Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, developer of the upcoming Stargate Worlds MMORPG, has signed a licensing agreement with Epic Games for the Unreal 3 Engine. The license covers Stargate Worlds as well as unannounced future titles from Cheyenne.


With the recent announcement that the US Sci-Fi Channel will not be seeking an eleventh season of Stargate: SG1, MGM must be keener than ever to make sure that Stargate Worlds will be a successful extension of the franchise. Furthermore, with numerous Stargate games announced and subsequently cancelled, Stargate Worlds has some big shoes to fill.

Whether the game will manage to stay true to ten years of continuity is a question on the lips of many ravenous fans, and may well make or break the game when it is released in 2007.

This message from Darkscribe, producer of Ultima Online, reveals some of his plans for the definitive MMORPG as it approaches its tenth anniversary. The big news is that the UO client is going to be completely rebuilt with a new interface and improved graphics, bringing the game more in line with what modern gamers have come to expect.

However, Darkscribe has promised that this will not damage UO's reputation for low system requirements:


Aside from a guarantee that players will retain all ingame housing and items, and that there are "more surprises in store", no other details are given about the exact nature of the upgrade nor any new features which may be introduced. This is not the first time that UO players have been treated to a graphics upgrade, as the 2001 expansion "Third Dawn" included an optional 3D client, but it is sad news indeed for players who can't afford to upgrade beyond their 200 MHz Pentium.

Acclaim, along with David Perry (founder of Shiny Entertainment) has announced 2Moons, the latest fantasy MMORPG to grace our PCs.

2Moons is to be a completely free game, with the publisher's revenue being raised by in-game advertising. What makes 2Moons unusual is that said advertising will only be present in the user interface, not in the game-world itself, and players will have the option to disable the advertising if they don't mind sacrificing certain XP and item bonuses.

Also worthy of note is the game's "adult's only" flavour, with David Perry claiming that the game will probably be "the most violent MMO on the market":


So far the 2Moons website is flashy but threadbare, and insists on a five digit zip code if you want to register for the closed beta (despite allowing players to select Australia, which only has four digit codes, as their country of residence). It looks like we're going to have to wait if we want to learn about such inconsequential details as how the game plays, what it looks like and when it's going to ship.

Codemasters, developers of the upcoming fantasy MMORPG ArchLord, has announced that subscriptions for the game will use a new model they are dubbing 'PlayPLUS':


The press release outlines the different plans which will be available, ranging in price from a modest US$9.99 per month to a staggering US$39.99 per month. It seems that a revenue-raising scheme, invented by smaller developers to allow them to offer games free from subscriptions, has been assimilated by Codemasters into the existing pay-to-play format. Players of free MMORPGs generally don't mind the fact that certain items are locked for paying players, since most of the game is still freely accessible. But only time will tell whether players will be willing to pay for extra content on a monthly basis on top of the initial purchase and their regular subscription fees.

Chapter 2 of Star Wars Galaxies is now online, offering a broad range of new content in a game frequently criticised for its lack thereof.


The full list of changes is too long to go into here, but is available at the official SWG site.