Beckett Massive Online Gamer

Aion players will soon be able to take the fight directly to the villainous Balaur in the first major expansion for Aion, Assault on Balaurea. AoB is currently available via direct download for free and from retail outlets for $39.99; the retail version includes the complete game client, 30 days of game time, and the exclusive premium Speckled Ailu (Panda) Pack pet along with a limited-time retailer specific pet exclusive.

Players with big bucks can now squeeze every bit of gameplay out of the EverQuest II Extended beta with a Platinum Membership. Do the perks justify the price?

Star Wars: The Old Republic has been getting all the love lately, so we thought we'd pass on some news about the other Star Wars MMO. No, not Star Wars Clone Wars Adventures. The other one. To celebrate the Labor Day holiday, Star Wars Galaxies is doubling the payout on a slew of rewards. It's power level time!

Congratulations to everyone who won the Kingdom Heroes Grand Mount giveaway we hosted last week on the MOG site. You can find the list of winners here, and one of the lucky winners gifted us with a screenshot to show off his awesome new mount (click to enlarge):

Do you enjoy spiky hair, impractically-sized swords, or hanging out with cat women? If you answered "Yes" to any of those items, you will be interested to learn that Final Fantasy XIV has moved to open beta today. Now is your chance to get your personal sneak peek at Square Enix's upcoming MMO... at least for as long as their site stays up.

PLANO, TEXAS (September 2, 2010) – Since its launch in September 2008, KingsIsle Entertainment’s flagship game Wizard101 has become one of the most popular online destinations for family entertainment. Over the last two years Wizard101 has received critical acclaim as one of the best massively-multiplayer games on the market. Millions of players have discovered the mysteries of the Spiral, explored hundreds of hours of epic storyline, and joined to create a vibrant player community.        

A new report from DFC Intelligence forecasts that the market for English language client-based free-to-play (F2P) games on the PC is expected to grow from about $250 million in 2009 to $2 billion by 2015.  This growth is largely due to widespread adoption of high-speed Internet connections combined with a growing willingness of consumers to buy digital content and improved payment options such as prepaid retail cards.

One of my most difficult tasks here at Beckett is trying to decide what I should use as my desktop background. Back in June, Wargaming.net CEO Victor Kislyi stopped by the office to show us World of Tanks (for which I've got a writeup in issue #27 of MOG, in stores next week!) and handed us a flash drive with tons of great, hi-res art (and a can of compressed air, but that's another story). As such, my desktop for the last two months has been:

Your guide to ganking squishies in World of WarCraft

All right, scrubs! Listen up, because we won’t be repeating ourselves here. Hopefully, you’ve all used your heads and listened to what I said the last time and you’ve built your characters to your strengths, despite the pressure to use templates. If not, then chances are you’ve eaten dirt more often than not, and you’re going to try and blame me. Too bad, pal. If you listened to half of what I said and had mixed results, then it’s nobody’s fault but your own. Go all the way or not at all, because if you try to apply the lessons in this and future articles in this series, it’s just not going to work out for you if you haven’t done what was needed in the first place. Be warned, I’m not going to tell you how to spec your character, how to gear it up, or talk stats. We’re not min-maxing number-crunchers. We’re gankers. If you want to raid, duel or even Arena-hop, go somewhere else.

In a recent interview with fan site TERAHispano.com, En Masse Entertainment's Patrick Wyatt talked about several issues related to the company's upcoming MMO, TERA: The Exiled Realm of Arborea, including En Masse's recent partnerships with Frogster and Digital River and how the company was planning to handle technical issues, such as download time and lag.