A press event earlier these week has resulted in a veritable flood of new information regarding the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Most of the news floating about is regarding the Death Knight hero class, fleshing out the details of the eagerly awaited addition, as well as some information on the raids players will encounter in the frozen lands of Northrend.

Every player with a character over level 55 will be able to create one Death Knight per realm. The new character will start at level 55 with a full compliment of abilities at their disposal, the reasoning here being that anyone who has leveled that far will be able to get the hang of the new abilities quickly. Anyone who has ever played with a recently eBayed character can tell you this is a complete falsehood, but it'll be amusing to watch at least.

Speaking of amusing, Death Knights will also gain the ability to raise fallen enemies and comrades as ghouls to continue the fight. If you raise an ally in this fashion they will get a choice of whether or not to take control of their violated corpse. Good times!

Americans Now Spend $1 Billion A Year On Game Subscriptions

Return To LotRO Free This Weekend

* New Region - Explore the icy reaches of Forochel
* New Quests - Over 100 new quests
* Hobby System - Feel like going fishing?
* Enhanced Monsterplay - New monster class: the Orc Defiler
* Looking For Fellowship Enhancements - Mustering Horns and UI improvements
* More customization options - cosmetic clothing, traveling clothes, and barbershops!
* New PvMP dungeon - The Delving of Frór
* Return to Angmar - completely overhauled to enhance playability and fun

Codemasters To Make Their Own MMOs

Up until now, venerable UK developer Codemasters has been merely dipping their feet into the MMO, licensing titles such as RF Online, Archlord, Dungeons & Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online. Now, as they are readying the release of their 5th licensed MMO, NetDevil's Jumpgate, Codemasters reveals plans to take on MMOspace with the development of their own games. VP of Codemasters Online Gaming David Solari explains that everything is going according to plan.

We always had a five year plan and it was always in the middle of that five year plan that we would start developing our own games. We are looking at that and we have to think very carefully about what title is right, what will work in the future.

MMO Week: Codemasters to bring MMO development in-house [GamesIndustry.biz]

Zhengtu Tearing Up the Chinese Market

China's Online Gaming Market Up 71%, Hits $1.7 Billion

Just about everything in the Chinese gaming market is on the rise, according to a new report by Niko Partners: with the exception of internet cafés (numbers are down thanks to a ban on issuing new licenses), everything is growing by leaps and bounds. The online market jumped 71% in the past year, which is no great surprise, but the grey market success of consoles may be:

Console game sales were up 75 percent on a per-unit basis to 2.48 million, but Hanson noted that due to a Chinese console ban in place since 2000, the entire segment persists through the gray market ....

"The big boom this year came from the easier availability of the new next-gen consoles ...."

She pointed to PlayStation 2 as being more popular than its successor, on the strength of its affordability, game library, and backwards compatibility, with Wii seeing popularity for similar reasons. Between PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, Hanson claimed Xbox 360 is more popular in China for its price point and library.

Other details and explanations can be found in a nice wrap up over at Gamasutra.

Niko's Hanson On Chinese Game Biz Growth [Gamasutra]

Stargate Worlds Beta Signups Begin

PVP In The Age Of Conan

Preorder Age Of Conan And Get Early Access For $5

The release of Funcom's Age of Conan is a little over a month away, and preorder offers are in full swing across North America, Europe, and Oceania. Players who preorder will get exclusive in-game items, such as the War Mammoth and Killer Rhino mounts (accessible after level 40), and a special storage belt dealie. As a special bonus to those who reserve themselves a copy, Funcom and Eidos are offering a three-day head start, where you'll be able to play the game before those suckers who didn't put down some cash, all for the low, low price of 5 USD (or 5 EUR). What, you have to pay? Not quite sure what world that makes sense in. It doesn't seem to be referring to the $5 you put down for reserve either. You get 30 days free play in the box, why make players pay $5 for the first 10 days? It boggles the mind, but hey...a head start is a head start. Hit up the Age of Conan website for details on participating retailers.

7 Of 11 Pirates Of The Burning Sea Servers Shut Down

EVE Online Source Code Leaked, No Worries

The source code for CCP's EVE Online has been popping up on torrent trackers all over the place this week, leading to players worrying about the security of their accounts, as well as having the peace, sleep-inducing serenity of their mining efforts disturbed. CCP assures everyone that the leak will have no adverse effects on the EVE community.

"The server-side interface used by the client is carefully protected to ensure that no abusive or unwanted information is transmitted to, or from the internal EVE server systems. Nothing the EVE client can do can affect the game state, no advantage can be gained by manipulating the EVE client, no advantageous or disadvantageous information can be transmitted to other EVE users by altering the EVE client."

One Million Concurrent WoW Players In China

The9 Limited, the operators of World of Warcraft in China, has announced that they recently achieved a peak of one million players online at the same time. That's not the fudgy sort of numbers you get for subscribers either - that is one million World of Warcraft accounts online and playing at one time. That's the biggest number they've seen since the game launched there back in 2005. Of course there are 1.3 billion or so people living in China, so a million is just a drop in a bucket, but that's a very big drop in a absolutely gigantic bucket. To put things in perspective, if a million people stood on your head, your skull would be completely crushed. Them's skull-crushing numbers right there, and before you go blaming gold farming, keep in mind that these are Chinese servers, not people accessing servers outside of the country, so nya.

World of Warcraft Hits Record One Million Concurrent Chinese Players [GameDaily]

Warhammer Online On The March

If you're going to deliver bad news, accompanying it with a tasteful selection of screenshots is the way to go. These shots of the unique character models created for The Chronicles of Spellborn, and are delivered with the news that the game is being pushed back to Fall of 2008, due to the developers revising the server infrastructure and a possible publishing agreement. The gameplay is there, the graphics are there, and now they want to tune performance, while laying down the foundations for future expansions and new content. Meanwhile, in publishing land, Frogster Interactive has signed a letter of intent with a renowned MMOG publisher, but even the most renowned-eriffic publisher needs a good 6 months lead time for marketing. In the meantime, closed beta continues, pretty screenshots are generated, and I poke at them every so often to see if they're done yet.

Has WoW Peaked?

I wish I could see the numbers, but my guess is that it probably already has peaked - but it's still a great business.