MMO News Wrap-Up

15 Jan 2010 at 14:08:43 by Bill Vaughan

Welcome back to the MMO News Wrap-Up which is back after a brief hiatus over Christmas and New Year. With so much MMO news around, as usual, we figured you might like to see it all summed up in one place. Read on for the very latest on Star Trek Online, Fallen Earth, Blizzard Entertainment, Age of Conan, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Kingdom Under Fire II and Global Agenda.

You might notice that there's been a fair bit of coverage for Star Trek Online recently, as the launch date of 2 February approaches. There has been a flood of new screenshots and trailers for various aspects in the game since the launch of the open beta this week; There's an overview of the Federation and the Klingons, there are also two brand new videos for the Starfleet ship classes, Discovery and Cerberus.

In the wake of all this excitement, we've had a stack of STO beta keys to give away. If you'd like a chance to try out the game before it launches, you can sign up for a key here. Best of luck!

I'll finish up with Star Trek Online by mentioning that we made a couple of walk-through videos that cover the first section of the game. The first video looks at character customisation, interacting with NPCs and consoles, and ground combat. You can see it over on IncGamers TV. The second video shows you how to move around in space using impulse and warp, and take on multiple enemies. The video is also on IGTV here.

On the topic of Sci-Fi MMOs, Fallen Earth received a couple of hefty graphics upgrades in the last few days. The first upgrade bulked out shrubbery and improved fog effects, making the environment seem much more realistic and alive. The second one, which went live yesterday, drastically improved lighting and shadows on characters as well as the landscape. A number of before and after shots were posted, see the environment effects here and the new shadow technology here.

The Warcraft film has been on everyone's lips again recently, after news of Spider-Man 4's demise spread across the internet. The man who's been confirmed as Warcraft's director, Sam Raimi, was due to start on the game adaptation after completion of SM4, so now Spidey has been shelved, it's unclear if the Warcraft production will move forward, or if Raimi will take on another new project before starting it. If he does get involved with something else, it's likely to delay Warcraft because, at such short notice, we doubt a new film will be ready to begin production immediately as SM4 would have been. Either way, there's been no word from Raimi or Legendary Pictures yet, but rest assured we'll keep you informed as soon as there's the slightest inkling.

Age of Conan has had its troubles, but Funcom still seems 100% behind the game. However, the strain of keeping it afloat has started to show. This week, players were informed that all characters under level 20 on accounts that have not been used for seven months or more will be deleted, unless the account is renewed shortly. Obviously, this didn't go down too well, many gamers resented the choice Funcom had given them – pay up or we'll delete your characters. It raised a number of questions in the AoC community; mainly, “Why?”.

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