It looks like Runes of Magic is getting in on the 4th of July MMO celebrations this weekend. Frogster America has announced that players can usher in Independence Day with bundles of fireworks (minus any fines or risk of bloody nubs), which they can pick up for 1 diamond in-game. They've also said the holiday celebration will bring specials in the item shop with prices on three Power Bundle slashed by 75%.

Frogster America also announced they'll launch a new PvE server tomorrow, "Reni", and there will be other summer activities that kick off on July 4th as well: a community screenshot contest; item and prize giveaways; and a leveling contest for players and guilds on Reni. Be sure to see their full announcement for more details on the Runes of Magic Independence Day contests and giveaways.

Runas de Magica y el pollo es muy delicioso para la cena! Ok, so our Spanish is a little rusty, we're missing some accent marks, and we probably just said that Runes of Magic tastes good with chicken, but what we mean to say is that the closed beta for Runes of Magic in Spain and France has begun.

Now anyone from those two countries, or anyone who wants to have their client in French or Spanish, can enjoy Runes of Magic in those languages. With the closed beta comes the launch of the French and Spanish Runes of Magic websites as well, so feel free to scurry on over and register.

The final date for launch for these two countries hasn't been confirmed yet, but the game will be shipping out with The Elven Prophecy, giving their launches a timeframe of either launching with the new expansion or shortly thereafter.

Today is the final day of the Runes of Magic Jade Warrior item code giveaway, and to finish off what has been an exciting week of in- and out-of-game giveaways, we thought it only fair to let the rest of you who never received your code get one.

So throughout the day today, from now until 8pm EST, simply comment to this post and a key code will be emailed to you at the address provided in your profile. Only 1 code per person. For full details on this promotion and how to redeem your key, check out this post.

[Edit: Eligibility is now closed. Thanks to everyone for a great week of giveaways!]

Last night, Colin and I held an in-game event in Runes of Magic to give away key codes for our Jade Warrior gloves. Not only was this event much more populated than our last RoM in-game event, but we had even more fun meeting players and Massively readers!

As promised, we returned to (or in this case, stayed later at) the server with the most people, and had some great fun just hanging out and chatting with readers of this site, as well as people who have never heard of us before. I know! We were shocked that they exist too! But in total, we gave out 129 codes across the 4 servers. Keep reading below to find out how the numbers broke down per server, and see some great screenshots of the event.

The major Runes of Magic patch Chapter II - The Elven Prophecy is scheduled for September, but before that comes out there will be some additional new content to tide players over. A new zone called "The Weeping Coast" has been announced; a trailer showing the varied inhabitants of the area can be seen above. Along with the release of the Weeping Coast will come 200 new quests, and a raising of the level cap to 52. All of this can be expected to happen in August.

As well as the trailer video, we have a bunch of screenshots of the new zone to show off. You can view the new gallery below, along with our gallery for The Elven Prophecy.

If you've made it this far and still haven't received one of our Runes of Magic in-game key codes, let us help you a bit with this post! Included after the jump below is another group of 100 codes for those wonderful Jade Warrior gloves, in addition to the codes we've been adding to our Facebook group page, giving away in-game and tweeting throughout the week.

We understand some of the feedback on our giveaway methods this time around aren't exactly all positive, but just know that we've been experimenting with a few different ideas. Some of these worked, some didn't, but we just hope it's been fun! Besides, wouldn't you rather say you worked to get your gloves, instead of simply clicking a button? Wait, don't answer that. There will be more varied opportunities as the week winds down, you can count on that.

On that note, don't forget to join us in-game tomorrow night for some more code giveaways! And now for some more codes!

If you weren't able to make it out for our Runes of Magic in-game event last night, it was really a lot of fun! It was great to 'meet' so many Runes of Magic players, and readers of the website.

I started off the evening on the Artemis server, where it took me a bit of trial and error to get the whole speed-cut-paste-between-windows thing down before the chat window scrolled the names away. Two hours later, I finished up on the PvP server Grimdal having met some interesting readers. I have to say, never have I encountered a group of more polite people. I must've heard more pleases and thank-yous than I've heard in a long time, both in-game and out. Even on the PvP server!

If you've found something interesting, cool, or strange, grab a screenshot and send it to us here! We're always on the hunt for more One Shots. Just send it to oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your character name/server/guild and a quick description of what we're seeing. We'll post your screens and give you full credit for it.

In our continuous goal to make this Runes of Magic in-game item giveaway more fun than just a simple button-click, we at Massively are thinking up more personal ways to get you your item codes. With so many to give away, it's great to try out new methods throughout the week.

So for tomorrow, we're going to try something in-game. That's right, we're throwing ourselves into the world to personally hand over as many codes as we possibly can! Simply meet up with "Massiveshawn" at the designated times and places listed below, shoot us a PM and we'll respond with an item code. It's that simple! All of these will take place Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at the city of Logar. They will also be in Channel 1 of each server. Here's where you'll find us:

• Artemis: 6:00pm - 6:30pm EST
• Osha: 6:30pm - 7:00 EST
• Govinda: 7:00pm - 7:30pm EST
• Grimdal: 7:30pm - 8:00pm EST

Is this something we'll do again throughout the week? Possibly, if all goes well. We'll also do these at varying times. You'll still see codes given away on Facebook and Twitter, but we thought we'd try something new for this one. See ya then!

Yesterday's Runes of Magic item code giveaway seemed quite a success as the codes were swallowed up quicker than we had imagined. If you follow us on Twitter or Facebook, you've seen even more codes distributed than on this front page. We gave away 460 codes in total yesterday, with 360 of them being through Twitter or Facebook.

Today is only day two of the giveaway as we still have about 9500 of these codes left! As you can imagine, once we get closer to the final days, we'll ramp up the coverage a bit until every last code has been given away. Be sure to also check out this RoM forum thread for more information on other sites throwing similar contests for other pieces of the Jade Warrior Armor set.

Click below to see today's new codes!

Attention all Runes of Magic players! We're proud to announce our participation in a brand new promotional giveaway for Runes of Magic in which you can get your hands on a special piece of an in-game armor set. This armor set is compiled of elements given away at various MMO sites running the promotion. For our part, we're giving away 10,000 key codes that will unlock the gloves in this set, while four other sites (yet to be named) are giving away the rest of the pieces. Gather codes from each site and you could have yourself one fine outfit.

How do you get your own pair? Easy! Starting today with this post and running until June 28th, look for special promotional posts here at Massively containing the key codes. Some posts may have 50 keys, some may have 100 or more, but they'll be set up where the first person to enter a key into their account gets the item. There's no commenting or emailing needed. If you're fast enough to copy and paste the code before anyone else, you got yourself some nifty new gloves. Keep reading below for more information and those first 100 key codes!

Runes of Magic is the game some view as a free-to-play successor to World of Warcraft. Our own Krystalle Voecks gave us a preview of what's to come in RoM from E3 2009 but Frogster has released a little more info about the next major patch, Chapter II - The Elven Prophecy. Frogster states: "In the upcoming 'Chapter II - The Elven Prophecy', the name giving elven will find their way into the game world Taborea. A widely branching background story entwines about the fairylike race with many new challenges that are going to be told in lots of new quests and new quest lines. Thus, 'Chapter II - The Elven Prophecy' will lead players into new game regions characterized by elven lore like an elven island at the shore of Ravenfell."

Frogster really seems to be on a roll the release of content updates on a regular basis since launch; Return to the Ice Dwarf Kingdom (Patch 1.7) dropped earlier this month, bringing guild castles, permanent pets, and high level content with it. Chapter II - The Elven Prophecy will be released in September 2009. For a first glimpse at screens and concept art for The Elven Prophecy, check out our gallery after the jump.

We had the chance to sit down and catch up with the guys from Frogster Interactive as well as a few of the Runewaker Entertainment developers at E3. While we knew Elves were coming to Runes of Magic, we didn't have too many details of just precisely how they'd be implemented into the game. As part of our talk, they let me check out the never-before-seen area that the elves will be a part of, as well as showing off some of the new instance content and guild buildings that they're adding to the game.

This next chapter - The Elven Prophecy - will give players the option of playing the elven race (surprise) which starts out in a strange and wonderous new area. Beyond that, they're also working on PvP arenas, destructible guild buildings, and some new epic powers. Along with this sweeping update, the game is being updated with several graphic improvements including updates to things like water, and adding in some incidental sounds and music to start to help close the gap in regards to the dearth of sound issue many have decried Runes of Magic for. If you'd like a preview into some of these areas, be sure to check the gallery below, as well as the newly-released trailer showing off the Elven Prophecy, coming to Runes of Magic this September!

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Massively was on the ground in Los Angeles last week and covering all the latest E3 MMO news coming from the convention. Check out our breaking coverage (or all the Joystiq network E3 reporting) and keep your eye on Massively's front page for the latest developments.

With only two months of operation under its belt, fantasy game Runes of Magic already seems to be enjoying a great deal of popularity. Runes of Magic uses the free-to-play business model, which is discussed in an interview with community manager Jörg "Kerensky" Koonen. Sam "Azerian" Maxted from ZAM caught up with Koonen to discuss the game's launch and where the title is headed in future updates, but their talk quickly turned to some of the details of how the game's economy operates.

Koonen discusses how players have responded to Runes of Magic's microtransaction system through the in-game Item Shop, and that by design the Item Shop doesn't sell certain types of items. "We do not sell any weapons or armour or such," he says. "All of this has to be collected by the players through the game." However, Runes of Magic also uses non-microtransaction currencies and some players are concerned that their gold lacks real value in the game. Koonen says that the developers are looking into this. They're presently gathering feedback from the playerbase and are willing to introduce other measures, if necessary, to ensure that non-microtransaction currencies serve a purpose in RoM.

Frogster Interactive seems to be off to a good start with their free-to-play MMO Runes of Magic, having exceeded 1 million registered users in under two months since launch. Frogster dropped some info today about the summer content they plan to release: Patch 1.7, "Return of the Ice Dwarf Kingdom" is scheduled to deploy on June 3rd. A key feature of the patch will be new expansion potential of guild castles. Guilds will be able to collect resources and build structures in their castle yard, unlocking more and improved buildings over time. Frogster Interactive states, "All buildings grant the guild special bonuses, from enhanced riding speed through the potential to mine resources up to powerful defensive works, which are in turn tactical elements in the planned guild vs. guild wars."

They've also revisited the "Ruins of the Ice Dwarf Kingdom", a dungeon intended for players between level 35-40, adding a new area more suitable for level 50 players. In addition, Patch 1.7 will introduce Elite skills for players at level 40 and 45 and the update will also bring permanent pets to Runes of Magic. This is Frogster's pre-E3 announcement, but we expect to learn more next week when we meet them at the E3 Expo.