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Online World News

Posted by Zonk on from the from-lands-far-far-away dept.

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.

9 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Who is Zonk? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    So, who is s/he?

    1. Re:Who is Zonk? by Zonk · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Up until I was hired on as the Slashdot Games editor, I was an editor over at MMORPGDot.com, where I was known as Dialogue. I also recently worked with simoniker on the Gaming Hacks book for O'Reilly Press. I do have a website, located at Randomdialogue.net. I don't keep my editor name linked to it because I'm not sure I could handle the traffic.

  2. Is it worth trying Anarcy Online? by carlivar · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I've always been curious about AO but I never have any desire to pay much for Massive Multiplayer games after Everquest. To me, it is ridiculous that they make you pay for the original game media and then ALSO charge you a monthly fee! And then keep grabbing for your money with expansion packs, ugh.

    So anyway, since AO is free for 14 days is it worth giving it a shot? I played EQ for a couple years, was addicted to it, got depressed by my "/played" and quit it one day. I've been playing a bit of Planetside lately because that's only $10 to download, but I doubt I'll keep it up much longer. It gets rather boring and repetitive. Is AO "EQ in space"? Or is it more interesting?

    Carl

    --
    Vote Libertarian
  3. Online gambling by idesofmarch · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That really makes me question when this kind of thing is going to run afoul of U.S. gaming laws. Ultimately, if it can be shown that virtual currency has quantifiable value and and exchange rate with real world currency, would this not constitute real gambling? I am aware that Lineage may not be hosted in the U.S., but many online games are. Any opinions from lawyers or others who may be knowledgable?

    1. Re:Online gambling by IKnwThePiecesFt · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Except in game currency could never be found to have an exchange rate with real life currency, since most games list such things as against the TOS

  4. World of Warcraft is by far the best MMORPG. by supervillain · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I expect many people to drop whatever they are playing to switchover. I know people that cancled their five year old everqust accounts after playing WoW for an hour.

  5. What about Vendetta Online? by tjwhaynes · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If space MMORGs are your thing, you might consider checking out Vendetta online, which is currently in Beta testing and features Windows, Linux and Mac clients.

    This is the same Vendetta that had been alpha testing for ages, looked like it wasn't going to happen, got all but abandoned and yet somewhere from the ashes the developers have pulled out the stops and built a mission-based, group-orientated space fighting and trading MMORG. So far so good and if you see "Nexus 6" knocking around, give me a couple of shots across the bows and say hello.

    Cheers,
    Toby Haynes

    --
    Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
  6. Guild Wars by jlefeld · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Guild Wars is the next mmo i'm going to get in to. It has mmo features but looks like it will remove the tedious parts from mmos. Plus there is no monthly charge. But out of the current mmo's I think WoW looks the coolest. I played it till level 4 and I was impressed about how cool the early quests were.

    www.guildwars.com

  7. Planetside news. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Several weeks ago there was a major shake-up in the Planetside universe - the story was that the Ancients (the alien race known as the Vanu) briefly returned, activating technology that displaced the landscape. This was, of course, just cover for the developers to delete one of the maps (which sucked and was the least-liked) and add three completely new maps to the game instead.

    This laid the groundwork for the series of additions coming this month to owners of the Core Combat expansion pack - a whole new class of vehicles. Battle Frame Robotics (BFRs). Yes, giant robots - which will make for the coolest and most epic battles yet. (You can still kill and be killed by BFRs if you don't own the expansion pack, you just can't pilot them or visit the regions required to obtain them).

    To coincide with the release of the upgrades, a brand-new bundle, Aftershock will be released at retail - which includes the base game and the previous expansion pack, Core Combat. Additionally - the price of the expansion pack has been dropped to $9.99 for existing subscribers.

    (not a developer, just a rabid fan who's been playing this game since release over a year ago. Any and all additions to this marvelous game are welcome, but the community (and me!) wants SOE to forget this Everquest crap and start making Planetside 2 RIGHT NOW, dammit.)