Q: Is anything being done for toons who are not allowed in Leirvik due to their Master Level?

A: Not at this time, unless you count our adding a new BG this coming patch. Certainly there are a number of you who have made this request, and I've passed it on.

Q: My guild recently moved to a different server, and we could not find a housing area with enough lots to create the village we had on our old server. Will you be adding new ones?

A: No. Setting up new zones requires a certain amount of hardware, and we can't justify that when the housing zones are not full.

Get in on all the action! There are over 65 player events happening on 20 galaxies in June!

Whether you're into PvP, role-playing, space combat or parties, your fellow players have it covered. All you have to do to get involved is check the events calendar and show up!

Crew and Faction Issues
We're continuing to work on the crew and faction issues some of you have been experiencing. We haven't nailed down the root cause yet, but continue to look into the problem. If you are experiencing problems with your crew and/or faction loading, do not delete your crew or faction! Send in a /ccr reporting what exactly you're seeing, include all character names having the problem, and any other significant details you have. Every bit of information you give us can help us resolve the problem.

The Seven Spirits of Mischief have started appearing in Aden and Elmore. Please note that these creatures are mysterious and unpredictable, so please take care when leaving your character unattended for any period of time during this event.

Titan Quest does seem a lot like an update version of Diablo 2, but that is not a bad thing. The latter was a thoroughly enjoyable hack ‘n slash, and Titan Quest provides that aspect in large does, but with the skill-leveling system, it also tempers all that with intelligent leveling considerations.

To the best of my knowledge, the idea is to create an open-ended game in the sense that there will be no levels, but more importantly, Irrational is attempting to create the illusion of a living and breathing world. To try and emphasize the emotional bond between the NPCs and the empathy created between the player and other actors in the world. One of the main vessels for this illusion is the architecture of the Artificial Intelligence.

1) Will the encounters be scaled to the players level or of static difficulty?

RR: The ability to scale the encounters is there much like NWN1. For the single player campaign, though, we know how much experience the character could possibly have and make sure encounters are the appropriate level.

If the player wanted to play the single player campaign again from the beginning with a level 20 guy…Well, I feel sorry for the Goblins because they will get a fast trip to the hurtlocker.

However, if someone wanted to change the module in the ToolSet and have it scale accordingly it would take into consideration the level of the character(s), the size of the party, etc.

Lately, we have been working on an update of the Ryzom.com engine; it is now up, and you are using it to read this news. :)

a) New Engine

The look&feel of Ryzom.com is mailny kept as is, but the engine behind it changes completely for something more robust and extensible. We use Plone, a content management framework (http://plone.org/), which is already used on the Ring website.

Good news for those who were waiting for it: the NPE has been patched on the ATS 2 (opened yesterday). All the ATS testers are welcome to log in and test it! :)

Reminder: the NPE - New Player Experience - is going to replace the current first experience of players. The four separated "newbie islands" are going to disappear to be replaced by a unique and larger island. Moreover, new players should be able to find more help through new designed missions that will guide their first steps on Atys.

Well it's getting close to that time again folks, the next IRL is going to happen and we want to get some idea of where you'd like to go for it. After all, it's your meet so you should get a say in where it is held.

The last two have been held in The Old Star in London (transport links to London are very good, plenty of cheap hotels if people want to stay over and apparently there are one or two things to see and do in the city if you arrive early) so if you'd prefer we can do that again. Or we can find another venue in the city, or even choose a different city altogether.

With so many RPGs feeling old and tired before you've even played them, thanks in large part to their traditional fantasy setting, we're looking forward to fighting more satyrs, mummies, Egyptian statues, demons, harpies. A mythological setting let the audience use a pre-arranged batch of knowledge, rather than a given world's particular quirks having to be revealed to you via clunky exposition or disorienting flashbacks. It's surprising that more Roman and Greek action games have sprouted up in the wake of God of War, but there you go. Since Titan Quest is slated to come out this month, it has the field to itself for a while yet. Stay tuned as we stake out our mailbox for the review copy.

Has your guild recently formed or did it finish the season outside of the top five? Do you want a final chance to compete for big prizes in the Guild Wars Factions Championship at Leipzig, Germany this summer?

Take on the best guilds from around the world! Show off your skills in front of the international press! Win the GWFC Open event and your guild will be on its way to compete for $100,000 in cash prizes!

We are delighted to announce today that in conjunction with Dark Horse Comics, a special Age of Conan limited edition comic will be produced! The unique comic book will premiere at the Comic-Con convention this summer, and will be printed in 400.000 copies.

The comic is being created by the award-winning Dark Horse Comics team, and Conan luminaries with the likes of Cary Nord, Scott Allie, our own Gaute Godager, Tim Truman and Tone Rodriguez creatively involved!

Competition!
To celebrate this release we have an extra special competition for you all today, with the prize of a place in our beta testing up for grabs*

So what do you have to do? Well we thought what would be better then giving you the chance to be a little creative in the comic medium as well! The kind folk at Dark Horse have provided us with two great pages from the comic, but without their final lettering. What we would like you to do is show us your creative skills and complete the pages. You can simply fill in the existing word bubbles or even add in a few of your own if you would like!

The show marked the debut of the Draenei race, which joins the Alliance. Originally from the planet Argus, they have knowledge of the Holy Light of Creation that also gives power to Azeroth's Paladins. Revealed previously, the magically inclined Blood Elves will augment the Horde. Each will have its own home area and the continent of Outland, familiar to those who played Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, will be opened, as will various other new locations. These elements seem likely to help attract new players while also offering current ones cause to create further characters. A few other notable additions are the Jewelcrafting profession, socketable items and flying mounts. The level cap will rise from 60 to 70, and of course, we can expect new monsters, quests, gear, dungeons, etc.

Long time no see. Well I've been very busy lately so it has been hard to sit down and focus my thoughts on the blog. First there was E3 which went very well and we are all very proud of the great awards that the game recieved from the press and media, its always good to know that people are looking forward to playing the game!

Then the 9th of May my son decided that he wanted to come into this world. It has been a really eye opener for me having a baby. It turns your life upside down and there are so much thing that you need to adjust to. Well I won't bore you all about this right now as you are here to read about the game and not babies, but as a proud father I just had to share the good news!

This week sees the release of our biggest and most anticipated update this year: player-owned houses. No longer must RuneScape members wander the world endlessly, never being able to sit down or have a place to call their own. Members can build their houses and make furniture using the new Construction skill. Start by building a cottage with a few chairs around a fire, and add rooms and gain levels until you have your own palace. Some pieces of furniture will unlock new abilities, magic spell tablets, and even chairs you can sit down in.

This incredible update features over 20 rooms, 330 pieces of furniture, 11 new NPCs, 12 dungeon monsters, craftable toys, new armour and shields, trophy rooms, tool racks, different architectural styles, butlers and a whole host of new games to play with your house guests!

Three! Three design updates in a row. This might be a trend folks! May was a busy month for us here at Tulga so I thought I'd try to summarize everything that happened and let you know where we stand with our various projects.

To begin with, we had a great E3. (Electronic Entertainment Expo) While we didn't have a booth, we garnered quite a bit of media attention with the announcements of both Horizons: The Settlements and Dark World Online. We also were able to speak with several websites about Horizons: Empire of Istaria regarding the growth we've been experiencing and progress we're making.

Although it sounds ethereal and high-minded, the spirit mastery is going to be familiar to anyone that's played as a necromancer in any role-playing game. Instead of encouraging your enemies to seek salvation, you're going to be blasting them with life-stealing plagues, lower their resistance to damage with skills like necrosis, and force them to flee for their lives with visions of death. In addition, your powers over the undead will allow you to spread the joy to your teammates, allowing everyone near you to increase the damage they deal to undead enemies and reduce the damage that they take in return.