Hello MMO fans and welcome to another go around with That’s So MMO! With PAX Prime having just ended and Dragon*Con now in-session, I’ve barely managed to get my Gollum loincloth dry cleaned in time for the costume contest.
“You can’t win if you don’t play” Star Wars: The Old Republic is inching ever closer to an actual release. “September Beta Weekends” have begun for lucky fans randomly invited through official forum sign-ups. Great news for the eager invitees, not as thrilling for everyone else, as the Non-Disclosure Agreement is still very much in place. BioWare has promised “many, many” more will be invited into the testing weekends over the next three weeks. Have you played the SWTOR Beta Mega-Lotto today?
“Free STO? Make it so!” Perfect World, who recently took over Star Trek Online after purchasing Cryptic, has announced their intention to make the game free-to-play within the next few months. Perfect World shouted the welcome news into the receiver during their recent financial results conference call but further details were not provided. Are MMOs with subscription fees becoming a thing of the past?
“Turan for Barbarians” Funcom has opened up Pre-Orders and Early Access for the new Age of Conan Adventure Pack, ‘Savage Coast of Turan’. ‘Turan’ goodies include a Camel Mount, a Sand Demon fighting pet (as seen in the new Conan the Barbarian movie), an additional level 50 character account upgrade and an additional character slot.
“Roman Holiday” Heatwave Interactive is attempting to woo new users into their Roman myth and monsters MMO, Gods & Heroes, with an extended Free Trial and lower entry price. The free taster will now last for seven days instead of three and retail and digital copies of the game have dropped to $29.99USD. A new Scout character class is also being introduced and fresh companions provided to previous subscribers. Now, get in there and start breaking some re-animated skeleton bones – don’t cost nuthin’!
“Conquering platforms” Conquer Online, first developed for Chinese PC gamers back in 2003, has been localized into English and is arriving for iPad and Facebook in the near future. NetDragon Websoft calls the martial-arts themed F2P MMO “the first ever completely free-to-play MMO on the iPad, with no download fees, no subscription fee, and no in-game Shopping Mall.” That…actually sounds worth investigating. You can’t get much more “Free” than that.
“Shelling shelves” Well-reviewed free MMO, World of Tanks, has crashed into retail shops with a $19.99 USD boxed version. Why pay for a cardboard version of WoT when you can download the client for gratis online? How does $30 worth of content, including a week’s worth of premium account access (with XP boosts), 1,800 gold and a T2 Light Tank sound? Boom!
“Toddler Champions” Champions Online, which went F2P back in January, has just celebrated its two-year anniversary. September 1st was the big day and ongoing events include a dance party and “really cool” item giveaways. According to the latest CO Producer’s Letter, upcoming game goodies in development include the “Whiteout” Comic Series which sends players “off to Canada” to investigate a crashed spaceship and a new King of the Hill PvP map.
That’ll put the wrapping on another box full of MMO F2P party favors for the week. I hope the stars align and your SWTOR lottery numbers come up. Keep it logged in.
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David Moore has run the site gamebunny.com for the past ten years and co-runs torwars.com, a site focused on all things Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Contest:
12:30 PM on 09.03.2011 | 
No matter what Bioware may claim.
I just can't get past this.
I may play it if there's a free month thing like Wow does to draw in new players/money.
Good news is that TOR is basically KOTOR 3, times 8 story lines.