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.

The Arena Net team, which makes the Guild Wars game, has announced their official stance on real money transactions and gold sales.

Real-Money Trading Policy

It is our goal to provide an enjoyable experience to every Guild Wars player. That's why we take the topic of real-money trading (buying and selling gold or in-game items for real-world money) very seriously. Every week, we ban thousands of accounts used by real-money trading companies, because those companies harm the game for other players by running large networks of bots to farm gold and items, spamming chat channels with their advertisements, and even attempting to steal login credentials from unsuspecting players.

Why we crack down on real-money trading

Real-money trading and related activities such as botting and spamming are breaches of the User Agreement and Rules of Conduct. These rules help protect the entire Guild Wars community from abuse by providing a set of guidelines for fair play that allow all players to enjoy the game. Real-money trading activities negatively impact the fun of many players.

How we deal with real-money traders

To help protect the Guild Wars community from the problems caused by real-money trading

NCsoft Europe has released its first official Podcast with a behind-the-scenes discussion with Matt 'Positron' Miller, and Sean and Jen Dornan-Fish.

Go behind-the-scenes in City of Heroes with Matt ‘Positron’ Miller, and Sean and Jen Dornan-Fish, to learn how Manticore and Sister Psyche are settling into married life. Get the full lowdown on the City of Heroes player meet this Easter weekend and find out how you could be making history with the Guild Wars Bonus Mission Pack.

Stephen:  So, shall we just start with the basics, like, if we go round and; if everybody would like to introduce themselves, and say exactly what they do within NCsoft, as we’re all within NCsoft now!

Matt:  I’m Matt Miller, I’m the Lead Designer for City of Heroes/City of Villains, I work at NCsoft NorCal.  I used to work at Cryptic where I worked on City of Heroes and City of Villains and now I’m doing the same job for NCsoft!

Sean:  I’m Sean Dornan-Fish, I work at NCsoft in Austin.  I’m Lead Content Designer on several unannounced projects, as well as working on City of Heroes again and Exteel.

Click Here for more details about it !

Star Trek gaming site, Hailing Frequency, reported  an interesting turn around for the recently closed official Star Trek Online site, which returned with a brand new background and a "Coming Soon" underneath the logo. The WhoIs information have not been updated as of yet, but as noted in the HF report, this might change very soon:

This could signify a change in hands of the domain, potentially from perpetual, to whoever may be developing it now, but, attempts to trace the domain back to its new owner do not give any results.

As the recent rumors have indicated, Cryptic Studios might be the secretive new developer, but their lips are tightly shut at the moment. Stay tuned as we continue covering this very possible resurrection of Star Trek Online!

Click Here for more info about it .

The second annual Virtual Worlds Conference will be held in New York City on April 3rd and 4th this year.

Game, toy, entertainment and media industries converge

Virtual Worlds Management has announced the program, speakers and exhibitors for the second annual Virtual Worlds Conference taking place from April 3 - 4 in New York City.

Speakers will include executives from Mattel, MTV, Google, Disney, IBM, Habbo, Gaia, crayon, Alloy Media, Electric Sheep Company, Epitome Pictures, G-Unit Records, Millions of Us, Cookie Jar Entertainment, Needham & Company and Zula USA, LLC.

"What began as technologies embraced by Internet sophisticates is now at the heart of revolution that is reshaping the media industry, toy industry, the entertainment business and technology companies," said Christopher Sherman, Virtual Worlds Conference executive director.

Get more details at the GamesIndustry.biz press release.

LITTLEST PET SHOP VIPs
PlanetCazmo

Hasbro’s LITTLEST PET SHOP VIPs Deployed Globally; PlanetCazmo.com sees viral growth

Shelburne Falls, MA, -- March 3, 2008 – Pileated Pictures, an online entertainment studio with a focus on virtual worlds and casual massively multiplayer games (MMOs), released information about its first two launches for 2008: The first is a major update to Hasbro’s LITTLEST PET SHOP VIPs virtual world web site, which launched internationally in early February with new features in nine languages, making it one of the largest global rollouts of a virtual world to date.  The second is Pileated Pictures’ original creation, PLANETCAZMO.COM a virtual world for Teens and Tweens that has seen impressive viral growth in a short period, without any promotional efforts.

Pileated Delivers Multi-Language Virtual World for Hasbro

Hasbro's LITTLEST PET SHOP VIPs virtual world is now accessible in nine languages, with an expanded collection of new pets, online activities and games. Designed for young girls, LITTLEST PET SHOP VIPs are a collection of plush pets with codes that unlock access to an online virtual world where each pet comes to life as playful characters.  The new versio

Massively reports that the Sims Online was shut down and is now known as EA-Land.

The Sims might have been a huge hit with casual gamers worldwide. The virtual world built on the same property, The Sims Online, was unfortunately rather less so. Last year, three employees led by Luc Barthelet convinced EA that the whole TSO concept could be revitalized under a new platform and model.

Development ensued, apace until on Thursday, February 21 the last of The Sims Online cities shut down, and were bundled off. Say hello to EA-Land. It appears that some or all of the downed cities have been merged into the new EA-Land mixed-pay model.

EA-Land is apparently following a model more like that of Second Life, with free players and paying subscribers, a planned currency exchange for Simoleons (TSO's world currency, and now EA-Land's), multiple avatars per account, custom content uploads, user-run stores, and web-services integration, facebook apps. It's the whole virtual world nine yards, it seems.

read more details at Massively

Feb 21st,Flying Lab Software announced  a pretty amazing program designed for our Australian community members: the Australian Ambassador program!

This is an unprecedented opportunity for current Pirates of the Burning Sea customers residing in Australia to apply for a chance play our game for free for one whole year!

That’s right, one entire year of Pirates of the Burning Sea for free, and all you have to do is apply!

For more specific information and your chance to apply, click this link!

it's great for Australian  ,but  maybe it's unfair for other regions ppls .cos they still need pay to play one whole year fot this game LOL

hope there will be more and more similar Ambassador program coming ,such as north american or EU or SEA :)