The rumours have been around for months now, but Tuesday Sony Online Entertainment confirmed that they had purchased Vanguard and Sigil Games Online from its investors. Nearly everyone on the Sigil team was laid off with around 50% of the outfit slated to be hired back, so that work can continue on the Massively Multiplayer Online Game. The game will continue running under the auspices of SOE, as announced by company CEO John Smedley in a forum post on Tuesday. Rumours that Brad McQuaid (keeper of the Vision behind Vanguard) has not seen been in Sigil's offices since last year has only exacerbated fan reaction to this announcement. It remains to be seen if SOE can undo the damage that the last five months have done to the Saga of Heroes community, and the game itself.

Yesterday was Square/Enix's annual media party, and there were a couple of interesting announcements. Game|Life's Chris Kohler was there, and reports on the most interesting announcement: a Final Fantasy XII re-envisioning entitled International: Zodiac Job System. The title will feature the same story, a further-refined combat system, and a series of 12 separate license boards. Each board corresponds to a traditional FF 'job', like Monk or Red Mage; at the moment there is no plan to release it in the states. Other announcements include word that Star Ocean will get the remake treatment, with the first two games coming to the PSP sometime in the future. They are also working on a next-gen Star Ocean 4; no details about that. Crystal Chronicles for the DS drops in August in Japan, no US release date was given. Finally, screenshots and videos of The Last Remnant capped off the event; we talked about the game earlier this week when it was announced.

Several readers sent in links to the BBC, which has picked up news of a German investigation into child pornography in Second Life. A German TV station captured images of two avatars, an apparent adult and an apparent child, involved in sexual activity. The station also said they had infiltrated a ring trading real-world child porn in SL. SL creator Linden Labs is cooperating fully with the investigation, they write on their official blog: "Our investigations revealed the users behind these avatars to be a 54-year-old man and a 27-year-old woman. Both were immediately banned from Second Life." The German prosecutor's office hasn't responded to Linden's offer of help in identifying the real-world traders.

1up is reporting on content from Game Informer magazine from this month, talking about Square's next big non-Final Fantasy RPG. Entitled The Last Remnant, it sounds like an interesting blend of the old and the new. While the action will stick with traditional turn-based mechanics, several elements reflect the changing landscape of the games industry. Square/Enix intends to release the game worldwide, localizing the game to an English audience as the game is created. Additionally, the game will have two selectable protagonists: one is to be a traditional heroic Square character, and the other more of an anti-hero for the American market. "The Last Remnant's been designed on Unreal Engine 3, and we should see the first official media come from [Square/Enix's announcement party] on May 12 and 13. Going with Epic's technology isn't too surprising considering the company's emphasizing the focus on Western gamers ... We don't know much about combat, but it's turn-based, more action-oriented and has a cinematic flair."

The BBC has up a short piece on the hopes of game developers and investors to 'beat World of Warcraft'. Representatives for the upcoming Age of Conan, recently-released Lord of the Rings Online, and Star Wars Galaxies all discuss what it's like competing in a post-WoW world. Funcom game director Gaute Godoger has a point when he says, "The industry so needs competition to World of Warcraft ... We need other strong games that can make people understand that there's more to it than WoW." The article discusses some of the features each of these games offer that differ from WoW, and theorizes a bit on where the MMOG genre will go next.

There is an good video on NPR about how real human reactions translate to the virtual world. It's interesting in view of the question posted here about rape in Second Life. The video covers a little experiment in SL where a reporter gets together with a psychologist to see if some unspoken human rules apply in the virtual world — such as staring or standing too close to someone. Perhaps surprisingly, in this world where you can be or do just about anything, you can't break these unspoken rules with impunity.

GameDaily Biz is reporting on the project that Ken Rolston moved to Big Huge Games to do. The RPG project will be helmed by the former Oblivion designer, developed by BHG, and (it's now been announced) will be published by THQ. Slated for the 360, PS3, and PC platforms, few other details are available about the project. Just the same, the article contains an interview with Tim Campbell, VP of Business Development, THQ, and Big Huge Games' Tim Train and Rolston. "BIZ: Ken Rolston, you're a legend in the RPG field, both electronic and paper-and-pencil. Where would you like to take the genre next? What innovations can we expect? Rolston: I'm actually a pretty conservative variety of visionary. In addition to our brilliant but secret central premise, and the addition of four or five original amazing major features and implementations we can't Wait to Reveal at a Later Date, I just want to make everything... story, characters, exploration, themes, setting, interactivity, entertainment, world class whacking and looting... just a little more perfect in every way."

An anonymous reader writes "The online Java-based fantasy MMOG Runescape has reportedly surpassed 1 Million paying subscribers. Gamasutra has a Q&A article with the Jagex co-founder and lead developer Andrew Gower about the UK-based firm's success. 'Counting roughly 4.6 million who play the free version of the game, RuneScape has more than 5.6 million players, says Constant Tedder, managing director of Jagex. As such, it represents credible competition to the big kahuna, World of Warcraft, which has topped 8 million paying subscribers. Part of the secret, Tedder said in an interview, is that the game doesn't take itself so seriously. In one recent event, players could transform themselves into penguins and infiltrate the penguin army to see what they were up to in the penguin underworld. The game has been growing largely by word of mouth.'"

wjamesau writes "A group of Second Life Residents have created an amazing-looking RPG inspired by the city of Midgar from Final Fantasy VII , with a scripted combat system and game masters who run SOLDIER versus AVALANCHE action set-pieces. An interesting twist is that Squaresoft, the owners of the Final Fantasy IP, apparently gave the non-commercial project their blessing — or maybe not. The island of Midgar has changed ownership so no one's quite sure, but several hundred players keep it going through donations. 'Operating as if Square gave approval has made them act as if they work for Square. They have rules about never sharing information about pirating Final Fantasy gear, and are the best promotion of any brand in Second Life. If Square were ever to come to Second Life, no PR manager could dream of creating a more dedicated player base than this one.'"

gbridge writes "Over eight years since the release of Fallout 2, the original (pre-alpha) tech demo of Black Isle Studio's abandoned Fallout 3 Van Buren project has made its way into the public domain. It's obviously a long, long way from being even beta quality but fans are rejoicing that they finally have something of the cancelled project to see for themselves. Bethesda have also given Fallout fans something to look forward to by announcing that a teaser video of their own interpretation of Fallout 3 will be released in 33 days time."

An anonymous reader writes "Julian Murdoch over at Gamers With Jobs posits that the recently released Lord of the Rings Online, for all it's flaws, is a new kind of game — the Destiny-Locked RPG: 'The reason that Story sets LOTRO apart is because you know how it ends. This is a luxury World of Warcraft simply can never have. There is no logical end to WoW, where the evil WoW faction of the Horde is victorious, and every member of the good-aligned Alliance dies. The viciously PvP nature of EVE Online means that the story can only sit on the sidelines and inform, not take center stage. But in LOTRO, the game is the story. In this, the game has far more in common with Oblivion than it does with WoW.' The argument here is that a game in which the outcome is known is fundamentally a different (and possibly better) form of gameplay than that the current rage of emergent-gameplay sandbox weak storied games. A challenging idea." It's not so much that the game's ending is already known, as that there is an ending.

Shack News and the Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo are reporting that sourcecode for the MMOG Lineage III may have been stolen. As the third Massively Multiplayer game in a huge-selling South Korean series released by publisher NCSoft, over a billion dollars may be lost as a result of this theft. "The Seoul Metropolitan Police said Wednesday that seven former NCsoft employees are suspected of having sold the technology to a major Japanese game company. The seven left the Korean firm in February and allowed the Japanese company to review the software during a job interview. Police believe that the technology might have been copied during the demonstration."

Real Money Transfer (RMT) is a contentious subject among MMOG players, but not something usually addressed by major news organizations. Joystiq has up a post on the BBC's coverage of gold farming in World of Warcraft , with a reporter 'live from Ironforge' addressing the issue. "The BBC has taken a straight look at Chinese gold farmers in the World of Warcraft. We'd fear for our own jobs when MSM begin competently portraying game news — thankfully, gold farming is old news and has already been well documented in the last two years, so we feel relatively safe. The piece takes a look at your typical Chinese gold farming operation, with some nifty use of green-screen by the reporter being magically teleported into the game. At least it wasn't another WoW game addiction piece."

To the surprise of almost no one, EA Mythic has announced that Warhammer Online won't be out until next year. Eurogamer reports: "'Since our acquisition by EA, we have been afforded many wonderful development opportunities and we plan to take full advantage of everything that is available. This includes taking several additional months to make the best MMORPG possible,' Mythic's Mark Jacobs wrote in a community newsletter." They're going to use the extra time to go back over the Dwarven and Greenskin areas to implement new ideas they've had since working on the original content. With the successful launch of LOTRO this week, and the continuing crash and burn of Vanguard , MMOG developers seem to be wising up to the importance of a really good launch.

1up is reporting on the combat system for the upcoming Dragon Quest IX . Rumoured to be a departure from the classic turn-based style, the DS title is now confirmed to be much more like previous iterations of the game than initially thought. "Enemies will be visible on the field, and players will enter into battle once in contact with them. Like Dragon Quest VIII, the battle will be presented in 3D with players selecting commands for attacking enemies, casting spells and others. In the case of multiplayer, each of the players will select commands for their characters shown at the bottom part of the screen. Dragon Quest IX will also be the first time players can customize their appearance including physical features such as your height, weight, face, hair as well as your costume. It is not yet known whether the costumes will be dependent on the class you have selected."

IGN is reporting that the next game in the Final Fantasy series will probably be around for quite a while. If Square/Enix has anything to say about it, we'll be playing the FFXIII family of games for the next ten years. "Although speaking with a Nintendo magazine, Hashimoto brought up Final Fantasy XIII as a comparison for Square Enix's decision to expand upon the FFVII storyline through the Compilation project years after the game's original release. 'Different from something like VII, which we expanded upon afterwards, with Fabula Nova Crystallis FFXIII, we've thought about an expansive world setting from the start. Under the idea of wanting everyone to be sucked into the world for 10 years, we're preparing a number of categories.' He likened this approach to films like Star Wars, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings." Chris Kohler took the time to point out that, in the same interview, the Square folks stated they're still not entirely convinced about this whole Virtual Console thing. "We feel that the Japanese game market still requires [physical] media. Also, FF and Dragon Quest are played by a wide range of users, from children to adults, so there are limitations when you consider the problems that we would have with billing systems."

The wait for 'catch-em-all' folks in the US is over; Pokémon Diamond and Pearl are out today. Joystiq and Kotaku have coverage of yesterday's launch party at the Nintendo Store. "There was a station set up to play the card game, manned by adults who were there to teach the game to kids. Finally there was a station where Junichi Masuda, the game director, and Shigeru Ohmori, the game design lead, signed autographs for those old enough to know who they are. It may have been meant to push Pokémon merchandise (the guys at the card station handed out thin packs of cards to every kid who came by) but it also meant there was something for everyone." 1up and Gamespot, meanwhile, are offering up reviews of the game. Both hand it the respectable score of 8.5, saying that it's still a great game experience but dinging the developers for not moving the series forward in any innovative directions.

Computer and Videogames reports that Bioware has moved Mass Effect's release to September, from the previous launch window of June/July. "The news comes from an official Microsoft event this morning, though no more details have been offered. The September release puts Mass Effect in head-to-head competition with fellow first-party RPG Blue Dragon, which is also released that month. This might seem silly to you budding industry analysts, but it's probably just as beneficial for Microsoft to avoid the infamous Summer drought." As much as I was looking forward to taking on the machines sooner rather than later, I guess if they want it to be 'good' ...

theodp writes "The expansion of Dell's Plant a Tree for Me program into Second Life has the Silicon Valley Sleuth wondering if this represents a new low in Earth Day marketing tie-ins. You may wonder, too, after reading Dell's invitation to its Earth Day Party at Dell Island in SL ('get your own tree sapling to plant in Second Life!')."

The Beta has been going on for some time now, and for all intents and purposes Lord of the Rings Online has launched. Pre-order players will be able to move their characters to the live game when the title officially lights up on April 24th, and commentators on Massively Multiplayer games have weighed in. Their opinion, generally, is unanimous: buy it. Tobold contributes a full-on review, as does CVG. AFK Gamer doesn't go in for such long-form opinions, but he still has a lot to say. Specifically, Foton comments on the good, the okay, and the bad, as well as a few words on the game's (somewhat out of the ordinary) classes. "[The game is] deep and broad. An MMOG, any MMOG, with its premium box price and its premium subscription prices, needs to offer more activities than: you can kill stuff, and, umm, you can kill other players, and umm, you could check the auctions/trade channel. There's many ways to screw around in this MMOG: Deeds, accomplishments, exploration (easy to outrun higher level mobs), titles, player-made music, engaging quest text, a solid start to the crafting system, MONSTER PLAY!!! There's probably more, but that's all I've tried so far."