Hello MMO fans and welcome to another go around with That’s So MMO! With PAX Prime having just ended and Dragon*Con now in-session, I’ve barely managed to get my Gollum loincloth dry cleaned in time for the costume contest.
“You can’t win if you don’t play”Star Wars: The Old Republicis inching ever closer to an actual release. “September Beta Weekends”have begunfor lucky fans randomly invited through official forumsign-ups. Great news for the eager invitees, not as thrilling for everyone else, as the Non-Disclosure Agreement is still very much in place. BioWare has promised “many, many” more will be invited into the testing weekends over the next three weeks. Have you played the SWTOR Beta Mega-Lotto today?
“Free STO? Make it so!”Perfect World, who recently took overStar Trek Onlineafter purchasing Cryptic,has announcedtheir intention to make the game free-to-play within the next few months. Perfect World shouted the welcome news into the receiver during their recent financial results conference call but further details were not provided. Are MMOs with subscription fees becoming a thing of the past?
“Turan for Barbarians”Funcom has opened upPre-Orders and Early Accessfor the newAge of ConanAdventure Pack, ‘Savage Coast of Turan’. ‘Turan’ goodies include a Camel Mount, a Sand Demon fighting pet (as seen in the newConan the Barbarianmovie), an additional level 50 character account upgrade and an additional character slot.
“Conquering platforms”Conquer Online, first developed for Chinese PC gamers back in 2003, has been localized into English and is arriving for iPad and Facebook in the near future. NetDragon Websoft calls the martial-arts themed F2P MMO “the first ever completely free-to-play MMO on the iPad, with no download fees, no subscription fee, and no in-game Shopping Mall.” That…actually soundsworth investigating. You can’t get much more “Free” than that.
“Shelling shelves”Well-reviewed free MMO,World of Tanks, hascrashed into retail shopswith a $19.99 USD boxed version. Why pay for a cardboard version of WoT when you can download the client for gratis online? How does $30 worth of content, including a week’s worth of premium account access (with XP boosts), 1,800 gold and a T2 Light Tank sound? Boom!
“Toddler Champions”Champions Online, which went F2P back in January, has just celebrated its two-year anniversary. September 1stwas the big day and ongoing events include a dance party and “really cool” item giveaways. According to the latest COProducer’s Letter, upcoming game goodies in development include the “Whiteout” Comic Series which sends players “off to Canada” to investigate a crashed spaceship and a new King of the Hill PvP map.
That’ll put the wrapping on another box full of MMO F2P party favors for the week. I hope the stars align and your SWTOR lottery numbers come up. Keep it logged in.
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David Moore has run the sitegamebunny.comfor the past ten years and co-runstorwars.com, a site focused on all things Star Wars: TheOldRepublic.
