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Those waiting anxiously for today's Age of Conan patch notes have been left wanting for the last few hours, as the Update Notes forum shows no signs of stirring. An official response was dug up on the German forums, and later confirmed by US community manager "Famine" -- apparently, the cause of the delay is to do with the translation of the patch notes, which must be released in all languages at the same time.

In the meantime, in a similar vein to previous weeks, the community has started up an undocumented patch thread in the forums (from European players who are already playing the new patch since their servers have gone online). However, this week everything is undocumented for now; the OP has promised to sort the thread later on when the official notes come out, removing things that are listed there. If there are enough things that are unique to the community thread at that point, we may revisit it for discussion. Even now, there are some very interesting points in that thread that we would love to bring up, but we'll leave it for you to browse for the time being, and get back to you when the real notes are released.

Update: Patch notes are now available! Dissection coming up.

[Update: Observant reader Phobic99 has see that the developers have pushed the beta launch back again. This time, we're set for 5:00 PM EST (22.00 GMT). Thanks Phobic99!]

The title says it all. The Age of Conan FilePlanet beta has been pushed back until 4 PM EST (20.00 GMT) for a few more spit shines and polishes before it throws itself into your loving arms.

The reason for the delay stems from the developers wishing to get in that one last hotfix onto closed servers before opening them up to the public. So, if you haven't logged onto Conan yet, we recommend you do so to get your client up to date. Only the game servers are down, the patching servers are not.

If you completely haven't attempted to log in yet, you will be presented with a 300 mb patch, so if you're a rabid Conan fan and want to get into the beta the second the servers go live, it's recommended you try to start the client now to get yourself ready. Especially if you want to hit that level cap for the FilePlanet power levelling contest.

In the mean time, why not go watch some television or something? You know, Law and Order is on at 2:00 PM EST on TNT. That should get your blood thirst up while you're waiting for 4:00 PM EST.

Being that the Home service plans to tie into every facet of the Playstation Network -- such as games, downloads, etc -- we're not entirely unsurprised about news of yet another delay. Especially since this time, the delay is for further refinement of Home. The closed beta has been extended into summer and more invites are apparently being sent out soon. Meanwhile, fall 08 is now the time to expect an open beta event.

We follow a lot of different MMOs and virtual worlds here at Massively, but most of them -- in fact about all of them -- are specific to personal computers. One of the more interesting virtual worlds in development has been Sony's Home service, which is of course being developed for the Playstation 3 exclusively. Because of this we have to admit our curiosity is somewhat piqued.

So while the full official launch may be delayed into uncertainty, it looks like PS3 owners can expect to be trying out Home this fall one way or another. Hopefully all the delays are worth the wait. We have to admit to being overly curious as to how Home will eventually turn out.

[via Joystiq]

SOE has informed EverQuest II players via the game's official community website that the opening of the Live Gamer service has been delayed. The originally stated launch date was March 31st. No new date has yet been provided. The Station Exchange -- the service Live Gamer is to replace -- ceased operation Thursday. In this new announcement, SOE noted that it will update a status thread on the official forums with new information at some point.

If you're not in the loop about Live Gamer: it's a company that works with game publishers and developers to provide legitimized RMT (Real Money Trading) services to users of MMOs. SOE has had all sorts of problems in the past with credit card fraud and gold farmers, and it hopes the folks running Live Gamer will have much better luck. Is this delay just technical in nature, or have new concerns arisen? It's a bit late for second thoughts, so this is probably just a technical bump in the road, but we'll be keeping our eyes and ears open for updates.

Oh, and if this is all new to you: before you raise your eyebrows too high note that, as with Station Exchange, Live Gamer service will be limited to the specified RMT-friendly servers.

Now that the gnashing of teeth has somewhat abated, there's been some talk about whether or not delaying Warhammer Online to the "fall" was a wise idea or not. A lot of people we've heard from think this is going to prove to be a really big problem for EA Mythic, as delaying that long will put them in the range of releasing sometime near Blizzard's upcoming WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Others have said that this may cause people who are jonesing for some good fantasy PvP right now even more reason to check out Age of Conan when they may have originally intended to just hold out for WAR -- which could lose them subscriptions. Then there are the folks who say that the delay is wise, well needed, and forward-thinking for them. They say that it gives them time to make WAR the absolutely most amazing game ever. (We can only assume someone at EA is having a head-explody moment at how long this is taking, though.) But this morning we thought we'd ask you -- do you think the delay is good or bad for WAR?

While we can't say that we didn't see it coming and we know that it's probably for the best, the recent delay of Warhammer Online from Q2 2008 to Fall 2008 has many of us in the Massively offices in low spirits. It's a sentiment that's reflected across the community, from what we've seen. In an effort to put out the fires in the community and remind us that the development team is on our side, WAR bigwig Mark Jacobs has been spending a lot of time in the Warhammer Alliance forums today, answering all sorts of player questions as a gesture of good will. Here are some of the meatier details:

• Newsletters, video podcasts, and previews will not only continue until the new release date, but will probably increase in frequency to keep up the buzz.
• To the question of how he felt about releasing so close to Wrath of the Lich King, Jacobs stressed that they would rather take a page from Blizzard than be afraid of them. He would rather release the game when it's ready than worry about being gobbled by the competition.
• The "head start" that people get by preordering the Collector's Edition will be "more than a day," but no exact amount of time has been decided yet.
• The recommended system requirements should be similar to or slightly below the requirements for the beta. They're still working on optimizing the game, so they don't even have a ballpark for the minimum specs at this point.
• He made a point of not even hinting at when the open beta might start
• And finally, when asked what type of "mud" would allow WAR's release date to slip so far, Jacobs conceded that it was both wet and sloppy.

As ornery as players have gotten over the delay, you have to at least respect the fact that the guy is willing to answer all these questions, from his home at 7 in the morning, no less.

Well, it looks like many a prediction have come true with the official news that Warhammer Online has been delayed to a Fall 2008 release window. Mark Jacobs has said the main reason for the delay is to, "Invest additional time and effort in implementation and polish to make WAR great" which is a sound line of reasoning if we've ever heard one.

In other words -- WAR needs more time to cook and EA Mythic has recognized that fact. The news is all good to us, especially since we've already said this was the correct road for WAR to travel down in order for it to succeed in the massively multiplayer online game market. There just wasn't enough solid looking stuff coming from the Warhammer Online camp to convince us that launching anytime before fall would be a smart choice. Thankfully, it appears as though fans of the upcoming successor to the RvR throne need not worry -- your game is being taken good care of and at least now there are more chances to get in on that ever-elusive beta.

Also, Mark Jacobs has started a thread to address any worries and questions that players might have -- we recommend checking it out.

An update has been made to the original message detailing the patch downtime at the website. Those waiting anxiously to get their keg will need to wait just one extra day, as the Lord of the Rings Online scheduled downtime has been pushed back to Thursday, March 13th. The time of day will remain the same, from 6AM to 12PM Eastern.

There will, however, be some downtime occuring on Wednesday as well -- but only for the Lorebook. This handy resource will be unavailable for a mere 2 hours on March 12th, from 10AM to 12PM, and the reason behind this is to make some updates related to the recent introduction of Book 12.

That's the choice EA Mythic is going to have to make and it will lead Warhammer Online down two very different roads, in my opinion. Neither of these roads are inherently bad, but only one of them is the right choice for WAR -- which means the hard part is figuring out which road is best.

Timing the release of popular content to coincide with the release of competitors' products is a time-honored practice in the game industry. Hell, it's a time-honored practice in ANY industry. You steal some of their thunder in terms of headlines, community buzz, and most importantly, player dollars. In a recent blog post, Relmstein questions Blizzard's logic in delaying the start of World of Warcraft's PvP Season 4 for at least another patch. He speculates their they're doing this to coincide the start of Season 4 with the release of Age of Conan. The logic goes, because Age of Conan is such a PvP focused game, they have to do their best to retain the PvP players they already have with more content aimed in their direction.

As Relmstein points out however, this might be something of a folly on Blizzard's part. It makes it seem like they're just stringing out content to subsist players until the expansion. Such a narrow band of new content is hardly going to stop players from trying new games, especially ones as high-profile as Age of Conan (or even WAR, slightly further down the road). Of course, this is all assuming that we're wise to Blizzard's motives. As one astute commenter pointed out, if Season 4 follows the same scheduling as the last two, it would end in April or May anyway. So who really knows!

Good idea: Show off your Massively Multiplayer game at Game Developer's conference! The long-in-development title Chronicles of Spellborn showed off gameplay and core features to the site OnlineWelten. The Germans had a camera on-hand, and you can enjoy the lengthy resulting video either on their site, or embedded below the cut.

Bad idea: Postpone the launch of your already long-delayed title well into 2008. The official site notes that the developers now plan to release Spellborn sometime in Q2 of this year - right into the timeframe of Warhammer Online and (possibly) Wrath of the Lich King. This already incredibly niche title is going to have a stiff fight on its hands, and it's a real shame that they're postponing it right into the path of these mass-market behemoths.

Some of the features are definitely worth checking out, though; check below the cut for that great OnlineWelten video.

The life of a developer can be arduous. As we've explained in the past, players (and bloggers!) have a habit of scrutinizing every public utterance of a developer, real or imaginary, and conjuring up all sorts of elaborate doomsday scenarios. Developers who have the cajones to brave the forums with any regularity really have to bite their tongues, lest they say something that will really get the players into a panic. So imagine our surprise when Warhammer Online designer Mark Jacobs openly posted in a thread stating that he wouldn't be distraught if he had to ship a game minus a couple of classes if it meant they could hit their target date.

And then, in the same breath (or whatever the forum equivalent of a breath is), he says that Mythic and EA are committed to shipping the game when it's ready, citing Blizzard's model for their continued success. It's all a bit confusing. For my part, I take more comfort in the philosophy espoused in the second post. As much as it would pain me if they did, they're not going to lose players by putting off the release date a month or two. You will lose players if they buy your game and find it is less than they were expecting.

A lot of EverQuest II players had believed that the enormous Game Update 42 was scheduled to be released today, February 5th -- but then no one could really trace back to why they had this date in mind. This thread managed to dig up that the origin was most likely from a French community staff member that had said GU42 was planned for January 29th at first, but was to be pushed back to February 5th.

The long and short of it is, no, it will not be released today. Community Relations Representative Aaron "Gnobrin" Bisnett locked the above thread, and started a new one in the Community News section of the forums, stating that prior specific dates given for GU42's release were incorrect and that "this update is planned to be released soon, but not today". Later in the thread, Craig "Grimwell" Dalrymple confirmed that a French Rep had done the damage, and the offending post has been removed to prevent confusion (answering the question of why no one could find it before). Gnobrin has promised to update the Community News thread with a real date when he can get his hands on it.

When the Age of Conan beta community expressed concern with the combat controls and overall balance last year FunCom listened. That -- as we all remember -- was the first delay of the game from last August into this year. From what we've been seeing from the game at CES 2008 it was a wise decision. So when the announcement was made that the release date for AoC was pushed back eight weeks, we assumed there was another good reason.

There was a strong suspicion that the reasons for delay were bug and polish related -- turns out that suspicion was right after all. Thankfully most people in the community seem understanding, which is good to hear. It's also good to hear that FunCom has learned their lesson from Anarchy Online's buggy launch. The first impression for an MMO is everything and we believe Gaute when he says he believes they made the right decision.

With the announcement this morning that Age of Conan: Hyborean Adventures has been delayed, we can't help but be torn about it. We covet the shiny precious, yes we do -- and we're sure we're not the only ones who are really wanting to see more of this title. But on the flip side, we've all seen truly abysmal MMO launches due to rushing to market, and certainly don't want that for AoC either. How about you? Would you rather see them bring games to market on-time with a few potential bugs, or are you firmly in the "release it only when it's absolutely done" -- even if that means delaying for months (if not years) camp? How long are you willing to wait to play some of the upcoming games?