erich666 writes "Wired reports on 'La Fuga' (The Escape), a real-world game. You overcome physical and mental challenges to escape a prison. Not just any live-action role playing game, this one is run in a $20 million facility in Madrid. A networked PDA and RFID tag keep you in touch while you play. The company is now building a 30,000-square-foot game center at 49th and Broadway in New York City." From the article: "The screen goes static and then switches to a view of a sweaty prisoner with a 5 o'clock shadow who tells me that I can liberate myself and all the other drones stuck in the prison. Those who have escaped before me will contact me to assist in my quest. The door opens, and I enter a sort of closet before another door opens to reveal a metal air duct. I try to step in, but I slip, fall hard on my ass, and slide down the chute into a room containing a baggage carousel surrounded by screens."

Ryosen asks: "The current issue of PC Gamer Magazine has a rundown on the MMORPGs due out this year. Reading over the list of hopefuls and checking out some of the websites and comments, I continually ran across complaints from players about the tedium in a lot of the quests from various games. These are typically of the non-imaginative 'take this message to that person' variety, or 'go kill 4 of these creatures' sorts. Obviously there have been some great quests and plots in games of the past and, with so many new RPGs in development, I thought this would be a great time to reminisce over some of our favorites. Who knows? Maybe some of those designers might find some inspiration for their upcoming creations."

Tabletop roleplaying has been a fixture in my life since I was ten. You can probably imagine my enthusiasm when I heard of the joint venture between Asheron's Call developer Turbine and D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast. The goal: A Massively Multiplayer game set in a D&D campaign. Keith Baker's Eberron was tapped for the gameworld's flavour, with the d20 ruleset providing the skeleton on which to create the title's mechanics. The result is Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO), which has been in the works for about two years now. DDO is faithful in ways I wouldn't have thought possible, but still manages to raise conflicting opinions for me. DDO has real-time traps and combat, beautiful graphics, and still fails to interest me on any level of my gamer soul. Read on for my impressions of a most perplexing MMOG.

Warcry has a short article with impressions from someone who was asked to participate in a Star Wars Galaxies focus group. The moderator evidently presented several options, and the group responded. From the article: "The final question/topic was whether we'd choose any one of the pamphlet outlines to add to the game, or if we'd prefer for them to work on bringing things back that were taken out. As soon as he was done talking, the group said 'Rollback' almost as one. The moderator seemed like he saw that coming, because he'd probably heard the term a dozen times already from the other groups."

Next Generation reports that Blizzard COO Paul Sims has dispelled any ideas that their hit MMOG would appear on the Xbox 360. From the article: "WoW is built as a PC gaming experience. Porting PC games to console often compromises games, and we'd never allow the WoW gameplay experience to suffer ... Also, it's important to us that the entire player base is able to play together. Microsoft's Xbox Live architecture is very protected from all sorts of outside influence, so shared play between 360 and PC owners would be very tough. We wouldn't even consider WoW for 360 unless we could overcome that hurdle."

Gamespot has word that Bethesda's upcoming release Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has gone gold. It is due out on the 20th. They also have a rundown on some gameplay. From the article: "In true Elder Scrolls fashion, you start Oblivion rotting in a jail cell. Don't worry--Oblivion plunges you into the action and story faster than any Elder Scrolls game to date. We'll get into some minor spoilers here, though many of the following facts have already been revealed publicly. Once again you'll play as a character burdened by destiny to save the world, this time from a demonic invasion from the hellish plane known as Oblivion. Before you know it, you'll go from the dungeon cell to exploring a dank underground, killing rats and assassins while also getting some welcome introductory exposition from Emperor Uriel Septim VII, voiced by Patrick Stewart himself." I know I don't normally mention gold releases, but I'm really looking forward to this one. You know a guy is committed when he buys new RAM for a game.

The year is finally picking up some steam, with new game announcements, ship dates confirmed, and delays expected. Besides the already announced Zelda delay, Nintendo actually has good news to offer. New Super Mario Bros. is slated for a May 7th release here in the states. Fallout 3 will not be at E3 this year, despite the highly anticipated nature of the game. Oblivion, Bethesda's upcoming RPG, doesn't quite have a release date yet. It should be coming out 'soon', though. NCSoft is apparently working on a dungeon crawler themselves, with the City of Heroes publisher announcing Dungeon Runners at the Taipei game show. For those of you who (like me) loved the title, there are sequels to F.E.A.R. on the way. They won't be carrying the stupid name, thankfully. There will also be a sequel to God of War, slated for release next February. Finally, for classic gaming fans, the GameTap service will be offering the Ultima series of games for play in the near future, probably around the same time that Street Fighter 2 will be on the Xbox 360 Arcade. Looks like we've got a 2006 worth looking forward to. Update: 02/22 20:18 GMT by Z : Changed the God of War information link to Gamasutra; Eurogamer pulled the info after legal threats from Sony.

Martin Ralya writes "As a tabletop RPG gamemaster, I've been thinking about what GMs can learn from World of Warcraft ever since I first logged in. After close to 200 hours of WoW time, I've come up with 9 lessons GMs can learn from World of Warcraft."

Labyrrinth writes "The media blitz for the upcoming release of the new MMOG, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes has begun with 2 independent previews at IGN and Gamespot . From the article at Gamespot 'In days of old when knights were bold, elves with pointy sticks would totally beat up on a bunch of skeletons. You may have seen online games that take place in high-fantasy worlds, but recently, these games have become much more lenient on players, so that exploring, fighting, and even falling in battle has relatively minor consequences. Not since EverQuest of 1999 (a game that was infamously punishing back then and was clearly one of the main reasons why newer games got easier) has a new massively multiplayer game tried to offer a well-thought-out, but purposely steep, challenge.'" Normally I don't think previews are noteworthy, but Vanguard has been practically a black hole of information since development began.

Gamasutra continues to expand their coverage of student game design programs, with a postmortem on the student project Insignia. A group of six students spent most of a year working on an RPG/RTS hybrid using the d20 license from Wizards of the Coast. From the entertaining writeup: "The process of pitching our idea was highly informative and gave us an industry perspective, insight and positive feedback from the judges. The pressure of competition also helped really focus the team's efforts rather than the more nebulous approach of most student projects."

ShannonA writes "The world of designer board games, including such classics as The Settlers of Catan and Modern Art, is full of creative collaborations between designers. In a new article, Six Degrees of Collaboration, Shannon Appelcline traces these collaborative connections across a half-dozen countries and over thirty years of time." Interesting to see how relatively small a part of the table-top gaming industry really is.

Gamespot reports that RPG maker Square-Enix reported an almost 70% decline in net profit for most of last year. From the article: "Square Enix attributed most of its financial difficulties to its primary business--games. The company had a profitable nine months, releasing a number of hits: Kingdom Hearts II, which shipped 1.1 million units in Japan since its release in December; Romancing SaGa for the PS2, which shipped 500,000 units (Japan: 450,000, USA: 50,000); and Dragon Quest VIII, which shipped 430,000 units in North America. However, the numbers couldn't match those of the previous year, when Dragon Quest VIII shipped 3 million units in its first three days of release in Japan. The segment's sales fell 43.3 percent to 21.2 billion yen ($180 million), and its operating income plunged 95.1 percent to 974 million yen ($8.28 million)."

John Tynes, a tabletop RPG developer well-known for work on products for Pagan Publishing and Wizards of the Coast, has a piece in this week's Escapist about the power of the tabletop roleplaying experience. He compares it to the experience of roleplaying in a Massive game, and finds it lacking. From the article: "There is no golden age here. There's just another group of players who tried to tell some stories and couldn't bend the tools to their will. The tools even made things harder in some cases - as in the contentious area of IC vs. OOC chat. Endsong says the guild started with local chat being in character. But more and more members switched to using voice communication via TeamSpeak. If you thought roleplaying online via text messages was a challenge, try it with a headset." Please note - this article contains some disturbing descriptions. No sarcasm, reader beware.

reidman writes "The unusual Japanese RPG Mother 2 (later released as "EarthBound" stateside) was a huge success in Japan. Hints about the development of the game's sequel were everywhere (even in the game itself). Originally developed for the ill-fated 64DD, the sequel was downgraded, delayed, and eventually cancelled. The fans, however, were too obsessed to let it be - and the game was quietly picked up again. Earlier this month an official announcement was finally made - the obsessive pursuit of the fans has made Mother 3 a reality (in Japan, at least) - it will be released on April 20, 2006 for the GBA! Now to get it translated..."

Earth Wind and Metal writes "In response to a recent article from the Guardian about the lack of original games, Siliconera selected ten brand new titles set for release in 2006 to keep your eyes on. Five of the games are new to the USA and the other five are making their world debut. The list includes the robot house sim Chibi Robo, sandbox mecha RPG Steambot Chronicles, Taito's DS cooking game Cooking Mama and of course Okami." I am *really* looking forward to Okami.

This weekend will see two very different portrayals of gamers by major media outlets. Gamepolitics reports on tonight's episode of Dateline NBC, which will detail a murder plot crafted by an RPG gamer. From the article: "'This is a tough case,' said Dateline correspondent Dennis Murphy. 'There were no forensics. (the police) knew that Brian Trimble was the link, the video-game player locked forever at 16 years old. Blaine Norris had the nerves to do the killing. And they had to get one guy to flip on the other.'. Meanwhile, Sunday's 60 Minutes will feature a piece on professional gamer Fatal1ty. From that article: "Some believe the time is near for video game competitions to become large spectator events. If and when that happens, Wendel will have played an enormous role."

Gamasutra reports that World of Warcraft has hit another milestone in subscribers, with One Million European players and 5.5 Million players worldwide. From the article: "The figure of 1 million customers is more than four times the previously estimated size of the entire European MMORPG market. According to data from Media Control and GFK panels, plus internal studies and account data from Blizzard itself, the company is also claiming that World of WarCraft was the best selling full price PC game in Europe last year." All those players will have a new world event to look forward to at the end of the month, as RPG Vault gives a preview on the Lunar Festival due to be released on January 27th.

eToyChest has an interview up with Bill Roper, formerly of Blizzard Entertainment, discussing progress on the action-RPG Hellgate: London. From the article: "Hellgate: London is playable as a stand-alone single-player game, but it's the multiplayer components that we believe will really make it shine. We're building our own online destination for the game that is comparable in features to any MMORPG. This means a client/server structure to provide safe and secure gaming, character databases, customer service, guild support and so on. We want to provide ongoing content for the game long after it has shipped, and we're building both the game and our infrastructure to lay the ground work for doing just this."

Gamespot is reporting that, despite earlier reports, the much-anticipated Elder Scrolls IV will fit on one disc for the Xbox 360. 1up is running a preview of the game, slated for a March release. From the article: "This game aims to let the player feel not only immersed in the game world, but also tied to it in an integral way. Your actions will determine future events, and have lasting impacts. For example, during the demo, we learned that the character had accidentally set a villager on fire earlier; after that, when he tried to go join a guild that he had joined in every previous demo, the guildmaster told him he was not welcome. There's a way to fix this, of course -- you can pay a fine, or do something to rehabilitate your reputation so that other villagers will think more kindly of you."

Announcements have been made for new titles that are likely to get some folks excited. An online-enabled version of Tetris for the Nintendo DS is slated to come out this March, and the first add-on to the online RPG Guild Wars is due out sometime in the second Quarter. From the Tetris article: "After long dismissing online play as not being central to gaming, Nintendo is fast becoming one of Web-enabled multiplayer's biggest boosters ... Tetris DS, a reworked edition of the 1985 Soviet puzzle game. It will add six new modes to Tetris' classic block-combination gameplay, all of which will incorporate the DS's second, touch-sensitive screen. "