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The Chronicles of Spellborn is approaching its release date and we have a bit of news regarding how the PvP servers will work, and the Fame system they have in place. As noted by a recent press release, all regions will be enabled for PvP except Hawksmouth, Aldenvault and the major cities. There will also be special PvP caves within the safe zones on all servers for low level PvP.

The Fame system will work much like experience in other MMOs. You can not only gain it by questing or aiding others in their quests, but the amount of Fame your character is awarded from killing enemies has increased. They decided to make this change so that players don't need to rely solely on questing to level their characters.

Here's a look at the third playable race in Gravity Interactive's Requiem: Bloodymare, the Kruxena. These part-biological, part-mechanical beings were created to be living weapons and will stop at nothing to get the job done. From the press release: "Be forewarned, they are brutal and cold-hearted and they have no qualms sacrificing an ally to reach their goal. Be careful if you are allies, you may be next."

And let's hear it for R:B as the 16th marked its full release! Go check out what it's like when an enemy is chopped up into component bits and prepare to laugh/get queasy.



[Thanks, Katrina!]

DDO's Module 7 goes live today, and boy, if you're looking for information about it, you're in the right place. Massively has been covering Module 7 since before Module 6 dropped, and just in case you missed out on any of our great coverage, it's right here for your perusing pleasure.

• Live at Connect '08, we provided coverage of the DDO panel, including a first look at the Monk class Turbine released in this patch.
• Shortly after that, we chatted with the woman herself, DDO Senior Producer Kate Paiz, on what worked well with Module 6, and everything else they were planning in Module 7 and beyond.
• We covered "Monk Week" and the official Turbine events leading up to the game.
• Not only did we provide great original coverage, but we aggregated coverage from around the 'net, including other interviews with Ms. Paiz, as well as official info drops (and did you take advantage of your chance to grab the soundtrack?)
• And finally, Massively's got the dungeonmaster of all Module 7 previews, including the number one reason you'll want to roll a Monk, a look at the Gary Gygax shrine and the new midlevel content, the new high level instances and bosses, and even an exclusive video preview of what you'll see in Module 7 (which you'll find right after the break).

We critted on the coverage of this new patch (going live today), and you get to be the one to claim all the loot. Before you sign in and check out Module 7 today, be sure to check all the links above and read about it here.

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!

Mystic Worlds is among the many blogs (including ours) who have been posting impressions of Pirates of the Burning Sea during their beta, but she got something that not many other sites have gotten: answers from the CEO of Flying Lab Software himself. Russell Williams, FLS' CEO, emailed her about what she'd posted, and countered a few of her concerns about the game before launch.

To her point that the female avatars look the same as men, he replied that FLS wanted customization to work across both sexes, so they had to use the same models (with a few modifications, obviously) for both. He says that the swashbuckling does need some tuning (and keep in mind that there are still weeks before the game launches for FLS to fix some of these issues), and that the invisible walls and tiny spaces in the beta are being worked on. He also says that a lot of the late-game instances and towns are much bigger-- as we heard in the press tour, FLS got better at designing as they went along (does that mean they should have designed the end of the game first?).

Finally, he says that the three "star systems" FLS targeted were sailing combat, organic PvP, and the economy, so if you're looking for those in an MMO, they'll have something to offer. Of course they're working hard on everything else as well, but those were the three key things he says they aimed for.

The date is almost on us-- after January 22nd, the game goes officially live for everyone, and then Williams has to let the game speak for itself.

WarCry has brought our attention to the fact that a new MMORTS has gone live. Ballerium, by game development studio Majorem, is now free to download and play from the game's homepage. Some of the features of Ballerium are thousands of players on a single map, seven races to choose from, a persistent multi user environment, and interestingly, AI that will finish fights for you if you disconnect.

The homepage's feature section also says that you can earn status and prizes outside of the game by participating in the Ballerium community, creating videos and fan art, and later on, making creatures and levels. If you register for the game before the end of this month, you'll be in the running for a $50 Jinx.com gift card.

This isn't the only MMORTS we've heard from recently, with Saga announcing their final beta date a week ago.

Relmstein has posted a great analysis of how to do expansions right-- he looks at the history of major MMO expansion releases, and grades their qualities on three criteria: timing of release, cost at retail, and quality of content. In essence, he sets up a quick continuum that proves the old theory: "Good, fast, or cheap. Choose two."

A game like World of Warcraft has released one terriffic quality expansion, but as Relmstein says, it was a long time coming. And Star Wars Galaxies released huge updates one after another, but we all know how well that worked out. Relmstein lists Everquest 2 as the best of all worlds-- they've released expansions fairly often (every 12 months regualrly), at fairly cheap prices (the fact that the original game content comes with every expansion doesn't hurt), and the quality has been done fairly well.

It's an interesting balance. Of course expansion packs aren't an MMO-only phenomenon, but the idea of constantly pushing out new game content is something that lends itself very well to a persistent massively multiplayer world. You'd think that there has to be some rate out there at which players are getting their content too fast, but according to Relmstein, we haven't even reached the ideal rate yet-- it's still taking developers too long to cook up polished expansion content for hungry players.

The Scribe, just recently returned to Tyria, promised that we'd be seeing the much-anticipated Bonus Mission Pack soon. And so we have, as a blurb on the official Guild Wars site notes that the pack is now live!

For those who have qualified, the Guild Wars Bonus Mission Pack is now available to play! To access the four new bonus missions, speak with Durmand[Historian] in Lion's Arch, Kaineng Center, or Kamadan. Once you have done so, you'll receive special story tomes that are filled with detailed histories and provide entry into the missions.

If you're unclear on just what this is, Arena.net has a handy FAQ that will set you straight. For more on the Pack, they also have up an interview from mid-October with lead designer Colin Johansen. He describes the high concept behind these bonus missions, as well as some of the challenges that went into creating them.

The embargo has dropped and so now we can announce: Pirates of the Burning Sea will set sail worldwide on January 22, 2008. We've been drooling at the thought of a little MMO pirate action for a year or so now, so it's great to finally have a date to put "break the champagne bottle against the hull" on the calendar with.

Preorders, we're told, will start up on October 23rd, and anyone who preorders will be invited to a "pre-boarding party" that will get into the game 15 days early, and have the option to level up to 20 before the plebians are allowed on deck on the 22nd. Preorders also get a "captain's best friend" (a blue and yellow pet), a weapon "suited to their fighting style," and a 60 minute original soundtrack.

Are you guys ready to fly the Jolly Roger? I played Pirates about a year ago at PAX '06, and wasn't super impressed, but I only got to play it for a bit, and I'm sure it's come a long way since then. I am excited to play anything featuring pirates, of course (they're the second coolest thing in the world, right between monkeys and ninjas), but I may wait for the reviews on this one. At any rate, if you can't wait to get the eyepatch, tricorner and codpiece on and make some landlubbers walk the plank, you've only got about four more months to wait.