The recent spate of MMO industry layoffs isn't discriminating in terms of company size if the latest rumors are true. We've just been informed that one of Blizzard's golden boys has been served his walking papers, joining hundreds of devs from the likes of NCsoft, GamersFirst, GameForge, and CCP in recent weeks.

John Staats, the senior level designer on Blizzard's secretive Titan project, has been let go, according to our tipster. Staats has been with the company for over a decade and is responsible for some of World of Warcraft's most celebrated content including all the raid dungeons, Blackrock Mountain and Booty Bay, and numerous other instanced dungeons.

Staats was also described by Jeff Kaplan as the "hero of the WoW dev team."

Via: http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/11/07

John Smedley, SOE's President, announced on Twitter this morning that over 330k new players have signed up for their action-RPG MMO DC Universe Online on the PC since the game transitioned to free-to-play Tuesday evening. In the same tweet, he announced that the number of concurrent users logged into the game has increased 600% in that same time, and that they’re planning to launch a massive TV and online ad campaign later this month. He did not mention any numbers for PS3 users.

Of course it’s not all daisies and roses for players trying to get into the game during this massive spike in activity. Even during non-peak hours, servers are having stability issues and, anecdotally, login queues have thousands of players waiting to get in and play. SOE loves to boast about DCUO&rsqu

After only three months of commercial operation, Troy Online is going to be discontinuing operations as of November 30th.

Hello Troy Online users,

First of all, we would like to thank all our users for your great interest and support with Troy Online.

Though Troy Online has only been commercially open for 3 months, we have come to notice many bugs and errors that were not taken into account beforehand. Due to these reasons we felt that Troy Online was not mature and solid enough to continue commercial service. We humbly accept your apprehension as well as suggestions for further improving the quality of Troy Online in the future.

ALT1 Games has decided to discontinue service of Troy Online, fix and change the problematic aspects of the game, and reopen service with a new vigor and fresh

Throughout Asia, it's common to see attractive celebrities pose with game hardware. The celebs might not be gamers themselves, but they're famous. Most can flub their way through without a gaff. Rainie Yang could not.

At a recent press conference in Taiwan, Sony dated the PS Vita for the region, giving it a Dec. 23 street date. Rainie Yang, a popular singer and variety show host, was on stage to help promote the Vita.

When asked what her favorite game was, Yang replied, "Super Mario Bros."— not exactly the thing Sony wants to hear its paid talent utter.

Apparently, Yang began posing with the Vita after the Mario gaffe. The ensuing photo op didn't fare much better: A grinning Yang held the Vita upside down for all the cameras to see.

Hey,guys,tell me others who do some stupid

Rise of Immortals players using the Steam version will want to check in this weekend to earn a series of Halloween achievements and holiday-themed skins.

The team is also handing out a nice treat to players who refer a friend. A special link has been provided. New players taking advantage of the referral and reaching level 5 will score Petroglyph coins for their friend.

Lastly, four Immortals can still be played for free for a limited amount of time before heading into the premium store.

More Detail :http://www.riseofimmortals.com/

GameFront is reporting on a website that is know for game leaks and refers to a email sent to the website owner back in August from a Blizzard source that reveals everything that was announced at last weeks Blizzcon. The email is dated Aug 17th, which of course be photoshopped, however if you look at the image upload date, it was 2 months ago.

The email shows that Blizzard was originally supposed to announce the Diablo 3 release date during Blizzcon, however in late September it was delayed to early 2012, so that’s mostly likely why it wasn’t. The email also shows that the tentative backup date was originally set for Jan 17th. Does this date remain as the backup release date? I don’t know, but it’s a pretty good estimate at worse.

Looking at Blizzard release schedule

Blizzard president Mike Morhaime has admitted the subscription-funded MMO market is a difficult one “to compete in,” but considering the value players get when paying a monthly fee, he feels free-to-play “doesn’t necessarily make for a better game.”

Speaking in an interview with Eurogamer during BlizzCon, Morhaime, like BioWare, doesn’t believe The Old Republic will be the “last large scale MMO” to use a subscription business model, despite a lot of “quality free-to-play experiences,” which are competing with sub-based MMOs in the market.

“I think it’s very expensive to make these games, especially if you’re expecting people to pay a monthly fee just to play the game, he said. “And so there are very few comp

This Thursday, October 27, we’ll be hosting a one-hour live online developer Q&A with Lead Content Designer Cory “Mumper” Stockton and Lead Systems Designer Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street, beginning at 5:00 p.m. PDT. I’ll be moderating the discussion to help facilitate a smooth and productive conversation. Given all the information revealed last weekend at BlizzCon 2011, we feel it’s fitting for this chat to be focused on the next expansion, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria.

While we’ve held some developer “chats” in the past, we’re going to be using CoverItLive for this event. We welcome anyone to join us for the chat, but in order to participate you’ll want to visit the official CoverItLive website beforehand to c

Today PWE announced that War of the Immortals , which was supposed to launch into closed beta, has been delayed until Nov 2nd.  The reason for the delay is so they can add some additional content to the it.

WoI is the follow up to Battle of the Immortals which was only launched a little over a year earlier and features 8 classes, destructible environments, territory wars, a pet system and much more.

With Blizzcon fast approaching, the team behind Starcraft Universe is giving players a chance to try out their mod starting today and running until Oct 3oth. Starcraft Universe is a fan created mod within Starcraft 2 that incorporates some RPG features and while it’s not massive or doesn’t have a persistent world, the team hopes that fans waiting for a real Starcraft MMORPG will give their mod a shot.

While the game will be available for the next two weeks, it’s important to note that the development team does not consider it yet ready for open beta. The PvP mode will be available and players will start at level 30 with a full set of lev 30 gear.

To celebrate the test phase a new preview video was released today which you can watch below. For more information head over to