Filed under: Mabinogi

Mabinogi, aside from having a bit of an alphabet soup name, is not a game known for holding things back until the next content update. If they can think of something neat to add in, they'll happily do so more often than not. So it's not exactly a surprise that with their upcoming Alchemist update, focused around (wait for it) the Alchemist, the game will be adding brand-new "Shadow Missions" as well.

Meant as a cross between regular party quests and dungeons, Shadow Missions are part of a new struggle against the nebulous Shadow Realm and the inhabitants of Erinn, Mabinogi's setting. The approach might feel a bit like the Skirmish system from Lord of the Rings Online, as you pick your mission from a message board in Taillteann depending on which of several types you feel like undertaking.

Once you've chosen a mission, traveling north from town lets you cross over into the Shadow Realm and take part in the battle, either protecting important figures or leading the siege against the dark inhabitants of the area. The official site has a small preview with a list of mission types for what looks to be an interesting addition to Mabinogi's gameplay.

Nexon has revamped the starter area in their free-to-play MMO Mabinogi, lowering the difficulty in several dungeons and streamlining the Advent of the Goddess storyline a bit in order to make things easier and faster for new players to settle in. Veteran players won't be left out in the cold, however -- this is a great opportunity for them to revisit the beginning storyline. From now until February 9th, twenty random characters from each server that complete Advent of the Goddess will receive a Premium Human Character Card.

That's not the only event adding interest to the world of Mabinogi. Players visiting Qilla Base Camp will notice a very special tree growing nearby with pieces of paper attached to the branches. Those pieces of paper are Wish Notes, found in treasure chests throughout Rano and Connous, and players can write wishes on them and attach them to the branches of the Wish Tree. At midnight, the wishes float up to the skies of Rano in a truly eye-catching display, and players have reported that their wishes come true!

With these new updates, the worlds of Mabinogi are better than ever for both new and old players.

If you're looking for a beta key to jump into the test with, you can find the complete list of sites that are offering keys over on the Mabinogi EU website.

To accompany the game's launch, Nexon EU is hosting the first event of the game, the Mabinogi Fan Club. The most dedicated beta testers will win this event, as those who submit the most bug reports with significance will find themselves rewarded with a three month subscription to Mabinogi's "Fantasy Life" service package.

The beta testing ends on December 30th with a huge fireworks blowout, so enjoy the closed beta test while you can!

We reported back in August that Nexon America had begun the third Quarter of 2009 with a very solid July; their revenue for the month grew 35% over the numbers for July 2008. Now that Q3 is over, they are happily touting some additional (and still impressive) figures. August 2009 beat out last year's August revenues by 32%, and September hit a lofty 44% growth in revenues compared to the same time in 2008. Overall, Nexon America's third quarter revenue grew 36% compared to Q3 2008.

Nexon America's CEO David Kim pointed out that this success comes without the bump that releasing a new game often brings: "Increasing our revenues without having added any new games to the company's portfolio for more than a year tells me that we are on the right track. Dungeon Fighter Online is just ramping up, so no revenues generated by that game are reflected in the outstanding third quarter we've had.

Dungeon Fighter Online is still in open beta, but an item mall has just been launched for the game. We can only imagine that Nexon's growth will continue when these revenues begin to show up on future financial reports.

The Ancient Secrets of Irinid patch for Mabinogi was only launched a matter of months ago, but it looks like the team at devCAT kept up their momentum and quickly got to work on the game's next chapter. Publisher Nexon America has just announced that there will be another content update this year, simply titled Dragon, which is focused on a war between dragon factions in a new area called Zardine. This zone will play host to a number of new enemies, and dungeons here will feature a new "hard mode" difficulty.

Along with the dragons in Dragon, Mabinogi's recent foray into flight will continue in the next patch, with players engaging in aerial combat with flying monsters -- while manning hot air balloons. Sounds ridiculously precarious, but at the same time fun. The update will also include lots of additional items, weapons, clothing, image enhancements and some pets. The teaser trailer we have posted after the break shows off a bit of everything from Dragon, including the aforementioned hot air balloon combat. Click through to check it out.

Mabinogi was recently patched with a big content update called "Ancient Secrets of Irinid", which added an African themed zone called Courcle and flying mounts (including the legendary pelican) to the game. To help promote all of the new stuff on offer, Nexon has put out a trio of videos that highlight some of the biggest features from the patch. The one above shows a fairly hazardous river rafting trip, which is made much safer by a pretty powerful new Magic Shield skill, followed by some animal taming.

Past the break, the second trailer looks at the new flying mounts -- though its hard to go past the pelican, there are others to choose -- as well as the Dash combat skill and the massive Giant Alligator boss. The third video starts out peacefully, with some Metallurgy and Fishing, but then things get decidedly more ferocious when the Giant Lion boss shows up to punt someone off the screen. It seems there's a delicate balance between some quiet exploring and getting your butt handed to you by over-sized animals in Courcle, but it's nice to have a choice.

Mabinogi's latest expansion, Pioneers of Iria, has recently gone live on the servers after much anticipation by the fans. Now players are able to not only explore the brand new continent of Iria, but also able to take advantage of new races in character creation, such as the giant and the elf, and the brand new exploration system.

We here at Massively recently had a chance to catch up with Nexon's Matthew McCullough, the associate producer on the North American version of Mabinogi, to ask him some questions about their brand new release. Is all of this new content truly real? Is it really free? Can elves and giants live together with one another in harmony?

Hit the continue reading link below, if you want the answers to these burning questions! Also, if you're a Mabinogi fan, look forward to our hands on with the Pioneers of Iria expansion later on in the week!

Nexon America as just informed us of a huge expansion coming to Mabinogi, titled Pioneers of Iria, which will be featuring a huge brand new continent, two new races for players to create characters as, new skills, new magic, a new exploration system, dungeons, cities, the works.

Pioneers of Iria, due to release sometime late in February, will introduce the brand new continent of Iria -- a land mass over three times bigger than the current continent of Ulad. Iria is also the home of the races of Elves and Giants, which will be featured as brand new player races.

Winner: Warhammer Online (writeup by William Dobson)

The hype-o-meter was off the charts just prior to Warhammer Online's release this year, and when the game finally did come out, gamers found it to be a refreshing change of pace at the same time as being a heck of a lot of fun. Unlike so many other MMOs out there, WAR allows you to get into the meat of the game right from level one if you so choose.

And what is that meat? Player versus Player combat, or Realm versus Realm (RvR) in this case. With the option to join a queue for an instanced scenario battle from anywhere in the game, and open RvR battlefields located in every tier, bloodshed is always just a short step away. The distinction between PvP and RvR is made extremely clear in WAR.

Class balance is not based on 1v1 battles, but rather, group-versus-group combat. The underlying goal of all the factional warfare is to siege keeps and capture territories, which is intended to require the co-operation of larger groups of players, and is reminiscent of Mythic's older and much-loved MMO Dark Age of Camelot. The ultimate glory in WAR is to have the chance to pillage the opposing realm's capital city, loot their dungeons and kill their king – sounds exciting just reading about it, right?

Even if you look past the RvR aspect of the game, WAR still brings a lot to the table: Public Quests, which give players a new way of coming together to accomplish PvE goals; the production values and the way the world of Warhammer is brought to life; the Tome of Knowledge, which provides little incentives to achieve things in all areas of the game, and offers detailed lore.

Troubled, perhaps. Flawed, for sure. But with a team dedicated to improvements and a fantastic new spin on the fantasy standard, everything comes together amazingly well in Warhammer Online. It's no wonder at all that it is our favorite new game of 2008.

We hope you enjoyed yesterday's NCsoft giveaways. Today we're doing a potpourri of giveaways from some Titans of the MMO game industry. Titan Tuesday kicks off with an import from the nation of South Korea that's become a huge winner in the North American market: Nexon. This innovative company has been kind enough to send us 10 currency cards to customize your MapleStory avatar, tweak your Audition singing experience, or up your Combat Arms ante. Nexon currency cards are good with any of the company's games. The games themselves are free to play, you see, something you might already know from our lengthy look at MapleStory earlier this year. We've been sent 5 $10 cards and 5 $25 cards, for a total retail value of $175. If you win, you'll randomly be assigned one of the cards.

All you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this post. MapleStory is very well known for its holiday events, so we want to know what your favorite holiday is! Let us know and you might just win a currency card. You'll need to comment before 7:00 AM EST Thursday, November 6th. You can only enter once per person, and after the contest closes we'll ship out these fantastic prizes to 10 randomly-selected winners. Give us at least a week to ship out this massive pile of swag, though. To win you must be age 18 or up and a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec). For full eligibility details, we suggest you read our official rules. Good luck!