ArenaNet has just released a new cinematic trailer for one of dungeons players will encounter in Guild Wars 2.  The trailers shows off the Ascalonian Catacombs dungeon.

The trailer is narrated by Rytlock Brimstone, one of the iconic charr characters players will meet in Guild Wars 2. Rytlock tells of the fall of the human kingdom of Ascalon, which is showns charr laying siege to Ascalon through a flashback, watch the walls of the human city crumble, and hear the mad King Adelbern damning the entire kingdom with his infamous cursed sword Magdaer.  Check out the trailer below.

The fifth issue in Champions Online new weekly content update, Dark Tower, is now live.   Each series in Champions Online new comic series will consist of six issues and each issue before must be completed before moving on to the next.

After a detour through Demoiselle Nocturne’s twisted dreamscapes, it was revealed that both Luther Black and the last group of soldiers were being held in one of the towers of the Kings of Edom. The heroes must now pursue her through the portal and rescue the last handful of survivors before the Kings of Edom arrive and the very fabric of the Qliphothic Realm unravels around them!

Below are some of the creatures players can expect to find in the Dark Tower.

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Last month All Points Bulletin relaunched back into open beta with GamersFirst, who had revived the once dead MMORPG that closed shortly after launching last year.  The latest update, version 1.5.2, which was set to go live today has now been pushed back to an unknown date.

Version 1.5.2 will introduce district recommendations and skill-rating based match-making as well as a lot of items that have not yet been talked about such as, “meta-grouping for better PuG-ing, action grouping relaxation (fancy way of saying you will be able to shoot right as you stop sprinting instead of being blocked from shooting), 70+ different mission fixes, new clothing, new items and a boat-load of various bug fixes and improvements based on much of the forum and tester feedback we have had.”

The reason for the push back seems to be that there are too many issues and not enough programmers, so Gamersfirst announced they are looking for C++ programers to add to the development team in Edinburgh, UK.

Along with the new features planned for patch 1.5.2, two major bug issues were also acknowledged, latency spike problems and 32-bit memory issue.  Many players have been reporting frequent and random latency spikes reaching 800ms, which seem to not be a direct networking, datacenter or server issue.

The 32-bit memory issue comes from the fact that currently APB requires 2GB of member to run, however “32-bit WinVista and Win7 by default only addresses 2GB of RAM”. Which isn’t true as far as I know. I run a 32-bit installation of Win7 and I have 3.25 GB usable by default, so I’m not sure where they’re getting that 2GB figure from.

It’s looking to be a bumpy road for APB early on, but that’s what beta is all about and we look forward to see how it progresses.

Jagex is planning its biggest update of the year for Runescape on July 26th with its latest update, Clan Citadels.  The new Citadels will float high above the lands of Gielinor and will be the new clan homes for RS players.

Clan members can gather resources and materials needed to build up and maintain their Citadels, which will be able to grow in size and grandeur with tiered progression.  Clan Citadels will be highly customizable allowing clans to create a truly unique homes for their clansmen.

Citadels will also feature proving grounds where clansmen can gather together to practice their fighting skills or just challenge each other to see who the greatest member is.

Clan citadels will be a members only update, available to clans with five or more subscribing players.

In a few hours Hellgate will be opening its doors to players for its Open Beta phase of testing which is set to being at 7:30 pm EST.  To celebrate the launch into OB, Hellgate has setup four special events for players, Guild Reservoir, Daily Supplies, To Level in Hell and the Level and Be Rewarded event, each event will award top players with valuable prizes.

To signup for the open beta, head over to the Hellgate webiste.

Today En Masse released an old but unreleased E3 video that was only shown to the media behind closed doors. The video that was released just now is a summarization of what the presentation demo was and talks about how the unique political system will work in TERA.

Episode 1: Inferno in Tulima is the first major content updated for Black Prophecy which is set to be released sometime in July.  Today via the Prophecy Nation blog,  we have the first details to what some of the new combat abilities are going to be.

Pilots will now be able to equip Special Items for addition offensive, defensive or supportive solutions while they are docked in a station.  This addition adds a new layer to players role in combat and required players to think ahead to what items they will need depending on what the mission requires.

Currently only information on three items have been released.  For offense we have the Explosive Charge which will increase the radius of all explosive weapons and missiles the ship is equipped with by X% for 20 seconds. The cooldown is 60 seconds.   I’m assuming X will depend on your level or other attributes.

For defensive there is the Shockwave which will knock back all enemy ships within a radius of X meters, but those ships not suffer any damage from it. The cooldown is 40 seconds.

The supportive item is Scattered tele-repair which can repair hull damage for all  friendly ships within a radius of 350 meters by X. The cooldown is 120 seconds.

Below was have some screenshots showing off the above items in actions.

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Yesterday Blizzard announced an update to its free trial period, changing from a 14 day free trial to unlimited up to level 20.  Is this a sign of weakness coming from the king of MMORPGs?  In shorty, yes, World of Warcraft is heading into its seven year and it’s safe to say has passed its prime.

Back in March 2011, Blizzard revealed that subscription numbers were around 11.4 million, which is down from the 12 million it announced only a few months before in Oct 2010.  The 5% drop could be related to the fact that RIFT is gaining steam or that more and more quality MMOs are switching to the free to play model. Offering an unlimited free trials could be a way for Blizzard to test the waters and systems it needs to make the switch to free to play themselves.

Blizzard already has all the tools in place to make a quick and smooth transition to F2P.  The WoW store has been live for well over a year and is already massively successful and now they have the Free2Play system in-place. They only need to flip the switch at this point.

Whether or not this will ever happen can be argued, but as the game ages and subscribers continue to decline, I think Blizzard will see F2P as a way to stabilize its player base and extend the life of World of Warcraft well into the future.

First launched in November of 2009 by Gamepot USA, Bright Shadow was a fantasy MMORPG aimed at the younger audiences.  Just over a year later, Bright Shadow closed its door and shut down its servers. Today Gamania has announced the relaunch of Bright Shadow, this time as a online collectible card game. Beta testing is planned for July 8th and will be made available through Gamania’s beanfun! platform.

Below are a list of features for the new Bright Shadow as well as the launch trailer also released today.

• More than 500 monster cards to collect
• Summon the ghosts of defeated monsters enlocked within the trading cards to battle foes.
• Use special skills to transform into powerful creatures
• Unique shell-shaded visual design
• Intuitive combat system
• Extensive character customisation
• 20 classes to unlock
• Rich story
• More than 60 randomly generated dugeons in the special

The latest update to the WWII tank MMO, World of Tanks, is set to roll out onto servers tomorrow June 30th.  Update 6.5 will feature two new maps, Redshire, that depicts a traditional British settlement, and Arctic Region, the very first purely winter location.  The update will also introduce the American tank destroyers line, including the T95 superheavy monster as well as two new light tanks, the American M22 Locust and the Russian T-127.

Update 6.5 will also replace the M26 Pershing with the M46 Patton, which is Wargaming.net’s first step to reworking the global tech trees.

“We constantly keep polishing the game balance, and updating World of Tanks to 6.5 is yet another important step in this direction,” said Wargaming.net CEO Victor Kislyi. “That’s just the first of the two American TDs branches we’ll be implementing, so we will bring even more strategic satisfaction to our players in the nearest future.”

Servers will go down for the update at 1:00 am EST and should be restored by 9:00 am EST.  For more info, check out the WoT official site.