It's great.

We understand that we are asking PS3 and prospective PS3 users to wait a bit longer, but we have come to the conclusion that we need more time to refine the service to ensure a more focused gaming entertainment experience than what it is today. Our overarching objective is to provide users with new gaming experiences that are available only on PLAYSTATION Home. Spending more time on the development and on the Closed Beta testing reaffirms our commitment to bringing a quality service, maintaining the PlayStation tradition.

Metal Gear Online Beta Now *Planned* For This Friday

Konami ID Dojo: Site Down, Fix It Time

Currently, the extraordinary levels of traffic levels are causing great difficulty for our customers in accessing the page.
In order to solve the problem, we will be carrying out emergency maintenance work on the site from 04/18/2008 at 20:00 (GMT+9h).
During maintenance, the KONAMI ID portal site will be taken down and therefore will be inaccessible.
We would like to apologize for any inconveniences caused.

Public Home Beta Can Be Installed, Not Played

New Battlefield Bad Company Screens, Vid, Beta

Mabinogi Open Beta Starts March 5th

Passively Multiplayer Online 'Games'

Worlds in Motion has a quick write—up of something that may become a new trend: passively multiplayer ... web browsing? From the GameLayer's website comes a description of a Firefox add on that turns web browsing into something else:

PMOG stands for Passively Multiplayer Online Game. Players play without playing; clicking around the internet turns into experience points and currency. A battle between Order and Chaos rages online, between people tagging and people spamming; this game gives people the weapons they need to wage that war in real-time in their browsers.

This unconventional massively multiplayer online game merges your web life with an alternate, hidden reality. The mundane takes on a layer of fantastic achievement. Player behavior generates characters and alliances, triggers interactions in the environment, and earns the player points to spend online beefing up their inventory. Suddenly the internet is not a series of untouchable exhibits, but a hackable, rewarding environment.

It's currently in beta, but this is a new take on the classic MMO and seems perfect for the lazy among us.

Multiplayer Web Surfing? [Worlds In Motion]

Nexon's Mabinogi Coming To the US

Nexon is adding to its US stable of free-to-play MMOs with Mabinogi, the Celtic and Welsh-themed game which launches a closed beta on 30 January. It sounds like MMO-meets-Harvest Moon, with promises of "offering players a 'life' experience" - characters age at a set rate, can participate in mundane tasks like farming, writing music, and getting married in addition to the usual battles-and-quests. I was delighted to see faint whispers of deliciously bad press releases for Asian MMOs:

President and CEO John H. Chi commented, "Playing Mabinogi is about more than just fighting and normal MMO fare. This is a chance for gamers to live a fantasy life in a place where communities build mutual beliefs of family, friendship and hard work."

And cute sheep prominently featured on the main page. I'm a sucker for fuzzy sheep - and if they're singing fuzzy sheep, so much the better. No details yet on when the doors of Mabinogi will be thrown open for the public at large, but it looks like they're still taking applications for closed beta testers over at the Mabinogi website

Nexon Announces Mabinogi [Worlds In Motion]

Oh, how I wish I had seen the original press release for Happy MMO's ELF Online. The sketchy translation both in-game and on their website leads me to believe the press release must have been a true gem. It's clearly a game that's not taking itself too seriously (running into a "wet nurse for newbie"? A "baby mode"?), and Jeff Freeman has a funny look at gameplay and environment in ELF Online. Considering the number of free to play Chinese MMOs that take themselves way too seriously, it's almost refreshing (though perhaps hiring some starving ex-pat to provide translation services wouldn't be such a bad idea):

All the quests that I completed were all of the kill 5 of this, kill 10 of that, collect 4 of these by killing 4 or more of those sorts, excluding quests sending me from one NPC to another. Stock MMO quests.

One other quest some might consider an exception, was the become-a-soldier-quest itself, after killing 7 of something, being required to swear that my little guy would fight to the death for the Imaginary Goddess.

But most people wouldn't consider that an exception, and would instead say, "What now? I didn't really read it." Stock MMO players.

One of my wishes for 2008? That gems like this and Shanda press releases continuing flowing freely from China.

How I Spent My Vacation: Elfing [via Worlds In Motion]

Huxley CBT Gameplay

Huxley, that MMOFPS by Webzen that we all keep gushing about, had its beta go live in Korea back in September, so it's about time, I think for us to finally see some game play. I am not disappointed. Not at all.

Pirates of the Burning Sea Open Beta

Pirates of the Burning Sea, the best piratical MMO I haven't played, is launching its worldwide beta this Friday. North American players can sign up for access to the beta through File Planet, with FP subscribers getting priority access. The open beta is set to go live at 5 p.m. on Friday.

Meanwhile pre-orders for European players is scheduled to start on Dec. 12. Yurpeens who pre-order the game will get:
An invitation to the "Pre-Boarding Party" allowing them access to the live game up to 15 days prior to launch, and the ability to keep their characters, skills and equipment after launch with purchase of game and paid subscription. (characters will have a level cap of 20 during this time)
Captain's Best Friend - a blue and yellow parrot
Mighty Blades - Swedish Rapier, Old World Steel or Musketeer's Matching Blades (depending upon which fighting style is selected)
Original Game Soundtrack CD - 60 minutes of pirate themed music (comes in pre-order box)

I really need to check this game out. I think I must have some sort of mental block after playing through a chunk of one of the early betas for the Pirates of the Caribbean MMO.

Pirates of the Burning Sea

UT3 Beta Coming Within 2 Weeks

The development team feels they're pretty close to being ready to release this so it could come out this week but for safety sake I'd say it should be out within two weeks.