Today Gala Net announced that their MMORPG, Allods Online, will be receiving a new unnamed expansion sometime this October.  The expansion will make significant changes to both the low and high level area, optimizing the starting areas to make the learning curve as easy as possible and adding a new zone for end-game players.

For low level players, the first 25 levels will be completely rework and re-balance with easier monsters, faster combat and a more intuitive system for beginners. The leveling system will be streamlined, the fatigue system removed and bonus XP is now distributed equally across all levels. Leveling overall will be also faster all the way to the cap.

Two new player classes will also be added, bringing the total playable classes to 30 if you included all race combinations.

For high-level players, a new zone called Kingdom of Elements picks up where the Cave of Tka Rik left off, unravelling more mysteries about the Allods Online universe and preparing players for the future. The Arena of Death PvP instance also benefits from a significant tweak – instead of being open twice daily, it will now be available constantly for player-on-player battling, with a new matchmaking system to provide gruelling tests of player skill 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Finally, players will be able to customize the interior of their Astral ships with all manner of decor accessories, from rugs and throws to paintings and full suites of furniture.

As with any expansion announcement, there is a trailer.  Check out the Allods expansion trailer after the jump.

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It seems people love to know what’s trending these days, so why not MMO games. Google offers a nice little tool called Google Insights, which can compare up-to five terms to find out what the “interest” is worldwide. It basically measures how often people search for that word or phrase.

What I did was take our full MMO list, over 250 MMO and MOBA games, five at a time and run the searches based on the title of the game. In some cases like Final Fantasy XI and Lord of the Rings Online I would have to abbreviate them and in other cases such as TERA, I would have to add “online” to get a more accurate result.

I did this twice, with an end result of the top 20 MMO games for the last 12 months.  I actually ended up with only about 12 games, so then I went back and did a losers bracket to get the other 8.

To make it a bit more exciting, I decided to setup a bracket system and have the top 20 games face off each other to see what MMO game would be crowned the hottest game of the year. Find out who made the cut and won below.

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Today Blizzard released the skill calculators for Diablo 3 where the first thing you’ll notice, if you’re familiar with D2, is that it’s not a skill tree system.  There are however still three groupings of skill types for each class, with a total of 20-25 skills per class.

The new system gives players six skill slots, two from the start then more as you level up, each with a rune slot to enhance that particular skill. There are a total of 5 runes types to choose from, with every rune being custom towards that particular skill, so it’s not just 5 runes total.

Passive skills have also been separated out, allowing player to choose 3 of 12 passive skills, with all passive skills being custom tailored for whatever class you selected.

One other thing you’ll notice is that the skill calculators only go to level 30, but Blizzard announced the cap would be 60, so I’m wondering what happens after 30. Are these not the final skill calculators? Do only attributes continue to increase after 30? I hope not, one of my favorite things about D2 was your skills constantly increased all the way up to level 99.

Continuing Asura week, ArenaNet has updated the Guild Wars 2 Asura race page with new lore, wallpapers and a brand new Asura trailer. Learn more about Asura lore, their history and how this little guys became such big techies.

Check out the the new GW2 Asura Race trailer by continuing below.

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RiotGames released a new video preview for the upcoming 1.0.0.125 patch showcasing some of the balance changes heading towards League of Legends. Balance changes to champions Shako, Mordekaiser, Shen, Orianna, and Taric were previewed in the video and some changes coming to the LoL store are listed below.

New Skins in the Store

• Redeemed Riven
• Crimson Elite Riven

PVP.net Store

• You can now search for runes based on rune attributes, descriptions, and effects
• Search no longer looks through unnecessary data when bringing up results
• Redesigned the store navigation (now featured on the left side)
• Redesigned the Runes and Skins tab
• Added a standalone “unlock” button to store items

PVP.net v1.43

• Ticker messaging has been improved to now more accurately relay the state of the platform
• Improved the startup times for PVP.net

You can watch the League of Legends patch preview video below.

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Am I the only one that’s shocked that there’s so much discussion around whether or not same sex romance arcs are going to be included in Star Wars: The Old Republic? Seriously, who gives a shit?

Well it seems quite a few people do. The announcement on Tuesday, which is posted below, where BioWare announced that same-sex romances would not be included at launch is now over 325 pages, full of comments and replies. Do these people realize this is just a game and that this isn’t going to legalize same-sex marriage in the galaxy, right?

Due to the design constraints of a fully voiced MMO of this scale and size, many choices had to be made as to the launch and post-launch feature set. Same gender romances with companion characters in Star Wars: The Old Republic will be a post-launch feature. Because The Old Republic is an MMO, the game will live on through content expansions which allow us to include content and features that could not be included at launch, including the addition of more companion characters who will have additional romance options.

Unless you’re some nut job who thinks gays are the source of all evil and you’ve made it your mission to stop BioWare from desecrating Star Wars lore, why does anyone else care? It’s just a quest story-line that effects nothing. I get it some people are uncomfortable about gays and those people will have to go through the “emotional abuse” of completing a quest story-line with gay characters, but no one is forcing them to buy this game or to run that quest line. For the rest of you, I just don’t know. Why do you care?

For someone that just recently got into the MOBA genre, I have to admit I’ve been swept up in it and am loving it. So when first heard of Rise of Immortals, the new MOBA from Petroglyph, and read that it was just another “Dota Clone” I decided to check it out for myself and see what it had to offer.

Much like every other MOBA title out today, Rise of Immortals is a free-to-play game that features an item store that allows players to purchase immortals, skins, upgrades as well as utility items such as XP bonuses for faster leveling. Launching with only 12 immortals, character selection isn’t on par with some of the older games out there, but it isn’t necessarily a bad thing as you can quickly get accustomed to all the heroes.

Here’s were RoI separates itself from the pack by incorporating something traditionally found in MMO games. Instead of players leveling a master account and being able to choose from any of the available heroes before a match, players select one hero during login and only level that one unit. Meaning if you ever want to switch to another hero, you’ll have to start over from level 1.

While many players will not mind this difference, I think it’s an overall downgrade in terms of gameplay. Some characters naturally play better together in teams, so being able to pick on the fly what character you want to use before a match is a big deal.

Read the full Rise of Immortals review by continuing below.

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There were doubts even last week when Aventurine announced that the updated Siege System would go live this week, that it would once again be delayed, but players can rest their worries as last night it was announced the revamped system would be deployed tomorrow, Thursday.

Players can expect extended down-time tomorrow during the update and today an addition server-side patch was added to restrict players from initiating any new sieges until tomorrows update. Any current sieges will not be effected.

Trion Worlds recently released two new RIFT videos, one paroding those Old Spice commercials that make no sense and another dance video. The Old Spice one is pretty funny and even though the dance one isn’t as good, it’s still worth checking out.

You can watch both videos after the jump. Enjoy.

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Blizzard announced today that in preparation for patch 4.3 they will be “toning down” the difficulty for both Heroic and normal raids within the Firelands though the release of hotfixes. Basically the health and damage of all raid bosses will be decreased in the same percentage Blizzard did for the original Cataclysm raids when patch 4.2 was released.

The first hotfix will go live on September 19, so there’s still time if you want to challenge yourself or guild and complete the raids on the harder difficulty level.

While the lower difficultly level is meant to allow more players and guilds to enjoy all of the new content, not everyone is happy with this announcement. If you check out the Blizzard Blog you’ll see over 1000 comments already, most of which are complaining that it’s far too soon to already be nerfing these raids and even more so with the Heroic raids. Unlike normal raids, which are meant for more casual players and guilds, Heroic raids are not, so why nerf them? I can’t say I disagree with the sentiment of the hardcore wow players. Why bother even creating a Heroic level raid if you’re just going to make it easy enough for anyone to finish?