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New virus targets MMO gamers

gameadmin — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:01:48 +0000

Time for some serious news here… Microsoft’s latest security report points out a certain worm called “Taterf,” a data mining worm that uses MMO games as its means of spread. According to the report, detections of Taterf worm have increased 156% since the second half of 2008. The said worm does the usual keylogging, packet sniffing and login detail mining on infected MMO gaming PCs.

Quoted from Microsoft’s report:

“Taterf, with detections up 156 percent since the second half of 2008, targets massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). These attacks rely less on social engineering to spread, and more on access to unsecured file shares and removable storage volumes — both of which are often plentiful in the enterprise. Taterf’s impressive growth underscores the need for organizations to develop guidelines for removable drives (such as thumb drives) and evaluate how connections are made to outside machines.”

Keep your security programs updated; and perform a complete system scan for anything suspicious. If you’re really paranoid, you can download the Malicious Software Removal Tool from the Microsoft website.

Bounty Bay Online: Not So Fleeting Alliances

gameadmin — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:54:53 +0000

In less than two weeks the ‘Beyond the Horizon’ add-on will be topping up the world of Bounty Bay Online with a whole load of game content. From 25th November the new add-on, together with comprehensive features such as six new cities, a new continent and five new character classes, will be offering all European players the opportunity to join fleet and merchant alliances in addition to guilds. Since even the bravest of seafarers knows that the support of a strong group on a journey of adventure or in a sea battle is virtually indispensible.
The simplest linking of individual players is when they join a fleet which is linked to a guild of their choice. Guilds and fleets are in turn always members of particular merchant alliances, of which there are five to choose from. The Islamic, Western Mediterranean, Iberian, English Channel, or Netherlands Merchant Alliance. Individual players can either join an alliance directly, or become a member by joining a fleet or a guild, or found one of these themselves, since they are always linked to a particular merchant alliance.

The higher the level of a guild, the more fleets can affiliate with it and the stronger the alliance becomes to which the guilds and fleets belong. All five merchant alliances have their own home city and are supported by the neighbouring harbour towns which are starting points for numerous daily quests with special rewards.
‘Beyond the Horizon’ will be the third and most comprehensive add-on for Bounty Bay Online to date. In keeping with its predecessors, ‘Beyond the Horizon’ will be available to download free of charge.

Altis Gates: Development Progress Report

gameadmin — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 02:31:00 +0000

We’ve just finished overhauling the maps for the five main cities and improved the autotrack function a bit, so now almost all the hyperlinks in a character’s quest log will guide them to a target location, making it much easier to find quest-related spots. We’ve also improved the function that allows players to move around automatically, so players will be able to use a combination of automatic movement and fighting functions to fight for as long as 255 rounds without having to enter new commands. This will give players more options for continuing their progress without having to constantly micromanage their characters when their time and attention are limited.

In the near future, we will be focusing on enriching the four mystic isles. We’re planning to add many well-known monsters from western mythology to the isles, such as Medusa and the Unicorn. In addition, the four isles will be guarded by a very tough boss that will drop high-end equipment and crystals upon defeat.

We will also be ramping up the fun with pets. In most MMORPGs, each player character can only control one pet at one time. We are eager to break this trend by developing pet corps for release as soon as possible. To form a pet corps, players will need to talk to an NPC who has the “Daily Sociality” option. Pet corps will consist of pets only and may include up to five pets. A player’s pet corps will be able to fight a computer-controlled pet corps. When a pet corps wins a battle, the pets in the corps will gain experience. With two difficulty levels, the pet corps feature will be entertaining for players of all skill levels, and make it easier and more fun to cultivate pets.

The Altis Gates development team has been working hard will keep doing so to continually make improvements to the game during the Alpha Test and beyond. Stay tuned to the official site for more information and the latest news about Altis Gates.

Conquer Online announces classic server!

gameadmin — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 02:26:38 +0000

The TQ team is honored to announce that the 1st Classical Conquerer Online server! Liberty will be launched after the server maintenance at 17:40, November 18 PST. The Classic CO project aims to bring back the original taste of Conquer Online to veterans who are missing the good old days. Based on the community’s suggestions, Classic CO will be run with the updated 2.0 style of graphics and features but with certain features removed to return the game to its original roots. The most critical change is that there will be NO Shopping Mall and Battle Power System in the new Classic CO.

The major changes for Classic CO are as follows:

   1. No Shopping Mall
   2. No Battle Power System
   3. No DB Leveling
   4. No DB Socketing for “non-weapon” gear or the 2nd socket for weapons
   5. No Talismans
   6. Toxic Fog is removed from the Ninja skills
   7. Gems drop rate from monsters increased
   8. PK is allowed in Twin City.
   9. Equipment Bonus Quests are removed.

Mentor System, Nobility System and Clan System will become more cosmetic features with the abolishment of Battle Power. Other than this list, the features and functions in the current CO will be available in the upcoming release, including the latest Martial Arsenal & Arena Systems.

The Liberty server is hosted in America. The release of the Classic CO European server - Royalty will depend on the feedback of the community. Veterans, have you prepared yourselves for the hardship to reclaim the virgin land?

Irondomain basketball manager game

gameadmin — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:16:36 +0000

3 Years after the game was started to develop we have gone online. Yes it was the summer of 2009. Today 3 months later we are having 65 000 users with over 1000 users constantly online.

So what is Irondomain.com?
Irondomain is strategic and original online textual basketball manager game based on social networking, and it’s free to play. Here you get to create your own club, build the team of your dreams, and compete against hundreds of thousands of real people all over the globe.
Beside basketball manager we offer high quality soccer manager game but only for experienced managers who prove that are the best one with basketball club. The competition is huge and only top managers can play.

On Irondomain.com all managers can earn Credits (Irondomains virtual currency) by playing Prized cups where all managers are awared for playing with us and competing with other players. We are every month giving around 1000$ worth Credits to top managers.

For more information we suggest you to go to Irondomain.com and check it for yourself

Irondomain Team

Combat Arms: Billions of explosives served

gameadmin — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:04:39 +0000

Nexon America’s FPS Combat Arms is about more than just shooting at other players, it’s also about blowing them up. And Combat Arms players have tried their best to blow up anyone in their path, throwing 1.5 billion hand grenades since the game launch in 2008.

“Our players seem to be taking to heart that ‘close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades’ with the amount of bombs thrown,” said Combat Arms producer Graham Kays. “Sometimes, it’s the perfect throw, other times it is magnificent timing and for some of us, it’s just dumb luck. Regardless, fragging with grenades is always a good time.”

In fact, nearly 240 million times, players have been close enough to those grenades to be blown to bits. That’s an impressive percentage of the more than four billion players killed while playing Combat Arms.

Grenades are varied and plentiful in Combat Arms, as players can select from six different varieties. The standard M67 is always handy when trying to blow somebody up. Players can also upgrade to the M67 two pack, which allows for two to be carried. The M69HE Frag packs a stronger wallop for those times when multiple kills are needed. While others like to cause a slow burning death with M-23F incendiary grenade or G7A gas grenade. For players who choose to use grenades as a source of surprise, the M18 smoke grenade creates a thick fog to confuse the enemy or hide your movements. The XM-84 flash grenade is the perfect way to blind your foes before defeating them with a machine gun or melee weapon.

Zynga a hype OR do MMO games last

gameadmin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:18:27 +0000

In the last few month the media is talking more and more about social games and people do refer then to Zynga. Recent news mentions that this company is doing close to 2 million dollars in revenues per day. Other media point out that the way the money is being made is almost scam. A few days ago I received an email with the question FarmVille=Scamville? Well more about that over here at TechCrunch.

What is wondering me is the following. A long time ago companies like Jagex, Bigpoint and GameForge started with browser games. You can say MMO browser games. They gained a huge number of players with games like Ogame, DarkOrbit and Runescape.

These games are being played in the browser, so no download. Easy to play, nothing fancy as in design, simple sign up and free to play. Of course you can buy ingame items. Make no mistake these companies make easily revenues of 10-15 million euros (not dollars!!) per month.

So what is suddenly the rush for every developer to follow a company like Zynga. Why is Zynga suddenly so popular? As far as I can tell, I believe that Zynga is realy attached to Facebook. What if Facebook ends the contract? Is there a contract between Zynga and Facebook, if so, how long is the contract? When it ends and IF Facebook wants to continue, doens’t Facebook holds the cards? Isn’t Facebook already a shareholder and we dont know about it?

In any case something positive might come from this. It is said that Zynga goes IPO next year. They expect 400-500 million dollars revenues in 2010. An increase of again 200%. Any prospectus that goes allong with this IPO should give us more details. If the IPO goes well, it will be good for the games industry in total.

If not, then the golden oldies will continue with browser games, where they OWN the users email address, make revenues theirselves and get there traffic through affiliate deals. They can survive without Facebook, but can use this community with social media-tools.

Something tells me that this is much healthier, but how can you make a point when the hype is there and no-one is listening.

MMORPG games more popular in 2009

gameadmin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:09:06 +0000

In the last year more MMORPG games have been coming to the market. You can see a huge amount of games coming from Asia. Question is “what makes a MMORPG popular and when do players pick a game up or not?”.

Over here at MMOhub we have seen and talked with many developers around the globe. We have noticed that every developer outthere needs a huge player database in order to be considered successful and make revenues. More and more the games are being offered for free. Just give your name and email address and start playing. That is the first worry of each MMO developer. Once you are in, it is time to get you as player “up in the game”. The higher the level you reach, the more stuck you get to the game, the more you want to grow as a player. Time for ingame items!

And here lies the truth of each game. Is a MMORPG developer able to convert to revenues. Is the game good enough, are the players realy stuck to the game, are they willing to stay longer in the game and buy those items. And if they buy items, how much revenues will they do per month, per year…lifetime?

In a growing market like MMORPG’s you will find more companies longing for players. Players will have more choices and will find themselves more often approached with marketing messages of so many developers. Where to choose from? What do other players and/or friends think of this game.

After many months working on our database of games, reviews and community build up, we believe that players like to benchmark. That is the whole idea behind MMOhub.org in the first place. Create a spot for you as a player. Do your research, talk in the community and make a choice.

The point I am trying to make is simple; the year of 2009 brought more MMORPG games in the market, but did the number of players and revenues grow equaly so that the new games are not taking revenues away from older games. Of course we would like to see the number of players and revenues grow drasticly and that the new games also attract new players. But is this the case?

Planet Cazmo

gameradmin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:36:20 +0000

Planet Cazmo is a cool place to hang out and make new friends. Its a virtual world set inside an alien solar system who have been inspired by music, hip hop and other earth cultural phenomenon.

Here you can create your own Cazmo (avatar) and customize them with hundreds of different clothing styles, hair styles, eye styles and much more. Always wanted to have green skin? Now you can!

Once you get your Cazmo created there’s a lot to do on Planet Cazmo. You could start just by hanging out in town and making new friends by chatting in real time. Or you can jump right into a quick game of Space Race 5000 to earn some Cazmo Coins. Or go talk to the Mayor to take on his quest!

And if you’re into customization, you can always head over to your Cazmo’s house and start decorating the inside. Choose from a constantly growing inventory of chairs, couches, stereos, tvs, rugs, lamps, and much more!

Features:

* Customize your own 3D character, house interior and house exterior

* Explore a virtual world complete with neighborhoods, town centers, and vehicles

* Play a variety of mini-games to raise Cazmo Points to buy more cool stuff in the game

* Chat with other players, make friends

* Trade items with other players

* Play for free, or buy some Cazmo Cash for Exclusive Items. (Memberships coming soon!)

* Browser based for mass audience

The Travels of Wiglington and Wenks

gameradmin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:58:45 +0000

The Travels of Wiglington and Wenks Virtual World is an exciting new massive online virtual world for kids aged 7 to 14. It promises an experience in which players will be able to travel to places around the world, through time and space, meet famous historical people, play dozens of fun enriching games, make new friends, buy exotic islands, build culture-inspired houses, wear clothes from different countries, explore secret locations, solve mysteries and become a legendary traveler!

Features

A Strong Story-line - The Travels of Wiglington and Wenks has a fantastic story-line. This means the children inside the world will be immersed and engrossed in the plot at all times. So the users are not simply logging in to just play a game or chat - they’re participating in a story!

Education - Unlike the vast majority of other virtual worlds, Wiglington and Wenks teaches and shows children places in the real-world. Without realizing, they’re learning about famous and historical landmarks and venues. They call this ‘Immersive Learning’.

Cultures - Due to the nature and structure of Wiglington and Wenks, the children participating in a world will be across the world. This means the users will be experiencing different cultures and making friends with other children from a rich variety of backgrounds.

It’s fun! - From the start, Wiglington and Wenks is designed and created to focus on fun. For parents, the points above are of incredible value. For children, they just want to have fun online.

Assisting the “Journey” - It’s not just about places inside Wiglington and Wenks. We will be providing our users with tools and objects to support the journey through these activities. We will be allowing marketers to insert relevant virtual goods into our world - all designed to enhance and support the experience.