Voodoo Extreme has the story that talented development house Troika Games has closed its doors as a result of lack of funding for future projects. Rumours of their closure have circled for the last week or so, but today's announcement makes the closure official. Troika is best known for its table-top RPG adaptations, such as The Temple of Elemental Evil and games based on Vampire: The Masquerade. From the announcement: "We want to thank all of our fans for their support these past seven years, it has really meant a lot to us that there were people out there who enjoyed our games enough to create fan-sites and follow our progress as a company. But we especially want to thank all of our employees - we had the pleasure of working with the some of the most dedicated, hard working, creative people in the industry, and we really appreciate all that they did for Troika."

Mark Leaman writes "About six years ago I founded an internet broadcasting company called GT2K (Gametalk 2000) which featured Real Audio based radio shows on gaming in all its incarnations (table top, strategy, computer...). During the dot.com "plague years" we saw hordes of internet broadcasting companies belly up. But now internet broadcasting is making a comeback thanks to Podcasting. Although Podcasting isn't new news Yahoo has some nice coverage on the re-emergence of the medium."

GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that much anticipated Oriental influenced action title Jade Empire will be delayed another month. From the article: "The Bioware-developed title is one of the most eagerly anticipated games on the Xbox, and marks a departure from the company's normal style of gameplay by veering into action RPG territory with multiple martial arts styles to learn."

The current design team for the Shadowrun table-top RPG, FanPro, has intended to make out of print resources available via the web for quite a while. In what is hopefully the first in a series of such offerings, they've made the Gamemaster's Screen and Critters Sourcebook available for download in PDF format.

Leafel writes "UGO has posted a feature on the history of Star Wars video games, dividing the timeline into 4 categories: The Golden Age (up to 1990), The Silver Age (1991-1996), The Gaming Renaissance (1996-2000), Modern Age (2001 on). From the article 'December 2004 saw the latest release in a long line of Star Wars related video games. As a sequel to one of 2003's top role playing games, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords has made a lot of Xbox owners and RPG fans very happy. In honor of KOTOR II's release and in anticipation of May's Revenge of the Sith movie event, we take a look at the long history of interactive Star Wars entertainment, complete with all of its highs and lows.'"

ClintonRNixon writes "A new open-source tabletop RPG has been released, The Shadow of Yesterday. People have been putting RPGs online for free for years, and Wizards of the Coast has their Open Game License, but this is the first time a game has been written and published using only open-source tools, and is published under a Creative Commons license. To make the online version, vi and Python Docutils were used; the published game was laid out using Scribus, The Gimp, and OpenOffice."

The sequel to the hit console/PC game Knights of the Old Republic shipped to retailers on Tuesday. KOTOR II: The Sith Lords has been surrounded by trepidation as original developer Bioware was replaced by relative newcomer, Obsidian Entertainment. Gamespot has a review available. From the review: "you might have a much tougher time settling into The Sith Lords, since chances are you'll feel like you've played this game before, only you'll swear it looked better the first time. But, on the other hand, so what? It's just as important to note that no other game since Knights of the Old Republic has managed to deliver this excellent style of role-playing. If you're a Knights of the Old Republic fan, then you should find a certain satisfaction in knowing almost exactly what you're in for going into The Sith Lords."

Aeonite (Michael Fiegel) writes "When I was in fourth grade, my teacher once made the class grade each other's papers. As she read off answers, I stared in horror at the paper I had been given from the girl next to me. Every answer was wrong. Every one. By the time I had ticked off the 30th incorrect answer, I was practically in tears. I felt responsible, somehow, for the problems on the page. It would not be her fault that she failed, but rather my own fault for calling attention to her flaws. I felt ashamed. I felt awful. That was twenty years ago. I've gotten over it. That said, I have purposely not read any other reviews of the new 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons coffee table book, so I have no idea if other 'students' will judge this book in the same way I am about to. Which is to say, with a critical eye and a sad, sad shake of my head." Read on for Fiegel's review.

The last major MMOG launch of the year hits retail stores today. World of Warcraft finally goes live after years of debate, development, and a more than six month Beta test. The usual suspects have details on the game, with Gamespot already having details on upcoming content and Gamespy laying out personal experiences from the test and interviews with the developers.

A while back we passed on some your questions to City of Heroes Lead Designer Jack Emmert. He has responded with details on the upcoming CoH expansion, the future of MMOGs, and commentary on some of the decisions that led to City of Heroes in the first place. Read on for his responses.

Though it's being drowned out by the Halo 2 news, Everquest 2 officially launches today. RPG Vault has a review available for perusal, GamerFeed has a hands on look, and if you're looking for crunchy, low fat coverage Gamespy has an interview with Heather Graham about her role in the game. If you're already tripping the light fantastic in Qeynos check out GamerGod's Qeynos Quest feature, or just cut out the middle man and look forward to the first content on Allakhazam. Finally, F13 provides usefully cynical commentary about the beta and launch of the game.

Psychochild writes "I'm the owner of the online RPG Meridian 59. We've been working hard on updating the game since relaunching it in 2002, rewriting the rendering engine to take advantage of 3D hardware acceleration, adding modern features like mouselook and rebindable keys, fixing bugs, and adding new content. We're currently offering a free trial of Meridian 59 for those interested in learning more about the game and the independent developers now running it."

If you already play the Massively Multiplayer Game Star Wars Galaxies, you're undoubtedly already aware that the Jump to Lightspeed space expansion officially launched today. For the rest of us, there are some details on the developer side regarding the ramp up to release available on the official site. Details on the experience of the new expansion is available at Gamespot and PC.IGN. More ... colourful analysis can be found on Grimwell's boards, and N3rfed has a post discussing the fact that the rest of the world has to wait until November 5th for their space-goodies.

Daemon writes "Square Enix officially announced the fourth installment of Final Fantasy VII based media. The film Advent Children, the games Before Crisis, Dirge of Cerberus and now Crisis Core. This new RPG will for the Sony PSP and has been scheduled for release in 2006."

News regarding two new expansions to Massively Multiplayer Games today. Thanks to Gamespot for the fascinating news that Asheron's Call 2 will roll out a new expansion sometime in the future. This announcement was anticipated after Turbine's purchase of Asheron's Call 1 and 2 from Microsoft, but no firm details had yet to be announced. Meanwhile, Yahoo has the press release on Planetside: Aftershock's release today. The waning FPS massive game has finally been reduced to the reasonable price of $20. The new offering includes the core game, the first expansion, and a new expansion that incorporates mechs into the game.

Kethinov writes "The Chrono Ressurrection Project (previously mentioned on /. here), an attempted 3d remake of the popular 2d game Chrono Trigger, has been shut down by Squenix in the form of a cease and desist letter. Quoth their website, "it is with our deepest regrets in that we have to announce the closure of the Chrono Resurrection project. Square Enix Co., Ltd recently issued a Cease and Desist letter which will mean the project is closed indefinitely." The site retains two trailers and a number of screenshots."

Thanks to RPGFan for its post covering forthcoming U.S. PlayStation 2 RPG releases from Japan-based publisher Atlus, linking to a preview of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, "big news for fans of the series, given that it typically doesn't see many releases outside of Japan." In addition, the site previews Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner, "a brand new creation from the MegaTen creators" also coming to the States, and also looks at Phantom Brave, explaining that Atlus "had a hand in getting NIS America's (The North American division of Disgaea and La Pucelle: Tactics developer Nippon Ichi) [title] ready for prime time." Elsewhere, in more signs that the 'hardcore' Japanese RPG is making a U.S. comeback, NIS America have announced in-progress plans to bring Gust's Atelier Iris - Eternal Mana, "the sixth installment in a popular line of alchemy-based [RPGs]" to the States.

NeoCode writes "Gamespot is reporting that Warner Bros has bought the developer Monolith Productions. Monolith, in the past, has produced games like Tron 2.0, No One Lives Forever 1 and 2, Aliens vs. Predator 2 and Blood 1 and 2. Currently, Monolith is working on The Matrix Online (aka MxO), the WB-produced, Sega-published MMORPG which is undergoing Beta testing right now." We've previously reported on current WB game boss Jason Hall, who was formerly the CEO and co-founder of Monolith.

Rainier Wolfecastle writes "A couple weeks ago, we had the opportunity to visit Peter Molyneux and Simon and Dene Carter in Guildford, UK, for some hands-on time with Fable, their highly anticipated, finally ready for release Xbox action-RPG." Kikizo admits "Fable has been a long time coming, and for better or worse the media has elevated expectations considerably", but likes what it sees, calling the September 14th-due title "huge, gorgeous and a joy to play." Eurogamer also weighs in with impressions, expressing some reservations despite "feeling relatively upbeat" about the title, explaining: "As much as we enjoyed our time with it, it's the sort of game - typical of Peter Molyneux really - that we can't really assess piecemeal."

Costik writes "Paranoia XP, the new version of the cult tabletop RPG which first debuted in 1984, and in which a 'well-meaning but deranged Computer desperately protects the citizens of Alpha Complex, a vast underground city, from all sorts of real and imagined enemies', is done, and will appear at Gencon Indy later this month. The interesting aspect is that it was designed 'in public,' using a weblog, an online forum, and a Wiki, with enthusiastic support from the community. Fans of the game wrote text, debated rules, proofread, ran statistical analyses, and even wrote a computer simulator to test the game's paper-and-pencil rules. Allen, the game's designer, says 'We borrowed the tools and methods of open-source software development for a paper game, and it worked brilliantly.'"