Still trying to play Auron’s financial bust Fury? Better start a marathon session as the game is going offline forever. Auron actually shut their doors last year, so it’s actually a small miracle the game has been up at all. The $13 million dollar investment into this PvP player title collapsed right on top of the small developer. The announcement came way of the sites official forums, which will be joining the same empty Internet space in the sky where Fury will reside for all of eternity…

… or until the community steps up and makes their own servers.

Codemasters free to play MMO Archlord is about to become 30% fatter. According to a press release (below), the game will gain a free expansion pack entitled Spirits Awakening. New skills, new monsters, new armor, and new game zones are all part of this freebie. If you’re playing, you really can’t argue with the price, and if you’re not, maybe this will draw you into the game world.


CODEMASTERS ONLINE REVEAL EXPANSION PLANS FOR ARCHLORD MMO

The Popular Subscription-Free MMORPG Readies for All-New Free Game Content

(Warwickshire, UK) – June 20, 2008 – Codemasters Online is pleased to announce an overhaul of its popular MMORPG ArchLord, in the shape of the all-new, free expansion; Episode 3: Spirits Awakening. Due to go live in the coming weeks, Episode 3: Spirits Awakening adds up to 30% new game content to the existing game.

ArchLord Episode 3: Spirits Awakening adds a number of new features & free game content including:

* New Game Content – Up to 30% all-new game content
* All New Zones – 3 new game zones for players to challenge
* New Class Skills – Over 80 new skills
* ArchLord Abilities – New ruling ArchLord skills and abilities
* New Armor & Items – New collectible armor sets with unique stats
* New Monsters & Enemies – New monsters and zone bosses

Ed Relf, Director of Marketing, Codemasters Online commented, “We are pleased to be able to set out our exciting new expansion plans for ArchLord. As recently announced ArchLord is now more popular than ever with thousands of new players taking up the challenge every day to compete to become the games all-ruling leader! Episode 3 adds a significant amount of new content to what is already a leading free MMORPG and we look forward to delivering this free expansion to our players.”

ArchLord is a premier free online role-playing game which allows players to download and play the game with no monthly subscriptions or commitments. The online game challenges thousands of players each month to raise an army and compete to become the game’s all-ruling ArchLord, controlling the entire game world and impacting the lives of thousands of players online.

To download ArchLord, visit the game’s official website at www.archlordgame.com

Looking forward to the latest Warcraft expansion? Well, if you’re reading this, let’s assume you are. If so, it’s time to register for the upcoming beta via this link (you need a WoW account to log in). Oh, and don’t get all happy when they take your e-mail. You’re not in yet. They’re picking random users to partake in the fun. Oh, and this is US users only. Sorry rest of the world.

For those of you who don’t know, Will Wright is arguably of one the greatest game designers in the world today, He is best known for his ‘Sims’ games. And as one of the co-founders of Maxis which is now part of Electronic Arts.

But it is his newest creation, that is looking to become, quite possibly one of the best games ever! Spore is a massively single player online game. So why am I writing about it here? Have I gone mad? Well not yet, But Spore does have me waiting in excitement for its release! You can find Spore’s homepage here http://www.spore.com/

Spore is a massive God simulation game, due for release in September 2008, in which players control the evolution of a species, from its very beginning as a single cell organism, through to a sapient land walking creature. Right up to the development of interstellar travel, I mean how cool is that? One of the things that have always let me down in simulation games, is the lack of repetitive game-play, you can only evolve so far, for example in Age of Empires: Gold Edition. You can only evolve your race from the Stone age to the Iron age, which limits the playability of the game.

But in Spore the game play is completely open-ended and it uses “procedural generation” meaning that you can create within the game world, which provides a seemingly endless scope for game-play, and character creation.

Wright has been quoted as saying that the “Game will consist of several long phases” with game-play styles ranging from strategy to life simulation. But unlike other Sim style games, the player is not forced to finish one phase before moving to the next. But rather can choose how long they play each phase.

The game opens with a comet crashing into a planet, leaving the seeds for life to begin. Which opens up into the first phase of existence, the Tide pool stage. Within which your little microbe swims, once you have looked after your microbe (prevented it from being eaten) And have managed to get it to eat several other microbes. You can edit it, by changing its appearance and giving it new abilities and defensive strengths.

Eventually you have the option of moving on to land, and this is where it gets interesting! Well more interesting. As your creature evolves, its evolution depends entirely on what you do with it, its strengths and weaknesses will be characterized by how you choose to evolve it, and the personalities of user created species are dependent entirely on how the user plays them.

In the creature editor, players are also able to create their own species, And this is where the multi-player part comes into its own, Because everything that a player creates, creatures, vehicles etc. are all automatically uploaded into Spore’s online database. And from this database other players of Spore can choose to play as your creature, and use your vehicles. Wright has also been stated as saying “that users will be given statistics on how their creatures fare in other peoples games, so for example stats on how many times a user created species has been played by another gamer.” How often a user created civilization has been destroyed or had an alliance made with it. And it is this right here that revolutionizes the god simulation. For the first time you can create a species and send it out into an online gaming universe, and see just how good you are at creating life. And lets face it, who doesn’t like to play God on occasion? All the content you see in the game is user created. The game will create a sound ecology in your game, by importing what it thinks your world needs from other players content.

The genius of this game is that Wright has created a game where almost everything is created by the players! From the simple stages in the ‘Tide pool’ to the more advanced civilization stages. Wright has effectively created a multiplayer game world, using a single player game. And its a bold experiment in gaming. One that looks as if it will be a huge success! Hopefully more game designers will take a page out of Wright’s book, and experiment more with creating games, and game worlds that incorporate things we have not see before. Instead on just creating carbon copies of other game styles. As any gamer will tell you, we all want to play something we never have before.

In my mind Will Wright is a genius, and I can’t wait for this game to come out, so I can create and share my Spore universe. And become God (did I say that out loud)?

You can find heaps of information about Will Wright here at Moby Games.

And its worth checking out this video of Spore too! Check it out here.

PricewaterhouseCoopers has predicted the video game industry will balloon to $68 billion (yes, billion) by 2012. That’s a growth of well over $25 billion in just a few years. The increase is attributed to substantial increases in the mobile and online gaming sectors.

PC gaming on the other hand is predicted to fall, the only segment of the market that’s predicted to do so. Console gaming will grow by nearly 7%, and that’s with a new generation of consoles releasing in that time frame (at least, most likely).

Guy Somberg is unhappy. Very unhappy. It seems the game he worked on as one of the original programmers isn’t doing so hot. Posting on his blog (the post having since been removed), Somberg explains his unhappiness:

“Work is depressing right now. Never mind the fact that Hellgate isn’t as popular as anybody had hoped. Never mind the fact that there exists a term ‘Flagshipped’, meaning where a company basically over-promises and then screws you. Never mind the fact that the forums are totally populated by people who do nothing but complain and talk about how much the game sucks. Never mind the fact that people do the same thing in the game itself.

Ouch. In other news on this FPSRPGMMO (phew), it seems most of the design team - including three of Flagship’s founders - have ditched the project as well to move onto other stuff. Those awaiting any future content are apparently going to be waiting… and waiting… and more than likely waiting.

Way to go PC pirates. You may have prevented those that paid for Crysis from getting the fixes they rightfully deserve if you read between the lines on this one. In their monthly update, Crytek explains they won’t be releasing the 1.3 patch players have been waiting for.

At this time, there almost certainly will not be a patch 1.3 delivered for Crysis. We are aware that this news will disappoint many of you, and we would like to apologize profusely. There is a good reason for this and we hope you understand when you hear more about the reasons why in the very, very near future.

However, in the PC Play interview in the same article, they lay out a perfectly legitimate reason:

We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable.

Someone must have lost a fortune, as this has also pushed the company away from PC exclusive titles as well.

A blending of social networking and pick up and play flash titles, Café.com manages to carve a niche for itself. The games range from fun to miserable, but the ease of use means you don’t have to spend too much time on anything lackluster.

Café’s design is simple and clever. The visuals are distinct, and the easy on the eyes color scheme matches the playful mood. The vast majority of the games are free to play in your browser via Flash. Load times are quick and painless. A small selection of downloadable games offer the usual trials and some familiar titles such as Jewel Quest and Luxor.

Registering is a simple process, though when you arrive at the option to let people know more about you, it’s absurd to think that phone numbers, a full address, and more is required before continuing. Why force the user to input information they don’t feel comfortable with?

Multi-player games run smoothly, though rooms are currently light on users. Casual fare such as Sketch-it are fun time wasters and seem to regularly draw people in. Those not interested in the multi-player aspects can take on a number of single player titles,

You can create an avatar for use on the site, though this proved troublesome to get working. It requires an additional software download which failed to load a needed pop-up window in either Firfox or Internet Explorer. Regardless, the site still tracks stats and accomplishments with or without an avatar. An option to simply upload photos also exists, so if technical issues are giving you problems, this social networking stand by is always available.

Café.com makes its money through power-ups, or additional items for your avatar. These give various advantages over opponents, and sadly drops those not paying into a troublesome scenario. Lobbies could become a game of chance in that you’ll want to avoid those who have paid money for special items instead of socialize with them. Still, there’s a business to run. Prizes will be offered in the future, though the site has no indication of what these will be or how to earn them.

Café.com has the idea and the basics. The games offer some entertainment value, and with more users, will offer a basic networking experience for a specific casual gaming market. As of now, the site is full of potential and with one breakout game in its library, the site could take off.

At the DICE Summit in Las Vegas, key Blizzard Entertainment staff members revealed the many games they’ve secretly canceled over the years. Wired’s Game|Life blog has the full story.

Several of the games listed are old news, such as the much-hyped Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans, Shattered Nations, and Pax Imperia, a game Blizzard was originally set to publish before beginning work on the very similar Starcraft. The game was finally published by THQ as Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain.

The remaining games (Games People Play, Crixa, Nomad, Raiko, and Denizen) are all being revealed for the first time, though Blizzard only provided the names of these canceled titles, opting not to go into any greater detail. The only hint at what one of these games might have been comes from Blizzard’s former Art Director Michael Dashow, who once featured concept art he did for an unnamed, canceled Blizzard game that was in development from 2001-2003. Sadly, Blizzard no longer allows him to showcase the art on his site, but through the magic of Archive.org, it’s still readily available. Well, the thumbnails are, at least. Regardless of which of those five canceled games this concept art comes from, one thing is clear: Blizzard is known for releasing such fantastic, polished games because they’re not afraid to cancel the in-development duds before they become critical and commercial failures. Clearly, a lesson more developers and publishers would be better off learning.

Just renew your Windows Live subscription? Ouch. We’re sorry. See, Microsoft apparently realized that it wasn’t smart to charge for online gaming on the PC (finally) and made the service a freebie. That means Gamertags, unified friends lists, etc. are now accessible in games like Halo 2 and Shadowrun.

If you did pay the $50 fee for a year, at least you have Xbox Live on the 360 too. Oh, what if you don’t have a 360? In that case, well, you’re screwed. We’re really sorry. Maybe you could go buy one now that you have an excuse to do so?

Just days after an interview with co-founder Max Schaefer stated in an interview that Hellgate was rushed out of the door due to financial issues and their next game Mythos was on track, the studio has apparently closed their doors for good. Both the Seattle and San Francisco branches are done for, and all employees have been let go. Rumors are the Korean company Hanbitsoft, partners with Flagship, will be taking over Hellgate.

Out of necessity according to Flagship co-founder Max Schaefer admitted in a Eurogamer interview that the company’s highly anticipated Hellgate London was rushed out the door. The company simply needed a return on their investment.

We ended up rushing it to market and not keeping it in the oven long enough, just out of necessity.

Schaefer promised that the developer’s next game, Mythos, won’t suffer from the same problem.

With Mythos we’re definitely taking our time, we’re well within our budget and our means to make it.