Napalm Riot

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On Monday, Gaia Online announced it has managed to raise $11 million after a Series C funding round conducted by Institutional Venture Partners. Now GO has about $32 million and is currently one of the most popular virtual communities with about five million visitors every month.

With the raising of these funds, various additions will be made to the website, one of which will be a Flash-based MMO, which will come out this summer. The company seeks to continually improve its online environmen . . . Read more

After a bit of a tease a couple of weeks ago, Meteor Games, founded by the creators of the kids Flash game portal Neopets, has announced details of their first-ever MMO. Twin Skies will be a blend of a traditional, 3D MMO with innovative out-of-game elements. For instance, certain web-based mini-games can earn you a monster in-game, who will roam about, fight, and even send you pictures of the hapless newbies it kills. That … is so deliciously evil. Other mini-games could change the weather in . . . Read more

Future is tapping into a rapidly growing online gaming phenomenon with a free monthly magazine, What MMO.

As the name suggests, the 16-page title focuses on MMO games and will be inserted into 150,000 copies of Future’s PC computing and games magazines – including PC Gamer, PC Format, PC Zone and Windows Vista: The Official Magazine.

(Source: http://www.mcvuk.com/news…ture-Launches-new-MMO-mag )

When Webzen first debuted Huxley to great fanfare during the 2005 Electronic Entertainment Expo. At that time, the game garnered its fair share of attention thanks to the promise of addictive first-person shooter combat made even more so by massively multiplayer online role-playing game sensibilities.

However, though the MMOFPS was initially slated for release on the Xbox 360 and PC in 2006, development has taken far longer than Webzen initially anticipated. Details on how Huxley has been sha . . . Read more

Imagine playing a massively multiplayer online game where the actions of you and your friends help shape the storyline of an ongoing television series. That's exactly what the Sci Fi Channel has planned for 2010, as they work with game developer Trion World Network to create the ultimate merging of the TV and gaming mediums.

"A television show that is on once a week isn't enough. The fans today want the experience to go beyond that," Howe said. "For example, we can tell them that there w . . . Read more

Chinese MMO operator Shanda Entertainment is being sued by a denizen of the company's Legend of Mir II over the loss of 31 virtual items, all of which mysteriously vanished from the player's in-game inventory over the last year.

The player, surnamed Wen, is seeking a little over $14,000 USD in damages from the company in a suit filed in the Shanghai Pudong District People's Court.

(source: Wired - http://blog.wired.com/gam…8/05/chinese-mmo-ope.html)

Joymax has released a new expansion for Silkroad Online called "Legend III Roc Mountain." In this expansion, players will get a new mountain area to adventure in with new monsters to battle in more epic quests.

Check out http://www.silkroadonline…aser/roc_update/intro.asp.

Joe Ybarra is one of the original game producers for Electronic Arts. His roster of achievements in award winning games include Bards Tale and Starflight, and his MMORPG credits include Shadowbane and Matrix Online. At the 2008 ION Games Conference, I finally tracked him down for a chat about Stargate Worlds which will be published by FireSky, a subsidiary of Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment.

“How,” I asked Joe Ybarra, Senior Vice President of Strategic Operations at Firesky, “did you . . . Read more

One of the blogs I read on occasion to scope out some extra news bits discussed playing Dead Frontier, and I decided to give it a try for discussion here.

As it turns out, the entire thing is a browser-based game. It seems to work alright in Firefox, but it's a bit sluggish on loading various screens. The game is still in it's beta stages, so I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt on that.

I entered in as Anarya, a First Level Police Officer that managed to survive this zombie uprising . . . Read more

According to GameLayers, the casual multiplayer game brings online social play into web browsers. PMOG gives players points for surfing with a PMOG Firefox extension, which can then be used to leave traps or treasure on any website for other players to find.


“There’s a reason we wanted to make a passively-multiplayer online game,” said GameLayers CEO and co-founder Justin Hall.


“Ideally we want to constantly play games but we don’t have time. A passive game is something we c . . . Read more

Playboy big wig Christie Hefner, daughter of the eponymous Hugh, has said that the naughty global brand will expand into virtual worlds, the firm having already diversified into clothing in order to escape falling magazine revenues.

Playboy presently has a bunny island in Second Life, but it seems that something more ambitious could be on the cards next.

"We intend to leverage [our brand] in both immersive real world and in the virtual environment to increase shareholder value," Hef . . . Read more

As of most of you know, the new class in WoW: WotLK is the Death Knight. This class is a hero class in the game, the first one as of now. But many people didn't know about this class yet, and so Gamespy has released some info on this new class that's coming out with the expansion. I'm getting of my information from WoW insider, which is simpler and easier to read.

Creation and initial play:

* Death Knights will start in a floating citadel similar to Naxxramas at level 55, and go thr . . . Read more

The best sign that someone’s qualified to run an Internet startup may not be an MBA degree, but level 70 guild leader status, according to the latest issue of Harvard Business Review.

“Leadership’s Online Labs” by Byron Reeves, Thomas W. Malone, and Tony O’Driscoll is based on the authors’ research into the leadership and management skills required by fantasy/sci-fi MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and Eve Online. In those multiplayer games, the hardest-to-achieve goals (such as kil . . . Read more

Two New Xfire Play 2 Win Contests for the Free 2 Play MMOs GunZ and 2Moons to Go Live This Month!

Xfire, the fastest growing online gaming community in the world, today announced two new contests taking place as a result of its partnerships with Free 2 Play game publishers: ijji.com and Acclaim. Xfire's Play 2 Win contests and Clans Competitions for popular shooter GunZ by ijji.com - live now through May 16 - and David Perry's Acclaim-published MMO 2Moons to go live May 16-30, allow pl . . . Read more

Codemasters states that from now on it will develop all it's MMOs in-house.


The publisher currently runs four MMOs with partners - RF Online, ArchLord, Dungeons & Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online. A fifth, Jumpgate, is being developed in collaboraton with NetDevil and is due out later this year.

According to vice president David Solari, Codemasters will focus on producing its own titles in future. "We always had a five year plan and it was always in the middle of that f . . . Read more

I'm sure some of you may have noticed, but the MMO industry has been growing and growing. It's now one of the largest bodies of the gaming industry. There have been many triumphs for the MMO universe, but there have also been quite a few failures, which has raised the question, "Can these games truly become global? Are subscription models going to decline? How should developers innovate the play?" There are also questions about how big a role established IP should play, as well as the overall co . . . Read more

Ingle Games Ltd. is gladly to announce that Phoenix Nirvana, the new highly anticipated expansion pack of Phoenix Dynasty Online is ready and you could click here to download the expansion pack now, with game client Version 7211.

The game’s unprecedented success and overwhelming popularity over the past several months have spurred players asking more and more features to be added in the game. We are delighted to oblige our supportive players by adding the Marriage System, Refining System an . . . Read more

ArenaNet is celebrating the third anniversary of the release of its global hit, Guild Wars, with a prize-packed online sweepstakes starting April 28 and running through May 31.

The Guild Wars franchise, made up of the original Guild Wars, Factions, Nightfall and Eye of the North, has become one of the most successful online role-playing games on the market, having recently surpassed the five-million units sold mark.

ArenaNet has marked the success of Guild Wars with the release of Guild Wa . . . Read more

Zyon Games announced their North American website launch of Secret Online today. The website can be found at http://secret.zyongames.com and is the first official English translation of the immensely popular free-to-play Chinese MMORPG dubbed Secret Online. Gamer fans will find a great deal of English content on the site, including such goodies as videos, screen shots, and game play guides.

Secret Online is one of the most anticipated Internet games for North American audiences in 2008. With . . . Read more

After seven days of closed beta testing, Korean developer Lizard Interactive announced that beginning April 30th, it will be opening the doors to the beta test to all players for its upcoming free-to-play, 3D fantasy MMORPG, Sho.
The announcement comes after the very successful short closed beta period which introduced almost all the key components of the game and had no major problems. As a result, the open beta will begin earlier than expected due to its success.

Set in 1100 BC China, duri . . . Read more

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