Bioware has let loose some details on their upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic title, the MMO that has the world going crazy about. This story-driven MMO, has been hidden in secrecy for so long that we now have a clue behind the minds of the game on what they are developing on.

“Our goal was to partner with a platform developer that knows online gaming and virtual world development, and the team at Simutronics has an excellent track record in that respect,” said Gordon Walton, Co-Studio Director at BioWare. “Their HeroEngine was specifically created for building MMOGs and it allows for a great amount of flexibility in the way our entire team collaborates.”

The unique collaborative design platform of the HeroEngine allows for development in real-time, enabling teams in different geographic locales to build the world and play the game live on the server simultaneously. Updates and changes to the game environment are instantaneous, negating the need for nightly builds and code crunching, which significantly reduces the notoriously long MMOG development cycle.

“The team at BioWare is creating an incredible experience, and we’re honored that they’ve selected our tool to help them build this epic world,” said David Whatley, Simutronics’ Chief Executive Office and HeroEngine Chief Designer. “We’ve invested years of experience and our passion for virtual world entertainment into developing HeroEngine, and we’re confident that fans and online gaming enthusiasts alike will be happy with the finished product.”

Paradox Interactive has released a new gameplay trailer for it's upcoming PC strategy game, Vae-Victis, weird name, I know.

Key Features:

• Governments that matter - Different, intuitive game play for Republics, Monarchies and Tribes. Republics are controlled by the five factions of the senate, Monarchies must keep fractious councilors in check, and Tribes must keep an eye on the clan chiefs.
• Laws and Decisions - Players can pass and revoke laws with great effects on the country, or make important one-time decisions.

Check out the trailer over at Youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/user/Paradoxplaza

Read more below...

Te prestigious German Developer Awards have voted and named Sacred 2: Fallen Angel the "Best International PC Game of 2008". It seems to have also been nominated for a few other categories including...

• Best Game Design
• Best Story
• Best In-game Graphics
• Best Sound
• Best German Game of 2008

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel is a hack-and-slash action-RPG with a rich story that takes place in a giant, open-ended and seamless world. This world contains massive dungeons, treacherous opponents and hundreds of challenging quests. Intelligent enemies, steadily adapting in number and difficulty based on player progress, challenge players in heroic single- and multiplayer battles for up to 16 gamers on the Games for Windows platform, and four-player cooperative games on consoles.

An update from the development team over at Wolfire share some new details about their upcoming PC and Mac title, Overgrowth.

Wolfire News Updates (more info at: http://blog.wolfire.com/)

Wolfire Releases a new Alpha
- New sky
- Sweet terrain shadows
- Higher detail terrain
- Ambient occlusion
- More objects, including new rocks, a “Joshua tree”, and a small bush.
- Instead of a single floating cube, there is now a nice little scene Aubrey whipped up using Phillip’s editor.

Also updates with the following...

Because Overgrowth’s gameplay will occur almost entirely in outdoor settings, the Wolfire team has made terrain their recent priority.  After achieving realistic terrain coloring in the Phoenix Engine, Wolfire decided to put the same care into terrain lighting effects.  In addition to adding high-detail terrain shadows from direct sunlight (http://blog.wolfire.com/2008/11/high-detail-terrain-shadows/), the engine now also accounts for ambient lighting and occlusion (http://blog.wolfire.com/2008/11/ambient-occlusion/). Combined these effects have resulted in surprisingly realistic environments.

Check out more below...

The Wonderland Online team has announced some 3 new items for its version 3.0 of Wonderland.

Wisdom Crystal
1. Double click the Maid Robot you have purchase and a Wit Maid manufacturing window will pop up. One Maid Robot and one Wisdom Crystal are needed to make a Wit Maid.
2. Click the Wit Maid and you may be surprised to find that the Wit Maid can talk to you.
3. Function 1: Players can store or draw pets at any time.
4. Function 2: It can be used as a mobile tent which allows players to deposit and draw items freely without opening their tent.
5. Function 3: Players can order human pets to do the manufacturing instead of themselves.

Boarded Voucher
1. Go find the sailor NPCs at the beach or docks and talk with them. The quantity of the tickets will differ according to the distance.
2. For teams, the team leader can give the NPC all required tickets so that all members will travel together.
 

For more information about the items read more below or head to the games official website.

Free to play MMO, Deco Online will be getting it's second update as announced by Joymax today. Entitled, "Part 2: Prelude to the Fall"...

Joymax, an independent developer and publisher of interactive entertainment for the global market, has launched a new update for Deco Online, the free-to-play action MMORPG. “Part 2: Prelude of the Fall” introduces a number of rare weapons and stylish armor sets, as well as a variety of powerful new skills. Extending the level cap to 90, the update also gives players two new maps where they can test their adventuring mettle, “The Plain for Lapse of Memory” and “Curved Mountain.”

More information can be found at www.joymax.com/deco.

The minds behind Last Chaos decided to turn to the community for help and with this free-to-play MMO heating up, they have come up with a little change to the user interface. There are several features that the new UI introduces and some of them include updates to character customization, gameplay and social networking.

The new interface includes:

• A new color, font type and golden outline handsomely encompasses the newly designed character pictures, and sleek borders for the chat box, skill bar, and character screen

• A more organized inventory screen, including a trash can that allows players to throw away their items, clearing more space for all of the excellent new treasures found in the latest content addition of Strayana.

• The new inventory boasts easy to use tabs, for event, quest and regular items. Each of these tabs allows the players to organize items rather than having to sift through the entirety of their inventory all at one time.

• A New character screen. On this screen players can now see all of their resistances, critical percentages, movement speeds, evasion rates, attack speeds and more. Allowing players to realize their characters full potential with a variety of new weapons, armor and accessories.

•  One button access to all of the players skills, social emotes, commands, and statistics

• Players can now see what sub-server they currently play on, allowing them to more easily network with their friends on the same server.

• Skill descriptions for all classes now show the full details of all of the new and old skills. This gives players a better understanding of the skill, when choosing what skills to focus their time on.

• A new pet attack option has been added. Giving players more control over the aggressiveness of their pets, introducing more strategy into combat.

 
For more information on Last Chaos, please visit http://lastchaos.aeriagames.com.

Independent game developer, Wolfire Games, has just announced that they will be releasing weekly alpha builds to those of you who pre-order Overgrowth. Wolfire says that some of the builds will be very rough, but they will release "blessed" alpha builds that will be of particular note and a little less alpha-like.

Wolfire's previously released title, Lugaru, puts players in the shoes of a rabbit that must kick, ram and run on all fours to victory against his opponents. The same style of fast-paced, physic-based melee combat that was made available in Lugaru will make its way into Overgrowth. However, Overgrowth will take advantage of multi-sampled HDR framebugger objects, dynamic blurred cube maps for ambient lighting, object and tangent space normals and atmospheric haze. All of these features are being made possible by their new Phoenix Engine with even more promised.

If you would like to find out more about Wolfire games, Lugaru or Overgrowth, you can head over to their blog at blog.wolfire.com or the official Wolfire Games site at www.wolfire.com.

PC gamers looking for something new to play over the Thanksgiving break can give Legendary a try. Today Gamecock Media Group have announced that the title is available in retail stores nationwide. You can finally join Xbox 360 players over Xbox Live.

Windows PC users can now join the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and PlayStation 3 owners as they experience the mystery, mythology, and massive destruction that centers on Deckard’s opening of Pandora’s Box. With secret societies battling over control of the Box, players will be thrust forward into an adventure that spans the world as they guide Deckard from one devastated location to the next as he fights against griffons, werewolves, minotaurs, and more in an effort to stay alive long enough to stop the creatures, and the societies, from taking over the world.

Legendary is availble for the MSRP of $49.99 and is rated M for "Mature".

Electronic Arts announced today that they will be releasing a demo for its long standing PC real-time strategy title, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3. Developed in-house by EA, Command & Conquer has been one of the flagship PC titles for years in the past. Now, with Command & Conquer now available for the Xbox 360, and PC< those considering a purchase, can check out the single-player demo that is pretty content filled.

The single-player demo includes the entire 7-minute opening cinematic from the game, along with three of the game’s interactive tutorials and one campaign mission from both the Soviet and the Allied campaigns for a full-blown taste of Red Alert action:

• Krasna-45: Circus of Treachery – The second mission of the Soviet campaign, players will immediately be introduced to battling the series’ newest faction, the Empire of the Rising Sun, escorting the Soviet’s commando Natasha to a launch facility, protecting her from the Imperial ambush division waiting to attack.
• Heidelberg: The Famous Liberation – Players will then switch their attention over to the Allied cause, in the third mission in the Allied campaign, teaming up with an in-game Co-Commander to take out the Soviet’s powerful Iron Curtain and headquarters in Germany.

The demo gives gamers a great opportunity to try out Red Alert 3 before the game’s first major patch is released later this year. The upcoming update will include the WorldBuilder, the game’s map-making and mod tool and a community favorite, enhancements to AutoMatch for multiplayer, balance fixes and an easy-to-use de-authorization tool that will allow players to de-authorize previously authenticated machines that they no longer wish to play Red Alert 3 on, ultimately giving them the freedom to play on an unlimited number of computers. More details on the patch will be made available soon.

You can download the demo here http://www.gamespot.com/event/download/red-alert-3/.