Rock, Paper, Shotgun

White Wolf are holding their Grand Masquerade at the moment, which makes me wish I was in New Orleans. That said, just mentioning New Orleans makes me want to be there so we won’t give White Wolf too much credit. If you’re not aware of them, they’re the company behind Vampire: The Masquerade and other related role playing games. Not the computer versions, mind, but the actual pen and paper, sit around and speak words to each other versions. The Grand Masquerade is their fan get-together and details about CCP’s upcoming World of Darkness MMORPG have been dripping out of it. Dripping like blood, you see?

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Star Wars: Galaxies had a brilliant idea at its core; to let people live in the Star Wars world without letting them all be Jedi from the moment they register. You had to earn the right because it doesn’t make sense for every single person to be a member of an exclusive and rare sect. In Star Wars: The Old Republic, I have no desire to be a Jedi at all. I want to be a smuggler and Bioware have released a new trailer to show exactly why.

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This week, DC began rebuilding their entire fictional universe from the ground up. Every title in the range has rebooted to issue number one, severing the future from decades of convoluted and conflicting continuity. I give them twelve months before this ‘new’ universe has split into fifteen multiverses filled with amnesiac clones of every major character whose only differentiating feature will be inverted costume colours or a small beard. Meanwhile, nobody seems to have told SOE who are still expanding the old universe in DC Universe Online. The latest expansion, out for free on September 6th, adds the Green Lantern Corps to the game, along with the Light power set. Players can also join up with the Sinestro Corps if they are villainous sorts. Being evil means you’ll have a magical yellow chainsaw, as seen in the trailer below.

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Are all the MMORPGs in the world swapping to microtransactions and freemium payment models? The writing is on the wall, and the writing says “Give us your money! Give us your money in smaller increments, and with less constancy!” Which is a crazy thing to see written on any wall.

Anyway, Massively report that Sony have just unlocked DC Universe’s in-game marketplace. Players now have the option of spending their real-world money on Vault Tickets, allowing them to access a special Vault instance at $1 each time, or Proto Repair-Bots, also costing $1, which patch up your character wherever you are. That is all. Nothing to see here, gents. Move along.

Age of Conan’s free-to-play reshuffling, Age of Conan: Unchained, arrives tomorrow. How do we know? Well, it’d be pretty hard to do this job if we didn’t know stuff like that. Also, a launch trailer just came out.

John’s comprehensive detailing of the “freemium” business model and what changes to expect can be found in the above link (including new content that’ll relate to the upcoming Conan movie), and you’ll find the launch trailer after the jump. Beware! It’s guarded by nine Cimmerian swordmaidens, each more beautiful and deadly than the last.
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Over its 30 levels of BIFF! and POW! and KICK! and making things go SPLODE!, DC Universe Online gave me more awesome moments than any other MMORPG I’ve ever played. It also reinforced everything I hate about the genre. Let me explain, with words.

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More news hot outta Tokyo Game Show! Careful you don’t burn yourself. Sega’s announced Phantasy Star Online 2 is hitting the PC in 2011.

No footage as yet, and not even any details, which is definitely cutting it a bit fine for a game that’s only a year away but nevermind. If you don’t know about Phantasy Star Online, it made its debut on the Dreamcast and pioneered online RPG shenanigans on consoles. The original game has since gone on to spawn a strange collection of half-sequels and has developed a fanbase that I will now politely describe as “friendly and rigid”.

Course, this TGS I was hoping for an entirely different Japanese online-focused console game to be announced for the PC. Click through to find out which one.
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