All Posts by Szark

12 images have been uploaded to our Age of Conan: Hyborean Adventures screenshot gallery.

To view the full size images, and to see the rest of the new screens, visit our gallery here.

Xfire has released their latest gaming statistics from their online gaming community, including a list of the top 10 MMOs. World of Warcraft claims the number one position, but the rest of the top ten still holds a few surprises.

Xfire - 8 million strong online gaming community - released today a new installment of online game play statistics - "Xstatics." The latest update adds stats from April 2007 through August 2007, along with several brand new Bonus Stats. All told, Xfire presents a total of 21 months of data, summarizing more than 120,000 man-years of game play. The latest release of "Xstatics" is available now and can be viewed at www.xfire.com/xstatics

"Xfire is continuing to provide the video game industry with up to date, authentic online game play statistics across more than 900 PC games," said Frederic Descamps, senior director of marketing for Xfire. "Xfire is the only company that can compile actual online game play data from a large sample size of more than 8 million gamers and so many games."

Below is just a sample of the fascinating findings from the latest "Xstatics" report:

• One of the bonus stats found in the latest iteration of "Xstatics" focuses on the game play data for the top 5 FPS games over the past year, including the rise of Call of Duty 2, which over the year has experienced a 95% increase in game play activity on Xfire
• Free-to-play (F2P) Korean games, such as Silkroad Online and War Rock, hold six of the top 20 game rankings as well as five of the top ten MMORPGS and two of the top ten FPS games
• A new feature has been added to the newest "Xstatics" showing how games have changed rank from the previous month in the different genres
• In the RTS genre Xfire's support of the World in Conflict beta revealed anticipation for the title as it leapt straight into position three of all RTS games, just barely missing the number two spot

Get all the details here.

The Vanguard official site has been updated with a developer profile on Game Designer Silas Morse.

Getting to Know the Vanguard Team: An interview with Silas Morse

It's my pleasure to introduce to you, a name that's already familiar to many on the forums, Silas "Cylus" Morse, Game Designer for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Silas is a true fan of the game he works on. Plucked from the population of players to become a designer, he shelved the possible life as a distinguished doctor to work on his favorite MMO. In this interview, you'll learn a little bit about where his passion from gaming comes from, as well as his loathing of Gnomes.

How long have you been playing MMOs, and which have you played?

Hrmm, I started EQ1 the day of release, played it for about 5 years before putting it down. I then went on to play EQ2 for a few months. From there I went into the Vanguard beta and achieved level 50 before I was hired onto the team.

I hope you put that on your resume. What areas of Vanguard are you most proud of? Are there any areas within the game that you helped create that haven't really been explored yet?

Ancient Port Warehouse is probably my baby. I didn't work much with the designers when it came to the actual content, but I was heavily involved with the current design and layout of the dungeon.

Read more about Silas Morse here.

The Dungeons and Dragons official site has been updated with a spotlight on bags, an essential item for any successful adventurer.

Is your backpack overflowing with all the little random things the denizens of Stormreach have asked you for? Are you beginning to think that gems are not really shiny? When you see an executioner beetle, do you want to step on it instead of capturing it for Mantakhan? Do you have kobold prayer beads falling out of your backpack? The top minds of Stormreach have been toiling day and night to relieve adventurers of their overflowing packs of gems and collectibles.

What did Stormreach's finest minds come up with? Bags! Bags that can be put inside of backpacks! These bags have amazing organizational qualities! The Stormreach Tailors Union bring you two types of bags, one for collectibles and one for gems.

Adventurers like shiny things, and what shines more then gems? So, why are so many gems left lying on the sewer floors? No more! Gems can now be placed into gem bags and then sold to vendors in a snap by telling vendors to go ahead and take all the gems they can find in player's packs, including their new gem bags. Gem bags are available in three sizes and each back only takes up one space in your backpack!

Read more about bags here.

The Chronicles of Spellborn official site has been updated with their weekly tech journal. This week Sebastiano Mandala spins an amusing tale about the life of a Graphic Coder.

[Tech Journal] A Graphic Coder's tale

By Sebastiano Mandala

Finally, after one year and something I have the opportunity to prove my existence on this project! Not a simple line written somewhere in the credits, not a picture published about the only active poor Italian working on the project. So here I am, Sebastiano Mandala, Graphic Coder for The Chronicles of Spellborn.

For this entry, I've been suggested to talk about weather and coffee, because pizza and mandolino was too much of a cliché. But eventually I decided to write about my work here, even if my Sicilian English will be corrected by someone before you could read this.

Mainly, my mission is to give you the opportunity to play this game with a decent frame rate.

When I got hired,the cheering people here in the office told me that they were working with a not so new 3D engine only used to run indoor games with not more than 8 players or something like that. I thought: poor guy who is in charge of making a heavy outdoor level based system in a MMO environment working on such an engine. Well, that poor guy was eventually me.

Read the entire article here.

Game Update #38 for EverQuest II went live today and the folks at SOE have posted the update notes on the EQ2 official site.

Highlights

• Rumors have it that Bristlebane has returned. Is this just another joke, or has another deity returned to Norrath?
• The dual wield designation has been removed and replaced with a system that will allow for more variety.
• There is a new Appearance tab in the Inventory window. Items worn here will not convey benefits, but will override what people see on your character.
• The Estate of Unrest is now a persistent instance.

Bristlebane Returns

Do you consider yourself a practitioner of pranks, a student of the silly, or even a fan of the funny? Does the idea of pulling a practical joke over on someone sound like your idea of a good time? If so, you might make an excellent follower of Fizzlethorpe Bristlebane, the Grand Prankster. Recently scores of puckish jesters, fanciful bards and quick-witted thieves have all been spreading rumors about the imminent return of their favorite Sire of Shenanigans.

If Bristlebane has truly arrived and resumed his place aside the other gods who have also returned to Norrath, why has he waited until now? What sort of mischievous plans does the Royal Trickster have in store for his faithful followers? What about the other gods who have yet to reveal themselves since their departure? The answers to these questions are undoubtedly wrapped within a riddle only Bristlebane himself can solve.

Read the full notes here.

"Make Love, Not Warcraft," the episode of South Park which partially takes place in World of Warcraft, and features scenes from WoW has won an Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour). Congratulations guys.

Congrats to the South Park team on their well-deserved Emmy win! 'Make Love, Not Warcraft,' the episode featuring the characters wielding the Sword of a Thousand Truths to defeat a menace inside World of Warcraft, picked up the Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming Less Than One Hour). This was the team's sixth nomination and second win.

Read more about the win here.

The Lord of the Rings Online official site has been updated with another article in their Creatures of Middle Earth series. This time the focus is on the Hillmen of Rhudaur, who have once again fallen under the power of Angmar.

In the Third Age, the Hillmen seized power in Rhudaur and forged an alliance with the realm of Angmar. Twice they invaded Arnor, and during the second war the North Kingdom was destroyed. But their victory was short-lived. Eärnur, Prince of Gondor, and the Elves of Rivendell and Linden drove the Witch-king of Angmar and his armies out of the North, laying waste to all who served Angmar.

In the years that followed, the scattered remnants of the Hillmen gradually came together in the southwest barrens of Angmar. Many foreswore their old allegiance to the ruined and evil kingdom of Angmar and took up a nomadic existence, each tribe co-existing in relative peace with one another, living simple lives as hunters and shepherds . . . until the Ring was found and Sauron stirred once more. Through oppression and subversion, many of the clans have renewed their allegiance to Angmar and its Steward, Míaran.

In J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, little is said of the Hillmen of Rhudaur beyond that they fell under the shadow of the Witch-king and allied with Angmar against Arthedain and Cardolan. In The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, many Hillmen have renewed their allegiance to Angmar, while others are exploited by the Angmarim - the Steadfast in service to the Iron Crown of Angmar, newly returned to power in Carn Dûm. Aided by a Ranger of the North, a few of the Hillmen are determined to remain free of the yoke of Angmar, biding their time, awaiting the right moment to bring Carn Dûm down around the ears of their oppressors.

Read more here.

NCONY Enterprise has announced the completion of the closed beta for their upcoming 2d MMO, Pi Story. They also mention that the open beta will be starting soon.

Seoul, Korea, September 11, 2007 - After six days of closed beta testing, Pi Story (pistory.gamengame.com), the 2D action MMORPG developed by South Korean developer NCONY Enterprise, shut down its global service test server. Dates for the next beta phase have not been confirmed yet, but a notice will be posted on the Pi Story website when it becomes available.

Responses to this cute horizontal scrolling game were overwhelmingly positive, with players connecting from over 100 countries around the world, the server was filled to capacity during most of the thirteen hours of operation per day. During this six-day test, testers posted more than 300 threads with questions, ideas, and problems, and more than 60 screenshots to show off their achievements inside the game. Moreover, NCONY had a corner for GMs and developers to share with players the behind-the-scenes look at the making of Pi Story during the down-time.

Mary Min, marketing manager for NCONY Enterprise, said, "Honestly, we did not expect this great of a response and are greatly humbled and grateful for our players' support." She further added, "All the credit goes to our phenomenal GM team and developers, and most of all, our wonderful players. It has been a great experience to watch the community come together to support each other, with higher level players assisting other players and answering their questions. We are blessed to have such a great group of users in our game."

Read more about Pi Story here.

K2 Network has released information about the Questing System and the Transformation System in their upcoming Fantasy MMO, Red Stone.

IRVINE, Calif. September 10, 2007-- K2 Network, Inc. , an online game publisher, in partnership with Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and developer L & K Logic Korea Co. Ltd., is pleased to announce more in-depth details about its 2D Fantasy MMORPG, Red Stone. One of the many innovative and unique components within the soon-to-be-released Red Stone is its unique quest system, branching out over three distinct types of quests; Main, Title, and General.

Main Quest

The Main Quest starts when you begin the game and continues as you advance through the game on your search for fragments of the Red Stone. The Red Stone Main Quest line guides you on an adventure across the continent of Prandel, following rumors and cryptic hints about the location of this mysterious object, which is said to grant power and wealth to whoever possesses it.

Title Quests

Various NPCs in the game will send the player on Title Quests, and upon quest completion, will bestow certain Titles on the player. Titles come with benefits - for example, one could earn the title of Banker, which enabling bank access, or Master Monster Distinguisher (say that three times fast!), which allows you to see the types and levels of monsters your are fighting. The Red Stone Title Quests will teach your character useful abilities and beneficial skills.

General Quests

Consisting of standard NPCs asking for basic assistance, General Quests encourage you to explore the world of Prandel and gain experience completing tasks. Completing the Red Stone General Quests will not only provide your character with rewards such as items, experience and gold, but will add purpose and direction to your adventure!

Transformation System

Another pivotal feature of Red Stone is its transformation system, which effectively gives each player control over a character with two complimentary sets of abilities. Players can use these complimentary ability sets in tandem with each other, enacting devastating combos and deadly moves which would not be possible using just one aspect of your character.

For example, the Thief has a strong incapacitating ability called Ankle Trap, which stuns any enemy and leaves them defenseless. The Thief counterpart is the Monk, which has an array of devastating close combat moves, but lacks the ability to lock enemies down. Using the Ankle Trap ability from the Thief helps to negate this weakness, leaving the enemy unable to counter the Monk's attacks. Each character class has two forms that complement each other's strengths and weaknesses; mastering your transformations and the corresponding abilities is vital to maximizing each character's potential.

Read more about Red Stone here.

NCsoft CEO Robert Garriott has written an article describing the nature of NCsoft's partnership with Sony and their plans to create titles not only for the PC, but for the Playstation 3 and PSP. Unfortunately, no specific titles were named in the article.

One of the most exciting things that we have to talk about this year is our new relationship with Sony, a deal which frankly gives us an unprecedented opportunity to bring our online portfolio of games to a suite of highly popular console gaming systems, including the PlayStation 3. Many in the industry and the press have asked me why we have chosen this path, and what kind of games they can expect to see on their favorite console--not to mention when. Here I hope to provide some insight into this relationship and how it fits into the vision for our products in the coming years.

It has been one of our business strategies to bring customers to a catalog of games where the customer has the choice to play a variety of different products. However, we don't want to limit ourselves to the PC, especially while the console market continues to grow by leaps and bounds with every new generation...and console makers want to get into the online space. The ideal system would be an extremely capable, stable platform, with the best Internet connectivity and greatest freedom of web access and interaction available to the user. This combination of access, openness and ability to bring NCsoft to the console market is very attractive. In this case, we felt like Sony fit the bill. We like their vision of where they are going and we believe Sony complements our strategy moving forward (this is not to say we are going to stop developing on the PC, far from it).

Specifically, this relationship allows NCsoft to develop titles across all of Sony's console hardware platforms--the focus being on the PlayStation 3 and perhaps the PSP. This long-term relationship will allow us to start developing console products, as well as build our growing catalog beyond just massively multiplayer games for the PC.

I am sure you are all interested to know what we will be developing. Unfortunately, for now, I can’t tell you, as we’re still keeping that under wraps. We are hoping, but can’t promise, to have the first of our products available for the holiday season in 2008. Yes, it’s a bit of a short time frame. One thing is certain, however. We won’t just be porting our games over to the PS3. We want to make new products using our current, popular Intellectual Properties (IPs) that will take advantage of the console, specifically in terms of user interface, connectivity, and play styles. This tends to take a lot longer than a normal port. We are also looking at all sorts of new, original IPs that we can use for the console games we create. That process, however, will take two to three years at a minimum.

So where will these console games be developed? We currently follow a distributed model of development for the PC, and the same type of system will be in place for console game development. While we are exploring the idea of starting a new studio solely for console games, outside of Austin, we are also looking at specific projects that we may house in other studios. This includes our Austin offices or our other currently existing studios. Console game development won’t just be at one single location.

Finally, you may be curious about what kind of business models we plan on using. Currently our plan is to utilize all of our business models with our anticipated Sony products. There will be the traditional subscription models, micropayment systems and free-to-play games with membership options.

While I still cannot go into much detail, I hope to have provided you with a glimpse into our strategy and plans regarding our expansion into the console world. It is an exhilarating time for NCsoft, and in the future we hope to have more information for you regarding our upcoming console products.

Stay tuned! There’s more to come.

Robert Garriott, Chief Executive Officer

Read the full article here.

IGG has released an overview of the current edition of Voyage Century and the North American version of the game.

Since the birth of the Voyage Century (http://vc.igg.com), the first 3D nautical MMOPRG always brings surprise and novelty to its fans. Let us have a brief glance over the present edition and the coming edition in the North American market.

Way to the East

The first Voyage Century edition landed on North American market was named "Way to the East". In this edition, players could experience in person the tyranny of Ottoman Empire and hunt the treasure of the Mongolia Khan, which aims to make the players familiar with the game and have progress faster.

Siege War

In this edition, the siege war system was unveiled, providing 11 cities for all guilds to show off their military power and ability. The winning side is the master of a city, everything in the city is under their control

New Continent

The first city in the American Continent---Tortue, was opened in this edition, from then on, pirates had their own territory. With the birth of the Tortue, new skill and new tasks appeared such as Extorting Skill and Melon-cutting Skill. Further, players who choose to be a pirate will encounter much stronger enemies. The two newly added armadas--- Royal Frigate of General Cruz and Royal Frigate of General Charlie Will are tough opponents of the pirates.

Deathly Treasure

Regarding to the coming edition Deathly Treasure, the first expansion of Voyage Century was included. In this new edition, teamwork must to be highly emphasized, since the Boss of the expansion is undefeatable without skillful collaboration.

The well operated and planed 3 editions kicked off in the 8 months' time mark the maturity of Voyage Century. In Deathly Treasure, various skills, versatile and flexible gaming systems and the highlighted teamwork resemble the future of Voyage Century.

Read more about Voyage Century here.

The folks over at the Chronicles of Spellborn want to hear from you. They have started a thread on their forums asking for questions about skills, combos, and bodyslots for an upcoming Q&A.

Hello TCoS Community !

I'm sure you have already read on the latest Dev Journal Entries , and especially those dealing with Skills, Combos, and Bodyslots.

Well, very good idea, since we are opening this very thread for YOU Community Members to ask any questions that are relevant to the following topics:

SKILLS*/ COMBOS / BODYSLOTS**

This thread is going to stay open until Monday, September 17th, so it means you have a full week to post in this thread the questions you'd like to be answered.

After this week, our Gamedesign Team and CMs will pick up the best questions and will answer them !

Ask your questions here.

Virtrium has announced on the Horizons community forums that they have been unable to resolve lingering billing issues with EI. They have apologized to players, and have prepared a guide for players who need assistance resolving issues.

Well - word has come down on past subscriptions. We are not satisfied with the situation and disappointed that things turned out the way they did. At this point we can provide a definitive path for those who have been asking questions about what to do. Please be aware that because of the delicate nature of this situation, we're going to err on the side of caution (legally) when discussing this matter. We think we've laid out clearly what options are available for you as a consumer and will update this post if needed.

This does nothing to affect Horizons moving forward. It's taken a lot of time, energy and money to reach this point, and it's good that we can now move forward. In fact, we can stop putting energy into this issue and put that effort into Horizons.

We would like to apologize that despite great effort, we were unable to provide an alternative. Please take the time to read the following carefully and take the action that you feel most appropriate.

Get all the details here.

Recently, the team at MMORPG.com traveled to Austin, Texas to take part in the annual Austin Game Developers Conference. While there, they had the opportunity to talk to a number of different folks about their games. Rather than write about the experience, we have decided to bring the experience to you. Please enjoy this video interview!

Video Interview While in Austin for the Game Developers Conference, Managing Editor Jon Wood had the opportunity to sit down for a conversation with Jeff Anderson, the CEO of Turbine about their successful MMORPG, Lord of the Rings Online.

Watch the interview here.

Recently, the team at MMORPG.com traveled to Austin, Texas to take part in the annual Austin Game Developers Conference. While there, they had the opportunity to talk to a number of different folks about their games. Rather than write about the experience, we have decided to bring the experience to you. Please enjoy this video interview!