Beckett Massive Online Gamer

Wizard101 and Beckett Media will be giving away an exclusive STORM SNOWMAN pet only at GEN CON from August 5 to the 8th. This new pet is said to be very rare and powerful! You can be one of the few people to own the Storm Snowman pet.

There's more to Internet privacy than your character name

For those who missed it, Blizzard’s very-briefly considered Real ID initiative would have had people using their real names on the World of Warcraft forums instead of clever handles like “ElectroPenisSlayer.” The idea was that, by not hiding behind a handle, people would be less likely to issue threats, talk smack, and be general a-holes on the forums.

It didn’t quite work out that way.

The LEGO Group and Dire Wolf Digital, a new company formed by several MMO and TCG industry veterans, today announced that it would be producing a digital and physical trading-card game based on the upcoming LEGO Universe MMO. The game is scheduled for release in 2011, several months after the release of the MMO, which goes live on Oct. 26.

Help Defend Gaming: Sign the Gamer Petition

Posted by Hal Halpin // President, Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA)

This winter, the game industry — developers, publishers, retailers, et al — will face the single biggest legal challenge that such entertainment, broadly, has ever been up against and in the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). The State of California had appealed the U.S. Ninth Circuit decision to strike down the so-called CA “video game violence” law in Schwarzenegger v EMA, which every court had done in every such “violent video game” case. But this time was different; For the first time, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the case (via “accepting certiorari” aka “cert”). To be blunt, none of us expected it and we were all taken back by the decision. Just 1% of cases filed are granted cert — one percent!

Sony Online Entertainment recently announced the upcoming launch of a new free version of EverQuest II later this year. Branded as EverQuest II Extended, the "new" game follows closely in the footsteps of Turbine, who turned Dungeons & Dragons Online into a F2P game last year and will do the same with The Lord of the Rings Online later this year. Unlike Turbine's titles, though, EQ2 Extended will not simply add new players to the current servers but will operate concurrently and separately from the non-Extended game.

After years of speculation, 38 Studios has finally thrown back the veil of secrecy shrouding its hotly anticipated RPG -- but it's not quite the one MOG readers have been waiting for. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, previously known as "Project Mercury," will be a single-player RPG set in the world of Amalur, the same game world, created by fantasy legends R. A. Salvatore and Todd McFarlane, that the company's upcoming MMORPG, codenamed "Project Copernicus," will also be set in. The project's lead developer, Ken Rolston, was also the lead designer for Bethesda Softworks' highly acclaimed Elder Scrolls series of games, including Morrowind and Oblivion.

As first reported by G4, Sony Online Entertainment recently issued pink slips to 35 of its employees. The hardest-hit sectors appear to include several members of the EverQuest II and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes teams. A statement issued by the company reads:

Perfect World International has posted its latest developer's diary for Battle of the Immortals. "This time, we're looking at the event system and some of the crazy activities you can do in-game" is how BoI's Product Manager Jonathan Belliss starts the video, which delivers with details on the Love Match, a dungeon-based compatibility quiz for one male and one female character, Energy Well, a tower-defense game with players acting as the towers, and future planned events.

Sony Online Entertainment just published the cast of triple-A actors who will do voice-overs for characters in their upcoming action MMO, DC Universe Online. Leading the list are Mark Hamill, who will voice The Joker, and Kevin Conroy who will do Batman's voice.

Read on for the full press release.