Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Wizards of the Coast announced today Dungeons & Dragons Online®: Shadowfell Conspiracy™, the second expansion to the award-winning free-to-play massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) developed by Turbine, will launch on August 19^th, 2013. Shadowfell Conspiracy takes place in the beloved Forgotten Realms® setting, features an increased level cap and introduces new Iconic Heroes and much more.

“We’re excited to share our launch date with the world and introduce the new Iconic Classes system that will be available immediately to anyone that pre-purchases Shadowfell Conspiracy,” said Erik Boyer, Senior Producer of DDO.  “We’re also making new Forgotten Realms content that will enable players to create a level 15 character in the Forgotten Realms and play all the way to level cap.”

“Turbine continues to release great content for DDO, and we are thrilled that Dungeons & Dragons fans have another great expansion coming this August,” added Nathan Stewart, Brand Director for D&D at Wizards of the Coast.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ONLINE: SHADOWFELL CONSPIRACY FEATURES:

• Two New Forgotten Realms Adventure Packs — Featuring gorgeous new wilderness areas packed with new D&D® monsters, dangerous encounters and a host of challenging dungeons.
• Wheloon:  Horrors from the Shadowfell pour into Wheloon, a prison city full of irredeemable criminals and traitors to the Crown. In this place, Netherese agents conspire to forge an army out of the Kingdom’s enemies. Masquerade as a traitor to infiltrate the Prison City, fight marauding criminal gangs, and destroy the army before it marches – all the while battling creatures made out of the very shadows.
• Stormhorns:  Deep in the Stormhorn Mountains, the Netherese Empire prepares to unleash its secret weapon against the Kingdom of Cormyr. Brave treacherous mountain passes through griffon territory and overcome cunning harpy ambushes. At the peaks of the mighty Stormhorns, overcome an alliance of giants and monstrous creatures – only to have to contend with a terrible Netherese secret weapon.
• Introducing Iconic Heroes — Jump into the action of DDO with these new prestige characters that start in Forgotten Realms at level 15 and feature unique looks and skills. Each of these classic D&D heroes is a paragon of their race and class and features custom iconic gear, appearance options and new abilities to enhance their power.
• Attain Epic level to 28 — Master your destiny and gain new epic feats and spells with three new Epic levels of advancement that let you reach new levels of power.

Beginning today, players can take advantage of special pre-purchase offers:

Collector’s Edition:  $49.99

Features all Shadowfell Conspiracy content, with all three Iconic Heroes including a pre-purchase exclusive Shadar-kai cosmetic costume, when it launches, plus immediate access to these items, including other pre-purchase exclusives:

• – Bladeforged Paladin Iconic Hero (including additional character slot)- A powerful, offense-focused disciple of the Lord of Blades, Bladeforged Paladins take less damage from slashing weapons and gain a tactical advantage from slashing damage. These devout leaders can repair themselves and fellow constructs.  Their stronger Paladin Aura boosts effectiveness of nearby party members.
• – Bladeforged Warrior Blue & Gold Cosmetic Costume (A pre-purchase exclusive)
• – Bladeforged Warrior Gold Cosmetic Costume (A pre-purchase exclusive)
• – Calico Tressym Creature Companion- A frisky, winged cat of your very own! Comes pre-trained with four tricks (A pre-purchase exclusive)
• – Tawny Owlbear Creature Companion- Cuddly and ferocious! Comes pre-trained with four tricks. (A pre-purchase exclusive)
• – Stormhorn Specs Cosmetic Goggles
• – Mountaineers Cosmetic Goggles
• – First expansion quest, ‘Shadow of a Doubt’ (Heroic level 15 only)
• – 3 Character Slots
• – Greater Tome of Epic Learning (1 per server): Permanently increases experience earned by a character in level 20 or above dungeons.  Provides +25% bonus to experience for first-time quest completions and +10% boost to other earned experience points.
• – One +2 Skill Tome per character
• – 2,000 Turbine Points

Standard Edition:  $29.99

Features all Shadowfell Conspiracy content, including the Purple Dragon Knight Iconic Hero, when it launches, plus immediate access  to these items, including other pre-purchase exclusives:

• – Bladeforged Paladin Iconic Hero (including additional character slot)
• – Bladeforged Warrior Gold Cosmetic Costume (A pre-purchase exclusive)
• – Stormhorn Specs Cosmetic Goggles
• – Calico Tressym Creature Companion (A pre-purchase exclusive)
• – First expansion quest: ‘Shadow of a Doubt’
• – 1 Character Slot
• – Lesser Tome of Epic Learning (1 per server): Permanently increases experience earned by a character in level 20 or above dungeons.  Provides +15% bonus to experience for first-time quest completions and +5% boost to other earned experience points.
• – One +1 Skill Tome per character
• – 1,000 Turbine Points

The no wipe policy will continue and anyone who gains access will gain future access to all subsequent beta key tests. Also players will be faced with the new challenge of a 3V3 single lane map featuring powerful siege tanks to see how well players can work in small squadrons to overcome their foes. NDA is fully lifted so be sure to grab a beta key from our new batch at MMOHut and mark your calendars for the 25th!

By Taylor Lux

History of the Game
Vindictus (North America/Europe), also known as Mabinogi Heroes (Korea/China/Taiwan), is a hack and slash MMORPG created by devCAT and published by Nexon. It hails from Korea and was released there on December 16, 2009 where it was only accessible to Internet Café users. The game was released to the rest of Korea on January 21, 2010. It launched in North America on October 27, 2010, in Europe on October 5, 2011, and Australia allowing North American servers on November 15, 2012. Ever since it first launched, it has used Nexon’s free-to-play model and offers appearance changes, abilities, pets, armors, and more via an online shop. The game has had a few major updates featuring a new town and story arc, a new weapon for Kai, and a new character, Vella.

Ooh! Shiny!
What can I say about the graphics? They are beautiful. The characters, enemies, and surroundings are quite stunning. When you compare cut scene quality with the rest of the game play, there really isn’t much difference between the two. The one main thing about the graphics, which falls somewhat into the story aspect is that when talking to pretty much any character inside a building, you do not walk around the inside, but instead you enter into a screen where the NPCs are all lined up towards the bottom of the screen. When you click on them, their manga style (Korean version?) profiles and a larger picture of them takes up the screen. During my stay on the game outside of other players, there were hardly any human NPCs around, making the town feel somewhat deserted to me. The NPC pictures inside the buildings were well done, but I believe I would have been a bit more appreciative of the graphics if it retained the normal MMO style of being able to go in buildings and compare my character to the NPCs I was working for.

Character “Classes”
I have placed classes in quotation marks for good reason. You get to play less of a class with races or gender choices that could potentially affect your game play and more of a specific character that you make into your own. The reason I say that is instead of the classic Warrior, Mage, and Rogue classes, the classes are simply named after the character. You have Lann and Vella, which are similar in that they both dual wield swords while having different ability trees. Then there’s Fiona, the sword and shield tank, Kai, the archery/range expert, Evie, the only spellcaster in the game, and Karok, the pillar-wielding and hand-to-whatever specialist. Sure, there are some customization that you have over each character, but it’s really limited to hair style/color, eye/skin color, how your eyebrows and colored and shaped, and body shape. Notice how I did not mention gender, which was something that turned me somewhat off about this “class” system. Anyone wanting to do the sword and shield tank is Fiona with a different name other than Fiona. You can’t have a female tossing a giant pillar around or a male spellcaster.

Customization
Naturally, as I discussed in the “Class” section above, a character’s class dictates their head (besides colors, eyebrows, and hair style) and gender, it also forces a character to specialize in one of two weapons for their characters. Playing typically as Mage or support type characters, I’m used to having my weapon selections quite limited, but this customization is somewhat restricting due to the fact that some of your skills are determined by the weapon in which you use. Playing as Evie, you have the choice of using a Staff (no surprise there) or a Battle Scythe (intriguing). The problem crops up that if you are using a Staff and have invested all your Ability Points (AP) into Staff Magic, but then decide to (or an epic Scythe drops) start using the other, all your points spent into the abilities with Staff become void. Granted, if you know you’re going to use Scythe from the beginning, then you’ll know not to spend your points on the other weapon’s abilities.

There is something that I found intriguing when I was customizing my first character; the height of your character directly affects things about your combat abilities. If you make a very tall character, as one would normally think, your character will have longer arms and can reach your enemies at a further distance. However, if you make a shorter character, your attacks will be faster than a taller character, but you’ll have to get in closer than you would otherwise. Other things, such as muscle mass, do not change anything about your combat abilities.

Storyline Format
As I stated up in my graphics section, the buildings are a completely different feel compared to the rest of the game. It is in these buildings where you receive most of your missions from. They do make it quite easy to figure out where your next mission will be when on the mini map they place a large yellow or red speech bubble with a corresponding punctuation depending on what is going on in the story. Also, the character you need to talk to once you’re inside the building will have the same bright bubble to know that they have some sort of mission that you can go on. I find that to be quite helpful in my being new to the game. I don’t have to know where each quest is happening or run around countless villages picking up tons of different quests, they are easily accessible in the same small location.

Once you have found the next main mission, you go up to this board and select the instance you wish to go into. The instances are re-playable with the small problem of in order to complete some quests or side quests within an instance; you’ll need to run through it a couple of times. Overall not that big of a deal, since one can usually get everything they need (unless very unlucky) within the first few attempts at the level, making a grinding feel seem less so. Some of the instances borrow directly from other instances, but for as detailed as the graphics are, I can somewhat forgive that.

Action Packed Game Play
Since this has a very hack and slash feel to it, it’s a very active game. I found that for the most part, unless positioning yourself better, dodging seems to be fairly useless when it comes to regular minions. However, dodging is imperative when going against the various bosses at the end of each instance. If you can do a decent job of dodging, it’s only a matter of time until the bosses go down. If you’re not too keen on dodging, I highly suggest that you stick with either Kai or Evie since their specialization is ranged combat comparatively to the other characters.

Most can pick up various objects around the instance and use it as either a weapon or chunk it at you enemies. In fact, most enemies after defeated can be picked up and thrown at his former comrades. The melee oriented classes can actually grapple some enemies, most notably Karok who’s specialty lies there. These are quite enjoyable and remind me of old school wrestling games when you execute a grapple where it zooms in on the back breaker.

The action packed nature of Vindictus keeps me engaged during the combat, but the space between mobs compared to one’s actual speed seems a bit too far apart at times. Between dodging when the boss attacks and slashing as much as I can while the boss is charging up holds my attention. I also must admit that I enjoy the fact that the game goes through a series of screen shots of when the boss dies and offers you a button to save them if you liked them. It adds to the dramatic conclusion of each boss with the heroic final shots at the boss.

Verdict: Great! (Strong & Pretty)
It’s a visually stunning game. The customization lacks, but the quick real time of the combat -system is rather strong and appealing to me. For a game that has only been out for 2.5 years internationally, it can still easily pick up new players. The format the story is delivered is definitely different from any other MMO I’ve played where the mission-giver stands around someplace which was somewhat unsuspecting for me. I was rather impressed overall with everything except for the customization aspects of the game.

The new MMO General War: Memories has announced the launch of its first server, Blitz. An intense World War II is breaking out online, and commanders can lead massive armies, tanks, and aircraft into fierce battles.

Having improved from closed beta testing, General War has been optimized across the board. The development team integrated the comprehensive task system, and improved tech research and weapon upgrading based on player feedback. New dynamic missions have been added to the PVE storyline to help players level up. Finally, a new skill system has been introduced, allowing players to brainstorm tactics to maximize their general status and steal some victories from even stronger opponents.

Along with the exciting music and heart-shaking historic battles scenes, General War will be a dazzling feast for the ears and eyes. To thank General War fans, Gamebox has prepared various new server events including giving discounts and free gifts. Go to the official forums and grab those tempting gifts.

From the creators of Runes of Magic, Dragon’s Prophet is a free to play fantasy MMO that transports you to Auratia, a realm where dragons fill the sky. For the first time ever, you have the ability to capture, train and ride your very own dragons!

For thousands of years, ancient dragons have struggled in epic wars to dominate Auratia. These wars have threatened to plunge the realm into chaos. Now, an even greater danger emerges, threatening the very existence of the realm.

Will you answer the call and join the fight to save Auratia?

Dragon’s Prophet is currently in Closed Beta and will transition to Open Beta on May 30th.

Check out more impressions on Dragon’s Prophet from our sister site OnRPG here: http://www.onrpg.com/articles/editorial/dragons-prophet-first-look/

In the first video, WildStar’s dev team present the details behind each of the four paths that allow players to stand apart from their teammates.

In this second video, the Dominion discusses the dangers involved with each of the paths.

In Kings and Legends Global, players are swept into a mythical medieval world that takes the traditional TCG strategy experience to an all new level. By combining the customary TCG gaming experience with MMORPG gameplay, both novice and veteran players alike will have something to look forward to. Featuring hundreds of uniquely customizable cards that can be crafted, extracted, fused, and traded through an in-game auction house, Kings and Legends Global also offers competitive Player vs. Player (PvP) and Player vs. Environment (PvE) tournaments, a Challenge Hall, and the Ascension Tower that offers 50 levels of intense strategic gameplay.

“We’re excited to be adding Kings and Legends Global to our portfolio on GameFuse,” says Henry Law, Producer of Kings and Legends Global. “The game brings the TCG experience to life with vivid characters and unique card functions that ultimately combine to form a robust TCG/MMORPG experience.”

In anticipation of the live launch, players can now sign up for early registration to receive an exclusive Starter Pack. In addition, players will be invited to hang out with the Kings and Legends Global Community Manager on GameFuse’s Twitch.tv channel to get a sneak peak of the game and what’s to come. Players can grab some awesome prizes during the live stream event each day for one week from 3-5 PM PDT.

For more information about the game and early sign up registration to receive your exclusive Starter pack, please visit the game’s official website at GameFuse.com.

Black Friday comes early this year for players of Uncharted Waters Online, the strategic massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) for PC, as all three item packages on Steam are now on sale at a massive 70 percent discount. The sale will continue until Monday, May 27 and on Tuesday, May 28, a new item package will arrive with new in-game content update. The upcoming “Morning Calm” update will open up ports in the historic Korean peninsula for adventurers to explore. Interested players can check out the game on Steam for free, where they can embark on a nautical adventure on the high seas.

The sale includes all three packages available on Steam:

- Steam Booster Pack ($1.49 after discount, originally $4.99) provides a 30 percent experience point boost and faster ship speed for seven days. Additionally, players won’t have to return to a port to revive sailors lost at sea with this pack.

- Steam Premium Pack ($2.99 after discount, originally $9.99) rewards players with 200 million ducats (the in-game currency) and provides a 50 percent experience point boost and faster ship speed for seven days. Players will also have a chance to win rare items, including ships.

- Sea Adventure Pack ($11.99 after discount, originally $39.99) endows a sailor with 300 million ducats and a 50 percent experience boost for 15 days. The pack also features exclusive items, including a Custom Arabian Galley, Dragon Crest and Admiral’s coat.

On Tuesday, May 28, the game will introduce a new item package along with the Morning Calm content update. With the update, the tranquil and picturesque beauty of the Korean peninsula will be ripe for exploring. Furthermore, the new item package will help players easily change their jobs while sailing the world to expand their horizon.

What could be more satisfying than pumping a hideous alien full of lead until it explodes in a fountain of green blood? Get your fill of alien carnage in Soldier Front 2 from Aeria Games, a leading global publisher of free-to-play online games. The highly anticipated First-Person Shooter (FPS) features several game modes with extra-terrestrial antagonists when players want a break from the highly realistic tactical combat in the rest of the game.

Soldier Front 2’s unique Hero mode throws players into a MOBA-style war between two teams, which continuously spawn alien troops that march against each other. The vicious aliens, known as Xanthids, form the backbone of the opposing armies, while players use their shooting skills to try and give their side the upper hand in the push toward the enemy base.

Two more modes featuring Xanthid are scheduled to be released shortly after launch. In the co-op Defense mode, up to four soldiers can team up to obliterate waves of encroaching aliens in a ruined metropolis. Manhunt mode will let players get out of their own skin, as a team of soldiers squares off against a team of aliens. Xanthid players can choose between three types of aliens: stealthy melee-attacking Rippers, speedy suicide-bombing Stunners, and projectile-launching Libertines.

Soldier Front 2 will be free to download, and like all Aeria Games titles, will be free-to-play. Players can sign up for recruitment to closed beta now at soldierfront2.aeriagames.com. Stay on target with news, events, and updates at Soldier Front 2’s Facebook page.