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After the continued struggles of E3 this year, it looks like another IDG-based games conference will have its own troubles. BigDownload reports that most major game manufacturers are skipping E For All, in part due to their focus on the upcoming Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) and BlizzCon (which will be televised). E for All will have major presentations by Microsoft and EA, but you'll have to go to PAX to see events and exhibits from other big publishers; for example, the playable Jumpgate Evolution demo, the Guild Wars tournament, or the Omegathon. The Seattle Times ran a story about Penny Arcade's creators and how PAX came into existence. Further competition for E For All is coming from the Tokyo Game Show, which runs in the beginning of October.

An anonymous reader writes "The Guild Wiki, an extremely popular fan-made wiki for documenting the Masssively Multiplayer game Guild Wars, was originally supported by donations, then later advertisements — supposedly just enough to break even. Just the past week, the owner of the domain name surprised this wiki community by revealing that he had sold the domain name, the database, and his services to Wikia, a commercial entity that intends to profit from Guild Wiki's content. The catch? Much of Guild Wiki's content falls under Creative Commons by-nc-sa license, which denies the commercial use of licensed material. Arena.net created their own community run wiki to serve as the in-game help system, because they didn't think they could use the material on Guild Wiki commercially. If Wikia continues to serve ads over Guild Wiki's content, how can the thousands of contributors to the site stop them without going to the expense/trouble of hiring attorneys (or the crude path of mass vandalism)? If it turns out the site owner has been making a profit all along from ads, what's the remedy?"

katalin writes "Arenanet, makers of the Guild Wars Massive game, have announced the first 'true' expansion pack to the game - Eye of the North. Next year will also see the beginning of a Beta test for a true sequel to the original Guild Wars. The new game will be substantially different from the current offering, with many elements similar to a more traditional fantasy Massively Multiplayer game. It still, however, will not require a monthly fee to play."

It's the last day of the first month of 2006, and already there are plenty of new things brewing on the Massive front. World of Warcraft's community is abuzz with news of the Raid content Jeff Kaplan mentioned over the weekend, and details on the 1.10 patch, which is to feature priest updates and weather cycles. City of Villains has big changes a-coming as well, with content for levels 40 to 50 going in, as well as new zones and a new mission type. The Mayhem missions sound like they're finally living up to the promise of 'being a villain'. The EQ2 server combines are the least of the changes occurring at SOE. Chris Kramer did an interview with GamerGod about some of the sweeping changes inc, touching on the free Planetside scheme and mentioning the Sony Station blog, which so far just has an intro from John Smedley. More romantically, FFXI is rolling out information on its Valentine's Day event. Valentione's day is the chocolate and hearts holiday as only Moogles could imagine it. It's fun to play for love, but also fun to play to crush. Guild War's world championships are taking place in about two weeks, with the first place purse weighing in at $50,000. Vanguard's own brand of hardcore lost a little bit of mystery this week with the release of a features list. Finally. Even though you can't win big bucks for playing them, Eve and Ultima Online continue to please their players with updates and releases. Eve's Creative Director spoke with OGaming about plans for outer space in 2006, and UO will see a new player tour and seasonal spring items. It's a good spring for Massive gaming. Update: 01/31 20:30 GMT by Z : I knew I would miss one. A reader wrote in to mention that Anarchy Online is gearing up for some great new stuff in the 16.2 patch, as well as in the upcoming expansion Lost Eden.

SnoopJeDi writes "ArenaNet has announced a Global Free-For-All PvP Weekend for this weekend. The event is designed to give the public a taste of the new chapter in the series: Guild Wars: Factions. Current players can access the new content from their accounts, and people who don't own the game can use one of the keys to create and activate a new account exclusively for the demo. The announced new features include two new classes(the Assassin and Ritualist), the new PvP Battle Isles, and a whole new continent named Cantha."

SnoopJeDi writes "ArenaNet has announced a Global Free-For-All PvP Weekend for this weekend. The event is designed to give the public a taste of the new chapter in the series: Guild Wars: Factions. Current players can access the new content from their accounts, and people who don't own the game can use one of the keys to create and activate a new account exclusively for the demo. The announced new features include two new classes(the Assassin and Ritualist), the new PvP Battle Isles, and a whole new continent named Cantha."

Holidays are always interesting times of the year in MMOGs, as development teams gear up for live events that change the face of the typical worlds we play in. Everquest 2's Holiday is in full swing, with the Frostfell event. Aggro me has a review for the curious. Planetside is featuring Holiday headgear, and Ultima Online offers up goodie packs with trees and presents. Azeroth's Feast of the Winter Veil has snowballs, lost reindeer, and once again has players selling cookies for outrageous prices on the Auction House. Ahh...the holiday spirit. City of Heroes/City of Villains is going all out this year (possibly to make up for the lack of a Halloween event this year). Heroes and Villains both have their own version of the event, with a mysterious Gamester entering the arena for some general holiday mischief. Finally, Final Fantasy XI not only has the Traditional Starlight Celebration, thanks to the Moogles, but just had a massive patch that's (as always) causing some stir in the player community. Happy New Year to all, be you Carebears, Gankers, or Forum Trolls! Update: 12/27 20:31 GMT by Z : Some users pointed out that I neglected to mention Red Moon Rising, Eve's new expansion, and the Guild Wars Holiday event. I promise, folks, it has nothing to do with malice. Some game events just catch my eye more readily than others, so thanks for keeping things Holiday cheery!

Halloween is a great nerd holiday, and it extends into Massively Multiplayer Game space. Everquest Live is offering up a series of events from the Kithicor Forest to the Hafling village of Rivervale. EQ2 has trick or treating in the two major cities, as well as smaller quests elsewhere. World of Warcraft players can also trick or treat with Innkeepers to honor the holiday of Hallow's End. Fashion seems to be the primary motivator in Anarchy Online's holiday event, which allows you the chance to snag Halloween themed t-shirts. Guild Wars has the winners from a Halloween art contest, as well as some theming in-game. Finally, Final Fantasy XI's always terrific seasonal events continue with The Harvest Festival. FFXI and World of Warcraft specifically allows you the opportunity to dress your character as various monsters and characters. My priest made a great pirate. Arr!

-pms-mistletoe writes "Hot on the heels of World of Warcraft's breaking the 4 million subscriber mark, Guild Wars has also reached a big milestone with over 1 million users. The differences and similarities between the two games are marked, especially given Guild Wars' lack of traditional sharding and no monthly fee. Are these large numbers of players signals that the popularity of MMORPGs is growing? Or are the same people playing both games?"

This summer it seems like Massive games are the only good news going, and this week has been busy. R. Spencer writes "1UP explores MMO addiction and, in true confessional style, opens the floor to heavy users and recovered junkies. It's especially interesting how much the mechanisms of MMO addiction have in common with other forms of addiction. The primary source of addiction nowadays seems to be World of Warcraft. If you're jonesing right now, you might want to check out this Guide to the Creation of the Scarlet Monastery on the official site. Additionally, Mogg writes "For new players, GamerGod has a up part one of a guide to the game World of Warcraft." This is Tobold's first writerly foray at the new site. Luck to him. For something a little different, 1up explores the world of Sociolotron...a Sex MMOG. Speaking of sex, SOE has been busy lately. The end to the Quest for Antonia search is almost here. They've put up new details on future EQ2 content, and announced a dramatic downsizing of The Matrix Online. See, when no one plays, you don't need as many servers. The new content mob is rearing his head all over with Secrets of the Syren in the works on Star Wars Galaxies, CoH Issue 5 coming up soon, and screenshots from the next Guild Wars update available. MMORPG.com continues to put out interesting editorials, with a look at the stories in Massive Games. Finally, the highly respectable Nick Yee has published a new edition of The Daedalus Project. The seminal source of MMOG statistics on the web has articles on participation in games at the level cap, introductions to the genre, and the stress of loot. As always, participation in the survey helps ensure future issues have good data.

NCSoft's newest edition to their ever expanding stable of games, Guild Wars, has launched in North America and Europe. From what I saw while in-game things seem to be working well from a technical standpoint. Commentary from the player base is already available from the fine souls at f13.net and Grimwell.com. More specific commentary comes from AFKGamer, who has commentary about the title a few days ahead of time, and on day one of play.

The folks over at ArenaNet are throwing the Final Pre-Release Beta Weekend Event. It's specifically aimed at folks who have preordered the game. If you're in, you can download the client and get into the game world early. From the article: "This BWE might be called our polishing event. Aside from the brand new maps that are being presented in their newer form, and which we know might need a bit more refinement, we're moving in on release (just 14 days and counting!) and we'd really like things to be just perfect on April 28th."

The folks over at ArenaNet are throwing the Final Pre-Release Beta Weekend Event. It's specifically aimed at folks who have preordered the game. If you're in, you can download the client and get into the game world early. From the article: "This BWE might be called our polishing event. Aside from the brand new maps that are being presented in their newer form, and which we know might need a bit more refinement, we're moving in on release (just 14 days and counting!) and we'd really like things to be just perfect on April 28th."

The folks over at ArenaNet are throwing the Final Pre-Release Beta Weekend Event. It's specifically aimed at folks who have preordered the game. If you're in, you can download the client and get into the game world early. From the article: "This BWE might be called our polishing event. Aside from the brand new maps that are being presented in their newer form, and which we know might need a bit more refinement, we're moving in on release (just 14 days and counting!) and we'd really like things to be just perfect on April 28th."

If you didn't get enough Guild Wars last month TunaSub2 wrote in to mention that "Guild Wars is getting ready to beta test again on December 4th." You can download the client here, and if you're interested in some softball questions to the design staff Filefront has you covered.

If you didn't get enough Guild Wars last month TunaSub2 wrote in to mention that "Guild Wars is getting ready to beta test again on December 4th." You can download the client here, and if you're interested in some softball questions to the design staff Filefront has you covered.

Beginning this weekend is another chance for prospective players to check out Guild Wars, the upcoming free MMOG by ArenaNet and NCSoft. If you're interested you can download the client in preparation for this Friday's event kickoff. Gamerfeed has some details on what to expect in the preview, while Gamespy has details from the first preview and an update since then. Finally, reader Detritus wrote in to tell us about two Stratics guides to prepare you for the event, one on Player vs. Player strategy and the other on Player vs. Environment elements of the game.

Beginning this weekend is another chance for prospective players to check out Guild Wars, the upcoming free MMOG by ArenaNet and NCSoft. If you're interested you can download the client in preparation for this Friday's event kickoff. Gamerfeed has some details on what to expect in the preview, while Gamespy has details from the first preview and an update since then. Finally, reader Detritus wrote in to tell us about two Stratics guides to prepare you for the event, one on Player vs. Player strategy and the other on Player vs. Environment elements of the game.

Thanks to GameGossip for its story discussing Korea-originating MMO firm NCSoft's financial results for the first half of 2004. Along with an "operating profit [of] $23 million", specific sales/subscription numbers were announced, a rarity in the MMO world, as the company "reported that Lineage II and City Of Heroes are both doing well, with sales as of the end of June at 86,000 units (Lineage II) and 190,000 units (City Of Heroes) respectively. Meanwhile, as far as active players are concerned, NCsoft reported that Lineage II and [the soon to be cape-friendly] City Of Heroes have 76,000 and 170,000 active players respectively." However, delays to NCSoft's forthcoming titles were also announced, since "Guild Wars has been pushed from Q4 2004 to the first-half of 2005. Meanwhile, [recently re-organized Richard Garriott title] Tabula Rasa has fallen back from Q4 2004 to the second-half of 2005."

Thanks to GameSpot for its hands-on impressions of ArenaNet/NCSoft's online PC RPG, Guild Wars, a subscription-free title that's previously received positive press. The preview explains that "the game relies on a skill-based system that's reminiscent of the card game Magic: The Gathering. You can collect and earn a wide variety of powerful skills and abilities, but... you'll be allowed to select only eight of them to take into battle", meaning that "a relatively new player will have a chance against seasoned veterans." It's also noted: "One of the most surprising aspects of Guild Wars is that the entire game will download to your computer while you play it", with only a "small executable program, about 90 kilobytes in size" needed - this is shown by the official download page for the E3 For Everyone alpha demo event, explained thus: "From May 12 through 14, while Guild Wars is being demonstrated on the E3 show floor, players from around the world will be able to play the same experience over the Internet."

Thanks to InsertCredit for pointing to a 4Gamer.net story including pictures of Coca-Cola cans featuring characters from PC MMORPG Lineage II. The promotion, due to start in South Korea next week, shows how relatively mainstream Lineage 2 and its prequel have become in that country, with a previous story noting "in [Lineage 2's] first five days in release, publisher NCsoft has tallied more than 130,000 paid users." The original Lineage's success in Asia, with "more than three million subscribers and more than three hundred thousand concurrent users", has enabled the company to expand into the U.S., where they are funding Richard Garriott's mysterious new MMO Tabula Rasa (of which there's previously unseen concept art available), as well as the superhero MMO title City Of Heroes and non-subscription MMO Guild Wars. The official Lineage II FAQ notes that "development on a North American version of the game is nearing beta testing stage", and the Unreal-engine title is likely to launch some time early in 2004.