Joymax today announced the launch of the new Digimon Masters Online teaser site and opened up signups to its upcoming closed beta testing phase, but not date has been announced.

No real information has been given about what features and social systems Digimon Masters Online will have, however we have a brief description below from Joymax.

The conflict has spilled once again from the Digital World into the Real World and the fate of both worlds will rest in the hands on a new generation of Tamers. This long awaited game will feature a deeper RPG experience, enhanced graphics and adrenaline pumping real-time combat – a departure from the turn-based action found previously in Digimon Battle. The game will be available across the world in English for the first time.

The next major content update, Chains of Kluer,  for Forsaken World is on its way and to prepare a new teaser site has been launched as well as a new video.  Chains of Kluer takes place beneath the city of Freedom Harbor within the Forgotten Prison where the monster Kluer is imprisoned.

The update will bring with it not just the Forgotten Prison dungeon, but also the following:

• Level cap increased to 80
• Mounted Combat
• New Dungeons
• New Events
• New Marriage Leveling system
• New Pet Adventure System
• New Fashion, Mounts, and Pets

Below is the official Chains of Kluer trailer, enjoy.

Last week a video of ArcheAge’s PvP Battlegrounds was uploaded to Youtube that didn’t get much attention, so I thought it would be nice to share it here for those of you who haven’t seen it.  The video is from the Korean CBT phasing and is just under 13 mins long.  For some reason there’s no video for the first minute, so just fast forward until you see something.

From the video, ArcheAge’s combat looks pretty fast and furious, it doesn’t take long to kill someone as you’ll notice the player in the video dying about 50 times.  The video has decent music too

A new tradable item shop currency will be introduced to the NA version of Allods Online sometime in the near future.   The new currency will allows players to obtain items from the item shop by trade rather than having to spend any money.

The currency will be available through Pouches of Gem Shards that will be available in the item shop for purchase and can then be sold in the Auction house, traded or given to other players.  The Gem Shards within the pouches can be used to buy items from the item shop.

So, if you want to be able to get free item shop items, you’ll need to find someone with a pouch and trade for it or buy it in the auction house.  Players will also be able to convert gPotatoes into Gem Shards.

The next Producers Letter from Naoki Yoshida, FFXIV’s director and producer, went up today talking about three of the issues that players are still discussing on the FFXIV forums.

Patch 1.18, which should be released sometime tomorrow, will removed the hated fatigue system and will also be re-balancing in-game means of transportation, with the goal of “giving players the freedom to play however they like.”

There has also been discussion about whether or not the ranking up system will be nerfed now or in future game updates.  Well it seems players have nothing to worry about as there are no plans for removing it.

The simple and emphatic answer to this, just as I posted in the forums, is no.

FFXIV is an MMORPG. But before the MMO-ness, it’s an RPG at its core. So it goes without saying that it should be fun to see your character develop and grow. There should be clear-cut goals, and a sense of accomplishment when you achieve them. No need for worries on that front!

Naoki went on to talk about party play and public areas stating that adjustments to the enemy distribution, respawn timers, linked-enemy bonuses, and party bonuses are being made so skill point awards in public areas are better when in a party.

To read the full produces letter, head over to the FFXIV forums.

Today Square-Enix revealed more information about Final Fantasy XIV’s upcoming 1.18 patch, which will include new settlements.  The new settlements or outposts, six in all, will be intended as landmarks and bases of operation for players.  There players can find useful NPCs, such as merchants or smiths and some quests to do.  Future FFXIV patches will add more enhancements to the settlements as well as bring new quests.

There will be two new settlements in each of the three main regions, The Black Shroud, La Noscea and Thanalan.  Below we have a screenshot for each of the 6 outposts and you can find more information about them and patch 1.18 on the FFXIV site.

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Straight out of the “are you f#cking kidding me” file comes World Joyland, a theme park located in Changzhou, China. What makes this theme park so special is that is based off of Blizzard’s popular World of Warcraft and Starcraft intellectual properties, which by the way it’s not paying Blizzard to license.

That’s ok though because the theme park owners have an iron-clan solution to avoid being sued into the ground.  One, they’re located in China and two they named the WoW area, Terrain of Magic, while the Starcraft area is called Universe of Starship, so no one will know it’s based on WoW and Starcraft.

Legal matters aside, do they realize that the reason Disney was so successful at one point was because they made a theme park targeting kids?  What 5-8 year old is going to bug their parents to take them to a WoW or Starcraft theme park?  And if you’re not a kid and excited to go to a WoW theme park I think you might have to re-evaluate your life or at the very least stop playing WoW.

Continue below to see some of the images from World Joyland.

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A new hotfix when live across all US and European severs early this morning for Star Wars Galaxies that just about doubled XP for everything and will most likely be in effect until the game closes down.

It seems SOE is trying to make the last few months of SWG as enjoyable as possible for the remaining players.

Bonus Everything

• Everyone logged in will earn Double XP, Double GCW Points, Double Heroic Tokens, Double GCW Tokens from Battlefields and City Invasions, Double Pet XP and Loyalty, Double Duty Mission Tokens, Double Chronicles XP, Double Chronicles Silver Tokens, increased chance to earn Gold Chronicles Tokens, increased RLS chance, increased chance to catch real fish (instead of junk loot and collection fish) and bonus Restuss Commendations!
• NOTE: The RLS chance has been increased to 5 times the normal value.

Fan Faire 2011

• The Fan Faire 2011 items are now available to be claimed in-game.

So it seems that yesterday a Polish retailer Empik.com added details for the Star Wars: The Old Republic pre-order and posted up an image of the box art, which was then quickly removed.  Rumors are now flying that Bioware will announce the pre-order this Thursday during Comic-con in Seattle.

It’s also worth mentioning that Walmart has the release date set as 11/01/11 and seems to be open for pre-orders, however does not mention any of the above pre-order bonuses.

I guess we’ll wait until Comic-con and see if any dates are announced.

Update: Via swtorstrategies.com it seems that the release date status on the EA site has been changed from TBD to TBA.

Source: Massively

Today Alt1Games announce that open beta testing for its upcoming mythology MMORPG, Troy Online, would begin on August 12th and end by Aug 19th.

The open beta will roll out many new features including all quests and quest arcs, raise the level cap to the max and open up all areas and zones to players. Troy Online will transition from open beta to commercial version immediately after open beta ends and all characters created during open beta will roll over as well.

Alt1Games will be launching unique events during its open beta testing, however they will not disturb the game balance or give any unfair advantage to players who do not participate in open beta.  Although it doesn’t sound that way from their even announcement.

We will award epic items to winners of first and second beta achievement event that it can be continuously using from OBT after commercializing game.

To create an account and signup for the Troy open beta, head over to the official site by clicking that link.