This review was done during the closed beta of this game and does not necessarily

reflect the end product as any mechanic, features, names or options may change.

Fantasy and Sci Fi, pretty much the only two genres that MMOs of today cover. Leaving out a niche of consumers who would otherwise play MMOs were a genre they enjoyed represented. World of Tanks, and it’s not so ambiguous name, is aimed at Word War 2 history buffs, tank enthusiasts and simulator game fans.  It looks to fill this gap by trading the fantastic for the realistic. But does WoT do good by this niche crowd who are notoriously meticulous when it comes to authenticity? We’ll break down this early look at beta to see if it is at least headed in the right direction.

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The European publisher Frogster (Runes of Magic) opened the website for the new hack’n’slay mmo Mythos. Starting from now  you can register an account for the upcoming closed beta test on the official website .

Read more and sign up for the beta

Arche Age , an Upcoming Sandbox MMO, created by XL Games and its Head of Administration Jake Song (Lineage) has recently finished the Closed Beta Test 1 and ThisIsGame.com asked a few questions about the games’ progress and ingame Details like the Crafting and Housing.

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Since the 22th of July, Vindictus (Mabinogi Heroes in Asia) is already playable in Korea, but the north American and European players have to wait until the end of the year before they can play it for the first time. A lot of videos can already be found on Youtube from the closed beta phase and the korean version. We picked five informative examples for you, but you can also find more videos on the web. The following videos show different classes and a lot of gameplay, among there is a fight against a very nasty black spider.

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Without much ado 2K Games and a german developer (Yager) announced the beta of the upcoming 3rd-person shooter Spec Ops: The line several weeks ago. The beta was planned for “summer” and exclusive for Xbox360. Equally quite like the announcement,  the beta launched a few days ago. Now a french player, who does not care about the NDA, is  presenting a nearly 16 minute taking gameplay video. The clip shows lots of things, like the menus and multiplayer action from the current state of the game:

On the official FFXIV Twitter Square Enix announced that the third Closed beta of Final Fantasy XIV ends on 25th of August. Shortly after this phase the Open Beta will follow in early September.

Thank you for participating in the FINAL FANTASY XIV Beta Test.

The current Beta Test Phase 3 (Beta 3) will end on August 25 at 5:00pm (PDT), and we plan to start the Open Beta Test in early September. We look forward to your continued help and support.

• After Beta 3 ends, all character data will be deleted.
• For the period during which a beta test is not being conducted, players will not be able to access the Players’ Site.
• Once the test’s character data have been deleted, all blogs and images on the Players’ Site will also be deleted.

We had the Chance to get some offscreen footage of Trion Worlds  Rift – Planes of Telara. The videos show a ranger class with a terrifying mutated hog pet, a Rift, and an Elementalist with a stone golem. The Rift Beta will start in September so it is not that far away.

[Event-related]

“Linkshells” have been added.

Linkshells are community groups that can be created by any player using an item also known as a linkshell, which can be purchased from the NPC A’shakkal at the Drowning Wench, the Adventurers’ Guild in Limsa Lominsa. When you have equipped a linkpearl (the communication device created by a linkshell), the corresponding linkshell crest will be displayed beside your display name.

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Here are a few scans i got sent from a german reader. Its from a gaming gagazine called PC-Action and we already reported about the facts, the article contains, but now we can see the pictures  as well.

see the rest Read more

A lot was going on in the MMO Business this Week and there showed up some new Announcements of Interest. Here is a little Overview  about the news of the recent days.  a Torchlight MMO, a Neverwinter Nights MMO Announcement, the start of the Vindictus closed beta and the Soulmaster Open Beta start, so there should something for each taste.

Torchlight MMO details

In the latest Issue of PC Gamer, Runic Games and Torchlight Designer Travis Baldree speak about the new Free 2 Play Game.Their vision is to have an MMO that plays as close to single player as they can get it. It will have the same focus on relatively fast action: carving your way through hordes of monsters with a large number of hugely devastating skills. The game has to be solo-able, but players will have to have skills that make them useful in a party and make them work together.

Neverwinter Nights MMO rumor

According to Massively there is a rumor about  an upcoming Announcement of a Neverwinter Nights MMO. The claim is underpinned by a developers statement, that Atari has an upcoming D&D video game. Besides Atari has saved the Domains “visitneverwinter.com“, “playneverwinter.com” and “neverwintergame.com“

Vindictus closed beta started

The Korean Developers announced that the Beta of the upcoming Massive Multiplay Hack and Slay has been started successfully. The F2p game is based on the Source engine, and its main content will be to kill monsters. Special Focus is set on brutality and multuplayer fun.

Soulmaster Open Beta starts

Developer GamesCampus has started the open beta of their upcoming game Soul Master. The game is a new MMORTS (Massively Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy) game that takes the innovation behind customizable “Hero” units in the RTS genre farther than ever before and allows players to have complete MMORPG-style control over their characters.