Trion has announced another free RIFT weekend, this once starting a day sooner than most at 12:30pm EST tomorrow, Oct 13th and lasting until noon on Monday.

Along with the free weekend, Trion has released an Ashes of History update package for $10 and current players can also snag up the Collectors edition for the same price.

The Ashes of History upgrade includes a personal banker, a spider mount and faction tabards. The Collector’s Edition includes a Tartagon mount, collectors satchel and the Bogling wastrel pet. For new players the Collectors Edition is $39.99 and also included the Rift client and one month of game time.

I think I left off somewhere around level 20 with the last free weekend so I’ll get to pick up where I left off See you in Telara.

NCsoft announced yesterday its partnership with Innova, a game publisher for Lineage II in Russia and who will now be providing service to Europe. With the new service, Lineage 2 will be going free-to-play in Europe while in North America it’ll be changing to a hybrid business model.

The new hybrid model planned for NCsoft West have not yet been revealed, but if I had to guess I’d say it will be limited free-to-play, with multiple subscription options and an item store.

For European players with NCsoft West accounts, you’ll continue on the hybrid model, which means you’ll have to start over if you want to join one of the new EU servers.

The new payment structure will be launching with The Goddess of Destruction expansion which is expected to be released before the end of the year.

Today we have the official trailer for Storms of War, the latest expansion to Forsaken World. So far up until now no information has been revealed about what exactly Storms of War is going to bring and while the trailer doesn’t provide us with a lot of new info, it does drop some hints.

Two of the tag lines in the trailer state, “Wage War in the Immortal Rift” and “Vanquish the friends of Aeon Spire“. Having never played Forsaken World I can only assume these are two new zones that are being added, as I could not find any information about either.

The Forsaken World: Storms of War Trailer is below.

Continued…

Didn’t get selected for the Diablo 3 beta yet? Then enter in Blizzard’s new Diablo 3 beta key giveaway. All you have to do is “like” the official Diablo III Facebook page and fill out the entry form.

Then starting Oct 17th, Blizzard will select 200 random winners every Monday for a key, with every 4th winner getting a second beta key to give to a friend.

I usually never enter Facebook contests, especially when the page already has over a million fans, but I really want to get a D3 beta key.

Jagex, the developers behind the extremely popular Runescape MMORPG, today gave the community an update on their current struggle to combat botters and gold farmers. Basically they came out stating their initiative to stop bots, which began in the beginning of this year when Free Trade was reintroduced, has failed and they are losing the battle.

The challenge for us is that despite all of our programmes and best intentions the problem is still huge and, most annoyingly, still adversely impacting parts of our game.

While we are winning small battles by spending significant money and resources in trying to combat this problem, the war is not going in our favour as we are struggling to keep up with companies whose only business 24 hours a day 7 days a week is to find ways to get bots into the game.

While they will continue with their best efforts to try to stop botting, they’re asking Runescape players for help. Players are advised and encouraged to use the tools provided to report botters as well as provide feedback to Jagex on new ways to prevent the practice. However most importantly they are asking the players themselves to stop using bots and purchasing gold from black market sites stating, “If there is not a market, then bots will not exist“.

This certainly isn’t good news for legit Runescape players as it seems bot developers are unstoppable. If a Jagex developer is reading this, do what Facebook did and make users tie their RS account to a phone number before they can use it. That will stop botters from creating tons of fake accounts in no time. You’re welcome

Yesterday Blizzard introduced another new pet to the Blizzard store, nothing unusual except for the fact the pet is tradable and can be listed on the World of Warcraft auction house. This is essence creates a loophole where players can buy the pet for cash, then sell it in-game for gold.

Currently only the one pet can be traded in-game, however Blizzard did state depending how it goes, future pets will either follow suit or won’t depending on player reactions.

It’s too early to say how we’ll handle future Pet Store pets. We made this change in response to feedback from players looking for alternate ways to get the Pet Store pets, and we’re always looking into other opportunities for improvement.

This is nothing new for MMORPGs, Eve Online has been doing it for years with their PLEX economy which allows players to buy or sell 30 days account gamecards to players in-game for ISK (gold) and TERA has also announced they will be doing the same.

This is just another step for Blizzard to slowly expand into the RMT business model. Like it or not, this is where the MMORPG industry is heading. Companies are tired of fighting gold farmers and there’s no better way to kill them off then by selling gold yourself, even if they do it in a roundabout sort of way.

In a recent interview with SCEE Playstation blogger James Gallagher, CCP talked about their upcoming MMOFPS DUST 514 and discussed a little about classes, combat, beta as well as other things. Below we have the highlights of the interview for you.

When discussing combat, CCP stated,

Essentially it’s a vehicular combat game on an extremely large scale, and then when you move into installations and outposts, it’s more infantry based.

CCP went on to say that there will be a vast array of vehicles for players to choose from, ranging from buggies to tanks to aircraft. While there is a general class system, light, heavy, etc, they are not labeled as such due to the Fitting system, which was ported over from Eve Online. This system basically allows players to use any type of weapons and equipment for their characters as well as vehicles, giving players a massive amount of freedom to basically create any type of class they wish.

When discussing how beta would work, CCP basically stated there would be no beta and instead there would be something called Private Trials. Since DUST 514 is being integrated into the already live MMORPG, a normal beta testing phase would not work. The trials will be rolled out in small groups and once the first group goes live it will be in essence the start of DUST 514 game service. The Private Trials will also be rolled out with accompanying story-lines for Eve Online players, with the story continuing with each new added group.

Some interesting info, I didn’t realize vehicles would be playing such a major role in the game.

Today Reto-Moto, the independent gaming studio created by the guys that brought us the Hitman series, released their deput teaser trailer for their upcoming World War II MMO game. Heroes & Generals is a MMOFPS that also offers a strategic campaign management system, which is all based on a massive-scale online world.

Heroes & Generals will feature a persistent online war that is fought by thousands of players on the battlefield and through a tactical war map where some players will make the big decisions that can effect the outcome of the whole war. From the trailer, we can see tanks and airplanes, although it is unclear whether those will be playable units or if they are called it for support.

Currently the game is in alpha testing and Reto-Moto is taking signups, so if you want to check it out, head over to the official site.

Check out the Heroes & Generals teaser trailer below.

Continued…

Usually when I start playing a game, whether it be for a review or because I simply want to, I usually have a pretty good idea of what I’m in for. However with Dragon Nest, aside from some of the news and updates about it, I never really bothered learning anything about the actual game or gameplay mechanics.

The reason being is that I’m just not a fan of the art style of Dragon Nest. The characters look like a bunch of children which just makes me feel like I’m playing a kids game and a little dirty to be honest. That’s not to say the graphics are bad, they are actually quite good and make great use out of the blur effect to enhance depth-of-field, I just don’t like the way the characters look.

As I began my journey I was expecting something more along the lines of, oh I don’t know, a WoW clone. Sorry, but with so many others out there, I just assumed. Rest assure, Dragon Nest is no clone, but it is also definitely not what you would think of as a traditional MMORPG. Think if Fable was a MMO and add combat combos.

Everything in Dragon Nest is instanced and connected by portals. There’s no open world to explore and really the only open zones are the towns, everything else puts you on a linear track. While I don’t necessarily mind instances (I liked Rusty Hearts which was all instanced as well), I don’t like it in Dragon Nest because there are far too many of them. Every zone is tiny, even the big zones are small when comparing it to any other MMO game out there, so you’re constantly staring at loading screens. Even if I loved everything else about the game, the loading screens alone would be enough for me to stop playing.

Continued…

Since the birth of the MMORPG genre millions of gamers have completed billions of quests that for the most part could have been completed by a five year old; and so quest grinding was born. The problem is that most quests offer no challenge to the player and for the most part are impossible to mess up. Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t we play video games because they’re challenging and fun? What’s the challenge or fun in killing 10 rats, collecting flowers or delivering a letter to your uncle?

As the title says, if I can’t die or at least fail at a quest, it shouldn’t be in the game.  If you ask me that should be the golden rule for every MMORPG and should be posted in every developers office so they don’t forget it.

Why isn’t this a problem in single-player RPGs? Games like the Elder Scrolls series easily have 100 hours of gameplay, but when you compare the first 100 hours with a MMORPG, the difference is night and day. Single-player RPGs don’t insult their players by having them go collect shit for hours upon hours, instead their quests, for the most part, are challenging. You need to be careful where you go and who you attack because there’s a good chance that if you do something wrong you’ll get yourself killed.

Think back to all the MMORPGs you played, then think have far you were into the game before you first died. I guarantee it wasn’t before level 10. It’s almost impossible to die early on in a MMORPG, even if you aggro a monster many levels above you, all you need to do is run 10 feet away and he’ll leave you alone. Even at later levels, only a small percentage of quests can get you killed.

I don’t understand the argument for making MMORPGs easier. To me that just tells me you don’t want any sort of challenge, instead you just want to decorate your character and complete achievements.  How’s that fun? In real life there called chores, why don’t you go do something productive then and write yourself a list of achievement to clean your house.

No other genre of gaming has anything like MMO games do in terms of easy content. Aside from perhaps the initial first mission or two in any shooter, RTS or action game, the rest is challenging all the way through. While I’m not saying there might not be easy levels here and there, you still have to have at least some competence to get through them or you’ll die or fail.

Of course MMORPGs need tons of content and we know no big publisher or developer will create a sandbox MMORPG, so until the industry changes, we’re stuck killing more rats.