While ArenaNet has not stated when closed beta will begin for Guild Wars 2, they did say it would be before the end of 2011. However today we have a fresh new rumor that closed beta testing will begin by November.

It seems a French gaming site has translated a Korean press release that was discussing the fact that ArenaNet would have a presence at G-Star, Korea’s largest gaming expo, and showing off more footage of Guild Wars 2 on Nov 10th -13th.  Mentioned in the press release was a statement that ArenaNet would be present at the expo “following the start of the Beta West“.

Keep in mind this was translated from Korean to French to English, so something could have been lost in translation.

ArenaNet has not confirmed or denied this thus far, however seeing how there’s only 3 months left in the year, this rumor has a 33.3% chance of being accurate.

Source: HunterInsight

With Patch 1.5 only a few days or weeks away, TrionWorlds today released a preview of what players can expect in the latest update. While most of this information has been previously released, we thought we’d run though it and give a little preview of what is to come in Rift patch 1.5.

First up is the introduction of Travel Stones which were used to instantly teleport people around the world, however were eventually swallowed by the sea.  After the defeat of the mad god who caused the stones to be swallowed, the Travel Stone have now risen out of the sea and are part of the new World Event in patch 1.5. Players will use the Travel Stones to travel to a distant kingdom where they will have to fight against two powerful cults who are trying to unleash doom upon Telara.

Next up is Planar Attunement which will allow players at the level cap to earn additional upgrades in the form of an elemental upgrade system. PA points can be obtained by completely quests and slaying planespawn minions.

Chronicle Dungeons are a new type of story-driven dungeon that are meant for solo players or groups of two and can be found at Greenscale’s Blight, Hammerknell, and more.

Patch 1.5 also introduces a new PvP warfront called Library of the Runesmasters. The new warfront is located in Hammerknell’s Libary where players race the enemy faction to control Dwarven secrets.

A new Veteran Rewards program will be introduced that awards players in-game items for being a loyal RIFT customer starting at one month up to 18 months.

A new dungeon mode called “Master Dungeon” will be available to challenge even the most elite players and guilds. The first of these new master dungeons will be in the Darkening Deeps, but eventually all raids and high level dungeons will have a Master Dungeon mode. Players who complete them will be rewarded with epic items.

From more information about the upcoming RIFT patch 1.5, head over to the official Rift site.

Yesterday Blizzard released Part One of their Patch 4.3 Dungeon Preview, which revealed details about the upcoming patch and the three new Heroic dungeons, specifically about the End Time dungeon. Parts two and three have now been released as well and we have a preview of the other dungeons coming in World of Warcraft patch 4.3.

The second dungeon players will encounter is called the “Well of Eternity”, which takes place ten thousand years in the past in the night elven capital city of Zin-Azshari. While providing aid to a much younger Tyrande and Illidan against the Highborne and Burning Legion, players must steal the Dragon Soul floating above the Well, but in order to do so players will have to defeat some lethal enemies including Peroth’arn, Azshara, and Mannoroth and Varo’then.

Dungeon three, called “Hour of Twilight”, takes players back to the present where having shattered the infinite dragonlight and obtained the Dragon Soul, they head to Wyrmrest Temple where they rendezvous with the blue, green, red and bronze dragonflights. However in order to reach the temple players will have to battle through the armies of the Twilight Hammer. Once there players will face-off against bosses such as Arcurion, Asira Dawnslayer and Archbishop Benedictus.

Below we have pics for both patch 4.3 dungeons.

Continued…

In a recent interview at TORWars, Principal Lead Systems Designer Damion Schubert answered some questions about Star Wars: The Old Republic and revealed two new features that have made it off the “Wall of Crazy” and into testing. To give you some background the “Wall of Crazy” is a wall full of post-it notes where developers put up features they are considering adding to the game. Schubert revealed that two of those notes have made their way off the wall and into testing.

The first is a dressing room where players will be able to alt-right-click to preview an equipment piece to see its appearance on them or their companion. Seems a bit useless imo, why not just equip it to see what it looks like, but I guess if it’s a bindable item, this can be useful.

The second new feature is group leader markings. Group or raid leaders will be able to mark individual players with unique marking so it’s easier to identify where the healer or tank are as well as other members.  A useful feature indeed, but fully expected in a triple A title like STWOR.

Schubert also stated that addition features are coming to make it easier for players to find and form groups, but was not yet ready to release any details. The rest of the interview was pretty pointless as most of the questions went unanswered as Schubert was not willing to reveal any other information.

It seems just about every major subscription based MMORPG that has been released over the last 3-4 years has either gone the road of free-to-play or has announced they will soon. Then there’s Warhammer Online, who’s sticking stubbornly to the subscription based business model regardless of how well it’s actually working for them.

Even though Warhammer Online had a stellar launch, it has since faded from the fore-front of gamers minds and has been struggling over the last year or two. Checking the Warhammer Online forums, it seems they are down to just 9 servers world-wide, which gives us some indication of just how far the WAR population has dropped.

So what gives? Why hasn’t Mythic made the switch or at least announce plans to go free-to-play yet? I’ve wanted to get back into Warhammer Online a few times over the last year to check out new content, but haven’t because quite frankly I don’t want to pay for a time card. Paying a monthly subscription is fine if I actually planned to dedicate myself to the game again, but to just check out a new patch or update, it’s not worth the effort.

I’m sure Mythic has had some serious discussions about going F2P internally, but it’s just surprising they still have’t announced anything while the rest of the industry has been making the transition. Wake up and just go Free2Play already Mythic, I want to try out some of your new content

The next World of Warcraft patch is heading this way and this time the heroes of Azeroth are planning on bringing down Deathwing himself, but in order to do so they must first acquire the Dragon Soul.

In patch 4.3, players will gain access to three new Heroic five-man dungeons to aid the Aspects and other heroes as they continue to fight against Deathwing, the Twilight’s Hammer, the armies of the Burning Legions and Highborne, even time itself.

The dungeons will be setup in sequential order so players will have to unlock access to new areas by completing the prerequisite areas. New epic loot, including new dungeon sets, will be available in these new Heroic dungeons and will be dropped by defeating the bosses in each dungeon. The new sets are not broken down by class and contain no set bonuses, they’re purely for cosmetic purposes.

The three new dungeons will take players to the past, present, and future as they try to obtain the Dragon Soul. In part one of this 4.3 preview, we are introduced to the “End Time” dungeon which takes place in the future where Deathwing rules over the lands and the heroes of Azeroth have failed.

Players will travel to a future Dragonblight where they will have to confront four familiar leaders who are now warped and corrupted by time, Sylvanas, Tyrande, Jaina and Baine. Each time a group enters the dungeon, two of the four leaders will be chosen at random and once they have been defeated, the maniacal figure blocking Nozdormu’s vision will be revealed at the Bronze Dragonshrine.

None of the Dragon Aspects could have predicted what entity would have such power to interrupt the sight of the Timeless One… the ability to create a new and infinite dragonflight. Only by destroying a mysterious dragon known as Murozond will you give Azeroth’s protectors the opportunity to avoid the potential outcome to which your eyes bear witness.

Below we have some  screenshots of WoW patch 4.3 and the End Time dungeon.

Continued…

It seems like we don’t go a week these days without announcing another subscription based MMORPG switching gears and going the way of Free-to-Play. This week we have the announcement from SOE that DC Universe Online is going free-to-play in early October.

DCUO will soon be available as a free download on the PSN and will require no monthly fee giving players the choice between 3 plans.

• Free Access – Just like it sounds. Download and play the game for free. You also get all ongoing game updates (except DLC packs).
• Premium Access – This next level of access opens up to you if you spend at least $5 in the in-game store. Premium Access grants you additional benefits that improve your experience in the game, such as more inventory slots, more character slots, bank slots and more free Vault tickets. So all you have to do is pick up some cool items in the store or buy a DLC pack and you unlock Premium Access. The best part? Once you unlock Premium Access you keep it for the life of your account.
• Legendary Access – With Legendary Access you can unlock the maximum level of features and benefits. To unlock Legendary Access you can pay for a $14.99 per month game pass, or save big with a discounted multi-month pass. Lifetime members are automatically granted Legendary access. Legendary Access also includes all DLC packs at no extra charge.

Players who are currently paying a monthly fee will be transitioned into the Legendary plans for their remaining game time and they to Free Access once that has expired.

Today in Gamigo’s second Letter to the Community they addressed some of the concerns players have had with Black Prophecy in term of bugs, performance issues and the upcoming Episode 2 update. No earth shattering news here, your basic vague update with no real new information being released.  However towards the end Gamigo spilled the beans on what Episode 3 would bring to the game.

Black Prophecy Episode 3 will concentrate heavily on PvE, introducing a new raid system which will allow pilots to fight end bosses alongside large groups of fellow pilots. New weapons, sectors and an increase in the level cap will also be added, although if you ask me, it’s far to soon to introduce a level cap raise.

Perfect World Entertainment’s latest MMO game, Rusty Hearts, recently launched into open beta this Tuesday and while it was a bumpy start, it was well worth the wait. I only say it was bumpy because there were a few issues with downloading the client and patches where they wouldn’t update properly, so it took a few days to get things working.

I really can’t remember the last time I played any type of side-scroller, maybe on the original Playstation, but I’m glad Rusty Hearts re-introduced me to the genre. While it is a side-scroller, the maps are fully 3D, however the path you walk on behaves as you would find in any side-scroller.

Starting out you select from one of four characters, in open beta it’s actually three as one isn’t selectable. I’m not quite sure if you have to unlock the forth character, buy it or if it’s just not available in open beta. I selected Frantz, a melee character who specializes in swords and axes.

You start off in the corner of a small town, with the rest of the town being inaccessible until you unlock it, and with a few NPCs stating about.  It’s a bit overwhelming when starting out as there’s a lot of options and things to click on, but you’ll quickly get acclimated to everything.

There is a overall story-line with every quest, but thankfully there is also a skip button so you can just get the quest and move on. The quests are given in the old RPG style where a chat box appears, in this case the bottom right, and there’s a back and forth dialog between you and the NPC.

Continued…

In a recent financial press release, CDC Corperation, the company that licensed the exclusive rights to distribute Lord of the Rings Online in China, reported that not only had it failed to launch the game, but they spent $10 million dollars doing it. Finally after five years, Turbine announced the delay constituted a breach of contract and has now terminated the agreement.

In September 2006, CDC Games licensed the exclusive rights to distribute, in China, Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar (LOTRO), a MMORPG based upon the Lord of the Rings trilogy. For the past several years, CDC Games has experienced significant delays in the continued development and launch of this game. Since initially licensing this game, CDC Games has invested approximately $10.0 million in licensing, development and other costs related to it, including a $4.0 million initial non-refundable license fee.

CDC Games has received notification from the game’s developer that the failure to launch LOTRO constituted an event of default under our agreements with them. The developer has also asserted that our license agreement for LOTRO has been terminated. CDC Games is currently in settlement discussions regarding the license for LOTRO, but does not currently believe that settlement discussions will permit it to retain future licensing rights for LOTRO.

I’m glad that at least Turbine got to keep the $4.0 million licensing fee. Just another example of a Chinese corporation doing whatever the hell they want because there safe behind their “you can’t sue me” wall of protection. To take a already completed game and not be able to translate it in five years is embarrassing. Not only has Turbine lost years of revenue due to CDC’s incompetence, they’re going to have to start from square one with yet another shady Chinese gaming company whose last game’s content was probably stolen from other games.