Guild Wars developer ArenaNet has announced plans for another special weekend event. Players who have completed the Guild Wars: Nightfall campaign will be treated to the opening of the Domain of Anguish... sounds like fun!

Seasoned campaigners will be given access to this elite area through the Chantry of Secrets. In this area, players will find "four separate areas to explore, nearly a dozen quests, new armor upgrade options, a system for acquiring novel weapons, and of course a compelling mission as well."

Aussie Guild Wars fanatics will get their first taste of the Domain of Anguish in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

The high profile online game Second Life (a multiplayer virtual life simulator that resembles The Sims) has come under renewed controversy in recent months with the immersion of real world corporations in the game world. The latest corporate wonder to join the Second Life family is the news service Reuters.

For a meagre $5000 setup fee and an annual running fee of $500, corporations are able to set up shop in the game to promote and sell their wares, and when registered users of the game are spending an average of 13 million dollars (US) on digital products and services, more corporations will continue to flock to the game.

Reuters plans to begin publishing news from the "real" world (including photos and video reports) for Second Life members and bring the latest goss from Second Life to their real-world reader when they visit a Reuters website.


With other high profile companies such as Coca-Cola, Reebok and Intel vying for in-game marketing supremecy, it's only a matter of time before more high profile corporations flirt with the opportunities that Second Life presents.

NC Soft has announced a new Good Versus Evil Edition bundle which will include City of Heroes and City of Villains, to be available on September 25th.

As well as bundling both games with all seven free expansions, the new edition will include 'exclusive' in-game items and two new travel powers. Existing players will have the option of purchasing these bonuses on their own, calling into question their 'exclusivity' and implying that NC Soft might be jumping on the bandwagon by selling in-game items to raise extra revenue.

EVE-Online, the space-faring MMORPG which showed us just how "big, really big" space can be, has celebrated yet another milestone this week:


A quick glance at the graphs and pie-charts over at MMORPGchart shows that, while most subscription levels have fluctuated considerably in the wake of World of Warcraft, EVE-Online's player base has continued to rise steadily. With only 1% of the subscription-based market, this week's milestone has shown that CCP's practice of hosting an entire galaxy on a single server is paying off in a big way.

NC Soft has released a significant update for Auto Assault, their action-orientated vehicular MMORPG. There are new missions, items and a new arena map for all players, as well as improved vehicle handling - especially at earlier levels.


In a further attempt to bolster player numbers, having already merged all servers into one, NC Soft has also introduced the Auto Assault Referral Program. Existing players can now refer friends onto a ten-day trial of the game, and if any of these friends proceed to purchase the full game, the player will receive free play time. Potentially, this could grant a player four months of free play in a single hit.