Weekly MMO news round-up, August 29: Turbine suing Atari, The Green Lantern, LEGO subscription model

By Stephany Nunneley

Loads of stuff happened this week in MMO land, and some of it is posted for you after the break.

Should you choose to click on through, you will find why Turine is suing Atari, get caught up on The Green Lantern and DC Universe’s Beta status, hear about new goodies coming to EQII, lament the collapse of the bank in EVE Online, and there’s loads of other stuff along with news on a couple of MMOs you may have never even heard of.

Go on, hit the link. You know you want to.

• Mabinogi’s new content update, Ancient Secrets of Irinid, added an African themed zone called Courcle and flying mounts. To get folks excited for this, Nexon put out three new videos for it. Massively has ’em, go have a watch.

• Speaking of videos, BigDownload has a slew of ’em for CrimeCraft, showing off different abilities. Go watch.

• A new developer diary is posted over on the Black Prophecy website. In it, creative director Timo Krahl and art director Nick Ebenhoch chat about the game’s design and graphics. It’s a decent read.

• CitiesXL will be released on October 9 in stores and via digital download via Direct2Drive, GameTap, Impulse, Steam, Trygames, etc. Good to know. Full thing through the link.

• Dawntide is a sandbox MMO from Danish developer Working As Intended, and Massively had the opportunity to sit down and have a chat with Christian Hummeluhr, Dawntide’s producer. In the interview, he discusses races, combat, skills, the size of the world, and loads more. Hit the link to read all about it.

• Some Champions Online videos have popped up over on FileFront and they are more than worth the watch. Also, Cryptic’s Randy Mosiondz tweeted this week that a superpower in the game could be “light”. Why not we say! But if you are considering playing this game you should head over to Massively for 10 things you should know before starting.

• The EverQuest II website is detailing the upcoming update, Shards of Destiny. Currently on the test server, one of the many things players are trying out is Chronomagic which allows players to adventure with lower level players in a lower level quest. It looks like it is going to be a rather large update. If you play, you will want to study up on it.

• EVE Online’s player run bank is 1.2 trillion ISK in the red, and accounts have been frozen. How did this happen. Long story. You can try the forums though, which explains it rather well. Or Massively. Both would be best.

• The Fallen Earth crew had an Apocalypse Party (end of Beta basically) from August 29, from 3 to 6 p.m. ET (GMT-4), which included in-game food, drinks and entertainment and gave away seven login prizes that are redeemable after the game launches.Open Beta closes on September 1, and more can be found through the link.

• IGG is prepping to launch Lords Online. To get you psyched, the site has been updated with more information and screen shots. Cool.

• TibiaME, the first mobile MMO has broke the 10k subscribers mark. In 2008, TibiaME more than doubled its subscriber base, with 105% growth since January 2009. Altogether, TibiaME now has an active player base of around 40,000 players. That’s quite a lot.

• SOE has unveiled The Green Lantern for DC Universe Online. He looks just like what you would expect. The Green Lantern. Evil Avatar has nine screens of him in action. Have peek. Also, Gamasutra sat down with senior producer Wes Yanagi who said that the game is still in pre-alpha and “in the next several months” SPE will start discussing open and closed Beta plans. The devs are also currently running the game with cross-compatibility with PS3. Go read about it.

• Looks like Turbine’s suing Atari for not ponying up the money it was supposed to for D&DO despite the royalties received. In tun, Atari are saying that Turbine is withholding information an funds, and Turbine says it’s an attempt by Atari to get out of the contact so it can concentrate on funding a Neverwinter Nights MMO rumored to be in development by Cryptic. Still with us? Good, maybe you can explain it to us then. Anyway, in all seriousness, you should read up on this as it could get ugly. Rock, Paper, Shotgun has it all broken down for you via Eurogamer.

• From now until September 8, Lineage II is running the Eva’s Inferno event. Looks like the god of destruction, Gran Kain, and his minions are causing trouble across the land and it’s up to you to help the goddess Eva thwart his evil plans. The official website has more on this.

• Allods Online is now in closed Beta, and Astrum Niva are accepting sign-ups. The free to play game has a $12 million budget behind it, and a very interesting premise. Hit the link to sign up for the Beta and find out more.

• Get a closer look at the gameplay you can expect when playing as a warrior in Dragonica Online by watching a trailer for it posted on FileFront. The THQ/ICE joint venture looks rather cute.

• LEGO Universe’s Producer, Ryan Seabury, recently sat down with Wired and talked loads about the upcoming MMO. Seriously, there’s loads there. Anything and everything you wanted to know about the game. Looks like NetDevil is going with a monthly subscription model as well. “We undertook a large amount of research and have announced plans for a monthly subscription model for LEGO Universe,” said Seabury. “An interesting thing to point out here is that this decision was far less a financial concern than it was about the user experience. We concluded that of all the myriad payment methods available in today’s online world, a subscription model is the best way to provide a trusted online experience that the whole family can enjoy.Players will be able to purchase in-game creations, but the details are not finalized yet.”

• Blue Mars is a free to play MMO with “bonding activities” and is made up of independently operated cities full of activities, and attractions such as shopping, avatar customization, personal spaces, and games like dancing, racing, and golf. Cites on Blue Mars are tied together with a unified login system, a global Avatar ID, and “platform wide participation based reward system that encourages users to explore, play, and make new friends.” Sound like Second Life to us. Anyway, apparently an anonymous source has told Massively that the game will go into Beta on September 2 – so if you want to see what the fuss is about, go here and sign up.