The blood and rune magic that assassins use is forbidden by most societies. Practicing it is punishable by anything from exile to execution. This is of little concern to Blood Assassins, who believe their abilities put them above society.

Assassin armor is flashy and has potent runic woven throughout it that enhances its effectiveness. Only those who have learned the tenets of blood and rune magic can wear it, so Blood Assassins wear it to mark themselves, daring others to defy them.

Much like Dryad Nature Mages are protectors of the wild jungles and natural spaces of Aranna, Dwarven Fists of Stone are protectors of the mountainous natural spaces of western Aranna. They protect travelers moving through their lands and battle hostile creatures who would invade or despoil their homes. Their armor is strong, but flexible, and is equipped with many types of supplies and tools. Its enchantments increase its durability, but prevent anyone other than a Fist of Stone from using it properly.

Successfully combining two different genres into one game is a steep challenge for any developer. We’ve seen plenty of games that tried to combine elements of various genres only to come up with a game that felt superficial and incomplete on any front. Spellforce 2 Shadow Wars does a great job of combining RPG and RTS elements into a competent, deep, enjoyable experience that fans of RTS and RPG games should definitely check out.

And bugs? A whole summer camp's worth of them. Random crashes, creature counts that tally inaccurately end of battle, mangled missions easily snapped by innocently completing objectives out of order, heroes that can attack through walls, and multiplayer games that de-sync like clumsy lovers -- to call HOMM5 playable would be accurate, but enjoyable? No way, Jose -- not yet, anyway. Never mind a klutzy A.I. incapable of wielding area damage spells or retreating from battles, no option to quit from battles, improper widescreen support, ten inadequate skirmish maps (and no map editor), and incongruous info feeds when clicking on objects. Series fanatic or no, you'll want a comprehensive patch addressing most of these issues before picking this one up. It's simply too big a mess at this point.

Dreamfall The Longest Journey is an excellent adventure game. I do wish there were more challenging puzzles and less action and stealth sequences, but the story and characters are so intriguing and captivating that they overshadow the game’s few significant flaws. Obviously, the beautiful graphics and sound help a lot too. I strongly recommend this title to anyone that loves a solid character and plot driven adventure game.

The game is interesting, fun in spurts, has an excellent storyline, some cool mechanics and totally surprised me. I thought I was getting some lame dungeon crawler, and that is not what it is at all. However, right now I really want to finish it, but I find I'm having to force myself to play, which is never a good sign. This is a clear cut case of poor design decisions weighing down an excellent premise and storyline. Hopefully Meridian 4 can make better choices in their next title.

The game's very early right now, but it looks amazing. Irrational's using next-generation graphics and the Havok 3.0 engine to create a visually distinctive, immersive, interactive world that managed to creep me the hell out even at E3, which is about the worst environment possible to demonstrate any kind of horror game.

Bioshock has been slated to come out at some point next year for the PC and the Xbox 360. Unfortunately, you're going to have to wait just a little longer.

So what is offered to devoted players in The Burning Crusade? First and foremost on anyone's list would be the hundreds of hours of new gameplay in a completely new area for high-level characters. This begins with the opening of the Dark Portal from Azeroth to Outland, which will be similar to a world-event, but will not require that all players be in the same area to experience it. Although the details were sketchy at this point, Blizzard has stated that regardless of where you may happen to be on the world map when this occurs on your server, and regardless of your level, you will experience something akin to hell freezing over. Or the gates to hell opening up and unleashing monsters like you have never seen before.

Auto Assault is one of those games that immediately either impresses or alienates with its concept. It's a game where, outside of brief stints in town, the player's avatar is their vehicle -- which may be a little hard for some people to identify with, and develop an attachment to, the way they do with a humanoid persona. More importantly, though, it's a game where action is as vital as statistics, and it's the first MMORPG to incorporate physics as an actual necessity. A vehicle's handling and the player's reflexes are just as important as their level and the quality of their loot.

Ubisoft could also bid to acquire one or more of Infogrames' games development studios, Mr Bonnell said.

Mr Bonnell, who founded Infogrames 23 years ago, acknowledged that he had held talks with Elevation Partners, the US private equity group whose partners include rock star Bono. But Mr Bonnell said Elevation's proposals were "not compatible with our vision".

Infogrames, which owns a controlling 51 per cent stake in troubled US games maker Atari, was also considering ending Atari's Nasdaq quotation, he said.

"One of the options would be to re-focus the activities of each company on its core business," said Mr Bonnell. "Atari could become the development studio for the American market whilst Infogrames would be the international publisher."

WarCry: How did the first round of beta go for you guys? Any surprises come up, any major pitfalls, anything like that?

LoA:We feel that the first Closed Beta for The Legend of Ares went very well. We had over 24,000 people register with our site and distributed over 12,000 digital keys. On top of that, we had over 15,000 client downloads. All in all, things went pretty smoothly.

After a very impressive cutscene, players are dropped into a room with no direction as to what to do next. Thankfully, there just aren't many options -- here or any other part of the game -- so a little exploring always yields answers. I just wish the solutions were actually interesting. I wouldn't call this much of a puzzle game either. The few actual puzzles I found were akin to figuring out what a series of buttons did, then pressing them in the right order. The game's puzzles mainly consist of figuring out what to do next, and it is rarely obvious what that is. In one instance, I had visited all the locations in the game and seemingly exhausted everything. Little did I know that I had to revisit a location to activate a cutscene (flowers blossoming) after discovering a recipe. Of course, had I visited that location last, I might not have realized this was an activated cutscene, but I didn't and it took me a bit of re-exploring every environment to discover that missing bit of info.

Overall, the game is simple to figure out and jump into, but it’s hard to master and even more difficult to quit playing. There are literally tons of things that you can do and get into, and the game leaves it so open ended that you can play it multiple times without it ever being the same game twice. Add in the mini games, and little add-ons like playing out a prison sentence or a pilot-ranking system that allows you to hire Rangers ranked lower than you to act as your wingmen and you have a solid title that will offer tons of sci-fi enjoyment for a LONG time. While it may be a little slow for you die-hard action gamers, those of you who enjoy these strategic games and have the time to sit down and get wrapped up in it should definitely check it out.

Fear not our bearded friends. Not only is Might and Magic in safe hands, it has also been hit with the defibrillator and had a shot of adrenaline injected straight into its heart. The core gameplay, which was Heroes’ strength back in the days of number 3, hasn’t been messed with. The thinking behind the game seems to be “make it pretty, make it last longer than your average war and make sure that everyone recognises everything right away”. The new developers have certainly succeeded in achieving these goals, but at a price.

New characters arrive in one of two regions: humans and hobbits arrive in the general vicinity of the Shire and Breeland, whilst dwarves and elves enter the game in another area of the world. Each region is associated with an introductory quest arc, parts of which are shared by both races of that region. The first quest demonstrated to me takes place near the end of this introductory cycle.

A recurring character from earlier in the cycle, a non-player character ranger named Andlum, suffered a wound from a Morgul-blade earlier in the quest arc, and by this point has begun fall under the dominion of the Nazgûl. The quest is led by another NPC ranger (and 'led' is the operative word here - the ranger physically lead us through the instance), with the aim of rescuing Andlum before his transformation to a wraith becomes complete. Alas, we were not successful in this, and Andlum is last seen disappearing in the company of another recurring character of the evil persuasion: the Pale Dwarf.

Funcom, possibly aware of the failings of those other games, took a different tack. They decided to make their action-adventure game have almost no action or adventure elements whatsoever. I’d guess that of the 18 hours I spent playing the game, 15 of those hours consisted of me listening to characters talk to each other. As a result, Dreamfall, despite being a well-made game, is rather disconcerting to play.

FiringSquad: How did the idea for Fallen Earth come about?

Christophe Watkins: We decided right at the start to do something other than fantasy. After going through a list of other possible genres we all decided we liked a post apocalyptic setting more than any other. We all grew up with The Omega Man, Logan’s Run, and Planet of the Apes (I guess that dates us). Then of course Mad Max, Blade Runner, and a bunch of others all the way up to The Matrix and 28 Days Later. All great concepts with vivid imagery, but what we liked best is that they all hit close to home more than any other genre would. We wanted an RPG that could evoke real feelings of fear and suspense, of curiosity, commitment, and determination not because we force ourselves to think like an elf, but because the story and concepts could really be ours if we’re not careful.

As we explained in our numerous previews, HOMM:V (an acronym sounding nearer to a corpulent Yankee car than a game) is striving to stick to the formula at all costs. We can finally reveal that... yes, they've done it. They've made another turn-based M&M strategy game and it's a good example of the series. However, does that mean the series bears up to scrutiny in the modern day?

In another blast from the past, Funcom has issued a new retail patch for The Longest Journey, upgrading their acclaimed 3D adventure game to version 1.57. Word is this release "fixes a crash at the altar in chapter 7."

If you missed the chat last week where we tried to chat with Obsidian about NWN2, you're in luck! Due to a technical problem we're going to hold it this week on Wednesday, May 31st, 2006 at the same time, 6pm PST / 9pm EST / 1am GMT. Here's the connection info:

IRC server: chat.neverwinterconnections.com
Channel: #NWVAULT_NWC_CHAT
Date: Wednesday, May 31st
Time: 6pm PST / 9pm EST / 1am GMT

If you have no idea on how to connect to IRC you can use the web chat client at NWC which only requires you to log in.

Bring your questions and we hope to see you there!

Neverwinter Nights 2, the highly-anticipated sequel from Obsidian Entertainment, is rapidly approaching release in September and features an enormous new single-player campaign, gorgeous visuals and effects and new gameplay. However, what the mod community is sure to find most striking are the upgrades in-store with the new editor.

The bottom line is that at some point "official" content for every edition of a game has to come to a close. Like first or second edition D&D, they had great runs but eventually they had a curtain call. NWN1 had a great run! It was revolutionary, inspiring, and an amazing game all around. In it’s own way it’s been just as revolutionaly as D&D itself was in the 1970’s when it came out. But like first edition D&D it has to have its curtain call at some point, and that time has finally come.

# Graphics bugged? Gallenite has some insight to the situation.
# The Gods of EverQuest, always a good lore discussion to have. Vhalen chimes in with lore and wisdom!
# Summer, always a great discussion topic to have this time of the year. Zliten strikes up the conversation. So what are your plans this weekend?

At its core, Guild Wars GvG is a struggle over a few main resources—Hit Points, Energy, NPCs (archers, footmen, and bodyguards), flag control, and morale boosts. All GvG builds are designed to compete for these main resources, and to this end they utilize offensive, defensive, utility, and healing skills. Teams use offense to take away enemy hit points, and defense to protect their own hit points. Energy, NPCs, and utility aid friendly offensive and defensive measures through indirect means.

Skill Update Notes for Week of May 29th

The following skill updates will be incorporated into the game within the next 10 days. At that time, they will be added to the Game Updates page.

All

* Shadow stepping no longer moves you farther than the radius of the radar.

The Guild Wars tournament ladder will be restarting for the third season of the GWFC series at 08:00 GMT on May 30. Be sure to watch the best guilds compete for a slot in the Season 3 Playoffs. These final playoffs will determine the five guilds that have earned the most GWFC points and a trip to Leipzig, Germany to compete in the Guild Wars Factions Championship!

Vendors and NPC's

* The Jewelry and Clothing Pawnbrokers will be moving to the Marketplace Tent. Vendors selling non-magical consumable goods will take their place in the House shops.
* We will be correcting some of the (now) incorrect NPC dialogue following the recent relocation of several quest NPCs.
* NEW - Scrag the kobold will be fixed so that he can talk to more than one player at a time.

How do you decide what a monster will sound like?

It's the one question I am asked most when showing animations with the sounds I made for them. For a question that is asked so often, I always find it very difficult to come up with a suitable answer.

How do I decide indeed?

The problem in answering the question is that "decide" assumes a conscious process; that there are few options for me to pick from. Since most of the monsters and creatures from The Chronicles of Spellborn do not exist in our world, I cannot fall back on using samples of these.

Just a quick note to keep you updated: the 4-days patch, bringing changes in the server architecture, will most likely occur in June. We need to pass through a long series of tests, then correct and test again; as always, we will patch only when the results are satisfying.

Throughout the ages, the deeds and struggles of the noble race of Elves have been entwined with the very history of Middle-earth. They remember all too well the devastation caused by the tides of evil that once darkened the land - a shadow which threatens to do so once again. In ages past, the Elves divided into many different groups, and settled throughout Middle-earth, primarily in the ancient forested realms where they yet live. Tall and strong, fair and graceful, Elves have keen senses and a deep affinity for the beauty of the natural world around them. Elves do not "die" in the way understood by Men; Elves often live in the lands of Middle-earth for thousands of years, suffering neither the effects of time nor disease, though the body of an Elf may be struck down in battle. At the end of their days in Middle-earth, the Elves travel to unknown realms across the western sea.

Jonric: To introduce Ultimate Baseball Online, what kind of game is it? What kind of audience do you feel it can attract, and do you think it will appeal to online world players?

Gabriel Law: Ultimate Baseball Online (UBO) is the first massively multiplayer online sports game (MMOSG) in the world. Each position on the field can be manned by a real player. Players can pitch, bat, field, steal bases and do everything as in a real-life game. Moreover, players start their career with basic characters, and their statistics are recorded in these categories: AB, H, HR, ERA, SO, Outs and so many more. Points are awarded in accordance to players' performance, and players can grow their characters to specialize in any of the seven performance parameters, such as speed or power batting. Furthermore, players can form their own teams and even leagues, sometimes for organized and prize-laden competition.

MMORPG.com: For those who may not be familiar with Game Center Group, could you quickly summarize what kind of services you provide?

D. Scott Mattson: GCG provides companies that are considering an MMO, consulting services specifically related to Customer Support. We also offer a turn key solution to host the entire support side of the house if the client wants to avoid the management headaches of the support organization. Launch readiness on people, process and tools is really where we shine. For existing MMOs we provide an assessment and recommendation on their CS model and provide direct ROI in terms of customer satisfaction.

The folks at Nevrax chose a radically different direction when they decided to expand The Saga of Ryzom. We’ve been hearing a lot about the Ryzom Ring for months, but at E3 2006, we finally got to see it in action.

The demonstration was simple, Milko Berest of Nevrax ran me through a scenario he had set up in advance. As he did each step of the quest, he showed me how it worked. Then he made a new, simplistic scenario from scratch before my eyes. All of this took under forty-five minutes.

Ships & Equipment
-Behemoth introduced
-Behemoth heavy introduced
-Capital ships re-introduced
-Raptor (ship earned through a mission tree, not licenses)
-TPG Teradon
-Trident light Frigate
-New bus
-Presets for 4 favorite ship loadouts
-Destroyed ships may now drop equipment (which has, thanks to the Hive and various police/military NPCs, expanded the weapon selections a bit)
-Law neut
-Introduction of hive-posi
-Introduction of hive-AGT
-Introduction of hive-bat
-Can sell weapons to others if they have not been unloaded into a station

Rather than a character class system, the team has incorporated incarnations, which are different combinations of abilities and equipment. Together with every avatar being able to learn any skill and wear any item, this should make it easy to switch among a variety of play styles as you deem appropriate. The advancement scheme is also unusual and interesting. You gain power by recovering lost memories. Doing so requires completing related quest-like tasks within the PvP scenarios. Rank is based on the number unlocked, not on levels gained by accumulating experience points. Combat includes a meta-layer based on building up elemental charges that should enhance the strategic element. There will be four modes ranging from solo free for alls to small-, medium- and large-scale group encounters. The pace is on the quick side but seems manageable for most players. The graphics appear to be very competitive.

When I met with Stephane Quilichini the lead game designer for Dark and Light I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, however shortly after sitting down it quickly became apparent to me that Dark and Light was much more than I had ever expected. I was still somewhat awe struck with the whole of E3 however in a meeting room at the Kentia hall of the Los Angeles Convention center I was shown something truly amazing.

Dark and Light is billed as “The largest MMORPG ever seen” and it is just that. The Dark and Light world is absolutely monumental in scale, Mr. Quilchini had the ability to pop in and out of any place on the DnL map anyplace that he desired and after looking at the world map fully zoomed out and then seeing the tiny microscopic spec of land on the map become a mountain range before my eyes was simply awe inspiring.

Archlord has a very important question to ask of all its potential players. Do you have what it takes to become the Archlord? When I stepped into the Code Masters meeting room I was entirely too impressed with my surroundings, everything was very nice and I was surrounded by well-dressed businessmen in suits. I looked completely out of place to say the least however we were all there on business, and I was there to see the Archlord.

My posh surroundings aside I found myself sitting learning about Archlord for the first time and I’ve got to say I was impressed with what I saw. Archlord is based on the concept of the Archlord system in which players vie for control over the entire server. The Archlord system is one where a single player can gain control through a battle for supremacy. The Archlord himself is just a man, a man supported by his guild who has helped him to become the server’s number one power.

While at E3 I had the pleasure of meeting with Webzen, the creators of the upcoming game Huxley. Huxley is a MMOFPS (Massively Multi-Player First Person Shooter). Huxley is a science fiction styled game in which 3 races battle it out in a futuristic world.

I had the pleasure of watching several people play the game and I personally think that this game will bring a unique atmosphere to the MMORPG community. Huxley is unlike any other game out on the market due to its futuristic backdrop and massive first person shooter theme.

RF Online: 10-day free trial promotion now available.

Your chance to engage in the most epic battles ever seen in any MMO role-playing game, free for 10 days.

Codemasters Online Gaming has launched a 10-day free trial promotion for RF Online, the epic sci-fi and fantasy MMORPG.

The promotion enables new players to experience RF Online’s unique blend of magical fantasy and futuristic science-fiction action with full access to the game, free of charge, for 10 days.

If you’ve yet to take your first steps on planet Novus and potentially join the most epic battles ever seen in a MMO role-playing game, sign up now at the dedicated micro-site hosted at www.fileplanet.com

[direct link: http://www.fileplanet.com/promotions/rfonline/trial/]

RF Online has already had over 150,000 downloads this year and anyone who already has the game client may still take part in the trial by applying for a key at the micro-site.

RF Online launched in the US and Europe in February 2006 and is published and operated in the US and Europe by Codemasters Online Gaming. For all the latest on the game, including the latest images, movies visit www.rf-onlinegame.com

Version 20.0 is now available! This is a major update, with updated numbers for many games, most notably World of Warcraft, Eve Online, RuneScape, and most of NCSoft’s titles. I’ve also added three new MMOGs to the tracking data: Tibia, The Matrix Online, and Dungeons & Dragons Online. I’ve also removed the old subscriber data for Ragnarok Online in Japan, and unified the various total subscriptions charts. Also new to this update is preliminary market data for Asian MMOGs (including Ragnarok Online) that are commonly reported in terms of Peak Concurrent Users and Average Concurrent Users. Given the differences in pricing models, many of these games are not subscription-based, so a direct comparison with subscription MMOGs cannot be made. There are literally dozens more Asian MMOGs that are not included; I’ve tried to chart the ones that are the most well known and for which I could get multiple data points. In the future, I hope to get more data on these games directly from the companies involved, so my data can be updated on a more frequent basis. My thanks to everyone who helped with this update, and thanks to those of you who waited patiently for this update!