During an investor Q&A session, Perfect World Entertainment’s CEO Michael Chi and CFO Kelvin Lau revealed that Star Trek Online would be going free-to-play by the end of 2011.

Star Trek Online, after the acquisition, in fact Cryptic is working on the free-to-play model for Star Trek Online. This is going to be launched by the end of this year as well. So I think free-to-play model we have a bigger potential in US market and also in China market.

Not a big surprise, but certainly a major announcement. Since Perfect World Entertainment bought Cryptic Studios earlier this year, everyone assumed eventually Cryptic’s MMORPGs would move over to the F2P business model, and shortly after the acquisition, Champions Online did make the switch. Star Trek Online took a little longer, but not it is officially a F2P MMORPG.

Today Funcom released its monthly developers updated for August which mentions various subjects such as the recent release of The Savage Coast of Turan adventure pack and other upcoming projects still planned for 2011. All future projects planned for 2011 have already been announced such as the PVP world bosses, the massive House of Crom dungeon and the final encounters of the Tier four raid cycle, but Funcom went further giving us a hint as what is to come in 2012 for Age of Conan.

Although no details have been given, Funcom did announce there will be a new adventure pack in the first half of 2012.

They also announced that work has already started “on a revamp of the tradeskill system that exists in the game“.  The crafting system will be completely redone with a new design which Funcom hopes will “invigorate” the crafting community within Age of Conan. More details will be revealed towards the end of the year, but the new system should be in place sometime in the first half of 2012, if things go as planned.

We didn’t want to try and band aid the existing system, so this is more of a substantial update that will hopefully integrate a deeper, more involving system for people to enjoy.

Good news for those players who enjoy crafting.

When Trion announced their half-birthday promotion last week, offering gamers a free week to try out RIFT, I decide to bite since I’ve been contemplating getting into RIFT for some time anyway.

My initial foray into RIFT was much like any other MMORPG I’ve played before, you select your faction, customize your character and get going. I selected the Defiant faction and decided to select a class I’ve never played before, I usually go for DSP or tanking, but this time I went with the Rogue class.

RIFT starts out in the present where Regulos, the god of Death, has taken over the world of Telara and most of the people left believe it’s the end of the world. My character is brought back to life by some scientist who tells me I have to travel back to the past, before Regulos conquered the world, and it’s up to me to stop him. So after completing a few tutorial quests, I jump through a rift that was created and travel back to the past.

You’re relocated to your factions starting area years before Regulos takes over the world, however because of the time traveling, or so I think, rifts are tearing through from the future into the past opening up portals for monsters to come through.

That’s of course only one part of the main story. The other is the war between the two factions the Guardians and the Defiants, who fight amongst each other for religious reasons. The Guardians, who are the chosen one’s of the Telara’s gods and extremely devoted to them, believe they’re the only ones that can stop Regulos.  While the Defiants have turned their backs on the Telara’s gods, blaming them for everything, and have embraced science and technology instead. This obviously didn’t sit well with the Guardians, which is why they’re at war with each other.

Alright, now that we got the storyline out of the way, lets get to the actual game. Click continue below for the rest of the first impression Rift review.

Continued…

CVG recently spoke with EA Labels boss Frank Gibeau who told them that the release date for Star Wars: The Old Republic hinges on the reaction players give to the beta, which opens up to many more players starting this Friday.

It is definitely tied to the beta test feedback that’s ongoing and so far, so good. We feel good about the date that we’re heading towards but you’re right, you could have a Crazy Ivan show up in the September/October beta test and be like, ‘wow, I’ve got to fix that’

You’ve got to have a great launch and as more and more user feedback comes in we make those polishing decisions on what we’re going to get right and nail

We don’t want to happen to us what happened to WoW and a couple of other services where in the first week there were queues trying to get on to the servers, the entire service crashed – we don’t want that to happen. So we need to nail and make sure that it’s up 24/7 and it’s high quality.

Not earth shattering news, EA obviously does’t want the blogosphere erupting about servers being down or hour long login queues on the first few days of launch, so they are preparing as they should be. With beta starting this Friday and running until October, I’m going to put my money on a November launch date.

Due to hurricane Irene slamming the east coast of the US this past weekend, Trion has decided to extend their Half-Birthday celebration for RIFT by a full week.  All XP bonuses will remain and all new players will get an extra free week to continue their journey.

UPDATE 8/30: We know many of you have been weathering out the storm on the east coast – so we’re keeping the subscriber bonuses turned on an extra week, you now have until September 6th to enjoy all the bonuses to XP, Guild XP, Favor, Prestige, Planarite, and dugeon & raid currencies. Have fun!

I’m glad to see Trion extending the free week. Currently my character is level 20, a Defiant Rogue, and even though I live in New Jersey the hurricane really didn’t effect me and I didn’t lose power so I was able to get some good game time in this weekend. With another week and continued XP bonuses, hopefully I’ll get to at least level 30 by the time this half bday celebration event ends.

Only a few years ago if you asked someone what a MOBA game was, they’d probably just give you a weird look, but today multiplay online battle arena (MOBA) games are the hottest new genre around. Even though it took a while to get here, starting all the way back with the Starcraft map Aeon of Strife which then became the inspiration for the Warcraft 3 mod DotA All-Stars, the MOBA genre is here now and it’s never been more visible than it has been in the last month or so.

Gamecom brought us a $1.6 million tournament for Valve’s newest MOBA, DotA 2, and EA announced their own title Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes. Before that RiotGames announced that League of Legends had hit 15 million registered players and due to the success of its Season One tournament, the prize pool for season two would be pushed up to $5 million.

Up until now there have only been an handful of dedicated MOBA titles, the biggest being League of Legends, but there’s also Heroes of Newerth, Bloodline Champions and Dimigod. Now it seems the secret is out and the MOBA genre is going to get crowded fast.  There’s about a dozen or so MOBA titles that have been announced or are already in the works including the two name above, Smite, Realm of Titans and Rise of Immortals to name a few.

If you take into account all the MMORPG titles with instanced battlefields or warzones, whatever you want to call them, than you can get a feel for how big the MOBA genre has become. While those are obviously not dedicated MOBA titles, they’ve become a standard must-have feature in any MMORPG.

Competition of course is always a good thing as it breeds innovation so it’ll be interesting to see where the MOBA genre goes in the next few years. Of course if Blizzard decides to throw its hat into the market, they’ll probably dominate the market and everyone else will just copy them for the next 10 years

Gameforge today announced a new update to their long running MMORPG Gates of Andaron titled Rise of Gor, which is due sometime in September.  The Rise of Gor update will introduce browser-based gameplay using the Kalydo browser plug-in, a new third warring faction, and a new mentoring system within the relaunched community site for newbies.

The kingdom of ‘Gor’ emerges as the third new faction in the war between the Valorian and Derion. At level 80, players of the new faction can enter large PvP battles, tipping the balance of power between the two old factions.  Additionally, opposing forces can now hold negotiations for war and peace in large areas and another layer of strategy to PvP combat.

New players now begin their adventures in Tebekut, which has been completely recreated. In order to make it easier for players to get into the game, a mentor system has also been introduces where veteran players can accompany new players and offer then assistance.  As a reward, they will receive a payout when the new player reaches level 90.

For more information about the Rise of Gor update, head over to the Gates of Andaron website.

Starting Sept 7th, Immortal King, the new Greek inspired MMORTS game from Game321, will enter its closed beta testing phase.

Want to get your hands on a beta key? We’ll you won’t have to wait long. Starting Sept 1st and leading up to the start of closed beta test, Game321 will be giving gamers various chances at obtaining a closed beta key.

Although not live yet, once the Immortal King website is launched on the 1st, gamers can head their to enter into a closed beta giveaway by filling out a survey.

Use MSN chat? Then add “immortal_king@live.cn” to your friends list and update your signature to something Immortal King related. Game321 will be keeping an eye on all signatures and will randomly pick winners in time for the closed beta launch.

There will also be other ways to get a closed beta key which will be laid out on the IK website once it’s launched or you could just check back here in a few days as I think we might have a few to give out as well

Phase one of The Secret World’s beta signup is currently underway and now more information has been revealed about phase two. The second phase will introduce a web-based community game where players will have to perform various actions on a global map in order to expand the influence of their secret society and climb within their ranks. As your rank climbs you unlock exclusive in-game items such as weapons and clothing, unique achievements and if you climb high enough, you’ll guaranteed yourself beta access. Other rewards and prizes are available as well such as the chance to visit the Funcom studio and even get your name featured in the game world.

Only one activity has been revealed so far and a pretty lame one at that, where players will have to recruit friends from Facebook to signup to beta. Hopefully the other games are a lot better.

Today via MMORPG.com some new information from PAX Prime was released in regard to Guild Wars 2 PvP servers. Lead Designers, Colin Johanson and Eric Flannum, stated that not only will players be able to create their own PvP servers, they will allow players to specify their own rule-sets.

WoW, it seems like ArenaNet really pushing and providing players with every possible tool to make sure Guild Wars 2 becomes a successful eSport. Another great addition to GuildWars 2, but I wonder how exactly it’ll work. Will guilds have to pay to get a private server or will it be an in-game reward for guilds? Or possibly the players themselves have to host their own server? How flexible are the rule-sets? Can players create their own PvP games? So many questions! Can’t wait to hear more.