In a weblog post lamenting Hellgate: London's lack of success and describing the developer's work environment as "depressing," Flagship audio and gameplay programmer Guy Somberg claims that the studio's staff, including programmers, accountants, human resources personnel, and artists, has been leaving "in droves."

Somberg has since taken down the post but a cache of the page is still available. According to the programmer, Flagship's founders are still at the company but are working on projects outside of Hellgate: "The only one still actively on Hellgate is [technology director Tyler Thompson], but Tyler’s not programming anymore; he spends all of his time on management activities."

With rumors of even more artists and programmers planning to leave the Hellgate developer, Somberg commented, "Thing is, the way things are going I’m likely to be the only programmer still working on Hellgate left from the original crew."

Released for PCs in October, 2007, Hellgate: London's launch received criticism for its bugs, slowdowns, and crashes, among other issues. Somberg, however, has high hopes for the MMORPG in the Asian market: "Y

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

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 !

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

It's so surprised that  Shadowbane servers will be wiped clean in order to alleviate some of the problems that come from years of not cleaning house.

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    We will be updating the Shadowbane Test Server with the first iteration of Patch 22 later this afternoon. There are a variety of changes associated with this update but most talked about development will be what we are referring to as "Shadowbane Reboot".

     The Shadowbane Team decided that it would be best for the longevity of the game to reset all server and character data and start from scratch. By doing so, the game benefits in a variety of ways. First, we feel the community will be better served by being more consolidated and less fragmented. Second, resetting the game removes items that have accumulated over the years that have caused imbalances to the game. In addition, numerous updates and enhancements have been made to the Shadowbane service to improve the performance. Some of the changes were not as effective due to preexisting data and resetting the service will allow the servers to work under optimal conditions. Finally, this update also gives us a c

The doors of hell will be opening for PC owners on October 31--the traditional date that ghosts are said to be able to make contact with the living--in North America.

Hellgate: London, which is made by some of the key developers of Diablo, has gamers play as a survivor of a demon invasion of London, battling the supernatural beasts and attempting to find some way to stop their takeover of the planet.

The title, which is published by EA and Namco Bandai, will also be released in Europe a few days later on November 2. For more on the game, please read GameSpot's interview with Flagship CEO Bill Roper.