MMO News Roundup

Nothing lined up for this weekend? Fancy some hard-core sitting in your pants and playing video games? I have excellent news for you, Star Wars: The Old Republic is available on a free weekend pass and will be available till 7am on Monday 26th March, even with the download time that’s still plenty of hours to charge about the place swinging your lightsaber. Standard trial account restrictions do apply but having played this title these are just inconveniences rather than detractions from the experience.

OMFGPANDAS! Yes, beta for World of Warcraft’s next expansion “Mists of Pandaria” has begun. Details on the website explain who’ll be invited in this first phase with Annual Pass holders, friends & family, press and opt-in beta testers all being included, this first phase will be focused on the starting area experience for the new race and as an Annual Pass holder I’m a) hoping my invite will be soon and b) that the beta will convince me Pandas weren’t a terrible idea.

Does the idea of being “on the front-lines of a persistent global war” rock your socks? Trion Worlds have just released a new trailer for their upcoming End of Nations; a free-to-play strategy game with PvP maps being able to host up to 56 combatants at a time. This could be the way forward for fans of the solo strategy genre with Petroglyph promising  that they’ll be “combining selected elements of modern massively multiplayer online games to expand and revolutionize the classic real-time strategy genre. This unique combination offers combat of unparalleled scale in a persistent world with robust customization options.” Beta sign-ups are available now.

More Druidic news from Dungeons & Dragons Online and with a trailer clip of the shape-shift no less, it .. err .. makes a good noise? Apparently you’ll be able to “Harness animal instincts to transform yourself into a vicious Winter Wolf, or defend allies as sturdy Dire Bear. Expand your physical limitations and rain down lightning as the Water Elemental, or incinerate the foes of nature as the Fire Elemental. Each wild shape has its own specialized set of spells to cast!” Wolf and Bear are old news but being an elemental sounds a little more promising.

It wouldn’t be a complete round-up without more Guild Wars 2 news but for this week it’s more information on how NCSoft intend to handle the micro-transactions, always subject to rants, ire and trolling the topic of “paying to win” understandably gets people’s backs up. Mike O’Brien (President of ArenaNet) discusses how the coming beta stages will be used to do some early testing on their system which looks set to follow the established PLEX system used in EVE Online.