Game development studio Cyanide launched their real-time strategy interpretation of George R. R. Martin's acclaimed fantasy series A Game of Thrones yesterday. You can see a trailer and a few screenshots if you're so inclined. Cyanide also confirmed one of their other offices is working on a completely different RPG based on the series as well. It's still a ways out, but they say it will be "Mass Effect-style," and will pick up at the start of the first book. "True to the style of Martin's books, it will tell the story of two different characters, switching back and forth between them as their tales move alongside the events of the first book (and occasionally intersect with one another). None of the characters from the book will be playable, though the game's protagonists will cross paths with plenty of familiar faces over the course of the game."

New submitter person46 writes "Bethesda's lawsuit against Mojang, developers of Minecraft, is going to court. As you may recall, Bethesda is claiming copyright infringement over the title of Mojang's upcoming CCG/board game Scrolls. Bethesda claims that the name and game concept are too similar to their well-known RPG franchise The Elder Scrolls. '[C]ourt documents show that Bethesda lawyers plan to use comments on Scrolls articles and videos from around the web to show how people will confuse Scrolls with The Elder Scrolls. He also added that they've captured screenshots of Scrolls' trailer as a way of showing how Mojang has copied Bethesda because both Skyrim and Scrolls contain mountains.' Mojang founder Notch had offered to settle the dispute with a friendly game of Quake 3, but apparently Bethesda wasn't up for that."

_xeno_ writes "It's taken a year since Final Fantasy XIV launched to what can at best be called unfavorable reviews, but Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada is finally willing to admit that the (still subscription-free) MMO 'greatly damaged' the entire Final Fantasy brand. Despite this damage, Wada said Square Enix will continue to work on 'reviving' the game, with an upcoming patch promising to finally introduce such series staples as chocobos and airships. Even so, there's still no word on the PS3 release, which was delayed until the game was 'fixed,' nor is there any sign that Square Enix feels the game will be worth a subscription fee any time soon."

BioWare announced today that their upcoming MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, will launch on December 20 in North America, and December 22 in Europe. They've released a new trailer for the game, and reiterated that they'll be throttling logins early on to prevent server instability. Gamasutra recently spoke with SW:TOR project lead James Ohlen about finishing up the game and preparing it for launch. He said, "We're also focused on game balance for combat, for itemization, for the social systems. We've been running a lot of tests, we're getting a lot of feedback on the game. And when we get that feedback, we use it to make tweaks and changes. We're not making major changes now, we're just making changes that we can."

dotarray writes "Diablo III really can't be that far off now. Blizzard has just announced that the closed beta test for the game has kicked off – meaning you can start checking your inboxes for an invitation now." The expanded Friends&Family test had been underway for a week or so, but now gaming sites are getting invitations. Of course, given the popularity of Diablo III, phishers are out in force with fake beta invites. For those who opted-in, the best way to check is to simply log in to your battle.net account. The beta is limited in terms of content — it only includes the first couple hours worth of play in Act 1 — but all five classes are available for play. There's no NDA, so plenty of commentary has sprung up already. Rock, Paper, Shotgun has early impressions of the Demon Hunter. Blizzard has also created a skill calculator for anyone who wants to play around with character builds ahead of time. The beta will be expanding in waves as they ramp up stability tests.

Over 11 years ago, Deus Ex became one of the most celebrated games of its time, tightly weaving FPS and RPG gameplay together with a rich cyberpunk story. Today, Eidos Montreal and Square Enix launched a new entry to the series, titled Deus Ex: Human Revolution. A launch trailer is available, and early reviews for the game are positive. Opposable Thumbs says, "Fans can take a deep breath: they will get what they want from a Deus Ex game in this release. The story is dense, complete with twists, interesting characters, and far-flung locations." Rock, Paper, Shotgun largely agrees, and both reviews praise the breadth of choices players have in how they accomplish mission objectives. However, they disagree on the quality of the voice acting, and RPS complains of untimely and oddly-designed boss battles. DE:HR's stealth gameplay and hacking minigame receive high marks, as does the game's overall length and replayability.

bonch writes "After seven years and a highpoint of 12 million subscribers, World of Warcraft has seen a loss of nearly one million subscribers in the last six months for the first time in its history, according to Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime during an Activision earnings call. However, the game remains the most popular MMO, and Morhaime said Blizzard plans to reverse the trend with fresh content. Some believe that the loss in subscriber interest is a sign of the game's inevitable twilight years. Blizzard also recently received a trademark for 'Mists of Pandaria,' fueling speculation about the next expansion pack."

Bethesda plans to launch their newest Elder Scrolls game, Skyrim, in November, and they've finally started to take the wraps off the game. A preview at Eurogamer provides some information about the game's combat, the UI, and exploration of the game world. Quoting: "RPGs send you into menus more than almost any other game genre, so it's weird that more thought doesn't go into inventory design, but as I play around with powers, weapons and items to lighten my load it becomes clear that Skyrim is a welcome exception. Its nested menus are accessed almost as smoothly as iPad page swipes, and navigating them is quick and clean. You can set favorites, equip items to either hand, and examine things in detail. More than once during my brief hands-on I have to rotate an object to look for a clue to a puzzle, or read a document, and it's all done without going to a different screen or do anything more complex than wiggling sticks and hitting a face button. It's easy to imagine that a system like this in Oblivion or Fallout could have shaved hours off the average player's actual game-time. As it is, it saves valuable seconds in my hands-on, and seconds are my currency today, so thank you to whomever at Bethesda designed the inventory."

rcade writes "Jeff Dee and Jack Herman, the creators of the super-hero roleplaying game Villains & Vigilantes, have filed a federal copyright lawsuit against the game's longtime publisher Scott Bizar of Fantasy Games Unlimited. They allege that Bizar has no rights to publish the game because his corporation was dissolved in 1991, reverting the rights to them. Dee and Herman revived the old-school RPG last year and have been battling Bizar ever since. Sadly, this suit will not be resolved by muscle-bound men in tights."

Today, after Eurogamer spilled the beans earlier than Randy Pitchford would have liked, Gearbox and 2K Games officially announced Borderlands 2, the sequel to 2009's well-received shooter/RPG. It's planned for sometime between April 2012 and April 2013, and will be available on the PS3, Xbox 360, and Windows. Gearbox plans to demonstrate the game in its current state during Gamescom and PAX Prime later this month.

derGoldstein writes "Two weeks ago Robert Boyd started offering his two RPGs Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World on Steam, for $2.99 (for both games combined). It fared far better than it had on the Xbox Live Indie channel: 'In less than a week, our Steam revenue has actually exceeded over a year and a half of XBLIG revenue for us.' Hopefully this will prompt more developers to port 'smaller' games over to Steam, especially since many of them can run on low-spec machines, like netbooks."

Stoobalou writes "Blizzard Entertainment has announced that its enormously popular online role-playing game World of Warcraft will be free to play for characters up to level 20. WoW has always offered free trials of one of the world's biggest multi-player online games but previous offers have always been limited to a set number of days. The new policy means that first-time visitors to Azeroth will be able to build an unlimited number of characters and classes up to level 20 at their leisure, although there will be some limitations."

An anonymous reader writes "It looks like approval to build a memorial to E. Gary Gygax has been granted in Lake Geneva City, Wisconsin. The Gygax Memorial Fund is still taking donations for the memorial that may begin construction as early as later this year. I (like many on Slashdot) spent many years of my youth using Gygax inspired creations as an excuse to socialize, roll dice, and eat chips at impromptu gatherings before computers intruded on the RPG realms."

An anonymous reader writes "The former Illuminati Online domain, IO.com, has been sold, and all existing customers will lose all services associated with the domain. A 1990 Secret Service raid on Steve Jackson Games, then owner of the Illuminati Online BBS and later the IO.com domain led to the creation of the EFF and was an important milestone in the fight for online rights. While the domain has been sold in the past, the services offered to customers always remained unchanged. However, this most recent sale, to an unnamed party, will result in all services being dropped on July 1, and people will lose email addresses, web pages, and shell accounts that many have had for 15+ years." Bad news for me — io.com was my first real ISP, and I was hoping to see if I could revive the account.

eldavojohn writes "It's no secret that Final Fantasy XIV took a lot of heat early on, which required extensive damage control. And the Japanese tsunami (which appears to have added $7.5 million to their losses) certainly didn't help. But if what early investor reports are saying is true, then Square Enix is expected to report $148 million in losses for the closing fiscal year. Expect title cancellations (which might add to the hurt) and a very painful realization for the owner of Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior (PDF). Perhaps a move to re-releasing classics will prove more fruitful than high development cost MMORPGs?"

NCSoft announced yesterday that they plan to shut down all North American servers for their long-running Lineage MMORPG on June 29th. The game came out in 1998 and gradually became one of the most successful MMOs of all time, reporting over a million subscribers as much as a decade after launch. Account creation on North American servers has been disabled, subscriptions for coming months have been refunded, and existing accounts have been reactivated for free. "We will not be making any additional content updates, but we do have US Ruleset changes and lots of great events planned for the next two months. We want to give you every opportunity to make all of your remaining Lineage dreams come true. We hope that everyone will stick around to have fun with the game you love in the time we have left. We know that we have incredibly loyal fans that have stood by us for the past ten years. As painful as it was, as a business, we had to make a very difficult, but necessary, decision."

During an earnings call this afternoon, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime revealed the company's goals for testing and releasing the much-anticipated new chapter in the Diablo series. "[Morhaime said], 'On the Diablo 3 front, I'm pleased to report that we began internal, company-wide testing last week. The game is looking great and we are currently targeting a Q3 launch for external beta testing. The development team is working hard to try to launch Diablo 3 this year, but I want to be clear. We do not have an official release date or window yet.' Details on the external beta are currently extremely limited, so we don't know the scope of how many testers will be involved or what the beta will include. It's hard to imagine that anything could match the gargantuan beta for StarCraft 2, but Blizzard has said that Diablo 3 will have plenty of online functionality, and that sort of functionality needs plenty of testers to succeed."

sdasher writes "Finally, there's a chance to combine your love of version control and parties: Gitionary. The brainchild of two MIT alums, it's a party game where you try to illustrate git commands. A set of gitionary cards (PDF) has been posted as well. Personally, I'm still holding out for the Debugging Python RPG."

donniebaseball23 writes "EA's BioWare is developing its first-ever MMORPG in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and the publisher is betting big that the project will be a huge success. Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter says development alone cost an estimated $80 million, with marketing and distribution adding in another $20 million. The good news is it shouldn't take much to break even. 'We estimate that EA will cover its direct operating costs and break even at 500,000 subscribers (this is exceedingly conservative, and the actual figure is probably closer to 350,000), meaning that with 1.5 million paying subscribers, EA will have 1 million profitable subs,' Pachter noted." They're now aiming for a release late this year, but acknowledged the possibility that it could slip to January 2012. If you're curious about the current state of the gameplay, Eurogamer and Rock, Paper, Shotgun (PvE, PvP) both posted write-ups of some recent hands-on time.

You may have no trouble smelling like an orc after 12 straight hours of raiding, but if you do, Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab is here for you. The company has come out with a line of RPG inspired perfumes. Choose from: Dwarf, Elf, Half-elf, Hafling, Orc, Cleric, Fighter, or Mage and people will not only see that you're a geek, they'll smell it too.