Following in the footsteps of Everquest 2, the original online gaming crack, Everquest will be going free-to-play this March, only 2 months from now.

Everquest will give players many options to choose from including a premium subscription, Silver and Free membership levels, item unlockers and more.  New players will also receive a Welcome Pack containing items to help them get started.

Pretty exciting news for veteran EQ players and even people like me who’ve  never played EQ. With same themepark MMO games being released every few months, I might give EQ a try as long as D3 or GW2 doesn’t come out before it.

The first time I played the original Realtime Worlds beta of All Points Bulletin I never really got past the first few tutorial missions due to a faulty graphics card. After spending some time with the free-to-play revival of this game, I’m starting to think I may have missed out on a fun experience.

Taking place in the fictional city of San Paro, APB pits criminals vs enforcers in a virtual game of cops & robbers. Featuring no classes, levels or stats, your skill with a gun will largely dictate your success, or failure in this game.

I say there are no classes but that’s not entirely true. Players can purchase equipment and character modifications that grant various buffs in the form of extra health, quicker health regen, ammo regeneration for team mates, and various other goodies I’ve not yet had the chance to play with. This enables players to specialise in various areas, perhaps equipping modifications beneficial to a sniper, or a close quarter shotgun wielder in effect creating your own custom class similar to the perks/specialisation features of modern FPS shooter titles.

Character customisation features some of the most varied options and choices you will likely ever see in an MMO, and will probably suck up a large amount of time when creating your first character. I was able to knock up a hockey masked enforcer tribute to Casey Jones fairly easily. Another childhood fantasy achieved if only in video game form.

Continued…

Today Turbine announced the fourth expansion to Lord of the Rings Online, named Riders of Rohan.  The expansion which will be released in the fall of 2012 and will bring with it a level cap increase, new locations, mounted combat and much more.  Executive Producer, Kate Paiz, stated that Riders of Rohan will be the largest expansion to date and will be twice as large as Rise of Isengard.

NEW FEATURES:

• Experience the Riders of Rohan – Join with the Rohirrim and ride across the sprawling Plains of Rohan; witness the breaking of the Fellowship at Amon Hen; forge alliances with the Ents of Fangorn; and aid Éomer, adopted son of Théoden, as he seeks to protect his homeland from the growing Shadow.

• Introducing Mounted Combat – Ride into Combat atop your loyal War-steed as you defend the people of Rohan from the forces of Isengard and Mordor. Customize your War-steed’s armor and level its skills over time to aid you in mounted defense of King Theoden’s lands. Mount your steed and gather your fellows to fight against Warbands, contingents of roving warg riders that have been scouted all over the Plains of Rohan! It falls to you to head off and defeat this new threat before they over take the land.
• Advance to level 85 – Continue your legend in the next chapter of The Lord of the Rings Online. Experience new adventures in the epic story, and gain new skills and deeds as you face new challenges on your journey to 85!

ArenaNet is embracing the Lunar New Year, which is today and according to the Asian zodiac system is the first day of the Year of the Dragon. The dragon embodies passion, independence and ambition which is something that ArenaNet can related to with what they’ve accomplished with Guild Wars 2.

To celebrate the Lunar New Year, ArenaNet has revealed their plans for beta testing and has officially announced that Guild Wars 2 will be released in 2012.

We recently finished our first closed beta test, and we’re now ready to hold progressively larger events. In February we’ll invite select press to participate in beta testing, and in March and April we’ll aggressively ramp up the size of our beta test events so that many of you will have a chance to participate. And of course, this all leads to the release of Guild Wars 2 later this year.

It seems closed beta testing will last at least to April, with open beta and the launch to follow. No hints were dropped as to when GW2 might launch, but it will definitely be in the second half of 2012. Can’t wait!

It’s always fun to try to predict what’s going to happen over the next year so here is our list of 2012 predictions for MMO gaming.

Guild Wars 2 will gain more players than Star Wars: The Old Republic – I’m having a great time playing SWTOR, but it’s just not different enough to hold my attention in the long run. I predict players will flock to GW2 and before 2012 ends, Guild Wars 2 will have a larger active player base than SWTOR.

Diablo 3 will be delayed until early July – Blizzard has never released a game or expansion in the first or second quarter past Jan 16th and since no release date has yet been announced, I’m going with an late second or very early third quarter release.

Warhammer Online will go Free-to-play –  I still can’t believe they haven’t so I’m guessing 2012 will be the year.

Blizzard will reveal their Titan MMO project – We all know it’s going to be a new IP, but that’s basically all we know right now. I predict that this years Blizzcon, they’ll spill the beans.

Black Prophecy will be shut down or sold – The game is seriously lacking players and while it still has promise, it has no change to turn things around in its current form. I predict Gamigo either shuts it down or sells it off.

End of Nations will be a flop - I love the concept that Trion is doing with End of Nations, but I just don’t see it being a hit and predict it will be a failure in 2012.

Eve Online will rebound from 2011 and continue to grow – I’ve never played the game, but it’s my favorite MMO I to hear about. I predict CCP will get back to basics and subscription numbers will continue to rise in 2012.

Mythos Global will shut down…again – The third attempt to run a successful version of Mythos will fail and the game will close down yet again.

The Secret World will go free-to-play by the end of 2012 – Not that I don’t think it won’t be a good game, but it doesn’t have the pull other titles like D3, SWTOR and GW2 have. I predict it will have a great launch, then peter out like so many other MMO games, changing to free-to-play only months after launch. That or it will launch as a free-to-play title.

There you have it, my nine predictions for 2012 and I’m going to say I’ll get more than half right.

To help celebrate the new year, MMOCrunch is teaming up with Nexeon Technologies to offer MMOCrunch readers 50 premium subscription keys + item packs for the sandbox MMORPG Face of Mankind.

The key will provide new players with 7 free days of premium membership plus will include the following in-game items.

• 1 Linner PP7 Weapon
• 10x Linner PP7 Ammunitions
• 10X Emergency medkits
• 2 Sets of Pythica Survivalist Armor
• 1 Unique Flaming Skull shirt

To get your key, head over to our Face of Mankind giveaway page and follow directions.

We are teaming up with our sister site MMORaid to offer readers a chance at a free copy of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. We actually meant to run this giveaway a while ago, but got sidetracked and while doing a little end of the year cleaning, I came across the Cataclysm box still sitting their unwrapped. So here we go.

How to Enter

To enter simply go to MMORaid.com, register an account and comment on any article.

Next Monday morning we will select one random comment that was made between 1/2/11 and 1/9/11 as the winner and send them a copy of the WoW expansion Cataclysm. So remember to use a valid email when registering as this is how we will contact you. Also no spamming. Spammers will be disqualified.

While the giveaway might be too late for most, I’m sure there’s someone you know that never upgraded so here’s your chance to become their best friend by giving them a free copy

Good luck to everyone.

I haven’t yet reached end-game, but I’m moving along at a decent pace, currently level 34 and at this point I thought I’d be enjoying at least some open PvP goodness. Yet in the last three worlds, Nar Shaddaa, Tatooine and Alderaan, all of which have open PvP zones, I’ve only run across two enemy faction players.

So where’s the PvP? Yes, I know I can join the Warzones, but to be honest, I’ve grew tired of them in Warhammer Online and while BioWare has added new elements and Hutt Ball, I still prefer open PvP much more than warzones, plus I hate Hutt Ball. I basically do my one daily Warzone per day and that’s it.

What I really want is open PvP and while I’m constantly told I’m flagged for PvP, I never see anyone. The two times I did, the guy ran away because I was a few levels above him and the second time we actually fought. He caught me during a mob fight so he killed me first, but 10 secs later after I revived myself, I was able to kill him.

Being my first open PvP kill I was expecting some sort of reward or at least acknowledgement of my first kill, but there was nothing, which just left me with an empty, why bother, feeling. I didn’t even gain XP or Valor for the kill.

Now, I’m not asking for a full fledged PvP rewards system like so many MMORPGs have today, because in my mind that just leads to PvP grinding. But I would like at least some acknowledgement of my efforts. Even something as simple as a personal stat board to show me my kills and deaths.

The problem with the open PvP zones is there is absolutely no incentive for players, which is why they’re empty. Why bother in a open zone when you can queue up for a warzone and get all the rewards? While hardcore PvPers will say the reward is in the kill itself, that’s not enough incentive to get most players to participate, so there has to be some reward be it XP, Valor or something else.

When it comes down to it PvP is flat out broken in Star Wars: The Old Republic and needs to be fixed asap. Being a one character per MMO type of guy, I don’t re-roll or start alts, my biggest concern is getting to the endgame and finding out there’s nothing left for me to do.

MMOCrunch is teaming up with Splitscreen Studios this holiday season to bring not one, but two giveaways for both Pirate Galaxy and Steel Legions.

Codes are limited as we only have 10 for each game. Each code will provide players with one of  the following goodies, depending on the game and can be used on existing accounts.

Steal Legions

• One Premium Tank
• Premium equipment

Pirate Galaxy

• One Preimum Ship
• 1500 Energy units

Click here to get your Pirate Galaxy code or your Steel Legions code.

Now that SWTOR has officially launched, I figured it would be a good time to give my first impression review for Star Wars: The Old Republic. While I had the opportunity to get into the last two beta weekends, I wasn’t able to due to other obligations, so my first real taste of the game was when the early access began.

Going into it I was expecting to dislike it; boarder-line hate it, so I’m actually quite surprised that I’m enjoying myself and even more surprised that I’m still listening to a good portion of the voice-overs.  Being one of the biggest selling points for BioWare, the billions of hours (ok, maybe not billions) of voice-over acting was going to be what separated it from all other MMORPGs and quite frankly has to be because so much of the gameplay features have been done before.

Currently my Sith Bounty Hunter is at level 21 and while I still listen to the main story-line, for just about every other quest I’m hitting the next button after a few words. The NPCs tend to ramble on and in most cases I really don’t care what they have to say, but that sort of fits my characters persona, so I don’t feel too bad. So in terms of the voice-over acting, I’m happy to report that it’s a big plus and being able to select the answers for yourself in conversations is also fun, or maybe it’s fun because I’m playing a Sith.

One of the new features that I haven’t seen before are the “personal zones” in the game that don’t revert back after you complete your mission. In many MMORPGs when completing a quest it resets back to normal for the next person to complete, but not so for SWTOR. Once you enter one of these zones, marked by a green force-field, you enter a zone that is personalized to your progress and the choices your make. Meaning if you leave that area and go back later, it doesn’t reset, which is nice as it feels you’re decisions in the game actually mean something.

Continued…