Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (WAR) may be the most highly anticipated MMORPG slated for release this fall.  Despite the chagrin that has surrounded WAR during its shaky 3-year development, WAR has won the acclaim of critics at every stage of production.  Mythic Entertainment recently announced that the North American open beta for WAR will start September 7, 11 days before servers are launched worldwide.

“Players can get into the North American open beta by pre-ordering Warhammer Online from select retail partners. Participants of the North American closed beta will automatically be granted open beta access.”

Update: EA Games just published their latest Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning cinematic trailer, that features stunning RvR:

Kotaku also reports that Counterstrike “in the vision of specialists, teaches war techniques” and that Everquest “takes the player to total nonsense and heavy psychological conflicts, because the quests he receives may be good or bad.”

More amusingly, Everquest is not even officially sold in Brazil, and the offensive Counterstrike content where “Rio de Janeiro drug dealers kidnap and take to a slum three UN representative s” and “the police invade the place and are welcomed with bullets” refers to a user created map, CS_rio. Lol, it’s ok Brazil, we have politicians like that too in America; they’re called Hillary Clinton.

EA Games and Namco Bandai have officially stated that their online RPG Hellgate: London will be released this summer.  The graphics look amazing.  I hope they release a demo soon.  Here’s the press release:

EA and Namco Bandai Games America Announce Summer 2007 Ship Window for Hellgate: London

Hotly-Anticipated Action-RPG From Flagship Studios Set to Heat up PCs This Summer
LAS VEGAS –(Business Wire)– Jan. 8, 2007 Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) and NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc. today announced a summer 2007 worldwide ship window for the highly-anticipated online action RPG Hellgate: London(TM), the first original PC title from premier developer Flagship Studios.

“We are all committed to making Hellgate: London absolutely the best game possible,” said Bill Roper, CEO of Flagship Studios. “The anticipation surrounding the game is immense and we are looking forward to its launch being a truly worldwide event.”

Hellgate: London combines the depth of role-playing games and the action of first-person shooter titles, while offering infinite playability with dynamically generated levels, items, enemies and events. The player creates a heroic character, completes quests, and battles through innumerable hordes of demons to advance through experience levels and branching skill paths. A robust, flexible skill and spell system, highly customizable appearances, and a massive variety of randomly generated equipment allow players to create their own unique hero.

Here are some more exclusive screenshots of Hellgate: London:

Perhaps “bonanza,” a word that literally means “an extremely large amount,” is the only word that can fully encompass the extent to which Blizzard is banning customers who violate their Terms of Use.  In the month of May alone, they banned over 30,000 accounts that were using third-party programs to farm gold and disrupt equilibrium in many other ways.  Furthermore, perhaps the connotations of the word “bonanza,” which include “profitable” and “rewarding,” are also accurate speculations as to the motives of Blizzard.  Cutting 30,000 accounts assuredly lessens Blizzard’s band-width and maintanence costs, and the 5-digit banning marathon in May leaves us wondering if Blizzard’s employees have a banning quota.

MMOG Chart has released updated figures concerning the state of the MMOG market, that is, a comparitive ratio of the number of subscribers of many MMOG to the whole MMOG market.  It turns out, to little surprise that Blizzard’s World of Warcraft (WoW) dominates the free market.  But the extent to which WoW has possession of the market is quite startling.  Holding 50.6% of all MMOG subscribers (indicated blue in the above graphic), WoW has an overbearing, exclusive grip on the market.

Check out www.pro-g.co.uk/media/screens/1536/0/ for more Neverwinter Nights 2 screenshots!

Empyrean magic has once again fled this world. The battle for Dereth continues on a different plane now. As his final act in this realm, Asheron sealed every portal to contain the expanding horde and protect what is left of the races who called Dereth home.

As of December 30, 2005 the AC2 service is no longer available. Turbine and the AC2 development team would like to express our thanks to the many players who’ve been part of Asheron’s Call 2 over the years. We hope you’ve had as much fun playing the game as we did creating it for you.

It’s never easy to say goodbye to a place you’ve called home, but we hope to see all of you in Turbine’s other worlds.

Businessman: Girls!

Businessman: Sexy is what sells.

Businessman: You get my drift?

Girls: No.

Businessman: (Turning into an orc) What do you mean, no?

Businessman / Orc: (Roars)

Girls: (Turning into elves) No is no.

Girls / Elves: (Attacking the orcs)

Businessman / Orc: (Takes some damage)

Girls / Elves: (Drinking Coca Cola)

Final Screen! You can download the video yourself from Tokyo-Genki. Funny that they run a WP blog, but don’t publicize the trackback URL…

The login screen where you log on screen

When you first start, you need to chose a character’s race: this is a human female warrior

The dwarf race is a little smaller

Why be alliance when you can be a horde night elf?

Personally, I find gnomes quite cute

Orcs are not at all sexy, even if they are women

Unless you’re into necrophilia, the undead *really* aren’t sexy

Tauren, on the other hand, have a majesty about them

I chose a human warlock, quite pretty and dangerous looking, although well figured and not at all slender

The World of Warcraft and Blizzard’s loading screen

The alliance intro movie cutscene

One of your first tasks is to kill some wolves!

For more WoW photos, please check out the WoW flickr photoset / gallery. If you’re unfamiliar with World of Warcraft, try this wikipedia entry:

World of Warcraft (commonly abbreviated as WoW) is a race/class-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the 4th game in the Warcraft series, excluding expansion packs and the cancelled Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans. The Warcraft games are set in the eponymous Warcraft Universe, a fantasy setting introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994. World of Warcraft is set four years after the events at the conclusion of Blizzard’s previous release, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. As of December 2005, World of Warcraft is one of the most popular MMORPGs in the world, with more than 5 million active subscriptions.

When the winner is chosen randomly, we’ll email them the Guest code, and request a physical mailing address if they want to receive the physical game card.

Update:

When I get 50 comments here, I’ll pick one at random (literally, I’ll use a random number generator), and send you a congrats email!

Update 2:

A winner has been chosen, and it’s number 11! Number 41 was initially chosen and then disqualified for entering himself multiple times. Thanks for playing!!