Weekly MMO news round-up: EverQuest and FusionFall expansions, Star Wars hitting Comic-Con

By Stephany Nunneley

Loads this week in MMO news, and some is more interesting than what we have been offered in previous weeks.

FussionFall is getting an expansion for its 5 million users, the EQI&II trademark rumors turned out to be new expansions, Star Wars will be on hand at Comic-Con, and Conan got a new update.

Also, Warhammer and LotRO are celebrating the summer with festivities to make things a bit more zany and fun.

Find out all about these and others after the break.

• SOE announced the sixth expansion for EverQuest II, and the 16th one for EverQuest at Fan Faire this week. Sentinel’s Fate, for EQII will see a level cap increase to 90 and will be releases February 2010. Underfoot, fro EQ is coming November 2009, and allows you to explore a new underground zone. More on Eurogamer.

• Cartoon Networks’ FusionFall now has over 5 million accounts and will be getting its first major content patch called Dexlabs Upgrade 1: Speed and Style which will bring vehicles to the game. It’s expected to launch this summer. More over on Massively.

• Book 8 for Lord of the Rings Online’s Volume 2, Mines of Moria, went live on Tuesday. With a few issues requiring some down time twice, but it is up and running. The summer festival is also going on, and some changes have occurred regarding how to get a new horse. Instead of winning a race, you have to accumulate 50 festival tokens. Granted, this is being done so people will repeat the festival quests, making sure all the work put into it wasn’t for naught, but still, not too many players are happy about it. Loads of bitching in the OCC channel have proved this over the past few days. Fingers crossed this changes with the next festival.

• Second Life turned six this week. Happy Birthday. To celebrate, Linden Labs is throwing a party until June 30. More through the link.

• The new est Champions Online newsletter talks a bit about the combat mechanics you can expect in the game. It’s basically an interview with Brian Urbanek, the guy in charge of balancing in-game combat and related systems. Read all about it through the above link. While you are at it, GameTrailers has a video posted for the game, featuring the “evil lairs” that harbor the baddies in the game. Fun.

• A panel on Star Wars: The Old Republic will be held Friday, July 24, at the San Diego Comic-Con. Jake Neri (Producer, LucasArts) will speak with Hall Hood (Senior Writer, BioWare), Alexander Freed (Managing Editor, BioWare), Dallas Dickinson (Senior Content Producer, BioWare), and Jeff Dobson (Art Director, BioWare) about creating the MMO. Should be pretty interesting to those attending the sold-out event.

• Speaking of Star Wars, SOE’s Galaxies turned six this week also, and lead producer Chris Field has told Massively that the current Empire Day event is in celebration of the occasion. Ceremonies in Theed and Coronet featuring Darth Vader and Princess Leia, propaganda mini-games, combat quests, entertainer-specific quests, craft-specific quests, new rewards, an eight passenger vehicle, X-wing and TIE fighter pilot greeters for houses and much more is on-going.

• Runes of Magic is getting a new zone (Weeping Coast) and a level cap increase to 52 in August to get players prepared for when Chapter II:The Elven Prophecy goes live in September. There will also be 200 new quests added on top of it. More through here.

• Lance Stites, executive producer over at NCsoft, has posted an open letter to gamers who play all the firm’s titles, letting them know that the restructuring going on at the company will not hurt the games. Also of note in the address, was that more voice overs are being recorded for Aion, the localization is going well, tutorial videos are in the works, and class descriptions are forthcoming. More through the link.

• A Fallen Earth stress test running over on Fileplanet has lifted the “subscriber-only” restriction and now all you have to do to play the beta is sign up. There are a limited amount of promotional keys available, but Massively has you covered, providing you hurry.

• Update 5: “Gangs of Tarantia”, has come to Hyboria. The latest major game update for Age of Conan has new content, and new system changes. Tarantia Commons, the urban underbelly of King Conan’s capital city, is ripe with social unrest, unscrupulous characters, poverty and villainy. Sounds like the city we live in. You can read more about the update over on the official site, and get a video tour through MMORPG.

• Patch notes for EVE Online: Apocrypha version 1.3 are now available on the official site. The patch will go live on Monday, June 29. Loads of changes and fixes are planned, and Freeform contracts can no longer be created. This is due to griefing problems. Players will still be able to view completed freeform contracts, for now, but in an upcoming expansion older freeform contracts will be removed.

• Warhammer Online’s summer event has kicked off and all players are getting a 10 percent bonus to experience and renown and enemies you fell will drop fireworks. Cool. The festivities end July 7.