Holy crap, RIFT players have some serious artistic skills.  Today RIFT announced the winner of their “Create a Clolossus Contest”, with the winner shown above, but looking through the submissions, there’s hundreds of high quality pieces.  I’m sure Trion had a difficult time narrowing it down to the top three.
You can check out the Winners, semi-finalists and all submissions below through the links.

• Winners
• Semi-Finalists
• All Submissions

I have to say, I’m not a fan of the runner-up, the Water Colossus.  I’m not saying it’s not good, just that I think there were better ones.  Below we have the 3 winners, followed by some of my favorites.  There’s really so many good ones, you should still check out all the entries.  I just found my new desktop wallpaper

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Last week I posted an article about a mysterious new website called Pottermore, which many people, including myself, believed would be the name of the new Harry Potter MMORPG. Today J.K.Rowling made the official announcement via YouTube this morning as to what Pottermore really was and unfortunately it is not a MMORPG.

Pottermore will be an online interactive reading experience where readers will be able to read along with the current books, read previously unpublished information about the world of Harry Potter and interact and contribute to the it.  What that means and entails has not yet been announced, but since it isn’t a MMO game we won’t be covering it, so you’ll need to head over to the official Pottermore website for the latest info.

The first season of League of Legends Championship tournament is over and team FnaticMSI came out victorious, winning the grade prize of $100,000.   In a three day event at Dreamhack 2011, eight League of Legends teams had made it to the championships and would be battling it out for the massive cash prize.

The two finalist teams, aAa and FnaticMSI, had met multiple times throughout the tournament, but it would be team FnaticMSI that came out on top in the finals.

On day 1 in the second round of qualifying matches was the first encounter between these two teams with team aAa coming out victorious in the first game. On day 3 they met again in the Upper Bracket Finals, and this time FnaticMSI was prepared dominating in game 1, then finishing off team aAa in game two.

However team aAa battled back and made it to the finals to meet team FnaticMSI for the third time. Team aAa took the first game winning 20 – 7, but lost their momentum and tower in game two, making team FnaticMSI the first ever League of Legends Championship team and of course winning the $100k.

The video for the final match is available on own3D.tv, however it’s currently not working so you can check out the final match below on Youtube.

The finals for Eve’s Alliance Tournament IX ended today, but not how anyone would have expected. Accusations of the finals being rigged or setup started even before the final match ended.  You see what many Eve Online players and viewers of the tournament didn’t know was that the two finalists were really one team.

The two finalist, Hydra Reloaded and Outbreak, were originally part of the same Eve Alliance, Hydra Reloaded, two months before the start of Alliance Tournament IX and one player was in control of both teams.

That Eve Online player goes by the name of Garmon and was the team captain for both tournament teams.  In a tactical move by Garmon and the alliance, a new alliance called Outbreak was created so Hydra Reloaded could have two entries in the tournament and increase their chance of making the finals.  So when the semi-finals ended and both Hydra Reloaded and Outbreak made the finals, the fix was in.

Hydra Reloaded entered the finals with a joke of a ship setup and were quickly decimated by team Outbreak.  However as both teams were sharing the same chat channel and communicating with each other, they decided that Hydra Reloaded would win the finals, so team Outbreak let-up their attack and allowed the remains players from Hydra Reloaded to finish them off.

It seems that many Eve Online players and viewers were outraged by this rigged final match and have taken to the Eve Online forums to express their disgust.  However not everyone shares this view, many players applaud what Hydra Reloaded and Garmon had done simply stating that this is what Eve Online is all about.  Bending rules and taking advantage of them to win at all costs.  The real victory wasn’t won in the finals, but was the accomplishment of getting two teams into the finals.

Since the end of the tournament, Hydra Reloaded has made a public apology for how the finals ended.  No official response from CCP or Alliance Tournament has been given and whether or not new rules will be put in place for next year so something like this doesn’t happen again.

It seems a dispute between one of GameDP’s volunteer community managers has spilled out into the forums and in an actual press releases that was sent out today.   When I first received the press release I wasn’t sure if it was a joke or if it was an actual release sent by GameDP, but it looks to be legit so allow me to summarize the dispute for you.

The dispute started when Rokkumon, one of GameDP’s most experienced volunteer Community Managers (CM) for Dragon’s Call, stepped down from his position for a two month span of time, then wanted to return. Below is some background about Rokkumon as was stated in the press release by GameDP.

Rokkumon was an old hardcore player of EverDream games. He has been doing the CM job for more than 2 years starting from Dragon’s Call, and now is the first CM in WarFlow. Many of the previous game events were held by him and he even wrote a few long unofficial backstories for Dragon’s Call. But recently, Rukkumon was ultimately pissed off by some reason, and turned his back on this game and the official.

Rokkumon claims he was promised to become the main CM for both Dragon’s Call and WarFlow, GameDP’s most recent game, but instead was “forcefully” removed from Dragon’s Call and put only on WarFlow. Rokkumon goes on to say WarFlow was a “near dead” game and putting your most experienced and active CM would be a waste of resources.

In the press release sent by GameDP’s, they stated that Rokkumon was “cursing the official and threatening to leave the position with anger”.

“Rokkumon was a pretty diligent and capable fellow. He did help us with pretty much work in the old Dragon’s Call servers. But it’s sad that he’s kind of losing faith and starts complaining a lot recently. “Adam Wu, Marketing Officer of EverDream Studio, explained, “Although I’m not suggesting him stay in the CM position at this stage, I do hope he could find a better way out.”

“He was active at first, but disappeared suddenly for nearly a week” Shelly, Chief Operating Officer of WarFlow project, said, “We cannot wait for him forever. We have to move on, there’s still much work needed to be done.“

A pretty lengthy post by Rokkumon was posted in the forums that was soon deleted by GameDP, however players took screenshots and re-posted the info which was also included in the press release.  Very strange situation having a dispute with a volunteer community manager get so out of hand and to reach such levels.  The forum post that was deleted can be found in full after the jump.

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The toy shooter from Rock Hippo Productions has made it out of open beta and officially launched today.   With the launch of MicroVolts, new content, features, maps and items have been released as well.  A new Clan system has been implemented allowing users to create their own clans and features a “special teams” group that all members within the clan will compete for in order to snag one of those few spots.

A new map, The Studio, has been added, as well as new weapons, the Steel Hammer (melee), DareDev (Gatling Gun), and Mimic (Rocket Launcher). For more information about the launch fo MicroVolts, head over to the official site.

For those of you still thinking about whether or not to get into Rift, Steam is offering a pretty nice discount this weekend on the recently released MMORPG.

Steam’s RIFT discount is 33% off which bring the cost down to $33.49 for the game and 1 month of game time.  So if you’re still contemplating, stop and grab yourself a copy before the end of the weekend.  The RIFT sale ends Sunday night.

Happy April Fools! Did you forget? We’ll if you did, then you might have thought some of these MMO April Fools day news stories were real. Below you will find a list of April fools day jokes from World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2 and Star Wars: The old Republic.

World of Warcraft

Guild Wars 2

Star Wars: The old Republic

From Bioware we are introduces to Shyriiwook Localization. This allows the game to be translated for Wookiees, so if you are fluient in Wookiee, you will be able to play SWTOR using this dialect. Check out the official SWTOR website for videos and more information.

Do you love MMOs? Do you love them enough to wax poetic (or rant) about them, at length, to your ever-patient family and friends? Have you ever wished for a platform of your own from whence you might proudly pontificate your passion with plentiful perspicacity? (OK, that last one was a little too much, even for me.) But if you’ve been longing for a chance to make your voice heard in the gaming community, this is that chance.

We here at MMOCrunch.com are looking for a few good writers. While there are quite a few specific categories that one might choose to write within, the basic breakdown of what we want is this: Columnists and Game Reporters.

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On the crisp, New York morning of January 20th, I rolled over in my hotel bed and groped for the alarm clock. Hearing it crash on the floor, I retreated back into my dreamy slumber, victorious. “Alarm clocks are overrated,” I said to myself. Suddenly, I was wide awake. Isn’t there a breakfast or something before the convention? With my lower body still in bed, my upper body lumbered around in search of the Paradox Convention schedule – Breakfast: 8:30am. What time is it? The defeated alarm clock read 8:16. “Hnnrrgghh,” I said, to no one in particular…

Straight out of Stockholm, Sweden, Paradox Interactive has staked its claim on New York at the Manhattan Hilton for two days (and nights) of chivalry and shenanigans. The general motto around here is, “Strategy is Our Game.” This could not be more accurate – the PC-based strategy game developer is revered for its eye for detail and its games are known around the globe for their deep game mechanics and gratifying challenges; something few in the medium can rival.

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