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Kiwi Heroes has a strong ethical message, intending to teach kids 'valuable life lessons' and show them what it really means to be a hero. The game's themes include wildlife preservation and the fate of the environment. Furthermore, there will be a charitable enterprise launched at the same time as the game:

There's MMOs to play, plenty of activities and events are happening in World of Warcraft, EverQuest, EverQuest II, and Guild Wars. Even the space cases in EVE Online are tearing each other up in the Empyrean Age expansion. But there isn't always something for everyone, many of us yearn for a new creation not touched before, and the million boxes Age of Conan shipped attests to that. Right now Warhammer: Age of Reckoning is looking like the only real new option on the dinner table, and it may be time to be taking a leap into Warhammer's open beta.

Over on the Warhammer Online blog WAAAGH! Syp has gathered and laid out all the facts and the rumors regarding the open beta. If you didn't know you can pre-order the Warhammer Online Collector's edition to guarantee a spot in the beta to beat the launch pandemonium. As for an estimate on when the open beta will start the latest WAR newsletter revealed that the guild beta will be starting in early July. This phase of testing will at least last for a month and it will be the last closed beta phase. Making it more than likely that WAR's open beta phase at the very least wont start until mid-August, if that, making the rest of summer pretty bleak MMO wise if you aren't planning on playing anything until WAR comes out.

The year is 2146. Global warming has long since made ice and snow only a distant memory, something seen in the history books but not really understood. That all changed with the discovery of the Warp Gate, that opened up the galaxy to exploration. And everywhere we went, there was snow. And where there was snow, there was Project Powder to shred it.

Project Powder, developed by free casual MMO portal Outspark, isn't the first extreme sports MMO we've seen, but it's the coolest. Combat? Duel against other players on the slopes! Crafting? Make snowballs! Exploration? There's a whole world out there ready to be explored -- and shredded. Okay, maybe it's not the deepest MMO out there, but if you just want to get together with your friends, form a team, level up and compete against the top 'boarders in the galaxy, Project Powder may be just the game for you. Closed beta begins June 24th, and you can sign up on the Project Powder home page. Get to level 5 in closed beta, and you get a special hoodie that you can wear in open beta that shows just how cool the open beta newbies will never be.

Check out the video after the break, courtesy of GameTrailers.

Dreamlords: The Reawakening has been in closed beta since April, and according to a new press release has entered "public beta". At the time of this writing, the official website has not been updated with any information relating to this update. Do we dare assume that "public beta" means "open beta"?

While at the site, however, notice the latest news regarding the server move on the 9th of June to "prepare for launch". So, we might be in open beta right now, and we might be seeing a full launch of the game fairly soon. We can't take this tension! When we know anything for sure, we'll let you know.

[Thanks, Marcus!]

Depending on how the new code travels through the QA process, Mono could come to the main Second Life grid within the next four weeks, says Linden Lab.

Mono (an open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET) is to be deployed as an additional, faster script runtime engine that should greatly speed many common scripting operations, increase stability and reduce load. Linden Lab says that it is unlikely that we'll see Mono deployed within two weeks, but within four is certainly not out of the ballpark.

Currently Mono is available for testing on the Beta grid, and scripters should take the opportunity to test their scripts there and get bug-reports filed sooner, rather than later.

The new script runtime engine does not add (and is not presently intended to add) support for any languages other than the already existing LSL.

Between 5AM and 10AM SLT (US Pacific time) on Friday, 16 May, Linden Lab is planning to restart approximately half of the Second Life grid simulators, in order to connect those simulators to a backup asset system. Why only half? Well, the other half got the treatment in this-morning's rolling restart.

The asset system, as you may have noticed, has been plagued with issues since November 2007, and the recent vendor-provided fixes have not improved matters. In fact, there's indications that there may be increased instability as a result.

Bridie Linden has updated the development roadmap (actually, it's not a roadmap so much, as a set of directions, but bear with us) for upcoming releases. The release cycle for the 1.20 viewer is going to be longer than usual, expecting to end in June.

The map is a bit tangled, with a commingling of server-side and viewer-side changes kind of munged together, but there's a new feature in the long, long list of bugfixes and bughunting tweaks: New feature: VWR-4794: Basic voice lipsync for voice visualization. Now that's going to be interesting.

Viewer 1.20RC7 and Simulator 1.22 are both expected to see the light next week.

Nothing much new in SLS1.22, except work to further ease load on the asset servers (if some of you are winding up at infohubs and welcome-areas instead of at home, or getting teleport routing failure messages, those are a part of this work), and code to help identify possible failure points in other systems.

Linden Lab seem to have finally gotten the new land store together and up-and-running, albeit as a limited beta at the present time. The old land store has been switched off, so no more orders through the old system.

Some people will have access to the beta Land Store at present. If you don't, and you want to access it, you'll need to fill out a Support Ticket (Land and Region Issues > LandStore Beta Access). This process takes about a day.

If you've got positive or negative experiences with the new land store, let us know.

As of yesterday, all City of Heroes players can access the twelfth expansion, Midnight Hour, on the Test Server. For an issue that was originally touted as a fairly small one, it's extremely impressive. The main features are, of course, the Villain Epic Archetypes, Powerset Proliferation and the new Cimerora and Midnighters Club content, but the Quality of Life changes have left many players open-mouthed. These are literally what the players have been asking for. Several of them appear to have come directly from the Suggestions and Ideas forum. The patch notes are now available to read.

We're especially impressed by the 'Inspiration upon levelling up' concept, which will even bring you back to life if you should happen to level up while defeated, and by the Zone Event Alerts channel. From now on, if Lusca surfaces in Independence Port or the Arachnos Flyer leaves its roost in Grandville, players who have added these channels will know about it. Every zone event is covered, with one exception; the reclusive lake monster, Sally.

Read on for a few more off-the-cuff impressions.

City of Heroes Issue 12: Midnight Hour has finally reached Open Beta, and in the first of our articles covering the new issue content, we're delighted to bring you a scenic tour of the Cimerora zone.

The Midnight Squad, researchers into the arcane, have acquired a time-travel crystal. Those who have gained access to the Midnighters Club, their secret stronghold connected to both Paragon and the Rogue Isles, can reach it; but access to Cimerora is limited to characters of levels 35-50.

A co-operative zone where Heroes and Villains work together (each for their own ends) Cimerora is small but beautiful, containing one introductory arc, a contact who gives out repeating missions, and one extraordinary Task Force that testers have called the best in the game so far.

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Face down the forces of evil! Give good a quick jab to the jaw! Massively has all the CoX Issue 12 news you can handle. Make sure to check it out!

Thy doom draws nearer, O Learned Readers, for with each passing day, Hello Kitty Online becomes more and more a reality! The latest information is that those of you fortunate enough to have gotten access to the closed beta will finally find out what it will be like to inhabit the world of Sanrio. The test runs from the 23rd of April to the 7th of May, and interestingly enough, testers will have a DVD of content sent to them, which will include at least a folder of video tutorials, though nothing else has been confirmed at this time.

This MMO has excited a ton of interest in age ranges well beyond the pre-pubescent that one might expect -- expect a First Impressions before too long!

Chinese virtual world HiPiHi has reopened registration for beta accounts. If you want to give this a spin, you will be pleased to know that you can now perform account registration in English. Unfortunately, it seems that you'll still need to either read a few words of Chinese or have a fine-mastery of educated guesswork to handle the user-interface.

We spent a few minutes in HiPiHi today. Within our first couple of minutes, we got our leg humped by some kind of transforming robot, and then someone tried to push us into the sea. Technology is awesome.

If you're feeling brave and would like to have a look at this virtual world in beta, give the signup a whirl. Be warned - the viewer download is at least 20 times longer than the download for Second Life, so find something else to do while that is happening.

One of the things that the new Second Life 1.20 release candidate viewer sports is a nifty new feature that busts some serious myths about avatar related lag. In short, by enabling the option, every avatar gets a number displayed over their heads showing how much work your PC needs to go through to render the avatar. This is the avatar rendering cost.

So far we have seen green numbers (low numbers, which are good), and red ones (high numbers, which are not so good). The amount of work that goes into rendering an avatar (now that we can easily measure it) isn't quite affected by things the way we thought it was.

Linden Lab has released a new 1.19.1 Second Life release candidate viewer, 1.19.1(RC4), fifth in the 1.19.1 series (release candidates start counting from zero, rather than from one).

Released on a Saturday. We know. Looks like someone's pushing for an official release early next week. In fact, Linden Lab says they're hoping this is the last release candidate for this series.

Linden Lab has released a new 1.19.1 Second Life release candidate viewer, 1.19.1(RC3), fourth in the 1.19.1 series (release candidates start counting from zero, rather than from one).

Almost all the changes for this release-candidate are essentially cosmetic items. Either those are the low-hanging fruit, or we're getting very close to 1.19.1 (and Windlight) rolling out as the official viewer. With our prognosticating hats on, we predict an official release of 1.19.1/Windlight on Monday or Tuesday (though we're prepared to be wrong, we think it is likely).