World of Warcraft Preview Panel

So much information came out yesterday for WoW fans, the biggest being the news of the next expansion World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria. Thanks to our friends over at Gkick.net we have a fantastic breakdown of all of the features that will appear in the next expansion. You can check out the full list of features here! I did have a chance to play as a Pandarian Monk yesterday, and overall I did enjoy the experience. My full write up will be up on Gaming Angels soon! Gkick.net is part of the Gaming Angels network and have been helping with our coverage of Blizzcon 2011.

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World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria announced at Blizzcon 2011

The rumors have proven true! Today at Blizzcon, Chris Metzen announced the upcomming expansion World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria. And of course with this expansion we will be given the new race to play: Pandaren. Plus we will also be getting a new class: the Monk. Alliance warships prowl the seas. Horde armies thunder across Kalimdor. Tensions between these factions edge closer to erupting in a savage war that threatens to consume all of Azeroth. Against this backdrop of impending conflict, an uncharted island mysteriously appears… Shrouded in fog since the world was sundered more than ten thousand years ago, the ancient realm of Pandaria has remained unspoiled by war. Its lush forests and cloud-ringed mountains are home to a complex ecosystem of indigenous races and exotic creatures. Will the mists of Pandaria part to reveal the world’s salvation… or will the battle to control this breathtaking new land

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‘The Secret World’ focuses on Dragons

This week, Funcom’s revealing more about MMO The Secret World through the use of dragons. Well, okay, it sounds like that, but what it really means is that they’re revealing more about the Dragon secret society in-game. (It’s one of three.) The mysterious Dragon society is based in Seoul, and throughout the week, Funcom is revealing a little more about them, whether it’s through screenshots, videos, or other media both on the official site and other, “select” media outlets. “Revealing new things about the Dragon is exciting for us, as the very nature of the Dragon is to stay hidden and create chaos behind the scenes to reach their ultimate goal,” Says Ragnar Tørnquist, Senior Producer and Director for ‘The Secret World’. “Not only is this a great opportunity to shed some light on the Dragon, but for a huge number of people who have already joined the Dragon through

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First Look: Tera

Tera has been one MMO that I’ve been keeping my eyes on. It seems like it will have a little something new due to being pitched as an Action MMORPG (AMMORPG?). Well I was pleased as punch when I got to go to En Masse Entertainment’s offices during PAX prime in Seattle to get hands on with Tera. Even better? It was hands on in a five man boss fight! First we were shown some new images from the game and a trailer to give us a taste of the game.  After we were given the choice to pick the roles we’d like to do the boss encounter with. I chose the archer since it’s a class I’m most familiar with. Our Editor-in-Chief, @Cherithe, was with me and she sat in to play the Mage.  Once everyone was ready to go, we started off this mini-dungeon. After a Leroy Jenkins

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PAX Preview: Dungeon Overlord

Dungeon Overlord is a web based, player vs. player, strategy game on Facebook.  WAIT! DONT GO AWAY JUST YET!  If you are anything like me, as soon as I see ‘Facebook’ my brain shuts down and all I can think of is “Great…one more game to block from my Facebook feed.”  But hold on for a sec and let me explain what Dungeon Overlord is about before you jump into that conclusion. First of all, Dungeon Overlord is set up more like a MMORPG, where you can see a full world and see all the other gamers that are currently playing the game.  Since it is a PVP, you’ll then be able to compete against them for territorial space.  If you like to just run around killing things, the game also has a Player vs. Environment part, allowing you to kill every stinking Elf in the land!  Side note: Elves

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Review: Age of Empires Online

Rating: E10+ Genre: MMO/RTS Publisher: Microsoft Game Studio Developer: Gas Powered Games Release Date: August 16, 2011 BUY I have been an Age of Empires fan since the Age of Empires II days. It was my first RTS that I’ve ever played and it cemented my love of the genre. So you can imagine when I heard that there was going to be an Age of Empires Online game, I was intrigued. I figured it would have a lot more PvP aspects to it, and ones that would hopefully be easier to find others to play with than the random matchmaking that had frequent disconnects that I remember from previous titles. Well I’ve spent approximately the last week playing Age of Empires Online and well, I liked it. Now there are some things that I didn’t really like or were a bit clunky, but overall I enjoyed myself and will

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Interview: Linda Currie, Design Director at Turbine

Linda Currie is a Design Director at Turbine, Inc. That not so little company that has two not so little MMO games that you might have heard of Lord of the Rings Online, and Dungeons & Dragons Online. LOTRO Rise of Isengard, which is the new LOTRO expansion will be coming out on September 27th Prior to joining Turbine, Linda was an independent design and project management consultant, and Creative Director at Create Studios, Inc. She was at while at Blue Fang Games, and was Design Manager of the design department. She worked as a Producer of Zoo Tycoon 2: Marine Mania, and was Lead Designer on Zoo Tycoon 2: Endangered Species and Senior Game Designer on the best-seller Zoo Tycoon: 2. Before that she was Executive Producer for Strategy First, and before that… well, you get the idea…30 years is a long time! Linda was co-founder of the former

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Interview: Marti McKenna and Stacey Janssen, Writers for En Masse Entertainment

This time we have an interview with two ladies who have a background in SyFy writing. Marti McKenna is a 22-year game industry vet and a lifelong geek girl. Her games career began in the late ’80s at Sierra Online, where she worked her way up from the assembly line through the fulfillment, customer service, marketing, and game design departments. In the early ’90s she took a senior writer position at Electronic Arts and eventually went on to lead the EA writing team. More recently she worked on Guild Wars and Aion (for ArenaNet and NCsoft) respectively, and now holds the position of Writing Team Manager at En Masse Entertainment. Marti has also been busy outside the games industry. Over the past decade she worked as fiction editor for Scorpius Digital Publishing and Aeon Speculative Fiction and as editor-at-large for The Internet Review of Science Fiction. Her short fiction has

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Review: Order & Chaos Online (iOS)

Rating: 9+ Frequent/Intense cartoon or fantasy violence Platform: iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad Publisher: Gameloft Genre: MMORPG Release Date: April 29. 2011 BUY Game Loft has produced and successfully released it’s first MMO. Order and Chaos has been called a World of Warcraft knock-off. But in playing Order and Chaos, I feel like I have been playing Guild Wars pre-Searing. When I think of elves that have the long floppy ears, and characters with tree trunk shaped feet then I think of WoW. The human character designs only slightly resemble those good old shoeless, ugly, WoW avatars that you had come to love. Right now for $6.99 at the Apple App store, you can play Order and Chaos on any iOS device for three months. It is the usual fare character choices: human, elf, ogre, and undead. There are professions to choose from such as warrior, mage, monk (cleric) and

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‘Star Wars Galaxies’ axed by Sony Online Entertainment and LucasArts

Star Wars-based MMO Star Wars Galaxies is shutting its virtual doors on December 15, 2011. According to a letter sent to all subscribers by Sony/LucasArts, the two companies agreed that “2011 is the appropriate time to end the game.” Current players will receive special “Fan Appreciation offers,” and the game will end with a virtual big bang — or at least some other “galaxy-ending in-game event.” Very unfortunate for any fans of this particular game, but it does appear that BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic‘s mere existence has extinguished this game’s flame. It would probably be pretty hard to run two MMOs at once…so the old one’s got to go. Was it a good eight years for you? Leave your memories in the comments.  

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