Although initial suggestions from Funcom about an open beta for The Secret World before the holidays proved to be incorrect, Funcom has confirmed that an open beta will happen before the launch of the game in April 2012.

If you’re an obsessive type, like me, you’ll probably already have started to dive deep into the factions of The Secret World, trying to make up your mind as to whom you should throw your lot in with.

You can’t swing a pentagram in The Secret World without hitting a member of a secret society. Whether they’re mystical warrior philosophers, cold manipulating power mongers or aristocratic defenders of the old “proper” ways.

Personally, I’m all about the mongering of power, which is represented by the nefarious Illuminati faction, but both the Dragon and Templars have a lot going for them, and making a choice isn’t easy. But let’s take a closer look at them and you can make up your own mind!

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MSNBC reported yesterday that one of the two teenager killers that brutally raped and murdered a highschool girl in 2010, confessed to the crime in a World of Warcraft chat to his in-game girlfriend.

The teenage killer meet his online girlfriend in-game and confessed to the crime, linking via MSN chat to the local news articles. When the girl asked if he felt bad for the family and friends of the girl, the cold hearted killer replied,

No, I don’t feel bad for them.

To which the girl replied,

“Just don’t ever again.” “I promise”, the killer replied. “I have no desire to.”

As the investigation progressed, the two teenage killers met online again,

Since we killed that bitch and it wasnt to hard we should do it again!

The two have since been sentence to life in prison with no chance of parole of 10 years.

Kruse was found to be a sexual sadist of the rarest kind, especially for someone so young—a twisted kid who, against enormous odds, found understanding in another disturbed boy.

We’ll I’m glad World of Warcraft was used as a tool to convict these two monster, but that offers little to console the families. Just a horrible story to hear.

Mark your calendars! December 15th is the official early access launch date for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Although not yet announced, BioWare updated their FAQ about early access and added a line which was spotted by a SWTOR forum member.

Early Game Access may be up to 5 days. The length of your Early Game Access depends on the date and order in which you redeemed your Pre-Order Code at the Code Redemption Center

I thought it was going to be earlier than that, but I guess 5 days is good enough.

Look like two more MMORPG’s are closing up shop this week. Yesterday it was announced that Troy Online would be closing down on November 30th only after three months of being open, due to bugs and errors. Alt1Games stated that they would continue work on the game, fix the issues and re-launch the game at a later time.

Today Lego Group announced that Lego Universe will be closing its doors on January 31, 2012 due to a lack of interest, even after going free to play back in August.

Yesterday we reported on a video where CEO Miguel Caron of Funcom Canada told the Montreal Gazette that Funcom would be trying to launch the The Secret World open beta before Christmas. Today Funcom has responded to it stating:

Open beta will not be initiated before Christmas, but will be a part of our strategy next year prior to our April 2012 launch.

Also mentioned in the video was that TSW would have a subscription fee somewhere between $15 and $17 and a response to that was given as well.

Funcom has not yet made any official announcements regarding the business model or price points for The Secret World. This is still being discussed and evaluated internally, and we will make an official announcement when this has been finalized.

So for those of you hoping for a Christmas open beta, you’re out of luck, and I guess the free-to-play model lives for another day.

Today CCP presents us with the future of war in DUST 514 and reveals the Mobile Command Center.

These massive ships represent the largest and most powerful weapons found in DUST 514, spanning 200 meters in length and hovering over the battlefields as they provide support to ground troops. Controlled by a team commander, these Mobile Command Centers are the backbone of any army and are protected by heavy shielding and armor. However they rely heavily on fuel and without it many of the MCC systems will not function.

Each MMC is equipped with turrets, shields and critical systems, each requiring fuel to stay active. Cut off the fuel and the opposing army will have a chance to bring down your MCC, which can very well cost you the battle.

ArenaNet has a new Guild Wars 2 development update on their blog today from Game Designer Jon Peters. The update touches up on three changes to the games including the engineer’s tool belt, the Ranger’s pet system and cross professions combos.

To begin the engineer class now has a complete list of tool belt skills, 23 skills in all, which correspond to class heal and utility skills. When a class skill is added to the designated slot, a corresponding tool belt skill will appear, with engineers being able to have up to 4 tool belt skills. Players can of course swap skills in an out to receive different tool belt skills.

Up next are Ranger’s and their updated pet system. Rangers can have up to four pets, two terrestrial and two aquatic,  with Amphibious pets being able to take up either slot. Rangers will be able to switch between two pets during combat and call for a 2nd pet if the first one happens to be downed.

Ranges will have two modes to control their pets, passive and active. In active mode, pets will automatically attack a target if you begin to and in passive mode, they will not until explicitly told to.

Pets will no longer evolve, instead they are set to the level of the ranger, with their stats and abilities being determined by their species. Each pet will belong to a specie and each specie will belong to a family, with each family having three basic skills that define it. Each specie will have an additional unique skill.

Finally we come to Cross Profession Combos, which are basically two skills used together to produce an addition effect. Combos can be performed by two players or in many cases by a single player and have two phases, Initiator and Finisher. The initiator is the skill that begins the combo with the Finisher being exactly that, the skill that finishes it.

Jon provide a few example of what type of combos players can expect.

Use Ricochet through a Firewall to get a bouncing axe that has a chance to burn the targets it hits. Leaping Death Blossom through a Symbol of Faith will remove conditions from allies near your target. Stomp inside a Smoke Screen to cloak nearby allies.

In a recent video interview with the Montreal Gazette, Miguel Caron the CEO of Funcom Canada, revealed that the target release date for The Secret World open beta is “before Christmas”. Don’t get too excite though, he also mentioned that it might be after Christmas.

Caron also stated that the subscription fee would be around $15 to $17 with the actual game around $60.

If you ask me that’s a horrible date to launch open beta.  For one they’ll have to compete for attention with the release of STWOR and it’s also 4 months before the release date. Do they really need 4 months of open beta testing? I’ll be seriously surprised if Funcom announces a Dec release, I was thinking February at the earliest up until now.

Update: Funcom Responds

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Every Wednesday the guys over at Carbine Studios update us on the progress of WildStar or give us some new info, images or videos to oggle at. This Wednesday was a special post as Executive Producer, Jeremy Gaffney, talked about where WildStar falls in as a MMORPG. Is it a sandbox or theme park game?

Well as it turn out it’s a hybrid of the two. Gaffney writes that players will be able to choose how they want to play.

As a player, you get to choose what’s important to you…

If you want to play without a ton of direction and choose your focus, rock on. If you want clear goals and some guideposts to give some rewards and meaning to the variety of content we make, we’re cool with that too. Play how you want.

Now that might all sound all good and dandy, but I’m sorry to say MMOs do not work on choice, they work on incentives. If the story-line/questing system provides more money or XP than playing on your own, players are going to complete the quests whether they’re sandbox players or not. The incentive is what drives players choice.

Through experience we all know questing is by far the fastest way to gain XP in most of today’s MMORPG and I don’t see WildStar being any different. So to say your game is a hybrid, seems more like a marketing strategy than actuality.

In my mind the only way to have a true hybrid is if the quests offered little to no XP or rewards, with the only incentive being the store-line itself. This way there’s zero incentive for sandbox players and it still provides direction and a story for rail players, where eventually they’ll be assimilated into the sandbox gameplay and won’t need the stories to keep them going.

Looks like there’s a new horror MMORPG on the block. MMOCulture posted some information about a new game called Unveiled: The Supernatural which is currently being developed by Maverick Studios, who has been working on the title since 2009.

Unveiled currently has four announced races, Vampire, Hunter, Werewolf and Witch, three of which you can see in the trailer below, but there will be no classes. Each race will be superior to one and weak against another, so that no single race will be superior. There is both PvP and PvE and a skill system called the Mastery system. Players will have multiple skill trees including weapons, summoning, spells, magic and more.

Check out the Unveiled trailer below.

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