Online World News

Several tidbits of info for you today regarding developments in Online Worlds. Lineage II is going to be adding a gambling component. Players will be able to place bets on monster races or purchase lottery tickets. MMORPG.com has a story discussing the fact that the excellent crafting based game A Tale in the Desert now has a Mac Client. Players on Windows, Linux, and Mac can now experience the Second Telling. Anarchy Online is now available for free download. Prospective players can download the client and have 14 days to experience the game before they have to decide to take up the monthly fee or not. Starting next week FilePlanet will be giving away 20,000 Beta Slots for The Matrix Online. Speaking of Betas, the Dark Age of Camelot: Catacombs Beta application is now available. Congratulations also to Mythic Entertainment and DAoC, who is celebrating it's 3rd Anniversary this week. The Blizzard site has up a new Q&A about World of Warcraft. It sounds like some features of the game are going to slip to post-launch. Combined with the rapidly approaching Open Beta this would seem to confirm that the game will be launching within a month or two.

Comments

Anarchy Online in Linux

[RedneckNinja]

It is worth mentioning that you can play Anarchy Online in Linux using CVS Cedega:

AO Linux

Works great for me! I use Windowmaker and while playing full-screen, desktop switching still works without texture corruption (I get texture corruption switching desktops running in windowed mode).
--

Old News

[Anonymous Coward]

Gambling in MMORPGs has already been done for a while now. I know for a fact that Star Wars Galaxies has both slots and roulette, and I'm sure other games have similar gambling systems with in-game money. Whoever is posting this stuff really should do a little more research than believing whatever they read on the internet..

Re:Online gambling

[idesofmarch]

All the TOS could do is officially prohibit a player from selling in-game currency. However, there are many websites where players can do exactly this, and the game companies are powerless to stop this and, in some instances, may not want to, as it would decrease the popularity of that particular game. I think it can be established that despite the TOS, many in-game currencies have very real value.

Re:Don't know about you lot...

[Realistic_Dragon]

The New Adventurer's Domain, and there are open slots: 129.241.186.207:5121

It's an action-orientated PW with light RP and it's pretty huge now. Powerplaying is gently discouraged, but no one will bitch at you for having a fighter(10)/bard(1)/rdd(10) - unless you happen to be trying to use dev crit kukris :)

Re:Online gambling

[jericho4.0]

That TOS might not hold up, though. In the U.S. 'possesion is 9/10ths of the law'. If I belive I 'own' a piece a chainmail, say, and the game supports my 'ownership', than that chainmail might legally be mine, regardless of the TOS.

TOS or not, if I can sell my chainmail right now for $50.00, then it has value. As much as the Federal Reverve would like you to think otherwise, the value of currency will always be decided by supply and demmand.

This article is a very interesting look at the realities of the online gaming economy. It notes that per-capita wealth of EverQuest players is $2,266 (Real Cash $$), making it richer than China.