NCsoft and the German gaming publisher Gameforged have partnered up to bring European players a Free-to-Play version of Aion staring in February 2012.

The switch will introduce three new account types, Free, Veteran and Gold.  Free will obviously have the most restrictions, but even the Veteran plan will have some slight restrictions. You can view the plan comparison at the Aion plan page.

As the title says this change only effects EU players, so North American gamers will continue to pay a monthy subscription cost, although I wouldn’t be surprised if it goes F2P later on in 2012.

You can view the Aion Free-to-Play announcement trailer below.

Continued…

Square Enix is reporting today that their Members service site has been accessed by unauthorized users. The full extent to what the intruders gained access to has not yet been released, however Square Enix has confirmed that no credit card data was involved.

The compromise effects both North America and Japanese members and while Square Enix continues the investigation, all members services will be temporarily shutdown for a few days.

We have reason to believe that unknown parties may have gained unauthorized access to a particular Square Enix server related to the free SQUARE ENIX MEMBERS service offered in North America and Japan. In response, Square Enix, Inc. has temporarily suspended operation of the SQUARE ENIX MEMBERS service starting at 10PM (PST) on December 12, 2011.

We are assessing the full extent of this potential breach to determine what data, if any, was compromised and will provide more details as soon as possible. While some personal information may have been accessed, we can confirm that there is no possibility of any credit card information leak from this incident, since the server in question stores no credit card information. We estimate that the suspension will continue for a few days until we complete our investigation and counter-measures. We will update you as we learn more.

More information will be posted as we learn it.

What many people, or maybe just bloggers, are calling Star Wars: The Old Republic day is finally here as early-access has officially launched. All invitations will be sent via email, so if you pre-ordered a copy and want to see if you were invited to today’s early access, make sure to check it including your junk mail. It’d be a shame to miss out on early access if your invite was sitting in your spam folder.

Anyway, I didn’t get mine yet, even though I caved and pre-ordered it a few month ago. I’ll probably get in on the 15th or 16th, so I have a few more days of waiting ahead of me. While I did get an invite to the closed beta in the last two weekends of testing, I didn’t actually have the time to log-in, so I’m still a SWTOR virgin.

As BioWare has announced, early access is entirely dependent on how early you ordered and redeemed your early access code.

See you in cantina.

During the Spike TV Video Game Awards last night, Blizzard premiered the full opening cinematic for Diablo 3. The video doesn’t really show much in terms of storyline until the very end, but I won’t ruin it for you. Also still no mention of a release date, which is now just annoying.  Common Blizzard, spill the beans already.

Check out the full Diablo 3 opening cinematic below.

Continued…

So Blizzard announced today that Battle.net will be able to hold players funds, real cash, for both World of Warcraft and Diablo 3 players. The cash can then be used by players to purchase items from the Battle.net store or can be used in the Diablo 3 auction house to buy items. Money earned from the D3 auction house can also be added to the Battle.net Balance.

The catch is that the money cannot be taken out of the system, meaning if you’re a seller in the D3 auction house, you have to cash out after every auction, which by the way has four separate fees. No that wasn’t a typo, it actually has four fees.

So let’s see how many times Blizzard is going to charge D3 sellers.

1. Auction listing fee – Each account will receive a limited number of waivers for the listing fees, but serious sellers will go through those in a day or so.
2. Auction closing fee
3. Cash out fee – Sellers will have to select the cash out option for every auction if they don’t want it going to their Battle.net Balance, meaning sellers will have to pay a Cash Out fee for every auction.
4. Paypal fee - Paypal takes a percentage of every transaction through their system, the more money involved the smaller the percentage. Since Blizzard is forcing sellers to cash out after every transaction, the percentage fee is going to be much higher then if you built up a large sum of money, then transferred it at once.

Ok, technically it’s only triple dipping cause the fourth fee is Paypal, but still. Is Blizzard serious? I can’t wait to see the fee list. Who in their right mind is going to use the Blizzard auction house when they can probably double their profits by using a blackmarket site.

I was all for the auction system, but this is ridiculous and just shows how greedy Blizzard has become since the merger with Activision.

The date for the next content update to Lord of the Rings Online has been announced by Turbine today and is December 12th. Update 5: The Prince of Rohan will continue the games epic story line and adss five new Isengard instances. The update will also introduce the new instance finder to help players find groups faster.

One of the new instances added is called The Foundry, which is a sprawling subterranean area underneath the Tower of Orthanc. In the header image you can see some of the nasty creatures that players will run into on their journey through the Foundry.

It’s holiday time again, and TERA Online is hosting a Holiday Card Contest. Create a holiday card using TERA themes, and you could win some TERA loot like a laptop bag, a hat, or a messenger bag. They’re also giving away “random TERA loot” as well – why not beta entry codes? Let’s be honest, that’s what we all want, isn’t it?

All you have to do is send an image of your work in an email to community@enmasse.com with the subject “TERA Holiday Card Contest 2011″ between now and December 31st. The image must be work safe, and be no greater than 5mb. For the full contest details, check out the official site.

Many Star Wars fans are up in arms at the discovery that despite being told in August there’d be a grace period for those who order physical copies of Star Wars: The Old Republic, there will, in fact, be no grace period. While any pre-order code will allow players entry into the early access, in order to keep playing come launch, you must have your actual game code. Many people made their purchasing decisions based upon the declaration of a grace period, and are understandably upset by this sudden change. There have been thousands of posts this evening on the subject, as angered fans vent their wrath upon the forums.

Although some good news, however meager it may be, has been revealed – after several hours of the posting frenzy, Stephen Reid, the Senior Online Community Manager, posted to say that sales and marketing are working to ensure that copies will be sent out prior to launch. European retailers will have the game on the 15th of December, US retailers on the 20th, and those who ordered digitally via Origin will have their game codes emailed to them on the 16th. There is still question as to how this affects those who ordered the Collector’s Edition and US customers who ordered online, but at least Reid is continuing to communicate as best he can to address concerns. He has even apologized twice – first for the ‘misunderstanding’ and then for calling this fiasco a misunderstanding.

It’s a shame, really. My guess is this was done by EA, and not Bioware, but the end result is the same for me – the trust Bioware has built over the past years has been rather badly shaken. Even if Bioware fully meant to have a grace period, and was forced by EA to renege on that intention, it’s difficult to continue to trust them when they can at any time be forced into altering their public statements like this.

About a month ago it was revealed through a FAQ that the SWTOR early access would begin on December 15th, however today after BioWare announced that pre-loading was available, the FAQ has been updated with a date of December 13th, two days earlier!

As previously stated by BioWare, early access is dependent on when you redeemed your pre-order access code, the sooner the better. There’s no information on the FAQ about how soon players can access the game, however if you check your SWTOR account, it should shows you your early access date.

Early Game Access will begin on December 13th, 2011 , 7:00AM EST (Pacific: December 13th, 4:00AM PST; European: December 13th, 12:00PM GMT, 1:00PM CET), seven days prior to the official launch ofStar Wars: The Old Republic. The length of your Early Game Access period will vary depending on the order in which you redeemed your Pre-Order Code. The speed of your download of the Game may also affect when you start playing.

Blizzard today announced their holiday prices for World of Warcraft with prices starting at five bucks. Players can find the Battle Chest, expansions and some in-game items on sale for big discounts. Below is the full list of sale items.

• WoW: Battle Chest for $5 (reg. $19.99)
• Cataclysm for $20 (reg. $39.99)
• Wrath of the Lich King for $10 (reg. $39.99)
• Celestial Steed for $10 (reg. $25)
• Pandaren Monk for $5 (reg. $10)

Of course any dedicated WoW player will already have the games, so why not give it as a gift to get your friends addicted. The WoW sale ends Monday December 19th.