Lockpick Entertainment has announced that they will be compensating premium members for a bit of confusion surrounding trait points.

As you know there has been quite some confusion about premium accounts and unavailable trait points. The confusion has to a large extent been due to vague communication on our part and therefore we will compensate you in the following way:

Anyone who is a Premium member at 2PM (Swedish time) on Monday July 7th 2008 will receive all their unavailable points to their available balance at that time. People going premium between this point and then will get half the points now (as it is currently implemented)

After this, the bonus we had of retroactively receiving half the trait points will be removed. Unavailable points will not even be visible to the player until we have added the feature of paying tribute for unavailable traitpoints.

As this might seem unfair to players who paid for premium earlier (even if they now too get all unavailable points) we will add a number of free days to their account equal to how many days ago (from July 3rd) they went premium.

We also got Click and Buy to make a few changes for us in their automatic fraud detection system which should decrease the verification needs, at least for some people and hopefully enable them to make their purchase. We will continue to work on adding more options as well

I want to thank all of you that has taken time to discuss this in the forums. Your involvement and opinions are important to us.

Read more here.

MMORPG.com would like to wish all of our American members, who make up the largest percentage of visitors to the site by nationality, a happy Independence Day on this 4th day of July, 2008.

As a point of trivia, The United States of America was formed on July 1st, 1776 making it 232 years old today!

In other birthdays, our Managing Editor Jon Wood was also born on the 4th of July and is celebrating his 228th birthday today. Happy Birthday old man!

In this week's Feedback Friday feature on the Tabula Rasa community site, NCsoft announces that Deployment 10, the game's next update, is now on the test server.

It’s Feedback Friday time, and we're here to give you an update on what’s been going on in the world of Tabula Rasa for this week.

Deployment 10 is now on the Public Test Server and we’d love any chance you get to take a crack at it and, to put it bluntly, break it. We had a 2 week bug fixing extension for this deployment, so we know some of you are chomping at the bit to see it. The next patch will also include fixes to some of the current D10 known issues.

As mentioned in the D10 announcement post, the Pegasus character database will populate the Public Test Server until our next build (some time next week). When the next build is added to PTS, so will the Cassiopeia character database.

Read more here.

CCP has posted notification to EVE Online players that piloting larger class ships than the size allowed by the jump gates to Factional Warfare complexes is now considered to be an exploit.

Exploit notification

Flying bigger class ships than allowed by the jump gates to Factional Warfare complexes has been classed as an exploit. If you are found doing this we will be forced to take in-game actions as abusing game mechanics is not allowed.

 

Read more here.

NetDevil has posted a guide to help players sign up their guild for the Jumpgate Evolution beta.

As you may have seen we’ve added a Guild beta-sign up form to the new Jumpgate Evolution website. This form allows guild leaders from across the globe to register their guild for the Jumpgate Evolution beta. This form is to give guilds the opportunity to get their guild into the Jumpgate beta without having to deal with individual applications while hoping you all get in at the same time.

In order to successfully use this form, there are a few things to remember.

• This form is for Guild leaders only.
• The Guild beta sign-up process is limited to a maximum of 50 members at present.
• You only need to fill in the form once.

Read more here.

Blizzard has announced that they have opened the Wrath of the Lich King Beta Opt-In program, giving players the chance to be selected for the beta process.

Today we opened the Wrath of the Lich King Beta Opt-In program, which gives players a chance to win an invitation to the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King beta. For The Burning Crusade beta, we randomly invited players from the entire World of Warcraft community. With the Opt-In, our goal is to strengthen the beta-testing process by inviting only those players who have expressed active interest in participating.

Keep in mind that opting in doesn't guarantee you'll be selected for the beta. And players who've previously been promised beta access through a promotion or contest (such as by purchasing the Dell XPS M1730 World of Warcraft Edition notebook) don't need to worry -- you'll still be entered into the beta automatically when the time comes.

Read more here.

For the second time now, we've scoured the internet to find a few outside links that we thought might tickle your funny bones. This time, we've found comedy MMORPG gold in the publications of The Onion.

In this hilarious spoof article from Kevin Spivey written back in April of ‘06, he pines away for the love that he met in World of Warcraft as the carefully forged relationship begins to crumble.

The article doesn’t seem written to offend, but merely to amuse.

***

This second parody from the fine folks at The Onion comes in the form of a video announcing the newest World of Warcraft sequel: World of World of Warcraft. The video features mock interviews with World of World of Warcraft developers speaking about the fantastic new features and technology that allow players to play players of World of Warcraft.

Grab the links for both here.

MMORPG.com has teamed up with IGG to give you a cool free stuff to claim within Voyage Century.  We have been given 5000 gift codes that will grant you $135 in free in-game gifts for Voyage Century!

Each gift key will give you:

• (1) Silver box containing 5 million silver coins!
• (3) Double XP Scrolls - In 60 minutes after used all skills obtain 2 times the present experience. The system will stop timing after quiting the game and begin timing again automatically after logining the game. It can be used for 5 times.
• (2) Phase 3 Skill Manuals - Requires the corresponding skill level 100.
• (1) Future Fighter Charm -  Left time 168 hours

We are limiting just one key per IP address so you will not be able to claim more than one of these from the same household.

Hurry and get yours before they are all gone!  CLICK HERE NOW!

The developers of Atlantica Online have provided us with this exclusive developer journal discussing the unique combat system in their upcoming MMORPG. Atlantica breaks with MMORPG tradition to bring players a turn-based combat system that the developers hope will set their game apart from other MMOs.

Unravelling the ancient legend of Atlantis is at the heart of Atlantica Online, a new massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) developed and published by NDOORS. Atlantica, which will launch its closed beta this July, followed by its commercial launch, takes players on a globe-hopping adventure to save the human race, while providing them a rich, strategic RPG environment combined with classic turn-based gameplay.

Life on Earth is threatened when remnants of the fabled lost civilization begins to poison the world’s population. Humanity needs a hero to find and destroy these artifacts. Players must traverse the globe to uncover the clues that will ultimately lead them to Atlantis. During their journey, which will take them to landmarks such as the Taj Mahal in India and Germany’s Marksburg Castle, players will encounter all manner of monsters taken from the myths and legends of cultures throughout human history. Dragons in China and vampires in Romania are just a few of the enemies players must defeat to reach Atlantis.

Read the whole thing here.

In the wake of the recent Jumpgate Evolution site revamp, NetDevil has announced that players will have to re-sign up for the JGE Beta, and they have posted a guide to make the process go smoothly for players.

You will have noticed by now that we have launched a fresh new website and forums through our publisher Codemasters Online’s existing web space. We’ve done this for numerous reasons, but the most exciting of course is that we’re getting ready for the testing process. We know that this may create some confusion for our existing fanbase, so we wanted to send out a letter to help you through the new registration process and address any concerns that you may have.

In order to prepare for this testing process we need everyone to re-sign up to Beta. We know that this is inconvenient for a lot of you, but we feel that by using the CodeM system, we’ll be able to better select from our pool of applicants. We all want Jumpgate Evolution to be an incredible game and believe that by using this system, the process will go more smoothly.

Read more here.

Cryptic Studios has published a team profile of content designer Brian Gilmore, who talks about what he does in the run of a day and his experiences with the original Champions RPG.

Q: What is your typical workday like?
A: I get into the office in the morning and get all the latest updates to the game. Then I check my schedule and tasks to see what I need to do that day. I'll start the game and then open the editor. And then, I make the greatest MMO content in the world with the best MMO team in the world.

Q: What aspect of Champions Online are you most excited about working on?
A: I'm an old-time Champions player, so I'm excited about everything. In fact, I owe my job at Cryptic, at least in part, to my knowledge of Champions. Seriously &nd