Blizzcon has kicked off and the first big piece of news has been released. It seems Diablo 3 will be free for all World of Warcraft players who commit to a 12 month subscription through the WoW Annual Pass. Also included is an in-game mount called Tyreal’s Charger.

Also revealed is the box art and collectors edition, detailing all the goodies that will be included which you can view below. I’m not sure why a WoW pet is included, I guess they really want to get D3 players playing both games.

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Less than two weeks ago Jagex announced that they were losing the war against botters in Runescape and today it seems they are claiming victory. Next Tuesday will mark “Bot-Nuking Day” as Jagex will roll out their new bot-busting patch which is expected to catch 98% of botters.

Today, I am really happy to say we are in the long-awaited position of being able to announce that we’ll be launching our most formidable bot-busting weapon in our history, targeting what we believe to be 98% of the bots seen in game.

While talking about their efforts over the last year to stop botting, Jagex also revealed that they had “recently detected and banned over 1.5 million botting and gold farming accounts.” I’m only assuming that by “recently” they meant 2011 as 1.5 million accounts is a massive number of accounts.

The bot-busting patch, code-named “ClusterFlutterer” will permanently prevent “reflection” bots from working. I’m not sure what a reflection bot is, but it sounds good to me.

To celebrate, Runescape is going to reward legit players with four days of events that will provide players with XP and reward bonuses. For more information about the events, check out the RS blog.

Ten days ago Blizzard announced that the new Guardian Cub pet would be tradeable in-game, basically creating a loop-hole for users to buy gold in World of Warcraft.  While many players didn’t seem to care, others saw it as another black mark on Blizzards reputation by allowing RMT in yet another Blizzard game. Previously it was announced that Diablo 3 would have a RMT auction house.

Today Blizzard responded defending their decision stating that the introduction of the pet was to provide a more secure and enjoyable environment for players. While it might be fun for some to buy a pet using gold instead of real money, Blizzard didn’t really explain how this would make the game any more secure.

In fact Blizzard admitted that very little gold farming takes place anymore and that the vast majority of gold comes from compromised accounts.

We’ve been hard at work for years now thwarting gold farming tactics, and we know that only a very small percentage of gold is actually “farmed” these days. The vast majority of gold that third parties sell to players is obtained through account compromises.

While I agree the Guardian Cub will further diminish gold farmers, like Blizzard said, only a very small percentage is actually being farmed these days. So how does this provide more security or prevent hacking?

Simiply, it doesn’t. So why is Blizzard trying to convince players that they are introducing tradeable pets as a security measure? Personally I think the head honcho’s at Blizzard Activision are dying to enter the RMT market, but has been so negative about it for so long that they’ll have to spend a few years back pedaling to convince everyone that RMT is good for gaming.

Everyone already knows what’s included with the collectors edition for Star Wars: The Old Republic, there as been some confusion as to what items come with what edition of the game. So to clarify, BioWare released a bread down of what is included in each version and a video of the items you’ll find inside the Collectors Edition box.

Below we have the digital items listed for all pre-orders, the Digital Deluxe Editions and the Collectors edition. Below that is the video.

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Today over at Tobold’s MMORPG blog, he posted an interesting article stating that he believes there is a general decline in the interest of the MMORPG genre beginning in 2009 when it reached its peak. While I won’t argue with the fact that there has definitely been a decline, I don’t think it’s due to a lack of interest.

Tobold presented two main data points to back up his claim. The first being Google Insights, which can measure search trends over the years and the second being traffic to his blog. While I won’t comment on his website’s traffic, as that could be caused by many different factors, let’s take a look at search trends.

Starting off with Google Insight, you can clearly see below that indeed searches for MMORPG have been on the decline since 2009, however plugging in other search terms can give us some perspective on the rest of the gaming industry.

Using ‘MMO Games’ as a search phrase you can see its been skyrocketing since 2004 and shows no signs of plateauing anytime soon. So while MMORPG has declined, MMO gaming in general is stronger than ever.

Entering general gaming phrases such as ‘video games’, ‘gaming’ and ‘games’ you can see two out of the three have also decline over the last few years and while MMORPG declined much faster, it shows that the entire industry is declining somewhat.

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It all started around 2001 as my interest in the MMORPG genre continue to build and I was on the verge of joining my first virtual world. At this time there were only a handful of MMORPGs on the market, the biggest by far of course being Everquest, but it never really grabbed my attention.

You see back them my concept of MMORPGs was completely different than it is today. I had this notion that when I finally selected one to play, I would stick with it forever. Because of that I was going to wait for the perfect game and dedicate myself to it. I also didn’t want to come in late and be years behind other players, so those early titles were all ruled out.

Around 2001 there were two big titles on the horizon, Dark Age of Camelot and Star Wars Galaxies, both of which I was extremely interested in. When DAoC launched, it was hard to resist, but I kept telling myself Star Wars is just around the corner. Little did I know that corner would be almost 2 years later after multiple delays. During those 20 or so months, I had picked up DAoC multiple times ready to purchase it, but always convinced myself to put it back and hold out for SWG.

When SWG was finally release, I of course picked up a copy on day one and started off on my journey. Sadly that journey didn’t last long and 3-4 months later I let my subscription lapse. While I enjoyed the game to some extent, it wasn’t what I expected. Even back then I was puzzled as to why there were so many stupid quests and thought it would be more of a free world where players could do whatever they wanted. I didn’t know it back then, but that was my introduction to quest grinding.

Ten years later and I still find myself thinking about DAoC.  Over the last decade I’ve hear nothing but good things, especially about its Realm vs Realm PvP system which was the main reason I jumped on board with Warhammer Online. I didn’t want to make the same mistake twice, of course we all know how WAR turned out.

It’s far to late for me to try it out now as I’d probably hate it for the graphics alone.  But every time I hear an ex-DAoC player reminiscing on the good times they had, it’s like a pin prick to my side reminding me what I missed out on. DAoC will be forever my “what if?” game and my biggest regret for not purchasing it.

Joymax announced today that Digimon Masters Online will be heading straight into launch from open beta on October 25th.

Digimon Masters will feature more than a 1,000 characters from the Digimon universe and follows the original story-line set by the TV show. As part of the game, all Digimon possess three distinct properties such as Attributes, Elements and Families. Digimon are born with their own Attributes that can either be an advantage or a liability in battle.  Elements are the source of a Digimon’s power, while certain items provide a power boost to a Digimon based on its Family.

Players will be able to become one of eight Royal Knights, who are Digimon who are in charge of each area in the Digital World. Leaders of a guild that conquers one of these areas can become a Royal Knight who has the right to impose taxes along with other perks and obligations.

To signup for Digimon Masters, still currently in open beta, head over to the official DM site.

Update 2.7 for Aion has gone live, bringing many additions to the game, including dungeons, changes and additions to PvP, updates to skills, and gear. The major addition is the Crucible Coliseum, a new PvP area where players can choose to fight each other one on one, or in 6-8 man free-for-all battles to the death. In order to enter the Coliseum, players must be at least level 46, and have obtained coliseum tickets through the new quests. The coliseum is only open during certain times, 12am – 2pm and 6pm – 2am Mondays through Fridays, and 10am – 2pm on the weekends.

View the official patch notes here.

• The new Crucible Coliseum PvP Arena, which includes two PvP inspired Instanced Dungeons!
• - The Arena of Discipline features one on one death matches in four different stages–brandish weapons and spells to dominate opponents, and earn crucible insignias and medals at their expense!
• - The Arena of Chaos features a frenzied ten Daeva free-for-all in six different stages–run, hide, and strike when opponents are at their most vulnerable to succeed in this ruthless environment, and earn crucible insignias and medals for wreaking carnage.
• The new Padmarashka’s Cave Alliance Instanced Dungeon, a reimagining of the Padmarashka encounter with new Quests, loot, and a few twists!
• Numerous refinements to PvP in Balaurea, including improved Platinum Medal Quests, and retuned Mastarius and Veille encounters, offering additional rewards!
• New rewards from the merchants in the Kaisinel Academy and Marchutan Priory, including powerful PvP equipment purchasable with currencies from the Crucible Coliseum.
• Numerous refinements to existing skills, including reductions in the cooldowns and DP cost of several abilities.
• Much, much, much more!

Frogster today announced that Mythos will be shutting down its game servers next week on Oct 27th due to a lack of players.

MYTHOS enjoyed great popularity with the launch in April and the numerous registered users ensured a good start. The desired long-term success unfortunately did not follow. Under these circumstances, we have made the difficult decision to discontinue the operation of MYTHOS.

Over the next few days, there will be in-game events and giveaways for the remaining players so they can go out with a bang.

1. The first event takes place on Thursday 20/10/2011 from 14:00 CEST (1pm UK).
2. The final event, the Farewell Party, takes place on Wednesday 26/10/2011 from 16:00 CEST (3pm UK), when we can all have one last party together.

Players that have been active in the last 3 months will all receive Runes of Magic vouchers which can be redeemed for mounts, diamonds or possibly both. Some players will also receive beta keys to Frogster’s other MMO game, Eligium.

Up until now, we’ve know that the upcoming Forsaken World expansion, Storms of War, would be introducing the Guild vs Guild PvP system and adding a new dungeon called Aeon Spire. However today PWE has released additional information about some of the other features and additions coming to Forsaken World.

Not a whole lot of details were released regarding the features, but here’s the list.

• VIP System – Buff your Training Grounds time, reduce the cooldown on your town portal, and more!
• PvP Arena Times – New time slots for 3v3 and 6v6 arena matches!
• New Items – New equipment, pets, fashion and more!
• New Guild Buildings – Enhance your guild base even further with three new buildings!
• Pet Unbinding – Unbind pets to trade or use on other characters!
• Devotion System – Earn tons of rewards for racking up consecutive daily logins!

You can also check out the Storms of War trailer below.

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