Rock, Paper, Shotgun comments on the big news from late last night: NCsoft has announced that it has purchased City of Heroes/Villains from Cryptic Studios, the Massive game's original developer. Everyone on the team has been offered a new position with the newly formed NCsoft NorCal studio, and many of them have accepted. As far as the players are concerned, NCsoft only intends for them to see freebies as a result of this deal: "Now back to you, the players. You are the lifeblood of our game. In celebration of our new studio and our exciting plans, and in order to thank you for the fantastic community that you have built, we are pleased to announce the following: All players with City of Heroes retail accounts will now have access to City of Villains, and all City of Villains retail accounts will now have access to City of Heroes. Players that didn't previously have access to "the other side" will find that they do now. Just log in to check it out! After the launch of Issue 11: A Stitch in Time this Fall, we are removing Debt from all characters and giving you a fresh start ... Also after the launch of Issue 11, all Supergroups will receive an additional 20,000 Prestige per Supergroup member."

holy_calamity writes "A bot-controlled avatar that tracks down lone avatars in Second Life and purposely invades their personal space has been created by UK researchers. The idea was to see if users value their virtual personal space. Bots avatars are not encouraged by Linden Labs — although this one is being deployed by academics, presumably spam-avatars (spavatars?) won't be far behind."

The official EVE Online site has details of upcoming patch 'Revelations 2.3'. Along with a number of bug-fixes to the PvP-focused Massively Multiplayer Online Game, this game fix will offer up compatibility with Mac OS X and Linux. Though the Mac client is a native port, Linux will require the used of Cedega. The post suggests that if you'd like a preview of what the game will be like on your rig, you can download the client and tool around the test server. System requirements are also listed, as are the distributions of Linux they are specifically supporting: Ubuntu 7+, Suse 10+, and Linspire 6. Update: 11/04 14:32 GMT by Z : Fixed implication of native Linux client.

Gamespot reports on the rumours swirling around the possibility of an Elder Scrolls Massively Multiplayer Online Game. They began when ZeniMax formed their very own Massive development company, ZeniMax Online. The company subsequently hired Matt Firor, formerly of EA Mythic, as its head. Now, the discussion online is centering on the registration of a URL that hints at big things to come for Bethesda's world. Pete Hines, spokesman for Bethesda, has a perfectly rational explanation: '"We are tired of people squatting on domains related to our games or simply not being able to get them if we needed them (note oblivion.com, fallout.com, and many others) and decided a while back we'd get these to keep it from happening again ... People are grabbing domains like these and trying to extract money from us for them, or using them for some other purpose.' Bogus or not bogus?: Bogus that the URL registration confirms the existence of an Elder Scrolls MMORPG. However, with others holding the Fallout and Star Trek MMORPG rights, the RPG franchise--famous for having MMORPG-size open worlds--is the only truly proven property in Bethesda's catalog."

The official Wizards of the Coast site notes that today is Worldwide Dungeons and Dragons Game Day. All day your Friendly Local Gaming Store will be running events using the D&D 3.5 rules, as well as skirmishes for Dungeons and Dragons minis. The official link there has downloadable character sheets if you want to go play, and the minis section of the site has rules and regs for the skirmish scenarios. The list of participating locations is available online ... so get rolling.

After a lengthy wait and a substantial retooling, Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa has gone live. The New York Times is running a piece looking into the history of Garriott's interaction with MMOGs, while Wired had a chance to speak with the 'General' getting a better sense of what the game is about. "'It takes 30 minutes to an hour just to meet up with your friends to start playing' in most MMOs, says Richard Garriott, the new game's executive producer. In contrast, Tabula Rasa, a PC game that will be released Nov. 2, was designed to appeal to the average Joe who's probably not interested in learning what "gold farming" or "damage over time" means and just wants to amuse himself by saving the universe. It's a calculated shift designed to move beyond the hard-core gaming crowd and court the mainstream audience that has made Nintendo's Wii such a surprise success. And it isn't particularly remarkable, except that Garriott is the man largely responsible for inventing the MMO model in the first place. "

EA Mythic CEO Mark Jacobs, in a new 'State of the Game' address on the Warhammer Herald site, revealed that Warhammer Online has been pushed back to at least April of next year. The game was originally slated for release this fall, and then was pushed to around February of next year. As always, the fearsome demon of polish is what's keeping the team hard at work through the holidays: "When we looked at our options, two paths lay before us: 1) Ship the game on time with fewer features and less polish, or 2) Extend the development cycle and spend the needed time and money to make WAR great. We chose the latter path - to invest additional time and effort in implementation and polish to make WAR great. Fortunately, we have the resources and support of EA behind us to extend our development cycle; time that will be used to make sure the game is everything we want it to be. WAR is coming, and it will be glorious." He notes also that they'll begin a new phase of testing next month, kicking Beta back into high gear.

Given the swirling rumours of a KOTOR MMOG, it should come as no surprise that BioWare and Lucasarts have announced they're teaming up for a project. They don't give any really concrete details, other than to say it is 'a ground-breaking interactive entertainment product'. They've also "launched a cobranded Web site, www.LucasArtsBioWare.com. 'Through our previous collaborations, we know that BioWare has an impressive ability to blend gripping stories with technological advancements, and we believe that our upcoming product will deliver an experience that will span the traditional boundaries of video game entertainment,' LucasArts president Jim Ward said in a statement. "

The site GigaOM is picking up its games coverage again, and kicks off with an article speculating on just what EA was thinking when it purchased BioWare and Pandemic. On the face of it, the move doesn't make much sense. BioWare is a great development house, but from EA's perspective their games are 'small potatoes'. "So why did they spend so much? The acquisition includes several titles for the Wii and DS already in development, and those may have breakout potential. There's tremendous gamer buzz around BioWare's upcoming RPG Mass Effect, but in all likelihood, it'll do similar numbers to the studio's million-plus-selling Knights of the Old Republic -- a hit, but not a huge one. There are rumors that BioWare is developing a 'Star Wars'-themed MMO, but if that's what inspired the purchase, the mystery only deepens: Sony Online's (SNE) MMO Star Wars Galaxies was a disappointment in relation to cost and anticipation, and that was released at the height of the buzz over a movie franchise that's since become old news."

BioWare's sci-fi RPG epic Mass Effect has now 'gone gold'. Essentially, the game is done and is ready to be pressed onto discs in time for its November 20th launch date. "The Limited Collector's Edition of Mass Effect will include a wealth of background on the game. Foremost among the premium package's offerings is a pair of 36-page booklets, one of which offers a primer on the game's universe and timeline, and the other a collection of concept artwork. The set will also include a bonus DVD with documentaries on the making of the game, a look inside BioWare, 18 Xbox Live gamer pics, 16 dashboard themes, 10 songs from the soundtrack, and 600 concept images with commentary from the game's art directors. [Z: But sites have noted it is only available for purchase online.] On top of that, gamers who preorder ... will receive a bonus disc with an introductory documentary on the game, a dozen gamer pics, eight dashboard themes, three songs from the soundtrack, and various trailers."

Gamasutra is reporting that a serious security breach caused the closure of EVE Online this past weekend. A previously-unnoticed anomaly in a database prompted CCP, makers of the game, to close down the game world and their website while the issue was examined. The flaw was rectified, and service restored the same day. No credit card or billing information was exposed in the breach. "Explained [CCP chief of operations Jón Hörðdal], 'What we discovered was an indication that one of our databases was being accessed through a security breach. Our policy in such cases is to mobilize a taskforce of internal and external experts to evaluate the situation.' Hörðdal said that the taskforce concluded that going completely dark so that an exhaustive scan could be performed was the best course of action. 'While some may feel that such a drastic reaction was not warranted, it is always our approach to err on the side of caution in order to protect the players,' he said."

simoniker writes "Areae president Raph Koster is perhaps best known as a designer of Ultima Online and the previous CCO of Sony Online Entertainment, and in an in-depth Gamasutra interview, he discusses his views on 'game grammar', the uniting of MMOs and online worlds, and the software patent problem. In particular, he's been talking about the 'barbarians at the gates' for hardcore MMO makers: 'Even the creation of the MUD in the first place was that. It was the Internet-based reaction to the stuff that had existed on the microcomputers and the Plato network and all of that. All of a sudden, "Oh, wait! We can put a text MUD on Arpanet!" And it was like, "Whoa!" and it spread like wildfire, and all of a sudden, all of that other stuff went away. So it's really possible for that stuff to be happening now with microtransactions, with portals versus traditional publishers, with digital distribution publishers versus traditional publishers, and with MMOs from MTV versus MMOs from Sony or EA or NCSoft.'"

Bill Slavicsek, R&D director on Dungeons and Dragons at Wizards of the Coast, has announced via his personal column that the three core books for Fourth Edition will all be coming out in the same month. When the new game version was announced at Gen Con this year, the initial idea was that the books would be staggered over a three month period. "After conferring with our various trade partners, the Sales Team here at Wizards came back with word that they'd rather have the three core rulebooks release in the same month than over three consecutive months. As that's how we originally wanted to release them, Brand and R&D got together with our Production Team to see if we could accommodate the request. The answer is YES! The new release schedule looks like this: May: H1: Keep on the Shadowfell 4th Edition D&D adventure with Quick-Start Rules. June 6: 4th Edition Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual." As a note, the article is trapped behind an inane login for the Dungeons and Dragons Insider site. Hey WotC? It's really hard to talk up your new toys when you make it hard to read your content. Why not loosen up a bit?

Rock, Paper, Shotgun is hosting an interview/retrospective with Ragnar Tørnquist talking about the classic point-and-click adventure game The Longest Journey. The piece starts off with a surprise: the game was originally intended to be a platformer. "I wanted to tell a story, a specific story - and that's why we ended up making an adventure rather than an RPG or an action game ... We were all fans of the classic adventures from LucasArts and Sierra, and I'd made a bunch of text adventures on the Commodore 64 back in the day, so the genre was a natural match. But in the end it was all about the story, and finding the gameplay mechanics to suit that."

Hugh Pickens writes "Time lag can cause some very strange behavior in massively multiplayer online games when players' actions onscreen become slow and jerky. New techniques are on the way to reduce the problem of lag time in MMOGs when a player's computer can't keep up with changes in a shared online world. Games like Quake use a technique called dead reckoning and while traditional dead-reckoning systems that assume that a game character will maintain the velocity and direction that it has at the moment an update is sent to all other participating computers; dead reckoning works best for movement and shooting and less well for erratic actions such as interacting with objects or with other players. Read the abstract of new technique called 'neuro-reckoning' that may improve the predictive process by installing a neural network in each player's computer to predict fast, jerky actions."

Retro Gaming with Racketboy has up a feature looking at the best modern 2D games out there, all on the PlayStation 2. He highlights the best of every genre, from the modern classic RPG/beat-em-up Odin Sphere to the timeless beauty that is the Metal Slug series. "Disgaea: Hour of Darkness & Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories: Disgaea greatly resembles other strategy RPGs. Its isometric perspective, 3D battlefields, and nice-looking 2D characters are clearly reminiscent of most other games of this type, and on first impression, so is the game's turn-based combat system. However, you'll soon realize that this game actually plays very differently. The gameplay itself is, in a word, weird."

That 'other' RPG hybrid, Too Human has been in silent running mode since their disastrous 2006 E3 showing. Thankfully, the game has progressed to the point where the team felt comfortable revealing the game. For the moving picture show, GameTrailers has you covered. For a more textual experience, 1up, Team Xbox, and Gamespot all chip in with their two cents. From Gamespot's post: "If you're familiar with the loot/drop systems in MMO games and action role-playing games, such as Diablo II, you'll have a reasonable idea of what you can expect from Too Human. Many of the enemies that you kill--most of which are robotic variations on classic fantasy goblins, dark elves, and the like--will drop weapons, armor pieces, or item blueprints for you to collect. Items are color-coded according to their rarity, and unsurprisingly, the most powerful items in the game are those that drop the least frequently. The rarest and most powerful items in Too Human can only be obtained by collecting a blueprint for their design from an enemy then spending a significant amount of money on having the item crafted."

The MTV Multiplayer blog has a first look at the World of Warcraft comic book slated to start its run next month. Set to be published by the Wildstorm imprint, and written by "Thor" and "Orion" veteran Walter Simonson, the comic will focus on the exploits of an amnesiac human washed up on the shores of the continent of Kalimdor. "Simonson said the comic will be 'very much tied to the lore and to the Warcraft history.' 'If you're a longtime player, I think the comic is a revelation about some of the mysteries,' he explained. 'There are mysteries from the past that have never been totally addressed within the game, or at least we're able to address them in the comic in a way that the game hasn't been able to.' He also said that he tried to write the comic so that it appeases Warcraft fans as well as newcomers." For a taste of the art from the first issue (done by Ludo Lullabi and inker Sandra Hope), the site has the first five pages available for viewing.

Closing out an era, Bethesda Softworks will be bringing the final piece of downloadable content out for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Rogues and mages both have their lairs, and this newest addition is for the melee-types: The Fighter's Stronghold. Starting this coming Monday it will be available on the 360 and for PC, and for one week only it will be free for the taking. They're also hoping to bring this content to the PS3 version of the game. "Since we're talking about DLC, I thought I'd update you with what's going on with the PS3 version of Oblivion. We are close, very close to working something out to bring Shivering Isles to PS3 owners. That may be in downloadable form via PSN, or as a standalone retail disc, or both. I can't say definitively yet that it will happen, and I definitely can't say when. But it's looking good, and hopefully we'll have good news soon. Don't have anything I can tell you about any other DLC, but Shivering Isles is the one we get asked about all the time, so I at least wanted to update folks on that."

WhaddayaMeanIHaveToLevelUpTheOldWay writes "A massive denial of service attack has disabled some of the world's largest virtual goods trading sites. The Korea-based sites hit by the attack are responsible for most of the country's estimated $1bn annual trade in virtual gold, weapons and other items for games like World of Warcraft. Local press reports are blaming Chinese botnet controllers for the attacks and claim that this is an extortion attempt. The sites affected have been offline for four days and reportedly handle more than 90 percent of Korea's online item trading — a business now worth more than $3m a day, according to Korean government statistics."