Beckett Massive Online Gamer

KingsIsle Entertainment today added a new mount to the in-game Crown shop for Wizard101, a "Chrismoose" mount that's available for 7,500 Crowns, and, in what has become a yearly tradition, the company will donate a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the mount to Texas charities.

Looking for a super-special gift to place under -- or, perhaps more appropriately, beside -- the tree for that sci-fi fan on your wishlist? You're in luck, because Bigpoint is now offering players of Battlestar Galactica Online to win a life-size Cylon just by logging into the game five times during the month of December.

For a very brief time, you'll be able to play both Star Wars Galaxies and Star Wars: The Old Republic. That's because EA/BioWare has just announced that early access for preorder customers of The Old Republic will start on Tuesday, Dec. 13 at 7:00 AM EST, a full week before the full retail launch of the game on Dec. 20.

If last year's EverQuest II Expanded didn't get you in the mood for some free-to-play EQ2 action, you can now go full-on into EQ2 F2P mode and even enjoy a new game update and expansion pack to boot. Today, EverQuest II goes fully free-to-play, coinciding with the release of a new free update and the pay-to-play Age of Discovery expansion pack.

Jagex, the makers of RuneScape and the upcoming Transformers Universe MMO, has partnered with Massive Online Gamer to provide early VIP access to its upcoming browser-based MMO 8Realms, and it's as easy as 1, 2, 3 -- minus steps 2 and 3, that is.

Gamespot is reporting that EA/BioWare claimed two million players sampled Star Wars: The Old Republic during its beta testing period, which ended Sunday evening. Of that number, 725,000 unique players checked out the game over Thanksgiving weekend alone. Hey, it beat playing Pictionary with the family.

Sci-fi sandbox MMO Perpetuum Online is celebrating its first birthday this wee and is offering a bunch of cool perks for fans to commemorate the event. A birthday treasure hunt is already ongoing, and this weekend's Anniversary Corporation Tournament should bring the best and brightest of Perpetuum's corps to the battle arena.

With free-to-play a little more than a month away, Cryptic's managed to squeeze in one more big update to Star Trek Online. Season 5: Call to Arms is now live, and brings with it enough new features to make even a Klingon in a tribble nursery happy.

If you've been hankering to try out Trion Worlds'  MMORTS End of Nations, you may finally get your chance soon. Trion is now taking applications for beta testers, and all you have to do is create a Trion account (if you don't already have one for Rift) and sign up to receive the EoN newsletter, The Resistance.

December 15 might be lamented by some fans of SOE's Star Wars games as the date Star Wars Galaxies shuts down, but it'll be celebrated by others as the date when a huge new update hits for Clone Wars Adventures. For the first time, players will be able to team up and bring a slew of new weapons to bear at their Separatist foes.