submit their original skin for a chance to win some goodies! Here`s the dish, we will be accepting new, original, never before seen GUI Skins from August 6th to August 30th. Your skins will then be judged based on originality, detail, and appeal. Once the votes are counted, the winner will not only have their skin available for download on our official website but they will also receive a Poring doll signed by the entire Gravity Interactive LLC employees!

Runners-up will have their skin posted on the downloads page so that all may enjoy their creative skill.  For all the details on the contest, click here.

Follow this link to the official Ragnarok Online website.

At Turbine Nation on Saturday, Jeff Anderson, President and CEO of Turbine, announced plans to release a new expansion to the original Asheron's Call, WarCry is reporting.  The expansion, entitled Throne of Destiny, will include the following:

• New playable race - the Viamont, a culture modeled on French/Italian middle ages culture, will have better graphics, racial weapons and armor and a new island to the north
• New level cap of 275 - up from current cap of 126
• New rare drops - five tiers of rare drop with the highest occuring once a month across all servers
• New dungeons and creatures
• An updated graphics engine - from 16-bit to 32-bit texture buffers and an upgrade to DirectX 9

This information was revealed at the Asheron's Call Expansion Pack Panel Discussion at Turbine Nation.  Thanks to the WarCry team for providing information on the event.  You may read their report here.

Click here for the Asheron's Call homepage.

"The summer has not been quiet, EVE has been more alive than a bumblebee on honey," begins the latest edition of the EVE Newsletter, which was sent out to subscribers on Sunday, August 8.  Included in this edition are stories about the upcoming EVE Fanfest in Reykjavik and the highly anticipated Shiva expansion, among others.

If you aren't on the mailing list, you can read the newsletter at the official website for EVE.  Just click here.

MindSurge Entertainment has just sent us an exclusive armor shot from their upcoming MMORPG "Freeworld."  This shot shows off some of their new textures for light steel and blood plate mail.  They are now updating all of their armors to match his level of quality.

The newest Star Wars: Galaxies Friday Feature covers three of the Hutt fighters.  These fighters were specially created for the game and had to be approved by Lucasfilm and Lucasarts.

Click here to see the Friday Feature.  This link will take you to the official Star Wars: Galaxies website.

GameSpy continues to build on their Dungeons & Dragons Online feature with a developer's roundtable.  The discussion includes: 

• Ken Troop, Lead Designer (Turbine)
• Pete MacDonald, Senior Artist (Turbine)
• Dan Ogles, Senior Engineer (Turbine)
• David Eckelberry, Game Systems Designer (Turbine)
• Ed Stark, Special Projects Manager, RPG R&D (Wizards of the Coast)

The piece covers much, from issues surrounding the Atari/Turbine/WoTC collaboration to the issues of translating P&P games to the computer:

Moderator: How does D&D Online, and online gaming in general, fit into D&D's grand scheme? Ed Stark: I've seen it said many times that there wouldn't be any online RPG if D&D hadn't existed in the first place, and whether or not that's true, those of us who've been working on role-playing games and D&D for years are finally happy to see the industry come full circle. D&D Online will be another way to play D&D with your friends. D&D has always been a social activity, and this is yet another expression of that. Dave Eckelberry: The online game represents the next evolution of the Dungeons & Dragons. Let's face it, online games from the early text MUDs to Asheron's Call are basically unique D&D campaigns taken to a new medium, and it's a pastime that fans of the original game get to see their game take form in a persistent online world.

The roundtable, moderated by Miguel Lopez, may be read in its entirety at this link.

With Omens of War, new epics are being introduced.  The Omens of War page has already revealed four of the Epic 2.0 items. Over at EQ Stratics, the team has posted a sneak peek at the new Magician Epic. 

Click here to view the post in full.

e-Games.com.my will be offering a free play server for Knight Online so everyone can try out this exciting MMORPG. The Game can be downloaded from http://knight-online.com.my/client.asp

Players who join the Free Server / Trial Server can only play up to level 40 and the database is wiped every fortnight (2 weeks) on Tuesdays (GMT +8). Be reminded that permanent data servers are already P2P.  You can read the official press release below:

Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia's premier online games portal, e-Games is proud to announce that a fabulous new server has been created specially for newcomers to the exciting world of Knight Online. This new server will launch on Tuesday, 10th August 2004. The new server, called Carnac after the world that the warriors and magicians of Knight Online wage their epic battles in, will only exist for a limited time only. So if you want to test drive the thrilling Knight Online experience but aren't willing to fork out your cash, because you don't know what it'll be like? That's okay! The free Carnac server is for you! Both old and new members of e-Games can play on the free Carnac Knight Online server and you don't need to worry about e-Games Point balance. No e-Games Points will be deducted for the use of this server. But keep in mind, since this server is for beginners to gain their footing in the Knight Online world, the level cap has been set to Level 40. Players joining the free Carnac Knight Online server must take note however, that no character transfers are allowed from this server to the P2P servers. Events like the Lunar War, Siege War and Dark Lunar War will not be held on this server and several other features will also not be available. Additionally, the database will be reset every fortnight on Tuesday for server maintenance. Remember, this server is only for new players who want to try out Knight Online. The policy for this server can be referred to at http://www.knight-online.com.my/policy_roc.asp and players are reminded that the Terms Of Service (TOS) is still in effect on this server. Violations to the TOS may result in banned or suspended e-Games accounts. So been itching to try out Knight Online but never did? Well, this is the best time to do it. It's one awesome game you don't want to miss.

An improved and more exciting version of SOD system, called melee system, will be provided to our users. Various and stronger monsters are waiting and you can experience special items to fight against them. 1. Date: After Regular maintenance on August 11th, 2004. 2. Details: It is basically an upgrade of Sod, and the process is the same as SoD. However, Bellatra is made of 4 rooms and you compete within the separate room. 2 teams with the highest points until the 3rd round will be selected. The 1st place will be decided through the 6th round. The 1st place team may proceed until the 8th round and only the ones who survive until the 8th round may receive the Rewards depending on the points obtained. Compared to Sod, stronger monsters and chief monsters will be appeared while special items will randomly appear. This system is called the Melee system. 3. Reward: The 1st ranked clan or party will receive game money according to the points obtained. You may obtain all of your Experience points if you do not die until the end of Bellatra. 4. Venue: Navisko Town Ex-SoD stadium

Read all about it at the PristonTale website.

Avast, ye matey!  There be devlogs aplenty over at the Pirates of the Burning Sea homepage.  First off, Misha has posted an update on the flurry of activity that has been going on in development:

Probably the nicest-looking changes, though, are in the realm of combat which you've already seen a little of in the latest movie. Joe hooked up a new particle effects system and Neil has given us some snazzy new particles. It's freakin' amazing if I do say so.

Speaking of that particle effects system, Joe has posted his devlog about that:

It's been a busy month for me, and what I have to show for it are all of the particle effects in those recent screenshots. I spent a couple of weeks with the creator of the lovely and talented PrometheanFX particle system getting it integrated with our engine. Boy, am I happy with the results. There are some issues here and there and there are some updates due to PFX, but they really work. The newfound control over our particles has enabled Neil to put together some spectacular effects, don't you think? Once particles were in and working, I spent some time getting out UI to give you a little more feedback. We had a lot of buttons that did nothing when you clicked on them and they were in an invalid state; now they are disabled and the tooltip tells you why. It may not seem like much, but it really helps when you're playing the game. Before this change I would often have to help people answer the question, "Why can't I run out my guns?" Now they just look at the tooltip. There is a lot more of this to come, but it is a good start.

Also, check out this cool battle screenshot:

All this and much more is available at the official PotBS website.

   Yesterday Blizzard posted five additional pieces of Fan Art on their website. Click on the link below to view them.

View the new World of Warcraft Fan Art: http://www.blizzard.com/inblizz/fanart/

View the World of Warcraft Website: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/

It wouldn't be D&D without monsters, and there's no arguing that. But judging from what was present in the demo Turbine conducted, it looks like it's on the right track as far as selecting the right kinds of creatures to eventually pit you against. In terms of low-level creatures, there are kobolds. Scads of them. Some rushed in with melee weapons, and others stood back and shot arrows from a distance. Slimes, too, and they moved about in convincingly viscous ways. Many varieties of skeletons were present as well -- in sword-wielding, arrow-shooting, and spell-weaving flavors. I also saw wights, ghouls, and spiders, which lead me to one disturbing conclusion: the guys at Turbine are quite fond of creatures that drain the life out of you, paralyze you, poison you, or otherwise turn your otherwise-hardy avatar into a shriveled, debilitated mess. Glad to know the team is planning on making things easy on us.

It's apparent by the recent discussion on MMORPG.com that this is a title that piques peoples interest. 

You may read the entire "Tour of Eberron" piece by following this link.