When you play a Massive game, are you escaping the real world?

what you guys are playing mmorpgs for ?

do you wanna escape the real world or do you just want to try another live style opposite to your real life ?

or you just want to kill the free time cos u dun not how to waste ?LOL

All the above similar questions asked by well-known Virtual Worlds researcher Edward Castronova  in his new book Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun is Chaning Reality.

"What I tried to do in this book is say, 'listen - even if the typical reader doesn't spend any time in virtual worlds, what is going to be the impact on him of people going and doing this?'" And he predicted that everyone will be involved in a virtual environment within ten years - although the level of that involvement will vary.

"A father of two spending 90 hours a week in a virtual world because he doesn't like his wife - I would say that's escapism, and it isn't anything you would say is good. "But if it's a heavy-set girl from a small town who gets victimised just because her body isn't the 'right' kind of body, and she goes online to make friends because she can't get a fair shake in the real world, then I w

Australian developer Auran has announced it has entered into voluntary administration and let all staff members go, just a day after announcing that massively multiplayer online game Fury would change to a free-to-play rather than subscription based business model.

A statement from company CEO Tony Hilliam said that "The Directors of Auran Developments, the company that employs all the Auran staff, have today called in a Voluntary Administrator (like Chapter 11 in the US). All the staff were dismissed today."

"Despite earlier reports," he continued, "staff will be paid for all their work to date, their annual leave entitlements, redundancy payments and long service leave."

The news follows last week's reports that the company was forced to downsize its 60 man team following the slow start for Fury and new outsourcing to Asia.

At the time, Hilliam said that after a ramp up from 30 to 70 staff members to complete Fury and its Battlestar Galactica XBLA game it had made some cutbacks to "focus on a smaller, more agile core team of Fury developers."

This was reiterated in the most recent report as well, saying that with the launch of its latest content

American teams focused on money rather than innovation

EA Partners' Nick Button-Brown has told GamesIndustry.biz that he believes European developers are more creative than US studios, as North American teams are focused on making money rather than taking chances.

As director of business development for EA Partners, Button-Brown sees rich pickings in Europe as the publisher continues to work with independent studios – a new deal with a German developer is expected to be announced very soon.

"There's more creativity in Europe than there is in America," said Button-Brown, speaking exclusively to GamesIndustry.biz at Game Connection. "The Americans are much more refined in their processes, it's all about the money. There are less chances taken and there is more money being thrown at developers in the US."

"Taking less chances means there's less failures, but I can't see the US having ever come up with Grand Theft Auto. There are a lot of really good European developers and they all bring slightly different things and there are big cultural differences as well, that they are willing to exploit," he added.

Click here for more info

-------------------------------

Could be a direct sequel or something new entirely.

With Final Fantasy XI still a popular MMO among the hardcore, it's not surprising Square Enix would be interested in continuing that franchise with additional expansion packs in the years to come, while simultaneously nurturing a brand-new IP with the upcoming MMO.

via 1UP

---------------------

Square Enix is great  company which have made FF (XI )series the most great graphic mmos in the whole mmorpgs

although its gameplay is not so g

In an SEC filing, Korean-based developer Gravity (Ragnarok Online) disclosed that in October, it received a notice that U.S.-based online game developer Perpetual, in which Gravity invests, would be liquidating all of its assets.

According to the filing, the notice said that a separate company called Perpetual LLC would "shall liquidate the Assets, wind down Perpetual, and distribute the net liquidation proceeds to creditors of Perpetual."

The date on which Gravity stated the notice was sent, October 10th, is the same day that Perpetual announced that its PC MMORPG Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising would be put on hold indefinitely.

Just prior to that announcement, the company announced it would lay off between 30 and 40 employees, as it did the first time that Gods and Heroes was delayed, reportedly due to the need for further beta testing.

Gravity stated that it does not expect to recover any of the $9 million investment it made in Perpetual in 2006, and that the loss will be reflected in its financial statement for 2007.

However, it is unclear whether this announcement also affects Star Trek Online, Perpetual's other MMO, which was still believed to be in development - or whet

Executive vice-president of product development Frank Pearce talks WoW 2, StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3.

Blizzard is sitting pretty at the moment. Having just announced that the world's most popular MMO, World of Warcraft, has got even more popular, with an astonishing 9.3m subscriptions across the world, the US developer can afford to employ its famous mantra "it will be ready when it's ready" whenever it's asked about games in development. And clearly its legion of fans wouldn't want it any other way. We here at VideoGamer.com thought we'd try anyway when we sat down for a chat with executive vice-president of product development Frank Pearce to talk World of Warcraft 2, StarCraft 2 and the mystery surrounding StarCraft: Ghost.

VideoGamer.com: Let's start with World of Warcraft. How's development on Wrath of the Lich King coming along? What excites you most about it and what has been the most challenging aspect of its development?

Frank Pearce: The most exciting aspect of Wrath of the Lich King for me, and I think for most of the team, was announcing it at BlizzCon earlier this year and seeing the reaction from the players. Being able to give the community hands-on time with a

A reliable source has confirmed to Next-Gen that Microsoft is canceling the superhero MMO Marvel Universe Online.

As Crytpic Studios' development of Marvel Universe ramped up, NCsoft eventually outright bought Cryptic’s original superhero MMO, the NCsoft-published City of Heroes, says our source. Now Microsoft has decided to cancel Marvel Universe, which leaves Cryptic with plenty of time and a nice chunk of change from the City of Heroes sell-off to develop a new IP.

Our source, who wished to remain anonymous, said that an official announcement will be made in a few weeks about the demise of the game, unless something “drastic” occurs.

As part of the NCsoft acquisition of the City of Heroes series, the MMO firm founded a new studio and brought in key Cryptic staffers Brian Clayton, Matt Miller, Aaron Brady and Ken Morse. NCsoft had nothing to do with the actual cancellation of the game, according to our source, but as the firm plans to expand the City of Heroes MMO, it would seem like NCsoft would benefit from not having a high-profile Marvel superhero MMO to compete against.

Rumors of the cancellation originated from a 1Up podcast where EGM executive editor Shane Bettenhausen said th

Heroes' Lee Auditions for Dragon Ball Z MovieDuring his November 11 panel at Pacific Media Expo in Los Angeles, actor James Kyson Lee (Heroes television series' Ando) said that he is trying out for the role of Yamcha in 20th Century Fox's live-action adaptation of Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball manga. He says that the movie is planned for a 2010 release and that he approved of the script so far. He also said that he was a childhood fan of manga such as Dragon Ball and Takehiko Inoue's Slam Dunk — the latter of which he had read the entire run.

original AnimeNewsnetwork

Still another 6-7 months we have to wait for DBO's coming ,our gamers always keep waiting for new wonderful mmorpgs come out ,such as Aion  O.o

yesterday i peek Ghost Hunt recommended by trademark,lol

ghost hunt is scary and when u guy watch it alone at night,maybe it will make you shiver

you can check it via below links ,remember ask some of your friends watching it with you together

http://www.crunchyroll.com/search?q=ghost+hunt+file+1

During this year’s Gstar game show in Seoul, South Korea, Nexon has revealed to Gamasutra new details about Maple Story DS, as well as an Xbox 360 port of the company's Korea-only PC MMO Mabinogi, which was announced today.

The recent Mabinogi announcement, which came on the first day of the major Gstar show attended by Gamasutra in South Korea, was relatively unexpected. The game is a more traditional, cel-shaded MMORPG with an interesting class system, allowing players to level up in branching paths with individual attributes.

The game has already been out in Korea, but will be coming to the Xbox 360 soon – Nexon hoped to launch it this year in Korea, but is not certain it will meet the target.

“It’s been under development for about a year,” said Kang, who added that it’s a rather straight conversion of the original game. “It’s being developed internally – but there’s not much more we can say at this time,” he concluded.

Other details, such as possibility of Western release, are scarce, but common sense and anecdotal evidence suggests that the game will be released as a packaged product such as Final Fantasy XI or Phantasy Star Universe, with aims for release outside of Korea, giv

After Bethesda-parent ZeniMax revealed it had secured $300 million to fund massively multiplayer online games," among other things, the internet was once again rife with speculation that an MMO set in the popular Elder Scrolls universe was on the way.
It was a familiar tune for some, given that ZeniMax had recently announced it was opening an MMO division and recruited former Mythic Entertainment executive producer Matt Frior to head it up.

The latest piece of evidence pointing to an online Elder Scrolls game comes from Voodoo Extreme. The site reports that ZeniMax recently acquired the domain name ElderScrollsOnline.com. It could be a simple matter of the company attempting to circumvent domain squatting, but it at least indicates that ZeniMax is thinking about such a game.

No system has been indicated for the MMO project, though a PC version is assumed as it is the main platform for MMOs. PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 editions are possible as well, as ZeniMax's last major game, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion from Bethesda, was well-received on both systems, with its next big title, Fallout 3, being developed for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 as well.

Looking at the popular franchises h