Pit of War, a web-based MMORPG, is adding the possibility to play as a woman gladiator. The new gender doesn’t have any perks or downsides—it is just an aesthetic change. Outcast Games has also added six new races to the game, each with their own pros and cons.

The new races are an addition to the human race and three previous races. Win the gladiator battleground with, the Elaar, the Spite, the Dunder, the Urk, the Snivler and the Thug.

These aren’t the only changes Outcast Games has made to Pit of War. Characters with two-handed weapons can no longer attack using the off-hand, among other minor tweaks to the mechanics of the game.

It is great to see Outcast Games add women characters, but the company said the women bring sex appeal and new strategies to the game. The women don’t have any perks, so basically there is no strategic element to the gender. Outcast Games says the women bring “WOW factor” to the game. When the demographic of gamers is more even than ever, why market the looks of a character, instead of the ability for women gamers to feel more connected with their character?

This is exciting for WoW fans, as well as a promise fulfillment from Blizzard that they were going to work on improving the timing of the release of furute WoW content. With Wrath of the Lich King there was definitely a stale period where the endgame content did become routine and not fun for the players who were hardcore raiders. Even for a non-raider for me I slowly started getting bored near the end.

I’ll be interested to see what comes out of this press tour and what other details we may get regarding the expansion.

You can read about my thoughts on what I got to play of the expansion at Blizzcon last year here.

Wander through the village of Eveningstar this summer when Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Wizards of the Coast bring back the classic Forgotten Realms locale to Dungeons & Dragons Online.

The new expansion, Menace of the Underdark, will not only bring back Forgotten Realms, where citizens of Cormyr must combat a new threat, but players can also explore the subterranean caverns of Underdark. This is the first expansion to the MMORPG that will give players a new level cap of 25 and a new class.

The caverns of Underdark create new obstacles for players to overcome. Gamers must fight the Drow, take over their city Shindylryn, and defeat Lolth, the Drow goddess.

Gamers can now play as a Druid, casting nature magic and transforming into a wild beast at will and travel through the King’s Forest.

“2012 is going to be our biggest year yet with a wealth of new content throughout the year including the launch of our first expansion pack,” said Fernando Piaz, Executive Producer of Dungeons & Dragons Online. “We are very excited to expand into the Forgotten Realms setting with a whole new storyline, level cap increase and the new Druid class!”

Dungeons & Dragons is bringing this free-to-play MMORPG back to its roots, with Forgotten Realms and the Druid class.

To celebrate, they’ve announced the Sram’s Shadow class, as well as new content.

For more information, visit Wakfu‘s site.

You start off in the starting zone and move through quests that follow a very martial arts feel to them. You have to fight training dummies, apprentices, and then a master before being sent to help protect a village and save supplies. The world itself is absolutely stunning in appearance and the new mobs look fantastic. You can tell that they’ve put a lot of work into this just for Blizzcon, so I can only see good things for when they have more time and can really sit and focus on expanding the art style and improving the look and feel of the game.

Now as for the new race themselves, that has been getting the most mixed reviews. Some players don’t like it since it seems too cutsey while others are actually pretty happy that they can get to play pandas. Not surprisingly only the male pandaren were available to play and had concept art shown. We were even told that this is not the final model for male pandaren and that it will see several tweaks done to it up until the release of the game. With all of the time they took to make over, for example, the Worgen before Cataclysm and the design changels that happened with the models shows that they will work up until close to launch to make sure that the models look good and will make the majority of the community happy.

As for how the Monk plays, the biggest thing for me was not being used to seeing an auto attack. Other than that the resource bar and management was actually pretty well done and pretty easy to pick up on. Once I got the hang of how to use the attacks, it’s actually a pretty fluid class to play in the beginning stages. It made me interested to see how the class would play once you get past level 10 and begin to focus on your talents and what spec you will go into. Based on what was talked about during the WoW Q&A, I’m super interested to check out how healing on a Monk since they will apparently be more mobile and have some interesting abilities, like setting down statues that will help to heal party members that they’re near as the Monk DPSes.

All in all I don’t mind how the male pandaren look right now. I wouldn’t mind if they could turn out more rugged as I think it would be more ideal, but for a start it’s not that bad. I also don’t mind that things are brighter and not as dark as they have been the past couple of expansions. I think this change along with the fact that we’re going back to Alliance and Horde fighting against each other will make for a good next expansion. I look forward to all of the updates that are going to eventually come out regarding MoP, and of course the eventual beta invite that I know I will get with my WoW Annual Pass!

Now this was definitely some information overload, but thanks to our partners over at GKick, they put together a detailed list with screencaps of each of the new trees. You can read up in detail over here on Gkick.net!

Gkick.net is part of the Gaming Angels network and have been helping with our coverage of Blizzcon 2011.

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.

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 push the Alliance and the Horde over the brink into total annihilation?

Blizzard Entertainment’s Mists of Pandaria™, the fourth expansion for World of Warcraft^®, unveils an entirely new continent for players to explore and reintroduces the enigmatic pandaren as a playable race. All but the bravest pandaren explorers have been hidden from the world for thousands of years. Now, in the aftermath of the Cataclysm, Pandaria’s heroes are stepping forward to declare their allegiance to either the Alliance or the Horde.

The Pandaren will be available to play on both the Alliance side as well as the Horde and you will be able to choose this after playing through the starting zone. But there are many many other key features that will be in the next expansion:

• New Playable Race — Pandaren: Adventure through Azeroth as World of Warcraft‘s first neutral race and decide whether to side with the Alliance or the Horde.
• New Playable Class — Monk: Unlock the secrets of pandaren martial arts and do battle as a damage dealer, healer, or tank.
• Level Cap Increased to 90: Learn potent new spells and abilities while exploring uncharted zones and taking on challenging new content.
• New Zones: Explore the lush Jade Forest, treacherous Kun-Lai Summit, and other exotic areas of Pandaria designed for high-level characters, and uncover the mystery of the Wandering Isle.
• Scenarios: Join up with some friends to achieve a common goal, such as mounting a defense against invading monsters, in a flexible new type of PvE challenge.
• Dungeon “Challenge” Modes: Master the ultimate five-player time trial and earn prestige rewards in a new dungeon mode that will put your resolve and coordination to the test.
• Pet Battles: Challenge other players’ companion pets with your own critter collection in a new tactical mini-game, and find out who’s king or queen of the pint-sized battlefield.
• New Talent System: Customize your character to suit your play style with the newly improved talent system.

Not going to lie, but I’m kinda jazzed up over the idea of Pet Battles and Dungeon Challenges. Metzen mentioned on the DirecTV broadcast that they’re making this expansion a lot more light hearted and less dark than the past few expansions, and I think this will be a welcome change.

All of these features plus a new class is also interesting since it looks like they’re realizing that they have some contenders on the field when it comes to MMOs and they seem to be wanting to catch up and make sure that they can stay the top contender.

More information will come as Blizzcon continues!

A whole year after the initial, catastrophic launch of Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV MMO, it looks like it’s time to finally relaunch the title. That means that the free ride is over, compadres. After Version 2.0 launches in November or December, the billing begins. (The PlayStation 3 version of the game is also supposedly back on.)

If you’ve already played the game and have an account, you won’t automatically get billed — the team realized that you may have run far, far away from the game (or you might not see the announcement that version 2.0 is almost ready). You’ll only be billed once you reactivate this feature.

Square Enix has been fairly thorough in outlining everything regarding the relaunch — take a look here.

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 type trash pull, we started in on the boss. And let me say, doing a boss fight with two developers on your team can make for pretty good party banter.

Now the boss fight itself was actually pretty interesting. Since Tera is all about the action part, no matter what role you have, you’re gonna be moving. Even the healer was moving around a lot more than I’m used to seeing. In general though I did enjoy the fight. I felt like I was mostly button mashing with the skills since I didn’t have much of a chance to really see what they all did, but for the most part i was able to get the hang of the archer. My one complaint though is that while running to avoid attacks the archer does not auto-shoot.

About the mages (a note from @Cherithe): Since we were thrust into the battle without a lot of explanation about the many, many abilities of our leveled up characters, other than their basic classes, it took me some time to get my mind to catch up with what my mage was capable of.  See, I play a lot of mage characters, and I’m very used to standing in the back, like any ranged dps, and spending my spells as the cooldowns let me.  But here, I got to be upclose and personal with the boss we fought, and several of my spells both did damage to the enemy and kicked me away from them, to keep out of reach between spells.  This was pretty handy, even if I was slow to catch on that’s what was happening.  It’s an interesting change from traditional mages, and it definitely makes it feel like the mage action is a little faster and more on par with what other character classes experience.

All in all however Tera has intrigued the both of us, and it’s definitely going to be on the list of MMOs to check out once it is finally released in 2012. The graphics are well done and the environments look stunning. Most controls feel rather standard for an MMO, and relatively easy to pick up on. The story has piqued my interest and it’s something I’d like to see what it develops into. It was great to be able to go to En Masse and get a great first look at Tera, a big thanks to the developers that sat with us through the demo.