It's a sad news special for  those who enjoy some digitalized Disney magic. It's been decided that Virtual Magic Kingdom, the virtual world developed and released in 2005 to celebrate the 50 year anniversary of the real Disneyland's opening, will be closed for good on May 21

As with Habbo Hotel, Virtual Magic Kingdom was developed by Finnish studio Sulake and shared many similarities with the social networking site. Players with registered accounts are able to decorate their personal rooms, earn and spend in-game credits, and participate in a variety of online events and activities with their customized avatars, all in a "safe, non-threatening environment."

Said producer Seth "Yavn" Mendelsohn: "In the time since we've launched VMK, we've seen many players come and go, and we're hoping you will graduate from VMK too – in particular, to games like Pirates of the Caribbean Online, Disney's ToonTown Online, Club Penguin and the upcoming Fairies and Cars online virtual worlds. We think you'll find you enjoy those just as much as VMK – if not more."

FAQ posted on VMK officialsite ,here

Via World in Motion

RF Online team has implemented a new IP blocking system for their continuing fight against abuse and spam .

As part of our on-going commitment to protecting legitimate players, we have now implemented an IP blocking system that prevents players from territories that are not supported by Codemasters from accessing the RF Online and ArchLord games.
Whilst this implementation shouldn't affect bona fide players, there is a small chance that some will be blocked. If you believe you have been blocked in error, please fill out an appeal via our online form at this URL:

http://www.codemasters.co.uk/support/appeals.php

The countries/territories that are not supported and hence affected are: Brunei, Cambodia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Republic of Lao, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam.

click for more at RF-Online Official Site

OGPlanet has recently discussed their creation of a portal for free-to-play MMOGs, similar to the casual portals that are available.

Back at GDC I had the opportunity sit down with David Hoffman, executive producer for OGPlanet, a company specializing in importing East Asian titles into the North American market.

The MMO Gamer: To get the ball rolling, for those among our readers who may be unfamiliar, please introduce yourself, and tell us a little bit about OGPlanet.

David Hoffman: My name is David Hoffman, and I’m the executive producer for OGPlanet. The company is located in El Segundo, California, and we specialize in bringing free-to-play, free-to-download MMOs to North America.

Primarily we’ve done this through Korea, by selecting high-quality Korean titles with a track record that have done well there, which also fit our marketplace here. We’ve been able to deliver those through our website.

click for more details at MMO Gamer

Remnants of Skystone, a steampunk-themed MMOG, was announced recently.

REMNANTS OF SKYSTONE: Finally - a Steampunk-styled MMO has been announced. OK, so it’s browser-based and possibly not very “Massive” per se, but I’ll take what I can get!

Explore the REMNANTS OF SKYSTONE developer blog and you’ll uncover many fun-looking screens, an evolving backstory, and developer ,Flipline's plans for the game’s release and beyond. Super Steampunk Skystone, OK!

via Gamebunny

click to Developer Blog

Fans of Mythos will be excited to learn that there's a new patch build out /

Mythos will be coming down tonight at 5:30pm PDT (GMT-7) for about 2 hours. Included in the patch will be various PvP and Crafting fixes that a lot of people have been waiting for.

Patch Notes:

- new Zone3 Quests content

- Breaking down magical items ALWAYS gives you Aether or Anima

- Lots of crafting balance changes - Risk is halved for most properties

- Damage modification nodes swapped with Speed mod nodes in the crafting tree for weapons

- In general, all starting item properties for crafted items should be higher at the beginning for items, and you should be able to make items as good as or better than normal drops much, much quicker

Click here for more details !

Irvine, Calif. – April 1st, 2008 – K2 Network (www.k2network.net), a worldwide publisher of online games, in cooperation with Samsung Electronics, announces today that Red Stone was selected as the only MMOG (massively multiplayer online game) for the World Cyber Games 2008(WCG).

Red Stone is unique 2D fantasy MMORPG with an amazing and compelling story.
Players may choose from eight character classes, each of which can transform into fantastic alternative classes to learn new skills and abilities. In Red Stone, you will explore dangerous lands, fight powerful monsters, complete exciting quests, and battle other guilds for superiority and glory. For more information on Red Stone’s upcoming WCG tournament details and to play the game yourself for free visit Gamersfirst.

“We are thrilled that Redstone was selected to participate in such a prestigious event,” says Joon Woo Kim, Associate Producer for Red Stone, K2 Network. “With its robust international community Redstone is a perfect fit for the World Cyber Games and we wish all the participants the best of luck.”

The World Cyber Games (www.worldcybergames.com) is the premiere global tournament and cultural cyber festival in gaming, wi

K2 Network today announced that they have launched an expansion for Sword of the New World: Granado Espada entitled The Land of the Dead. This expansion comes with new monsters, new stances, new skills and new features including a whole new PvP Enabled map for players to explore, a new level of equipment, two highly anticipated UPCs (Unique Player Characters) and a host of Cash Shop additions.

K2 Network, Inc. ( www.k2network.net), a global games publisher, announces K2 Network’s game portal Gamersfirst.com has launched an expansion for its Free2Play epic Age of Exploration MMORPG Sword of the New World: Granado Espada, entitled The Land of the Dead!

This new expansion adds new monsters, new stances, new skills and a slew of new features including: A whole new PvP Enabled map for players to explore, a new level of equipment: 92 Elites, 2 highly anticipated UPCs (Unique Player Characters): Kurt and Eduardo, and a host of Cash Shop additions including Andre’s Dolce and Granado Beachwear, the brand new Polisher system and Devil Wings.

Click here for more details at GamesIndustry.biz

Ubisoft acquired full rights to the Tom Clancy name a few days ago for a reported 90 million dollars and has now announced a Tom Clancy MMO.Development on this new project has not yet started, but speculation is already putting the budget for this game at around 50 million.

It truly seems that the MMO rush is on and everyone wants a piece of the action. No doubt a Tom Clancy MMO would be a FPS, although I don’t know how you can take a spy/swat type gameplay and turn it into a MMO. How does that work? 50 spies all trying to steal the same suitcase? No, most likely it would follow in the footsteps of The Agency, which Sony is working on. You would create your team and signup for missions that are instanced.

click here for more details about it .

MMOcrunch

NCsoft and Epic Games have announced a deal that will allow the Korean MMO developer to develop two as yet unannounced MMOs using the Unreal 3 Engine. There is no word on specifically what games those will be.

NCsoft Announces Unreal Engine 3 License for Two Upcoming Projects

World-renowned online game developer expands on Unreal legacy

SEOUL, KOREA (March 25, 2008) - NCsoft® Corporation, the world's leading developer and publisher of online computer games, today announced that it has reinforced its relationship with Epic Games, Inc. by licensing Unreal Engine 3 to develop two unannounced, top-tier massively multiplayer online games. NCsoft has achieved spectacular results working with the Unreal Engine over the years, shipping the highly successful Lineage® II, and the soon to be released Exteel ™, using Unreal Engine 2.

"Unreal Engine 3 has a well structured rendering pipeline, and its graphical quality is superb thanks to advanced lighting and shadowing systems," said Young-muk Choi, lead programmer, Development Unit, NCsoft. "Tools within the Unreal Editor empower us to instantly produce and optimize our outputs, and we especially love how the engine enables

IGG has announced that their prized 3D MMORPG, Tales of Pirates (http://top.igg.com), has completed the development and will have been officially released on March 24, 2008.

Tales of Pirates started its’ Alpha Test on March 15, 2007 and its’ Open Beta Test on March 29, 2007 respectively and during the tests they received tons of encouraging comments while the number of players online climbed significantly.