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!

What is currently taking place on the planet of Illum is an absolute slaughter and travesty. Republic forces, vastly out numbered by Imperials, are being decimated with little to no hope of making any type of stand. With no hope of survival, Republic players are staying clear of Illum, turning it over to Imperials who now sit and wait for those unfortunate Republic players, unaware of the situation, to enter.

That’s the current state of the game for Star Wars: The Old Republic on the PvP world of Illum after the release of Patch 1.1. While the patch brought with it a new flashpoint and operation, more importantly it brought much needed changes to PvP.

Up until now Illum has been a merry-go-round where players, for the most part, would stay clear of each other in order to trade off objectives and farm rewards as quickly as possible. Patch 1.1 however introduced some incentives for players to actually kill each other, except BioWare forgot that Imperial players vaaaastly outnumber Republic players on nearly every server. So instead of a merry-go-round, we have a one sided slaughter where Imperial players are camping Republic respawn areas and hunting down new players when their location is revealed through the new Illum notification system.

But it doesn’t stop there. Imperial players are also farming NPC turrets, which respawn almost instantly, allowing them to rack up HUGE amounts of valor. WTF BioWare!?  PvP rewards for killing NPCs? (UPDATE: Seems this was reported falsely by players, turrets and NPCs do not provide valor)

I’m all for giving players incentives to kill each other and I’m still waiting for some in open PvP zones, but this seems like such a rookie mistake. Hasn’t anyone at BioWare played a PvP MMORPG before?  How about some safe zones or added incentive for the factions that’s outnumber to help bolster their numbers. Or maybe just a faction player cap and definitely no Valor for killing NPCs, that’s just plain idiotic.

If you’re interested in checking out the slaughter, below you can find a video that was recently uploaded by a Republic player.

UPDATE: BioWare has responded by adding a population cap to Illum and are working on correcting the issue where enemy players are able to enter the opposing faction’s safe zone without being killed.

Continued…

In an interview with VideoGamer.com, Dave Kosak, the lead quest designer for World of Warcraft, stated that patch 4.3 would be the last major update in relation to Cataclysm before the Mists of Pandaria expansion.

4.3 is definitely the climax of Cataclysm so there’s no more Cataclysm content. Traditionally we’ve had a grace period where we patch the game before the expansion comes out and you get sort of mechanical changes before you get the new expansion content. So we’ll have a world event prior to Mists of Pandaria, but that’s mostly a part of Mists of Pandaria’s launch and it’s not really more Cataclysm content.

It seems the release of Mists of Pandaria is closer then we thought, much closer. Looking at the time-span between each expansion’s release date, we can see that on average it’s slightly less than 2 years.

Burning Crusade > Wrath of the Lich King – 22 months
Wrath of the Lich King > Cataclysm – 25 months
Cataclysm > Mists of Pandaria – 13 months (so far)

With no major patch updates planned, I would doubt Blizzard would wait another 9-10 months for the release of Mist of Pandaria. So does this mean we’ll see a summer release? Perhaps, perhaps not. Blizzard is also known to make gamers wait, so a Nov or Dec release is just as likely.

It’s official, Star Trek Online is now free-to-play and to kick things off Cryptic has released a new launch trailer. Interested readers can head over to the STO website to download the F2P version if they want to try it out.

It’s a pretty generic trailer that doesn’t even mention the fact STO is now free-to-play, which is odd to say the least. You’d think they would have made that the major point of the trailer. Anyway, check out the Star Trek Online F2P launch trailer below.

Continued…

Today En Masse Entertainment officially announced May 1st, 2012 as the release date for their upcoming MMO game TERA.

TERA will be available both online and in stores with standard and Collector’s Editions available, although no info has yet be revealed about the CE.

Closed beta signup opened up over the weekend on the TERA website and are expected to begin within a few weeks. For those of you who want to signup to the beta, head over to their beta signup page.

Rumors began spreading yesterday that THQ was planning to cancel all of its 2014 projects, including its MMORPG Warhammer 40K: Dark Millenium, to position itself to be sold. The rumors began when a game industry veteran, Kevin Dent, tweeted that THQ had canceled its entire 2014 lineup.

Today THQ responded to the rumors via Gamasutra stating they are false and have made no plans to cancel War 40k: Dark Millenium.

THQ has not cancelled its 2014 line-up, and has not made any decisions regarding the planned MMO,

As part of the ongoing review of our business, we have made decisions to ensure that the company is strategically addressing the most attractive markets,

As we have previously announced, we have dramatically reduced our commitment to the kids’ boxed games sector which leads to a significantly more focused release schedule moving forward.

Good news if you’re one of the many fans, like myself, that was looking forward to Dark Millenium. Although it’s undeniable THQ is facing some serious financial troubles. This time last year their stock was hovering around $6.00 and today it sits at $0.66. So I don’t think Dark Millenium is in the clear just yet, but at least it’s still alive and kicking.

The first major content update to Star Wars: The Old Republic, called “Kaon Under Siege”, is going live on servers on January 17th and will introduce players to a new flashpoint. Today BioWare released the official trailer for the update which you can view after the jump.

The Rakghoul plague has spread across several worlds and has made it’s way to the small world of Kaon where both Republic and Empire foruces will create an alliance in order to combat the spread of the plague.

The trailer seems to show the intro of the flashpoint with some gameplay later on, although brief. If you played BioWare’s original Star Wars RPG, Knights of the Old Republic, you’ll remember that it featured Rakghoul mutants as well, so it’s a bit of a throw back.

Check out the Kaon Under Siege trailer below.

Continued…

It seems players logging into RIFT today are receiving a server wide announcement about an upcoming server merge. Unoffcially there’s about 17 servers involved so far as posted by RIFTJunkies which you can view below.

The merger is planed for Jan 18th and is meant to turn old servers into trial shards, however no official announcement has yet been made by Trion on their website or forums.

We all know that server mergers normally mean a decline in players and due to the amount of servers being merged, I’d say that’s probably the case with RIFT as well. It’ll be interesting to see what sort of free trial Trion will now offer as they currently offer a 7 day trial. My guess is they’ll start offering an unlimited free trial with a level cap around 20, maybe 30 and if that doesn’t bolster subscriptions, they’ll go Free-to-play by the end of 2012.

You can view the list of servers affected after the jump.

[Update] We received a response from Trion about this and they stated,

Bottom line is that we’re not merging any servers. The 11 shards in question are being turned into trial servers for a future large-scale trial promotion. We think the confusion is due to server wide notifications that recommended players transfer their characters before the 1/18, which is when the reconfiguration will happen.

Continued…

En Masse has officially opened closed beta signups for its upcoming MMORPG TERA.  Called “preview events”, each closed beta phase will require its own invitation, with the closed beta event ending in an open beta testing phase.

To signup to TERA’s closed beta, head over to the TERA website and enter your email address in the forum.

• TERA‘s closed beta tests each require a unique invitation. Each invitation will indicate which closed beta test it is valid for. Submitting your email address more than once won’t increase your chances of receiving an invitation.
• Invitations to TERA‘s closed beta test will be distributed before each event based on random selection.
• Invitations to TERA‘s open beta test will be distributed to everyone who signs up to be a TERA beta tester.
• If you participated in our TERA alpha test, your access will extend to allTERA beta tests.
• We will introduce additional methods of securing an invitation to TERA‘s closed beta tests such as official contests and giveaways.

Today marks the one year anniversary for DC Universe Online and to help celebrate SOE has released a new in-game item, the Anniversary Cape, although failed to mention how to obtain one. Maybe everyone gets one.

Sony Online Entertainment also released some stats for the last year which include some impressive numbers.

• More than 3.5 million hero characters and more than 2 million villain characters created
• More than 2.3 million registered users on the PS3
• Players have logged a total of more than 3.6 million days of playtime
• More than 1,200 new NPC characters, 200 new quests, 2,500 new items and 1,800 new encounters

Although impressive, they fail to mention any numbers for PC players, which makes me wonder if DCUO isn’t doing quite as well as the PS3 version. Anyway congratulation to DC Universe Online.