The second beta weekend for Star Wars: The Old Republic is set to kick of this Friday on October 7th and lasting until Tuesday, so a bit of an extended weekend for beta testers. BioWare will be increasing the amount of invites to this second beta weekend, so if you didn’t get one last month, you have a better shot this time around.

Invites are being sent out all this week, so if you didn’t get one yet, don’t panic just yet, there’s still two more days. BioWare also mentioned that additional beta weekends are scheduled before the launch, so you’ll get more chances down the line. You can also log into your SWTOR account to check if you’re a tester.

The Diablo 3 beta kicks off today and the NDA has been dropped, so those invited can post and talk about anything they like. Invitations are now being sent out, but don’t worry if you don’t get one, Blizzard will be setting up some promotions and giveaways in the near future, so you’ll get a second change.

What are you still reading this for? Go check if you got a key already

Perfect World’s latest MMO game, Rusty Hearts, is slashing its way into the open beta testing phase today. Rusty Hearts is a free to play game, with hack-n-slash combat and an anime inspired graphical style.

For those interested in the open beta, head over to the Rusty Hearts official website to signup. Currently the website has not been updated yet, so it still says closed beta, however you can still download and install the game.

If you needed any more proof that the pay-to-play business model is dying, today it was revealed that PlanetSide 2 will be free-to-play. In an interview with a Chinese gaming site 17173.com, which was then translated by MMOSite, John Smedley, the President of SOE, not only revealed that PlanetSide 2 would be F2P, but discussed microtransactions,

When asked about the business mode and beta schedule, Smedley reveals that the game will be free-to-play, but it may not be the microtransaction type as he mentions the model of buy to play and Diablo 3′s auction house. Smedley also thinks that EA’s The Old Republic will be the last popular MMO with subscription fee. At last, the beta plan. According to Smedley, PlanetSide 2 will start large-scale test in US at the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012.

While not the best translation, Planetside-Universe got clarification from Mr. Smedly as to what was actual said about microtransactions and they got this reply from him,

On Auction House
We aren’t doing an auction house like Blizzard. They asked me what I thought of that move by Blizzard and I said I liked it and thought it would help with farmers and that we were doing it years ago with Station Exchange. It has nothing to do with Planetside 2 whatsoever. Ive said before the game will be some form of F2P but we aren’t announcing anything specific yet.

On Beta
I did in fact say we are aiming for late this year or early next year. No further comment about that. It’s ready when it’s ready and we are proud of it.

So there you have it, PlanetSide 2 is confirmed as a Free2Play title, microtransactions details will be revealed later and beta should begin by late 2011 or early 2012.

Bioware announced that no only is this weekends beta testing canceled for Star Wars: The Old Republic, the rest of September’s beta weekends might be canceled as well, stating they are not guaranteeing any additional weekend betas.

There is no Beta Testing Weekend scheduled for this weekend. There may be further Beta Testing Weekends during September, but we’re not going to guarantee it. The weekend that just finished was really our first dry run of Beta Testing Weekends as a whole, and we have plenty of data to crunch, and decisions to make before we start things up again.

While it’s up in the air for now, BioWare did mention that tomorrow they will release a comprehensive FAQ regarding beta weekends along with details of the beta from last weekend. Also mentioned, that from here on out all beta weekends will continuously get bigger, which means more invites for everyone.

If it’s going to possibly take BioWare all of Sept to restart beta testing, that throws out Oct as a possible launch month and even Nov depending on how the rest of beta goes go. Bottom line, this sucks.

CVG recently spoke with EA Labels boss Frank Gibeau who told them that the release date for Star Wars: The Old Republic hinges on the reaction players give to the beta, which opens up to many more players starting this Friday.

It is definitely tied to the beta test feedback that’s ongoing and so far, so good. We feel good about the date that we’re heading towards but you’re right, you could have a Crazy Ivan show up in the September/October beta test and be like, ‘wow, I’ve got to fix that’

You’ve got to have a great launch and as more and more user feedback comes in we make those polishing decisions on what we’re going to get right and nail

We don’t want to happen to us what happened to WoW and a couple of other services where in the first week there were queues trying to get on to the servers, the entire service crashed – we don’t want that to happen. So we need to nail and make sure that it’s up 24/7 and it’s high quality.

Not earth shattering news, EA obviously does’t want the blogosphere erupting about servers being down or hour long login queues on the first few days of launch, so they are preparing as they should be. With beta starting this Friday and running until October, I’m going to put my money on a November launch date.

Phase one of The Secret World’s beta signup is currently underway and now more information has been revealed about phase two. The second phase will introduce a web-based community game where players will have to perform various actions on a global map in order to expand the influence of their secret society and climb within their ranks. As your rank climbs you unlock exclusive in-game items such as weapons and clothing, unique achievements and if you climb high enough, you’ll guaranteed yourself beta access. Other rewards and prizes are available as well such as the chance to visit the Funcom studio and even get your name featured in the game world.

Only one activity has been revealed so far and a pretty lame one at that, where players will have to recruit friends from Facebook to signup to beta. Hopefully the other games are a lot better.

Today at PAX Prime Bioware officially announced that beta test weekends would begin on Sept 2nd as everyone had previously assumed it would.

Access to the beta weekend events is not dependent on whether or not your pre-ordered the game, so everyone has a chance.  So if you still haven’t signed up you can do so from the Star Wars: The Old Republic website. Good luck to everyone.

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.

Bioware announced the details of their Guild Testing program for their upcoming MMORPG, Star Wars: The Old Republic. The programs allows entire guilds to be considered for the Game Testing Program, which is already underway with a few select guilds, however more guilds will be invited in the coming weeks.

If you want to join, make sure your guild has at least 10 registered members to be considered for Guild Testing.  Guilds are then selected at random to participate.  Currently European guilds are not eligible as the EU Guild Testing program has not yet begun, but will soon.

For more information about the SWTOR Guild Testing Program, then head over to the official forum post.