Today THQ released a press release with some information about internal studio realignment and their focus on key strategic initiatives.  The release talked about the closure of two of its studios and how resources would be better aligned to server the company’s future portfolio of games.

However toward the end THQ gave this statement about Warhammer 40K: Dark Millennium when talking about their future key strategies.

3) create an ongoing digital revenue stream with the launch of the company’s MMO, Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium(TM) Online; and 4) continue to drive digital end-user sales through existing channels as well as through the upcoming re-launch of THQ.com.

Whether this refers to Warhammers subscriptions or if plans to open up an in-game item shop has yet to be determined, but it looks like THQ wants to start concentrating more on digital revenue streams.  If your goal is to increase digital revenue one way to accomplish that is to go Free-to-Play and open up a shop. So this could very well mean that we would could be seeing both Warhammer Online and War 40K Online both going F2P in the future.

Yesterday it was learned that Blizzard had trandmarked the term Mists of Pandaria which many are now saying is the name of the next World of Warcraft expansion. Below you can see the actual registered trademark filing which clearly states Mists of Pandaria is a computer game, so this can very well be the next WoW expansion.

However nothing is official yet, so we’ll have to wait for Blizzard to comment.

It looks like Gamestop also mistakenly, or maybe not, posted up the pre-order information for Star Wars: The Old Republic for a brief period of time.

The collectors edition of SWTOR will retail for $149.99 and include these items with it:

• Exclusive Gentle Giant Darth Malgus statue
• Star Wars: The Old Republic game disks in collectible metal case
• The Journal of Master Gnost-Dural annotated by Satele Shan
• The Old Republic galaxy map
• Music of Star Wars: The Old Republic CD
• High-quality Collector’s Edition box

However pre-order account will also receive the following in-game bonuses and items:

• Flare Gun: Fire flares into the air
• Training Droid: Hovers at your side for combat assistance
• HoloDancer: Project your own holographic dancer
• HoloCam: Keep visual records of in-game adventures
• STAP: Sleek and unique in-game vehicle
• Exclusive Mouse Droid: Spunky Droid to join your adventures
• Exclusive Collector’s Edition Store: Unique in-game vendor with an assortment of items

Gamestop’s pre-order also confirmed the box art that was revealed two days ago stating that pre-order accounts will gain early access to the game as well as a color stone to change your weapons color.

Tomorrow is San Diego Comic-con so we’ll see if they finally make it official.

Source: Massively

On the RIFT PTR, players recently came across a new island, Ember Island, and a ship that is parked at the end of a dock.  Since the find, players have been speculating that the ship could mean that Ship Traveling is coming to RIFT, although most admit that’s a long shot.

Ember Island on the other hand is being rumored to be an upcoming PvP or RvR zone.  However some believe it will instead be a raid zone as one player stated there is an entrance to a cave on one end of the island that currently goes to a dead end.

Whatever it is, we won’t find out until Trion tell us, so in the mean time you can take a look at some screenshots of the ship and island and decide for yourself by continuing below.

Continued…

So it seems that yesterday a Polish retailer Empik.com added details for the Star Wars: The Old Republic pre-order and posted up an image of the box art, which was then quickly removed.  Rumors are now flying that Bioware will announce the pre-order this Thursday during Comic-con in Seattle.

It’s also worth mentioning that Walmart has the release date set as 11/01/11 and seems to be open for pre-orders, however does not mention any of the above pre-order bonuses.

I guess we’ll wait until Comic-con and see if any dates are announced.

Update: Via swtorstrategies.com it seems that the release date status on the EA site has been changed from TBD to TBA.

Source: Massively

It seems that Paul Darrow, 70′s sci-fi actor of Blake’s 7 fame and voice of Grand Moff Tarkin in a few Star Wars games, let it slip to ShadowLocked.com that Star Wars: The Old Republic is coming out by Christmas.

Paul Darrow said he recently did more voice-over work for Lucas about a month ago stating:

Anyway, I’m a Sith, and they told me it’s coming out at Christmas. I was just doing some tops and tails, because I had recorded it about a year ago. I’m your guide – a Sith warrior.

It seems the interviewer didn’t even realize that what he just heard was huge news in the MMO gaming world and didn’t even bother asking a follow up question.

We’ll try to get a response from Bioware, so nothing is confirmed, but as far as rumors go, that’s pretty solid.

Today a new player survey was put up on the Runescape site asking players to give there opinions on certain matters of the game and their gaming habits.  The survey asked the general questions such as how often do you play, what MMOs have you played, why are you playing them or why did you quit playing.  Pretty general stuff, however towards the end was a series of questions asking players how they felt about paid subscriptions and items stores.

The questions ranged from whether you would ever pay for items and if so what type of items or content would you pay for?  It also asked if whether or not you’ve ever spent money before in other MMOs item stores.

While Runescape has always been free with an premium subscription option, it seems Jagex is contemplating making the move to an item store over a premium subscription.  Or perhaps they will offer both.

To those Runescape players reading this, what do you think?  Would you mind if Runescape opened up an in-game item store?

The latest update to Eve Online, Incarna, went live yesterday introducing a new micro-transaction store, called the Noble Exchange, where players could buy vanity items for their characters.  Eve Online players expressed their concern prior to the release of the update to CCP about whether items that effect gameplay would eventually be introduced.  CCP replied stating they would not and would be strictly cosmetic items.

A day after the release of Incarna an internal newsletter from CCP was leaked that showed more items being added to the Noble Exchange which do effect gameplay.  “Not all virtual purchases [in EVE Online] will focus on customization: some will simply be new items, ammunition, ships, etc. that can be purchased outright.” The leaked document also mentioned the possibility of buying faction standings.

What’s more is that the items are extremely expensive.

The Noble Exchange uses a new currency, different from ISK, called Aurum.  Aurum can only be obtained by converting PLEX, which has a ratio of 1 PLEX to 3500 Aurum.  PLEX can be obtained in two ways, it can be either purchased for $19.99 in real money or can purchased using ISK at the cost of about 400 million.

Got that…no, here’s a simple conversion chart.

1 PLEX = 400 Million ISK or $19.99 (real money)
1 PLEX = 3500 Aurum

The items in the leaked internal newsletter are listed below, displaying their Aurum costs, which is then converted into PLEX, dollars and ISK.

Exchange Rate: 3500 AUR = 1 PLEX = $17.50 = 400 mil isk at Jita (New Eden main trade hub).

• Looking Glass Ocular implant – 12k AUR -> 3.5 PLEX -> $61.25 ->1.4 Bil ISK
• Men’s ‘Sterling’ Dress Shirt – 3.6k AUR -> 0.97 PLEX -> $16.97 -> 388 Mil ISK
• Women’s ‘Sterling’ Dress Blouse – 3.2K AUR -> .91 PLEX -> $16.00 -> 364 Mil ISK
• Men’s ‘Comando’ Pants – 3k AUR -> .85 PLEX -> $15 -> 340 Mil ISK
• Women “Impress” Skirt – 3.6k AUR -> 0.97 PLEX -> $16.97 -> 388 Mil ISK
• Women’s ‘Sterling’ Dress Blouse – 4.4k AUR -> 1.25 PLEX -> $22.00 -> 504 Mil ISK
• Men’s ‘Precision’ Boots – 1k AUR -> 0.28 PLEX -> $5.00 -> 112 Mil ISK
• Women’s ‘Greave’ Knee-Boots – 2.4K AUR -> 0.68 PLEX -> $12.00 -> 272 Mil ISK

(the above conversions were from EveNews24 who used a lower $17.50 conversion rate for PLEX)

The leaked document, which dates from May 2011, has not yet been confirmed as authentic and no reply from CCP has been given.  We’ll keep you updated.

Source: EveNews24

Update: The newsletter has been confirmed to be real.

Today via a post on the Darkfall blog, Aventurine posted about the possibility of Darkfall Online being developed for the Asian markets.

There is great interest in Darkfall for Asia. To suit the Asian markets, Darkfall would need to be localized and there would need to be some co-development along with our Asian partners. This will be good for the game overall since we’d be tapping into some vast development resources. Unfortunately I can’t be more specific but there will be announcements when we can.

From the quote it definitely seems Aventurine would love to expand Darkfall into the huge Asian market, so the only real question is when this will happen.

Also in the post was an update on when new dungeons will be added to Darkfall as their has been none over the last year.

The new Central Dungeons  are on the horizon and will consist of 4 different main areas. Depending on which way a player chooses to go through they will end up in one of  four areas and face one of the four main bosses. In addition to the unique boss fight, each area has their own theme, lore, quests, design and concepts. The way to the main areas will also offer several challenges as players have to beat and evade several different types of traps and obstacles.

One of the rooms will have the Demon Queen as main boss where players will fight on a big spiderweb like structure which they will have to find their way onto.

Check out some of the screenshots for the Cairn Dungeon below.

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Harry Potter fans were mystified yesterday as a new Harry Potter website popped up that simply stated “Pottermore Coming Soon…”.  It has been suggested that the new site will be the home of the new Harry Potter MMORPG, however we won’t know for sure until next Thursday when the count-down clock reaches zero.

At the bottom of the site we can see the trademark statement. “Harry Potter characters, names and related indicia are trademarks of and © Warners Bros. Ent. All Rights Reserved”. Looking up the trademark’s description of service we see the trademark Pottermore was described as,

Providing multiple-user access to a global computer information network; providing on-line chat rooms and electronic bulletin boards for transmission of messages among users in the field of general interest; providing on-line communications links which transfer the web site user to other local and global web pages; providing on-line facilities for real-time interaction with other computer users concerning topics of general interest

If this isn’t the Harry Potter MMORPG I would be very surprised considering the two statements that I bolded in the description.  What do you guys think, is Pottermore the long rumored Harry Potter MMO?