Mythos Official Website Now Live + Screenshots

Mythos is an upcoming hack n slash action MMORPG from Frogster. The game utilizes 3D graphics and a lovely, comic book esque art style. The game will be free to play and features all of the aspects of MMORPGs you’ve grown accustomed to like PvP battles and guilds.

There is also a beta scheduled for the game, which you can learn more about at its official website. The game will launch officially early next year. To learn more about Mythos and check out the new screens, hit the break.

New Aion Expansion Fly-Through – Gelkmaros

Last week we brought you the fly-through trailer for a zone on the Elyos side of things, from the upcoming Aion expansion, Assault on Balaurea. This week NCSoft is back with another trailer along those same lines. This time, however, it is showing off a predominently Asmodian zone, Gelkmaros. So, for those of you who like the arguably darker and lesser-played side of things, you might want to hit the jump to check out this week’s fly-through video.

Aion: Assault on Balaurea releases in just one week, on September 7, 2010. It’s a pretty sweet MMO, from my time with it, at least. In a way I want to go back, but I don’t have the heart to give up WoW….

Might & Magic Heroes Kingdoms Released

Yesterday, Ubisoft officially launched its first MMO, Might & Magic Heroes Kingdoms. The game is free to play and requires no install – it runs right in your browser. There are four factions to choose from: Necropolis, Haven, Inferno, and Academy, each with different strengths and weaknesses. The game universe progresses through a series of seasons, where each season ends once an alliance reaches the victory condition.

So if you love MMOs or you just have a lot of free time to kill, go to the game’s official website to try it out today.

Final Fantasy XIV NA Pre-release Trailer & Theme Song

Final Fantasy XIV comes out in about a month, and today Square-Enix released a pretty lengthy trailer for the title. Along with the awesomely gorgeous cut scenes, they’ve thrown in a few shots of actual game play, as well as the first time the English theme song has been heard. The theme song – “Answers” – is performed by award-winning singer Susan Calloway. She apparently fell into the good graces of Nobuo Uematsu, who is the musical composer for the game (and for many past Final Fantasy titles), appearing with him on the “Distant World” tours.

Of special note is that, if you purchase the collector’s edition of the game, which itself got its own trailer a couple days ago, you’ll be able to get early access to play, starting September 22, 2010. Final Fantasy XIV officially releases for the PC only on September 30, 2010, with a PlayStation 3 releases coming up in the early part of next year. Hit the jump to check out the trailer. Your eyes will thank you.

Thank You Square Enix, FFXIV Fatigue System Rocks

Many people on the internet have been rage-writing lately about a little-understood feature for Final Fantasy XIV called the fatigue system. While Square Enix may be vague, misleading, and sometimes even downright confusing while explaining how this system works, the basics are plain to see. The amount of experience a player can gain will be limited by the fatigue system. Now before we get into the convoluted details, let’s talk about some reasons why this is not necessarily a bad thing. I can understand some people might not like this proposition, especially as one who has played MMO-RPGs for days on end at times without break. However, I believe this concept is rock solid even if the implementation may be a little bit risqué. Just think about being able to play an MMO without the obligation of ‘no-life’ing’ whenever you can just to keep up with the progress of your friends (and enemies). A higher level of balance than seen in previous MMO-RPGs will be achieved with this system.

Aion: Assault on Balaurea New Zone Fly-Through Trailer

Today NCSoft released a new trailer of their upcoming Assault on Balaurea expansion for Aion, where they are nice enough to do a fly-through of one of the new zones, Inggison. This zone is outside of Atreia, where the entire game takes place up until this point. In fact, the lands of Atreia are on the interior of the planet. Inggison, however, is on the exterior, so we’ll see all sorts of different wildlife, monsters and all sorts of nifty things. Perhaps it’ll be like the difference between Azeroth and Outland, right? Oh, wait, sorry…I brought World of Warcraft into this post, my bad.

Hit the jump to check out the fly-through trailer. Assault on Balaurea is set to release on September 7, 2010, so just a couple short weeks from now.

Final Fantasy XIV’s Collector’s Edition Gets its Own Trailer

In a little over a month, those who are looking forward to Square-Enix’s latest MMO effort will be deeply rewarded. This is especially so for those of you looking to pick up the collector’s edition of FFXIV, which includes a whole lot of awesome goodies. In fact, this collector’s edition is so special that it was given its very own trailer. Hit the jump to check it out. It’s pretty short, but it gives another overview of what is in the collector’s edition.

Allods Online Takes Fan Feedback and Releases Region-Specific Patch

MMORPG players are very vocal. Just take a jaunt over to the sesspool that is the World of Warcraft forums. Or, maybe this just goes for gamers in general. Either way, if there is something they don’t like about their preferred game, they make it known. Instead of waiting for that to happen, the team behind the free-to-play MMO Allods Online went out and contacted players and guilds to find out exactly what changes should be made to the game they all enjoy.

After the feedback was received, they compiled a list of changes and have put them live in a region-specific patch, only affecting North American and European servers. The patch includes a lot of things that – surprise, surprise – make the game less of a pain in the groin. Here’s a list of the major changes in patch 1.1.0:

• The Astral is being revamped! Astral isles will be much easier to find, astral Demons will not be as difficult, and the quantity of Astral drops will increase.
• More tradable items! The Rough Dragon Hide Backpack and Small Deposit Box will now be tradable.
• More daily quests! A new daily quest will allow players to receive the Incense blessing and another daily quest will give players an opportunity to earn an XP Scroll (Scroll of Knowledge).
• Extended item lifespan! The expiration date on items acquired from the Item Shop will be increased to 30 days.

Also mentioned in the press release is that they are hard at work on another major content patch making its way to you this fall.

GamesCom 2010: Cause for Final Fantasy XIV PS3 Holdup Re-iterated

The answer is relatively simple. “Memory Restrictions” were the words uttered by Hiromichi Tanaka, producer, at Gamescom last week. According to Vg247, Tanaka said, through a translator:

“The main reason was the memory, On the PC, they have enormous memory. For PS3, there’s a restriction. They are adjusting the memory size and customizing it; it took longer then we were expecting. But we’re really working hard to bring it out as soon as possible.”

Tanaka was then asked whether this memory limitation should be attributed to the Blu-ray disc or the PS3’s HDD, to which Tanaka responded “memory” and with no help from his translator. So much for nailing down the specifics.

Final Fantasy XIV launches September 30th for the PC. The PS3 version will be available at sometime in March of 2011. An open beta for the game will begin next month.

FFXIV Open Beta Coming in September

Final Fantasy XIV, Square-Enix’s latest effort in the MMORPG genre, has been in a closed beta for the last few months. The launch date of September 30, 2010 is quickly approaching, so they announced today that the closed beta phase will be ending on August 25th (Wednesday), and an open beta will be starting in early September. Why is this significant, you ask? Because you practically had to give away your firstborn child to the RPG gods at Square-Enix to get into the closed beta. Opening that up means that just about anyone who wants to can try the game out in a beta format before it ships.

The title is very graphically intense, so perhaps you might want to try it out just to see if your rig can run it. Or, maybe you’re not quite sure about your purchase yet because of some game mechanics questions. Needless to say, you should get the chance to “try before you buy” when the open beta phase begins.

Personal Responsibility and MMORPGs

Life is full of responsibilities – from making good grades in school, to driving a car, to having bills to pay and a family to support. Making good decisions and learning from our mistakes is seemingly essential in the day to day activities of life. If you don’t make the right decisions, you will likely suffer the consequences – getting in an accident where people are injured or worse, divorce or having your utilities shut off for lack of payment.

Everyone is, for all intents and purposes, held to the same standards of personal responsibility and accountability in real life. But, what about the virtual world – the worlds so many people in today’s culture tend to slink away to in order to avoid the problems and pressures of that real life, even if for only a few fleeting moments? Is that same personal accountability and responsibility the norm in these realms, or the exception to the rule?

Lord of the Rings Online’s Free-to-Play Service Gets a Release Date

I played The Lord of the Rings Online for a bit, off and on between breaks from World of Warcraft. The game is a masterfully crafted vision of Tolkein’s vast world, and definitely a great MMORPG on top of all that. We’ve known for a while that Turbine was going to take the game in a free-to-play direction, and that service has been in beta testing for the past few months.

It was just announced today that the game will be out of beta and go into full, live free-to-play mode starting September 10, 2010. Even starting now you can no longer sign up for the game the way it used to be. What are the benefits and differences here? We’ll let Turbine run those down for you, as the list below is taken from the official announcement.