By Tom Senior July 13 2011

Dawn of War 2 made a bold shift away from the scale of the first game. It dropped base building and huge armies and replaced them with a cluster of upgradeable units with skill trees and armour slots. If you felt that the Dawn of War 2 format failed to capture the enormous armies and planet-sized scraps of the Warhammer 40K universe, then you might want to keep a close eye on Dawn of War 3. Relic marketing manager James McDermott told Eurogamer that the sequel will let you “build your own custom mega army,” and aims to capture the sense of a “war that rages eternal.” Oh my. “Looking at what we had real success with with Dawn of War II – Retribution, with the DLC, and with customisation and building their armies and collecting being a big part of what 40k fans really love, we want to make that a big part of DOW3,” said McDermott. “There’s going to be lots of opportunities to expand and build your own custom mega army. That’s definitely an area we want to invest in.” 

Read more here –>pcgamer.com

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Long-running superhero MMO set to make the switch later this year.
By Mike Sharkey Jun 22, 2011

Seven-year-old superpowered MMO City of Heroes is the latest subscription-based online game to make the transition to a free-to-play model. Paragon Studios and NCSoft have announced that City of Heroes Freedom is now in development and set for launch later this year. Promising to redefine the long-running super hero MMO on the cornerstones of content, rewards, and choice, Paragon said it has been working on its hybrid F2P model for City of Heroes for over a year in an effort to improve the overall customer experience. "Freedom is about getting more content into the hands of our players, whether they are subscribing or playing for free," Brian Clayton, Executive Producer at Paragon Studios, said in a statement. "To do this, we've looked at City of Heroes from the ground up and focused on three ways to enhance the experience by giving our players more choices, greater rewards and the best content we've ever produced. And for the first time ever, players can choose to enjoy more than seven years of content for free."

Read more here –>pc.gamespy.com

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By Andrew Webste Nov. 1, 2010 

Last year, Turbine did an experiment, taking the previously subscription-based Dungeons and Dragons Online and adding a free-to-play option. The result was an almost immediate success. More players joined the game, revenues increased, and subscription numbers even rose. So this past September Turbine did the same thing with Lord of the Rings Online, adding a free option to an already successful subscription game. Ars spoke with several members of the LOTRO team to see just how things are going two months after the change. "It’s still fairly early, but we’ve had a really successful start," Adam Mersky, Turbine's director of communications, told Ars. "We’ve had over a million new registered users come into the game and our monthly revenue has doubled. We’re only six weeks in, but basically we’re making twice as much a month now than before when we could only make it off subscription revenue." The game is set up in a similar way to DDO. Players can still subscribe, but there's now also a free-to-play option, coupled with a brand-new LOTRO store. Here, players can buy everything from additional quests and expansions to new clothes and even skill buffs, or tomes, as they're called in the game. And players, both free and subscribers, have flocked to the store. “We’re having over half our (player) base use the store, that’s almost four times the industry average," said Mersky. 

Read more here –>arstechnica.com

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by Davy Jones 10-18-2010

Reign of Assassins Online, an online game adapted from the same name movie directed by John Woo, will start its first beta test in Hong Kong and Taiwan regions on October 25. The official has announced Reign of Assassins (the movie) would be launched in Taiwan region on October 22, and it is expected to have a great performance in its box office. Reign of Assassins is a new martial arts/morality tale from China, featuring Michelle Yeoh of long-standing performance in this genre. It is said that the adapted online game will depend on the plot in the original movie, building a fantastic Kung Fu world in ancient China for players. The game was developed by Taiwan's Gamania, and has been unveiled on TGS 2010 for the first time. 

Read more here –>chinagame.178.com

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By Stephany Nunneley June 19th, 2009

Unlike other MMOs that have had to merge servers, the same cannot be said for Lord of the Rings Online because the user base is expanding, according to Turbine. We asked Aaron Campbell, live producer for the game, if the company had seen a drop off in player activity on certain servers or if there were plans to merge servers in the future. “If anything, The Lord of the Rings Online is growing,” he told us. “We have no plans to merge servers.“And please don’t mention it, it makes me twitch unpleasantly.”

Read more here —>Link

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By Variety June 9, 2009

A couple of weeks ago, we posted word that recent Atari acquisition Cryptic Studios was working on breathing life into several Atari legacy titles. Now we’ve got a few more details to share. Sources tell us that the developer is working on a massively multiplayer online (MMO) version of “Neverwinter Nights” with an eyed 2011 release.

Details about the project are unavailable, naturally, as it is an unannounced title. But this reportedly was the primary reason Atari was interested in acquiring Cryptic late last year. (The developer is currently working on “Champions Online” and “Star Trek Online”.)

Read more Info here –>Link

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By Michael Barkoviak – February 23, 2009

After announcing its intentions early last year to create a new MMO video game, both the gaming world and space community became interested to hear more about what kind of game is in the works from NASA. NASA is in a position to develop an online game that functions as a “persistent, synthetic environment supporting education as a laboratory, a massive visualization tools and collaborative workspace while simultaneously drawing users into a challenging, game-play immersion," the U.S. space agency said in a statement.

NASA’s Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond will be developed by Information In Place, Virtual Heroes, and Project Whitecard, NASA recently announced — there were rumors swirling for more than a month regarding the studios that would be selected for the project. The subscription-based video game will run on Unreal Engine 3 engine and will offer gamers the opportunity to head into space serving as several roles related to space exploration.  For example, gamers can play as a roboticist, space geologist, astrobiologist or mechanical engineer while helping create space outposts or travel around the solar system.

Read more info here –>Link

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