We have some good news for MMOCrunch readers.  Turbine was kind enough to send us 5 Rise of Isengard beta keys for their upcoming Lord of the Rings Online expansion to giveaway to our readers.

Normally we would setup a giveaway page to give out the keys, however since we have a very limited number of them, we’ll be running this contest a little different.

• To enter simply reply to this post stating why you think you should received a beta key to Rise of Isengard.
• After 24 hrs, we’ll select our five favorite answers and send them a beta key using the email address used to comment. So make sure you enter a valid email or you won’t get the key.

Good luck to everyone.

Update

And the lucky winners are:

• Joe
• LotroSurviver
• Eoldred
• Grinili
• Jason

You’ll each receive an email shortly with the beta key and instructions on how to use it. If you don’t get it check your spam folder. Congrats.

Riot Games is kicking it up a notch with their second season League of Legends tournament by upping the prize pool from a mear $100k to a record breaking $5 million.

The thriving eSports community surrounding League of Legends continues to grow at an incredible pace, and it’s the enthusiasm of competitors from across the globe that has engendered this special opportunity.  And with League of Legends featured as an official title in such landmark eSports organizations as Major League Gaming, Electronic Sports League, and the World Cyber Games, this substantially increased prize pool is just the first glimpse into what we have planned for the upcoming season.

The $5 million will not just be for the eventual winners, the money will be funding prizing for local, national and international tournaments to foster and grow the League of Legends eSports scene.

League of Legends Season 2 will begin sometime this fall and will feature weekly live streams of regional tournaments in North America and Europe.

* Bioware is selecting players at random for Sept’s beta weekends, so this is not guaranteed as part of the prize

In an interview with VideoGamer.com, global brand director Chris Lye, stated that Guild Wars will remain open even after Guild Wars 2 launches, if an active player base remains.

The only incentive we need is to have an active player base. Guild Wars is a very cost effective game to support and because there is no active cost to maintain both a Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 account. We could see a lot of players keeping both.

To me that sounds like ArenaNet will be leaving it up to players to decide if Guild Wars remains running and for how long. There will obviously be a major shift to GW2 once it’s released, so the question is will enough players remain playing the original to keep it cost effective.

From that statement it seems that it would take a massive amount of players leaving for them to decide to shut down Guild Wars, but you never know.  If GW2 turns out to be as good as ArenaNet is making it out to be, players could start their GW2 journey and never look back.

It seems Red 5 Studio’s CEO Mark Kern finally spilled the beans on when Firefall would be released.  In an interview conducted at this year’s ChinaJoy convention Mark told Tencent Games that Firefall would be launching in December in North America.

Some confusion followed as Tencent Games though he meant beta would being in Dec, but over the weekend on the Firefall forums it was confirmed that Firefall would be launching and not entering beta in Dec. So that means we should see closed and open beta being announced soon.

MMOCrunch is teaming up with Wicked Interactive to offer MMOCrunch readers a chance at getting access to the closed beta testing phase for their new MMORPG Bounty Hounds Online.  We have 250 closed beta keys available, which can be obtained via our Bounty Hounds Online CB key giveaway page.

Closed beta is set to begin in a few days on August 5th, so there’s plenty to time to get your key.

For those of you not familiar with BHO, it is a Sci-Fi MMORPG that takes place in a distant galaxy. Players take control of a mercenary and fight alongside their trusty robotic pets called CTUs.

While I might not be pre-ordering SWTOR myself, MMOCrunch has teamed up with MMORaid.com, a new social MMO gaming news site, to give MMOCrunch readers a chance at a free copy of Star Wars: The Old Republic Collectors Edition.  Below are the giveaway rules.

SWTOR Collectors Edition Giveaway Guidelines

• Go to MMORaid.com to register an account
• Submit an article, comment or just vote for your favorites
• One lucky member from the Top User list (top 25) will be randomly selected to receive the prize

Details and Rules

• The winner will be selected on August 27th and announced on MMOCrunch
• When registering, please use an email address you regularly check as this will be how the winner is contacted.
• Users abusing the system will be disqualified and or banned.
• The winner will receive the pre-order code so they can participate in Sept’s beta test weekends and will receive the actual CE box once it is released.*
• The top two users will not be included in the drawing as they are MMORaid staff.

Good luck to everyone.

* Bioware is selecting players at random for Sept’s beta weekends, so this is not guaranteed as part of the prize

The long awaited launch of Black Prophecy in North America has finally arrived, but as far as launches goes, it’s a mess. Wanting to download the client and hop into the pilots seat I headed over to the NA game client download page where I was surprised to see not one download file, but six, four of which are 1.5 GB in size. Umm, isn’t it the developers job to bundle the client into an easy to download and install file?

Most clients today are only a few megs which then download and install the full game for you. Why do I have to sit here and download 6 files myself? I didn’t get to the install yet, but I sure as hell hope I’m not going to have to sit here an click next when it goes from file to file.

The third file in the pack is also is a dead link, so even when I finish downloading 4.5 Gb files, I’ll have to wait and come back later to get the last 1.5 Gb file.

Definitely not a smooth launch as I feel like the solar winds have been taken out of my sails. Anyway, I’ll have about 30 mins until these files finish downloading and hopefully by then gamigo will fix the broken link so I can get the last file.

Prius Online is chugging away in open beta testing and seems to be making some big strides. Today Gala-Net announced that it has removed the IP restriction to Prius Online and can now be played world-wide. While the announcement was only made today, the restriction was already removed on July 5th.

In addition, Gala-Net has also made attempts to address the issue of players who say there is a lack of in-game content.  So five new dungeons were added on the 5th and the first major content update has now also been announced for late July.  The update will include another six new dungeons, Guild Siege, Guild Championships, an increase in the level cap and more.

The first major content update to Allods Online, since it went live in May, has been official announced as Allods Online: Renaissance.  The update is set to be released to European servers by mid to late July and will include the highest-level dungeon to the Allods universe yet.  Along with the new dungeon, a set of new features including the reincarnation system and new character creation interface are also on their way.

The new reincarnations system and high level dungeon have already been revealed in weeks prior to this announcement, however a few new pieces of info have been released today.   An all-new character creation system, which benefits from a more intuitive interface and visual overhaul, as well as more dynamic events enhancing the questing experience. Players could end up with double XP or loot bonuses, or even double the amount of monsters to fight, depending on which way fate falls, with events timed to change these conditions several times a month. In tandem with the global effects from World Threats resulting from PvP action in Astral Odyssey, Allods Online will be mixing up its universe to keep things interesting along all points of any player’s leveling curve.

Finishing off the set of additions is a set of tweaks for space-farers. Astral navigation has been revamped in Allods Online: Renaissance, with Astral ships gaining a 60% speed boost and the map system enhanced with color coding and grid overlays to make navigating the Astral space easier. However, this comes with a price – ships can now be pursued from wormhole to wormhole by terrifying demons, so only the bravest ship crews will make it to the loot-rich allods that lie within the depths of Astral Space.

Below we have some screenshots of Allods Online: Renaissance.

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