At least the wait's not far off now. The company confirmed to 1UP that an official patch is in the final stages of development and certification, and should be available for both PC and Xbox 360 users sometime next week.

We want RPG players to like this game because it is a fully-fledged RPG where you own whole countries and command whole armies. You all know these RPGs where you end up having godlike powers, but somehow all you own is what you can carry? Where you hear of whole armies roaming the land, but somehow it is always just you and your buddies fighting a handful of monsters? Well, in SpellForce 2, you can go to battle with a real army and you even get your own realm to protect and develop.

GamingNexus: Will the game follow the plot of the movie or will it just occur in the same world as the movie? Will you be running into the characters from the movie?

Dmitri Zakharov: The game features its own story and it overlaps with components of the film. One of the features of the Night Watch game is the new and exciting story that allows players to interact with the characters that they know from the film. We felt that if we made a game based on the story shown in the movie, it not be that interesting and especially not surprising as everything is already known in advance. So we created our own story in cooperation with Sergey Lukyanenko, author of the book and creator of the Watches universe. The game delves into the the Night Watch universe where you will meet Gesser, the head of Night Watch, Olga, his lover and a powerful Light mage, Tigra who will be joining your team for certain missions, Zavulon, the head of Day Watch, and the evil Alice, one of the witches of Day Watch and Zavulon’s lover. You will also meet new characters, one of them, Stas, will be the Main hero of the game.

This is the second in the three part E3 Witcher Interview series. This podcast focuses on the dynamics of the choices you make through the game and how it will effect your character later in the game. Watch for Part 3 in this series coming soon!

RPGDot: Let's talk about character creation and development. First, AoD uses a skill-based system, although a class is also initially chosen. Can you elaborate on this?

Iron Tower: It's not a class, but a background. It's what you did in the gameworld, before the in-game events. It helps defining your character better, establishing his ties with various factions. For example, a thief starts as a member of the Thieves Guild (joining it on your own is more complicated than walking in and asking for an application form), gets a reputation bonus when dealing with shady elements and factions supporting the Thieves Guild for their own reasons, and a reputation penalty with the Imperial Guards and the Merchants Guild.

The background doesn't restrict your character in any way. A knight may specialize in combat and serve his Noble House in that capacity, or he/she may specialize in diplomacy or stealth. An assassin can rely on a quick blade and Critical Strike skill, or on poison and charms, and so on.

Backgrounds are optional, you don't have to choose one, in which case you will enter the game world as a stranger. Nobody knows you, which could be a good thing or a bad thing; depends on how you look at it.

I recall reading about Codemasters' acquisition of Rising Force Online, and actually having some interest in the title. With the standard fanfare and marketing enthusiasm, the press releases touted the game as the pinnacle of the genre, with innovative gameplay and so on and so forth. Having read nearly the same press release from nearly every other announced MMO, I was aptly skeptical but I still kept an open mind. I added the game to the mental list of titles I follow, and did a little more digging. What I found at that time was enough for me to get a little excited about the game. Unfortunately for Codemasters, that excitement was in no way justified, and they have a bit of a lemon on their hands.

Well, to paraphrase our president, fool me twice...you won't get purchased again. Sokal's Syberia series managed to sway me with its trendy clockwork curios and plot-specific brainteasers the design team was then ballyhooing as "anti-Myst" (no "play the organ to open the door" crap, in other words). But Syberia worked because of its exotic art, brisk plot, and story-integrated puzzles -- vision, at least as far as game mechanics went, never figured in the equation. With that in mind, it's hard to believe Paradise comes from the same guy. Never mind the vision thing -- with puzzles this dim-witted, I'd frankly rather play Myst.

On Wednesday, May 31st, Stratics hosted a developer chat with the Star Wars Galaxies development team. Community members asked questions about the upcoming in-game event revolving around the city of Restuss and the Galactic Civil War!

If you missed the chat, you can read the transcript by clicking this link.

You can view the exclusive movie revealed at the chat by clicking this link.

You can also find more information about the Restuss event in this featured preview.

The Chronicle 5: Oath of Blood gameplay movie is ready for download! Discover the fantastic new areas of Elmore and the mysterious beings that inhabit them in this first look at what's coming in the next Chronicle.

Let's talk a bit about Junction Point Studios. The company has been founded about 1.5 years ago, but it's been pretty quiet until now. What have you been doing so far?

JPS currently has about 20 people. We started out working on a pretty epic game with a supportive publisher but, through no fault of our own, the deal got cancelled after about 9 months of work. Since then, we've been working on some stuff with Valve (can't talk much about that), doing concept development for some folks (can't talk at ALL about that, sadly!) and pitching some new game ideas. We're keeping plenty busy!

TTH: First off, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to let the community get to know you and your work a little better. I’d like to start with a bit about your artistic background. As someone who has always had an art or craft project in the works since I was little, was art always a factor in your life?

Damron: I should be the one to thank you and the community for being so curious about the people behind what we are creating.

To answer your first question, I had actually never really thought about this. Unknowingly, I would say yes. Art was something that I never put ahead of anything else in my life until I got to college. Growing up, I was interested in a lot of different things, but none of them had more priority over another. Art was something I dabbled in from time to time, and it was usually me just trying to imitate other art like The Punisher comics, DragonLance art, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or other comics.

Silky Venom: How did you become an artist?

Christian Akesson: Mainly by doing, generating a project idea, research, concepting and executing. Back in 1994 while studying general education classes in college, I chipped in for a computer with my roommate, Martin Karlsson (technical lead here at Sigil), and we bought Strata Studio Pro, a very basic 3D program. We would take turns and sit down and do our own projects. Most of the renderings and “art” results were quite atrocious, but it was a great learning experience.

What do you think are the core features of the earlier games, and how will you improve on them?

First of all it was turn-based strategy. It's a very interesting genre, and very popular amongst certain gamers. We're not planning to destroy the genre, or even revolutionize it. We're planning to do a very good game in the genre that will please the fans. For us the important strategy for developing Disciples III is to create a game that can be recognized on the basic principles of Disciples I and II, but we want to enlarge the game. You can do everything you could do in Disciples II for instance, but there will be more options. More spells, more units and more features. We also want to expand on the graphics, to get more realistic environments, as you can see in the trailer. For the units there are very detailed models that feature thousands of polygons, up to 20 000 for some of them. This is something that is usually not seen in the strategy genre, but is more common in for instance the cRPG genre. You'll be able to control how your units advance.

GameDaily BIZ: When you sit down to write music, what gets you motivated, puts you in the right mood to produce game music?

Jesper Kyd: I am excited about how I can enhance the game experience and how the music piece I am writing is going to enhance the situation I am writing it for. There is so much that can be done with music. There are no limits anymore since technical limitations are not a huge concern these days. And with music budgets for most games now the size of independent films, sometimes even larger, there are so many creative things we could be doing. We have only just scratched the surface and pushing things forward is also a huge inspiration for me.

It's a preview event on the Test Server for Issue 7 of City of Heroes/Villains. Issue 7 (aka "Destiny Manifest") is the latest in the regular updates the most spandex obsessed of games. It's mainly centred on Villain content, but with enough elements to stop the Heroes complaining. For example, a new player-versus-environment zone, Grandville, is being added for Level 40+ characters, containing the Spider City. Timed Mayhem missions involving (er) smashing. A mass of new missions and patron powers, including new power sets for villains (Thug pets for masterminds, Electric armour and melee for Brutes and Dark Armour and Melee for Stalkers). And so on, included a general art upgrade for the slightly-dragging-behind City of Heroes.

With our next major content patch, Shadow of the Necropolis, players will have access to the new high-level raid dungeon Naxxramas, the seat of Kel'Thuzad, one of the most feared enemies the world of Warcraft has ever known. Horrors of the past and new terrors yet to be unleashed are converging inside the necropolis as the Lich King's servants prepare their assault. Soon, the Scourge will march again...

Learn more about the Scourge Invasion, the new world event coming with the next patch.

MMORPG.com: How will the historical aspects of SilkRoad translate for players to enjoy today?

Silkroad Team: The foundation for Silkroad Online is that of a reproduction of the Silk Road and the world during the 7th Century. The regions’ history, culture, stories are the background that fills the fantasy game.

The cities you see inside the game are the results of a huge amount of documentation and consultation with historical investigation in order to create a world as close to the 7th century era as possible. The names of the places and other names in the world are taken from names present in history as often and closely as possible.

If you log into the game you will see places like Jangan, Donwhang Stone Cave entrances, Constantinople which actually existed as real places. The similarity in even the appearance of the virtual of the historical is enough to make the player have the impression of actually having stepped back in history.

The FINAL FANTASY XI development team has finally addressed everyone’s cries for a system to raise their own personal chocobos. As announced at the FINAL FANTASY XI Fan Festival 2006 in Santa Monica, this new feature will be introduced in the next version update!

Raising Your Chocobo
[Basic Concept]
Think of chocobo raising as an upgraded version of gardening. You can raise a chocobo by taking care of it for a minimal amount of time each day over a span of roughly 1-3 months, so even players with little time can enjoy this feature. Your chocobo may come in handy when it is fully grown!

There are few recorded deeds of Hobbits until late in the Third Age of Middle-earth, which is just the way Hobbits would prefer it. They are simple, quiet folks, preferring to dwell in hillside holes in and around the area known as The Shire in western Eriador. Called "Halflings" by some due to their size relative to Men, these small folk enjoy the peaceful endeavours of farming, eating, and gift giving, rather than concerning themselves with the dangerous affairs of the rest of Middle-earth (save the legends of Hobbit bowmen in the wars of Fornost). In these dark days, however, it is the unassuming Hobbits, with their often surprising adeptness of both word and action, that will have the greatest impact in the war between the Free Peoples and the lengthening Shadow from the North.

As revered and influential as the gods of the Trium are among the scattered inhabitants of Elanthia, there is another charismatic deity whose worship infiltrated the lands roughly four years after the Sundering.

Considered the abiding spirit of a reconciled Elanthia by her followers, Lorstra, the Chantress, rose to prominence shortly after the Triad of Temsyne, Urwir and Takut. She is celestially distinct, however; her deistic agenda runs contrary to their very existence.

While the series has shifted publishers, from Microsoft to 2K Games, Gas Powered remains at the development reins, and the Dungeon Siege team has packed this expansion with all sorts of content geared toward fans of the series, as well as fans of role-playing games in general. Broken World promises lots of high-level content to enjoy, and don't worry if you didn't play or finish Dungeon Siege II, because you'll be able to select from a list of premade characters, which will let you jump into the expansion directly. Meanwhile, if you have an existing Dungeon Siege II character, you can transfer him or her to the expansion for new challenges.

Space Rangers 2: Rise of the Dominators really surprised me. The depth and breadth of the game is on par or grander than Freelancer or even The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but lacks the internal storyline to project the player toward the end. The goal of defeating the Dominators isn't easy, and requires lots of preparation, upgrading, questing, and discovery that open-ended games thrive on, and that Rangers 2 provides. The amount of things to do in Space Rangers 2 is staggering, sometimes daunting, but the friendly training mode (be sure to go through it) allows players unfamiliar with the genre to get into it. Rangers 2 allows for near limitless gameplay with no hand-holding, making it truly an epic, addictive experience. Though it has some flaws, the scale and depth of gameplay make Space Rangers 2: Rise of the Dominators one of the best space adventure games to come along in years.

The creatures aren't the only thing we're showcasing in the game, though. Few models have received the same amount of attention as the player character models themselves, and we allow a broad spectrum of character visual options for you to adjust as you see fit to get the type of character you want. You can select hair color, highlights, skin tone, eyes, and even more with each player character and customize them until they look and feel like your character. But the visual look alone is only half of it. We also allow for a number of new base classes (warlock) and a range of prestige classes (among them Shadow Thief of Amn and Arcane Trickster) to define your character the way you want and choose the career path you want. In addition to the warlock, we have the classic range of D&D professions, such as the fighter, ranger, paladin, rogue, druid, priest, wizard, sorcerer, and more, and even familiars and animal companions to accompany you on your adventures.

Following numerous reports of strange mechanical noises emanating from NetDevil’s super-secret workshop in Colorado, we packed our bags and traveled half way across the world to find out the cause of all this commotion - nothing had prepared us for what we were about to see.

The game is already well-known for its pretty unique character development process which practically covers the first 20 levels of gameplay in single-player mode. Only after this character- forming adventure is finished, will the character be introduced to the multiplayer aspect of the game. The initial single-player part of the game starts the story off with the main hero introduced as a galley slave, or the heroine as another kind of a slave, who, after a shipwreck, washes up on a shore of an island. The character will have lost his/her memory and starts the game practically from nothing.

The character-forming part of the adventure offers 10-15 hours of gameplay and four possible storylines that direct the character towards one of the four main character archetypes in the game: a soldier, priest, mage or rogue. This main archetype will later be diversified by the choices that the player makes and leads to various classes by the time the MMO part of the game begins, such as a zealot, barbarian or a priest.