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!

Beta signups to SOE’s upcoming MMOFPS are now live on the new PlanetSide 2 website which launched yesterday. Players can sign-in using their SOE Station account or create a new one if they don’t have one, them opt-in forthe PS2 beta.

Along with the beta signup, the new website also has more information and updated FAQ about the game, including key features, factions and more. Check out the new site to sign-up for beta.

Trion has opened up their closed beta signups for its upcoming MMORTS game End of Nations as well as posted their inaugural webcast called Warfront.

The big news from the webcast was the announcement of the beta signups, the rest of it wasn’t really worth watching, it was basically just trying to get you to signup to their newsletter and Facebook page.

If your interested in registering for the beta, head over to the EON beta signup page.

Mythos has probably had one of the bumpiest histories of any MMO game I can remember. Originally developed by Flagship Studios, in 2008 due to financial issues while Mythos was getting ready for open beta, the game was put on hold, then scrapped when Flagship went under.

Mythos then became the intellectual property of HanbitSoft, a Korean MMO publisher, who decided they would re-create Mythos for Asia and NA markets. Frogster would become the publisher in Europe. Last month Frogster announced Mythos EU would be closing its doors due to a lack of interest.

Which brings us to today where HanbitSoft and T3Fun have announced that the North America version will be going into a 4-day closed beta test on Dec 1st.

Now I don’t want to sound like a pessimist, but how many times can a game fail before they give up? To signup for the Closed beta, head over to the Mythos Global website.

The final scheduled Star Wars: The Old Republic beta weekend is scheduled to being the day after Thanksgiving, Nov 25th until Nov 28th.

The last beta test will be by far the biggest as anyone who registered for the beta before Nov 11 will be accepted, plus BioWare is giving away thousands of keys to those that didn’t, 400,000 keys to be exact. You can get one from BioWare’s Facebook page. This last best test will really test the servers ability to handle massive server loads and to prepare for the official launch which is now less than a month away.

I’ll see you guys in-game

The first thing I should mention is that I am not a Star Wars fan. I’ve seen the movies of course – over 2 decades ago when I was a kid. I never had any of the action figures, I’ve never played a Star Wars game, and unless I hit Google I couldn’t tell you which movie features the Ewoks or which one has Luke losing his hand. You can call me an ignorant savage if you like (my fiance does), but I prefer old classic movies like The Lion in Winter or The Maltese Falcon, and as a kid I preferred Schmendrick to Luke. When it comes to MMOs, I don’t like story-driven games, I want to just go out into the wilderness and kill and kill and kill my way up the leveling ladder. Companions? If I want company, I’ll group or play a single player game like Dragon Age. Space combat? I’d rather go crawling through a deep mazelike dungeon. Jedis? Lasers are cool, but I’d prefer a nice dagger to stick into my enemy’s back after I’ve robbed him blind (I just love MMOs with pickpocketing, I get to loot my enemies TWICE!).

I thought the game was being overhyped simply because it has lightsabers, Jedis, spaceships, and Sith. So when I had the opportunity to sit down and play Star Wars: The Old Republic this weekend, I expected to have a few hours of ok fun, uninstall the game and walk away.

I was wrong. Not only did I not walk away, I preordered two copies.

Continued…

The third closed beta weekend for BioWare’s Wrath of Heroes has been announced for Thanksgiving weekend. So if football isn’t your thing and you need a reason to get away from your relatives, you can tell them it’s an exclusive beta weekend that you can miss.

The closed beta weekend will begin on Nov 24th and will end on the 27th. No info about if any new features or characters will be added for the third beta weekend, however it should be released sometime this week, so we’ll keep you posted.

A new post was published today on the Firefall developers blog giving everyone an update as to what the status of beta and development is currently at. The gist of it is that the development process is not where Red 5 Studios had hoped it would be, so they are hiring additional programmers to get things moving at a quicker pace.

The infrastructure issues and technical limitations of the last few tests have made us wary of adding additional users until we have a better handle on the overall experience

We have various issues with performance and optimization that are always on-going and we pleased to announce that we’ve hired additional programmers to help with this and increasing the overall visual fidelity of the game.

Due to the setbacks, additional beta invites will be pushed back to at least a few more weeks and even then will be kept to smaller numbers.

we are still keeping a tight control on the number of invites. As mentioned in the past, we plan to roll out invites all the way through next year. There is no specific number we need to hit by any specific date, thus we are going to be cautious for a while longer.

Today PWE announced that War of the Immortals, which was supposed to launch into closed beta, has been delayed until Nov 2nd.  The reason for the delay is so they can add some additional content to the it.

WoI is the follow up to Battle of the Immortals which was only launched a little over a year earlier and features 8 classes, destructible environments, territory wars, a pet system and much more.

In a recent interview with SCEE Playstation blogger James Gallagher, CCP talked about their upcoming MMOFPS DUST 514 and discussed a little about classes, combat, beta as well as other things. Below we have the highlights of the interview for you.

When discussing combat, CCP stated,

Essentially it’s a vehicular combat game on an extremely large scale, and then when you move into installations and outposts, it’s more infantry based.

CCP went on to say that there will be a vast array of vehicles for players to choose from, ranging from buggies to tanks to aircraft. While there is a general class system, light, heavy, etc, they are not labeled as such due to the Fitting system, which was ported over from Eve Online. This system basically allows players to use any type of weapons and equipment for their characters as well as vehicles, giving players a massive amount of freedom to basically create any type of class they wish.

When discussing how beta would work, CCP basically stated there would be no beta and instead there would be something called Private Trials. Since DUST 514 is being integrated into the already live MMORPG, a normal beta testing phase would not work. The trials will be rolled out in small groups and once the first group goes live it will be in essence the start of DUST 514 game service. The Private Trials will also be rolled out with accompanying story-lines for Eve Online players, with the story continuing with each new added group.

Some interesting info, I didn’t realize vehicles would be playing such a major role in the game.