Today Aeria Games released one of the biggest content updates to their free-to-play MMORPG Grand Fantasia.  The patch update introduces World PvP, new maps, dungeons and instances; raises the level cap to 85 and adds the new “Looking for Party” feature as well as the new Ultimate System.

Additional information can be found below.

• Introduction of World PvP – Players now have the option to duke it out amongst each other with the introduction of World PvP. Gain exclusive “PK Club” fame points that are redeemable for “PvP rewards.”
• Additional Maps, Dungeons and Instances – Visit the “Nightmare Corridors,” a 2-player instanced dungeon with over 30 floors that will keep players on their feet.
• Level Cap Raise –Players now have the ability to achieve up to level 85 especially with the help of additional dungeons and instances in game.
• New “Looking for Party” Function – If players had trouble finding partners to complete quests there is now an option to “Auto Party” in-game that will allow players an easier method to team play.
• New Ultimate System – The new Ultimate System allows players to upgrade their stats with the help of the Guardians of Saphael.

En Masse’s monthly Twitter chat continues to roll on and this month’s chat transcript with Senior Producer Brian Knox and Senior Community Manager Evan Berman has now been posted.

A lot of questions where asked during the Twitter chat and while most of the answers were pretty vague, there were a few tid bits of interesting info.

• Guild Housing is back on the table now that the release date has been pushed back to Spring 2012. Although not guaranteed, there’s a good chance it will be included at launch time.
• Raid content, 5+ players, will make its way into TERA in-time for launch
• A big announcement in regards to TERA will be made at PAX Prime this weekend.

You can check out the full Twitter transcript on at the official TERA website.

Guild Wars 2 and Star Wars: The Old Republic aren’t the only upcoming MMOs coming out with massive PvP zones. Enter The Secret World PvP warzone.

Today in an interview with creative directorRagnar Tornquist, we learned some new details as to how TSW’s large-scale PvP warzone will work. Below I’ve outline all the juice bits of information from the interview.

The Secret World PvP Warzone Details

• The three factions, Dragon, Illuminati and Templars will battle it out in the warzones.  It will be possible for one of the factions to get completely dominated and that faction “gets kicked off the table temporarily“
• Warzones are not meant for low level characters. You’ll need to get about 40-60 hrs in before you’ll become useful in Warzones.
• Warzones are not instanced and will be persistent.
• There is currently only one announced Warzone, an unnamed city in China, however there will be more in the final product.
• Players that participate in the PvP Warzone will gain ranks within their secret society.

The rest of the interview focused on PvE and the story-line aspect of The Secret World. If you’re interested check out the full interview at Ten Ton Hammer.

Playstation Home is getting a remake this fall as Sony is planning on changing the game lobby into a MMO type theme park with quests and mini-games included. The new home center will become the Hub, from which players can move into other districts based on game themes.

Currently there are a handful of districts, Action, Adventure, Sportswalk and Pier Park. For example the action district would be geared towards games like Call of Duty, Killzone and Resistance, and will look like a level you would encounter in one of those games.  The other two are basically the same, however Pier Park would act more as boardwalk where users can play carnival or arcade games, go on rides and is rated E for everyone.

Each district will have it’s own mini-games, quests and persistent story-lines for PS Home users to participate in. Users will also receive rewards for completing quests or certain tasks, such as cosmetic upgrades to their Home avatars or unlocking game content such as screenshots or videos.

I don’t know about you, but I thought PS Home was a horrible idea when it was first announced and this makeover doesn’t make me feel any different about it. It sort of reminds me of what everyone was saying the internet would become in the late 90′s. That instead of websites you visit, there would be a virtual world of stores and building where users would walk to the website as a storefront.

Steam is an outstanding example of what a social hub should be. Simple and to the point. I don’t have to play horrible mini-games or complete pointless quests to unlock content or walk to a different district to get access to certain games. I have my friends list at my finger tips and can chat with them at any time, even in-game. The list goes on, but this is about PS Home, not how awesome Steam is

I think Sony is heading in the opposite direction it should be. PS Home is considered a failure by most and instead of realizing that most people don’t like chatting in a virtual environment collecting pointless items, they’re doubling down and making Home even bigger.

Source: Kotaku

MMOCrunch is proud to announce today its partnership with Overwolf Ltd to bring you the MMOCrunch Overwolf Client.

Overwolf, for those of you not familiar with it, is a social media tool that allows gamers to stay connected while in-game with any PC game. Check your Facebook page or email, upload videos, chat, or even browse the web. Overwolf keeps you connected. No longer do you need to alt-tab to your desktop if you want to check an online quest map or need some info from about gear or raids.

MMOCrunch Overwolf Features

• Facebook – Complete Facebook integration. While in-game players can be keep up to date and post by having their Facebook feed open or one click away if you like a clutter free screen.
• Video Recording – Completed a Raid or found an Epic item and want to tell the world? Overwolf allows players to record and take screenshots of their gameplay which can then easily be shared on Facebook or any other social media site.
• Web Browser – A full working browser is included so no longer do players need to Alt-Tab out of the game to check a browser window.  Need help with a quest or just want to check our some gear or item information? Just open up your in-game browser and check what you need to on the fly.
• Instant Messenger Chat - Chat with your friends while in-game seemlessly, no longer will you miss IM messages because your completing a three  hour raid.  Currently Overwolf only supports MSN chat, however additional IM services will be offered in the future such as AIM.
• Widgets - New features and widget will be added in the future so Overwolf will only get better. Currently Overwolf has widgets for Twitter, Youtube, Skype, Gmail, Yahoo mail, and many more.
• Free – All this and more is offered completely free.

Download Overwolf Here

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A new update was posted on the DUST 514 website recently detailing some of the communication features that players will have to communicate between Eve Online and DUST 514.

One of the main features will be Eve Gate, which will act as the communications hub between the two games both in-game and out. Players will be able to setup contact lists, check in-game mail, post on forums, and setup calendars with events amongst other things.

Corporations play a major role in Eve Online and will as well in DUST 514, which will be seamlessly integrated together, allowing corporations to recruit players from both games.

The idea is that a corporation staffed with members from both EVE and DUST 514 should be able to access all available functions. Common functionality includes creating corporations, managing membership, managing finances, and joining alliances.

There will be of course both voice and text chat available to players to communicate with each other from both games.

DUST 514 players also get their own War Room, where they can go to view vehicle and character specs, stock up on items from the marketplace or corp inventory.  The War Room can hold up to 32 players at a time, so players will be able to chat with fellow corp members or hires and strategize about their gameplan.

Gamescom has officially ended, but there’s still plenty of information coming out and today we have even more info on Guild Wars 2 PvP system, this time via Ten Ton Hammer as they interview ArenaNet Lead Designer Eric Flannum.

Most of the interview talks about the Conquest PvP demo shown at Gamescom, however there were some questions about World vs World and Guild vs Guild which reveal new details.

World vs World PvP

World vs World PvP matches will run for 2 weeks at a time running 24/7 and will be open to as many players as ArenaNet can ultimately fit onto a server.

It’s basically this giant strategy game with four really big maps, keep sieges, supply lines and all kinds of strategy. At the same time there are mobs for people to kill if they want to, and you can XP up from level 1 all the way to level 80 in World vs. World.

World vs World will match up servers every two weeks based on their win/lost ration.  So if a server is undefeated and another has never won, they won’t get matched up. Currently there are also no plans for any kind of seasons in regards to World vs World PvP, however if there is a demand for it, that could be something that is added in the future.

Guild vs Guild PvP

When asked about GvG, Flannum confirmed what Jon Peters has stated in a previous interview that Guild Wars 2 would not have Guild vs Guild PvP.

No, that’s one thing that is a pretty big departure. The reason we didn’t want to do it is that even in guild vs. guild in Guild Wars 1, we found that what we had to do is create a lot of systems to circumvent that. It was just really hard to get that many people all from the same guild on at any given time.

What we’ve said instead is that our guilds are going to be about building social networks, and if there is a group of people that are the hardcore PvP guys they’re all going to be in the same guild anyway so that’s OK. And they’re going to register as a team, and be known as the team from a specific guild and build up a reputation. And then that gives them the flexibility that if they want to have a top team along with a team 2 and team 3, they can do that kind of thing. So we wanted to disassociate the two things.

Now in World vs. World there are things like guild keep claiming, so you will claim a keep that your world has conquered, and your guild can claim that and fly their banners, they can upgrade it, spend resources, and do all kinds of stuff.

So there you have it, no GvG, but World vs World is sounding better and better the more info that’s released about it. Who else is excited?

And the Guild War 2 flood of information keeps coming out of Gamescom.  Today GWcom.de released an a video demoing the crafting system found in GW2 and providing some more information about how it works.

To start off there will be 8 total professions players can choose from with 2 professions being active at any one time. The twist is that players will be able to switch from one profession to another without losing their progress (level) in that profession, which basically means players will be able to master all 8 professions if they want to.

Now I’m going to assume there will be some restriction or cost to switching your profession otherwise limiting players to 2 active professions makes no sense.

In Guild Wars 2, there are two basic crafting mechanism, Discovery and Crafting. Discovery is the recipe system where players experiment with various materials to see what types of recipes can be created. Then once you have some recipes, you’re able to start crafting items. Guild Wars 2 takes the XP approach with crafting, so the more items you craft the more XP you get and eventually level in your profession.

Recipes also have level ranges, however it was not fully explained how it works in the video.  From what I can gather, by using the Discovery Recipe system, players can discover higher level recipes then their current crafting level, but whether or not you’ll be able to use those recipes at the lower level has yet to be answered.

Check out the full GW2 crafting demo below. Only the first 2 mins 30 sec have any commentary, the other 20 mins is just crafting.

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The guys at Joystiq recently had a chance to speak with the developers who are working on DUST 514 and revealed the launch price at “around $20″. CCP had previously announced that there would be an initial download fee for the game and that players would receive that payment back in the form of in-game currency, but didn’t give out a solid price until now.

CCP went on to re-confirm some already known information that the Eve Online and DUST 514 marketplaces would be completely integrated stating, “Bought currency items and non-currency items can be freely exchanged between the players“.

CCP also expects that some players won’t even bother with the actual FPS aspect of the game and concentrate solely on their virtual business.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we get quite a few EVE players that join Dust but actually don’t play Dust at all, they’re just on the market speculating … and they never go into a match,

I still wish DUST 514 was on PC, but who knows, maybe PS3s will be under $200 by then.

In a new interview with GuildMag, Guild Wars 2 designer Jon Peters was asked some interesting questions about the structured PvP system and there were some juicy answers.

When asked whether there would be other structured PvP modes besides Conquest, Peter’s answered,

right now there’s only one mode, conquest

This could mean that either in the current development process there’s only one mode or it could mean there will only be one mode at the time of launch. It took it as there will be only one mode at launch time, but I could be wrong.

Peter’s also confirmed that eventually there will be an observer mode for structured PvP matches, but probably not at launch. PvP rewards will also be available to all players, not just those that play in the structured tournaments. The rewards mentioned were weapon skin unlocks and titles.

When Peter’s was asked “Why abaondon such a successfull format as gvg?”, he replied,

I’m not so sure gvg is all that successful…its a little too complex and little too hardcore

He goes on to talk about the difference between Conquest and how it’s an improvement.

So looks like Conquest mode is going to be the replacement for GvG in Guild Wars 2. Maybe I took his answer wrong, but to me it sounds like there isn’t going to be GvG outside of the Conquest PvP game mode. So can I now be disappointed?

You can watch the full interview after the jump.

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