Funcom’s official Anarchy Online community site has the first details on the game’s new tiered pricing scheme. The basic sci-fi MMORPG remains free from level 1-200, but players can now opt to subscribe to just Shadowlands, the game’s first expansion, for 5 USD/EUR a month before taking the plunge and subscribing to the game’s other expansions (Alien Invasion and Lost Eden) for the full 14.95 USD/EUR.

Wired’s Game|Life blog points out that this deal benefits American players the most, saying:

While this is excellent news for AO players in the United States, thanks to the relatively weak dollar, European players who pay the 5 EUR per month would actually be paying almost 50% more than their US counterparts (5 EUR = 7.25 USD).

Regardless of unfortunate European inequalities, these sort of tiered MMO pricing schemes are definitely something we’d like to see more of going forward. How about instead of just offering cheaper subscriptions that only cover specific expansions, we start seeing lower rate plans that offer casual-friendly time limits? With the MMO market continuing to grow, it would be a fantastic way to continue playing multiple games without having to work overtime.

EA loves some casual gamers. After releasing things like Boogie, maybe they have a chance of drawing those new players in with a freebie.

Battlefield Heroes hits in the summer, and promises cartoony visuals that are a distant change of pace from the gritty, real world style the games have been known for. The best part? It’s all free! Well, almost. The announcement includes the dreaded terms “Ad supported” and “micro transactions.”

Sure, you can play for free, but that nifty shotgun you just got pelted with? That’s $3. The hat that guy is wearing? That’s $2. Oh, and don’t forget the training mission brought to you by Mountain Dew. Sigh.

PC Gamer has spilled the beans about the mysterious connection between Team Fortress 2’s new medic class achievements and the mysterious “large scale modification,” and they are delicious. By earning the new medic achievements, players will unlock new weapon loadouts for everyone’s favorite healing class. For example, unlocking half of the medic’s new achievements allows you to replace the standard healing beam with the Overhealer, which doubles your target’s health but builds up Ubercharge more slowly than the standard beam, if at all. Clearly, everyone should expect to get addicted to TF2 all over again.

Valve also plans on releasing a new map, Goldrush, which will see the red and blue teams taking turns trying to escort a mining cart past the enemy’s defenses. All of this new content, along with a second new map called Badlands, should arrive on Steam a month from now. Unfortunately, there’s still no word regarding when the game’s other eight classes might see their own new achievements and unlockables or whether any of these new goodies will show up on the PS3 or 360.

Hellgate London’s official site has information concerning the first post-release content for the game, called The Stonehenge Chronicles. The update, which will finally bring Hellgate up to version 1.0, nearly three months after its initial release, will introduce Stonehenge and a batch of new quests, areas, weapons, and monsters with it. In addition to a handful of bug fixes and more balance changes than you can shake your soggy fish and chips at, The Stonehenge Chronicles will also include the game’s first group dungeons. Of course, all of this new content will only be available to subscribers.

But really, is any one even playing Hellgate: London any more, let alone paying for it? The game was riddled with development problems, with the final version playing more like a very buggy, very underdeveloped beta than a retail release. Truthfully, Flagship Studios has made great strides towards righting the wrong of Hellgate’s early release, releasing three major patches in the the three months since its Halloween release date, but all the band-aids and duct tape in the world isn’t going to be enough to redeem this lesson in wasted potential, we’re afraid. Cut the cord, Bill Roper, and bring us The Next Big Thing.

These people mean business.

If anything, it’s a sad day in this world when a government feels the need to regulate how people spend their free time. However, it’s even sadder when you need your fix bad enough to enter one of the 563 illegal Internet cafes just to play some Warcraft. The Chinese gaming industry is a phenom of the world, and not letting people take part in the $1.46 billion dollar economy builder seems ridiculous.

Then again, if people aren’t smart enough to stop before they drop dead, maybe there is a need for some type of limitation.

The end of January is the new middle of November, apparently, as several genuinely excellent titles see release this week.

Pick of the Week: Tie: Burnout Paradise Racing | PS3 360 Finally, a real next gen Burnout! Paradise sheds the structure of previous Burnout titles in favor the open-ended, load time-free Paradise City. And best of all, it’s all playable online. You can race with or against your friends or ignore them entirely, continuing your single player experience in an online environment. Seriously, buy this game. Just look at that awesome box art!

Pick of the Week: Tie: Advance Wars: Days of Ruin Turn-based Strategy | DS This week’s releases are too good to throw our full support behind just one. Like Burnout Paradise, Days of Ruin is essentially a must-buy. The latest Advance Wars title strips away a lot of the dead weight from earlier games, including the questionably balanced Dual Strike CO powers from which the previous DS installment takes its name. As you already know, Days of Ruin features online multiplayer and map sharing, meaning this game’s gonna stay in your DS for a long, long time.

Robert Bowling, Community Relations Manager at Infinity Ward, has posted a weekly Call of Duty 4 roundup over at his blog in which he laments just how pervasive piracy has become on the PC, writing:

They Wonder Why People Don’t Make PC Games Any More

On another PC related note, we pulled some disturbing numbers this past week about the amount of PC players currently playing Multiplayer (which was fantastic). What wasn’t fantastic was the percentage of those numbers who were playing on stolen copies of the game on stolen / cracked CD keys of pirated copies (and that was only people playing online).

Not sure if I can share the exact numbers or percentage of PC players with you, but I’ll check and see; if I can I’ll update with them. As the amount of people who pirate PC games is astounding. It blows me away at the amount of people willing to steal games (or anything) simply because it’s not physical or it’s on the safety of the internet to do.

Even without the specific numbers (which Robert has further commented he cannot disclose), it’s clear that piracy has affected Call of Duty’s sales on the PC enough to warrant a mention here. Worst of all, Activision is paying to maintain servers that benefit paying customers and pirates alike. If you can excuse the high horse here, just because it’s easy to pirate a game doesn’t mean you should. Game developers and publishers aren’t otherworldly forces exempt from forces of nature or economy. Games cost money to make, and every pirated copy takes money out of developers’ pocket and adversely affects their next release. Simply put: if you love games and want to keep playing them, do the right thing and pay for them.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled (and significantly less preachy) website.

World of Raids has a great link to an online flash game that trains players for the Teron Gorefiend raid boss in World of Warcraft’s Black Temple. Like the actual boss fight, the flash game is hard, but with a little practice you’ll soon find yourself a more than capable player ready for a spot in any raid group… as long as your gear is up to snuff, of course.

Even those of you who have no idea what a “world” or a “warcraft” are can waste away a few minutes of your day, hopefully while on the clock. Hardcore raiders, however, should look on this as the excellent learning tool it is. Perhaps in the future we’ll see more of these online raid trainers (please), allowing raiders to brush up on boss fight tactics and the rest of us to live vicariously through their fantastic online adventures.

Following in the footsteps of Bungie and Insomniac, Blizzard has released its first official podcast, BlizzCast. The first episode includes a conversation with Samwise Didier, Blizzard’s Art Director, as well as a sneak peak at World of Warcraft’s upcoming 2.4 patch, which will introduce the Sunwell Plateau, the game’s final, pre-Wrath of the Lich King raid instance. World of Raids has a partial transcript and some screenshots from the anticipated patch.

Jeff “Tigole” Kaplan, WoW’s Lead Designer, reveals that the Sunwell Plateau will feature loot “a tier above Tier 6,” not unlike AQ40’s loot when compared to the loot found in Blackwing Lair. Kaplan goes on to say that “we really are planning to do the itemization a lot better than we did with Ahn’Qiraj 40 so people can rest assured.” Considering AQ40’s loot table, it would be virtually impossible to do any worse.

Now that the most profitable developer in the world has their own official podcast, hopefully even more developers will follow with podcasts of their own. Those of us will long commutes will thank them.

Valve employee Robin Walker told Shacknews they hope to have two new Team Fortress 2 Maps available to PC players within the next two months, one of which is a remake of Team Fortress Classic’s “Badlands” with some added verticality. The much-hyped new Medic achievements as well as a “large scale modification to the core of the game [that will] debut in a limited fashion through the Medic first, but [will] be affecting all classes eventually” should show up before the two new maps.

The exact nature of this “large scale modification” is a big question mark at this point, as is the exact nature of the Medic achievements, which have only appeared online in their (possibly fake) German form. No word yet if any of this new content will be available on the PS3 or 360. Still, it’s nice to see a developer continue to support their product after launch, regardless of where that support ultimately does and does not end up.

I once tried to level a World of Warcraft character usually only Discovery XP, experience rewarded whenever your character discovers a new location in the world. I made it to level 6 before giving up. Boingboing has a link to an interesting WoW Insider article about a much more tenacious WoW player trying to reach the levelcap with a rogue and a priest without ever killing anyone or anything. The player writes:

Both my priest and my rogue try not to hit anything, although there’s always a chance of a misclick when trying to open a quest item with mobs fighting near it. Both of them always wield a fishing rod, so any accidental hits won’t increase their weapon skills. Neither of them will do quests where they have to kill things. In battlegrounds, my rogue will throw bombs to interrupt flag captures and stun people and may even accidentally kill players low in health or nearby critters. My priest only heals, so he is actually closer in roleplaying terms. Neither will “get around” these limits by grouping and having other players do their dirty work.

“[Throwing] bombs” sounds pretty anti-pacifist to me, but it’s a great idea just the same. The strength of Blizzard’s games has always lied in the player’s ability to stretch the design to its limits. Anybody who had a Diablo 2 Smitadin or beat another player at Warcraft 3 using only a hero a lots and lots of moonwells can attest to that.

Noor is currently at level 27; just 43 more levels to go!

38 Studios, the MMO developer founded by Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schillings, is old news. However, just this week at CES, the baseball star announced this would be his last year playing America’s favorite pastime. He told journalists “I’m done. This is my final year,” saying he plans to devote all of his time to the studios’ upcoming MMO.

The fact that 38 Studios would work on an MMORPG, of all things, doesn’t come entirely out of left field (horrible, horrible pun intended). Schillings is just as devoted an MMO player as he is a baseball player. His adventures in EverQuest 2 are especially well documented. He reviewed two of the game’s expansions for PC Gamer magazine and even hosted an in-game event to raise money for ALS patients.

Clearly, this is a man who knows MMOs. He’s assembled quite a team over 38 Studios too, including Todd McFarlane and fantasy author R.A. Salvatore. With any luck, they’ll create a game that can make a name for itself in the crowded MMO market.