Courtesy of Broken Toys, yet another take on RMT:

“Live Gamer enables a complete marketplace solution for the player-to-player trading of virtual items.”

Yes, right, we’ve heard it all before. You are selling gold, right? [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

A World of Warcraft player spotted some interesting openings on Blizzard’s Job Opportunities page : Lead 3D Character and Environment Artists “for a team focused on next-generation massively multiplayer online games”. His post on the WoW forums gathered immediate speculation and a surprisingly rapid response from Drysc, the World of Warcraft community manager:

No, it is an unannounced Next-Gen MMO.

And that doesn’t mean an expansion for World of Warcraft either.

Speculation is now rampant : what does Next-Gen MMO mean and what world will this game be set in. Starcraft 2 releases next year, so the timing could be right for a Starcraft MMORPG to follow it up a few years later. With a science fiction setting and a story line of galactic war, Starcraft would offer a very different flavor from the Warcraft world whilst allowing for different races and planets to be inhabited for a similar styled PvP aspect of the game.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

EVE Online users are being told not to reboot their machines if they have installed the “Trinity” update. The update actually removes C:\BOOT.INI from Windows XP machines, making the system unbootable.

EVE Online’s website states [More...]

Posted by Sixes on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

If you’ve still got an active City of Heroes subscription, you may want to take a look at Issue 11: A Stitch in Time. This is a free expansion which allows heroes to “flashback” to story arcs that they may have missed.

Pirates of the Burning Sea have lifted their NDA and encouraged beta testers to discuss their experiences of the game. The open beta has begun and apparently North American players can download and play as of November 7. Hopefully you can just sign up anyway, without some sort of annoying process of proving where you play from. So far SOE have avoided forcing players into separate servers and update schedules but the specific details for Europe and Australia have not yet been released which is worrying.

Scott Jennings slates G4 for loving WoW to excess. There are other games out there doing just fine, thanks!

EQ2Flames claims that Gallenite (Scott Hartsman) is leaving EQ2. LFG has since apologised for leaking the news which has yet to be confirmed.

Apparently Activision and Blizzard have merged to form “the world’s post profitable games business” according to the BBC. Can’t tell you what the official website says, I’m afraid. When I clicked through to read their press release, I was told that I had to accept the terms and conditions of the website in order to view the content. Um, this is PR? Once I stopped laughing hysterically, I pressed decline to get redirected to a 404 page. Nice start, guys.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

MMORPGG? Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Golf Game! Shot Online is a free online golf simulation with multi-player action and what rather intriguingly is referred to as “deep role-playing experience” with a strong community focus.

MMOhub have an interview with Christopher Yamauchi about their game [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

News wrap-up:

Star Trek has posted a Dev Blog where you can see just how odd some of the developers are. Take a look at http://www.startrekonline.com/devlog/ for the latest installment.

Mmo Hub updates their ongoing series Postcard from Beta with screenshots from Conan … scary looking stuff.

Pirates of the Burning Seas has been running a weekend stress test and although the content is under an NDA, initial feedback seems to be positive!

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Pirates of the Burning Sea have launched their second stress test weekend today. They are still taking sign ups on Fileplanet but the stress test ends on the 18th so you’ll have to be quick.

Apparently, the first weekend stress test was an exercise in frustration as the servers fell over within hours of starting the test, although the event was described as an unqualified success as the point was to keep pushing the servers until they broke. Hopefully they won’t break quite so quickly this time!

I suppose I’ll have to tear myself away from Kunark and have a peek.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.