Dragon Master Evan, the latest character to hit MapleStory is now available! Evan is an interesting character, because as you'd expect he is a dragon master, and so he fights alongside his own dragon, Mir.

Find out more about Dragon Master Evan here.

Today, MMORPG.com is pleased to present these new Trooper class screenshots from Bioware's upcoming MMORPG, Star Wars: the Old Republic.

Check out the Trooper Screenshots.

MMORPG.com's Garrett Fuller recently had the opportunity to test drive the Trooper class in Bioware's upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO.

During this year's GDC I got a chance to head out to the super secret LucasArts headquarters for a sit down and demo of their much-anticipated upcoming MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic. We have interviews and further coverage coming later, but for now, we wanted to give you a look into the game from the player's point of view. Being that the demo time was short and only the Trooper class was available for play at the moment, I'll do my best to give you a feel of the game and talk about some of the abilities the Trooper showed off while blasting away at thugs in Ord Mandell.

The characters we were given for the demo were already specced out and equipped with some pretty good gear. We were not max level by any means, and started by running around on the planet of Ord Mandell. The customization options must be widely varied, because my Trooper looked like he ate one too many burgers while sitting in some intergalatic diner.

Read GDC 2010: Hands On With The Trooper.

MMORPG.com columnist Justin Webb attended this year's Game Developers Conference and took in the seminar presented by famous novelist and current MMO developer R.A. Salvatore. Today, Justin fills us in on Salvatore's love of a hardcore death penalty and the fact that death and resurrection will be directly addressed in 38 Studios' Copernicus.

One of the highlights at this year’s GDC was R.A. Salvatore’s talk about world design. While he stressed that the talk was about his personal gaming opinions, and that we shouldn’t assume that anything he talked about would be in “Copernicus”, he did drop one nugget regarding 38 Studio’s upcoming MMO, a system feature called the Well of Souls, which I’ll get to later.

Much of Bob’s talk revolved around ensuring that players feel like they are heroes. And many of his opinions were filtered through an old-school love of Everquest, which is understandable. All of us MMO players have a soft spot for our first game. It’s a cross between imprinting and a rose-tinted nostalgia for your first love. You are willing to overlook all kinds of things that are wrong with your first sweetheart. And for Bob, his first MMO love was Everquest.

Read Pacman Jesus and the Well of Souls.

Eurogamer is reporting that EA's Chief Banker Eric Brown has described Star Wars: The Old Republic as Electronic Arts' "largest ever development project, period, in the history of the company".

No specifics on The Old Republics budget were provided, but Mr. Brown mentioned that a typical EA project (non-MMO) runs around $30 million, with any MMO costing well above that. As a point of reference, World of Warcraft cost Blizzard $100 million to make. World of Warcraft generates that amount of cash every month nowadays, and as Eurogamer notes, EA is obviously interested in recouping costs the same way.

A pretty big gamble, but we're (hopefully) only a year away from finding out.

Read the full story over at Eurogamer.

That unnamed update that's slated to release somewhere between March 18th and March 31st on the Star Trek Online Release Calendar? Yeah. It's got a name now.

IGN is reporting on the announcement of Season 1: Common Ground, Star Trek Online's first major content update. Common Ground will include: a trio of Lifetime Subscriber bonuses, Federation vs. Federation PvP, a new ground PvP scenario, new character customization options including off-duty uniforms, new Klingon ships and Klingon ship customization options, new fleet actions, new skills, and additions to the C-Store including new bridge and Federation ship variants.

Phew! 

Get the full details over at IGN.

[Thanks Thorgrimm for the tip!]

The APB Video Podcast series continues with episode #17. This latest entry to the podcast series features APB Audio Lead Roland Peddie answering questions from the community regarding the in-game music creator.

Watch the video here.

CCP Games has licensed Unreal Engine 3 to power DUST 514, the console FPS tie-in to their wildly successful sci-fi MMOG EVE Online.

CCP has also announced that they have entered a joint-development agreement with Geomerics to integrate their Enlighten real-time radiosity lighting tech with Unreal technology.

View the full press release here.

[Thanks Kost for the tip!]

Gala-Net has announced that the Open Beta for Aika will begin next Tuesday, March 16th! All six classes will be available in the beta, along with all content from levels 1-50, a full range of PvP options, and a player-run political system.

Additional details below:

New and returning Aika fans will be able to access a regular lineup of the exciting PvP events introduced during CB. Invading nations continuously attempt to steal valuable relics from their rivals in 1000 vs. 1000 battles, while weekly Castle Sieges pit guild against guild in a bloody struggle for political dominance. A diverse range of class-specific riding mounts will be accessible to players starting from level 40, from the Warrior's war hamster to the Dual Gunner's hoverbike.

Players will also be able to benefit from an expanded Arcan economy by buying and selling rare items across all five nations through the auction house.

Sign up for the beta test here.

This week's Friday Update adds yet another planet to the roster of planets that will be featured in Star Wars: The Old Republic, bringing the new total to a whopping 11 planets.

The newest addition is the glacial world of Belsavis, a prison-world  housing some of the galaxy's most dangerous Sith Lords, Mandalorians and vicious aliens. A Republic world, the Empire has recently discovered Belsavis'  existence and seeks to liberate its allies from Republic imprisonment.

Check out Belsavis' HoloNet entry here.

In addition to the new planet, BioWare has also announced a new webcomic entitled "Blood of the Empire." BioWare has teamed up with Dark Horse comics once again to publish this new webcomic series, which will feature a new perspective and a strong character-driven story written by BioWare's Senior Writer Alexander Freed.

View a sneak peek of the new webcomic here.

Looking to celebrate the success of the Allods Online Open Beta test, gPotato has released an official trailer for their free-to-play MMORPG Allods Online.

Watch the trailer here.

The folks at Massively spoke to Star Trek Online Executive Producer Craig Zinkievich at this year's Game Developers Conference and managed to score some tasty information: new playable factions will be coming to Star Trek Online this year.

So what factions are coming? They aren't sure yet, though Craig does admit many of the development team are interested in introducing Romulans to the game:

There's a huge amount of the dev team right now interested in doing Romulan. I think the Borg would be really interesting as just something totally different, totally different gameplay. There are a lot of really cool mechanics, a lot of really cool things you can do there. Really, if you're in the MMO for the long haul, there are going to be a lot more playable factions, you can't stop with those two. There's Jem'Hadar, you're going to be going to the Dominion, there's Cardassians [...] so many playable factions that we can and will be releasing with the game.

Craig also dated the next major update for Star Trek Online for this July, which will be followed by yet another large update possibly around November.

Via Massively.

[Thanks Eric M. for the tip!]

Yesterday, we reported on FFXIVCore's bonanza of FFXIV information revealed in this month's issue of Famitsu. That post has since been updated with info on several more classes as well as the game's battle theme. FFXIVCore has also posted a translation of a lengthy interview from Japanese magazine Dengeki on FFXIV.

Image Credit: FFXIVCore

The interview discusses a number of general game mechanics, with one notable highlight being the strong emphasis on distance, range, and direction in battle:

Q: About how many people make up your average party? Do alliances exist?

A: The average party will probably be between six and eight people, but there are many flexible ways to adventure where you can go out with more or less people than that, and even play solo. Of course, we also have something like alliances in the works. Battles are planned to be party-versus-party oriented. Battles are not so much focused on dealing direct damage as they are on finding the right position to attack from for the best attacks. First, you’ll have to find the best distance and method of attack, and then the trick will be to keep that positioning. This is important not just for damage and accuracy, but also for certain attack effects (like the pole arms ability to stop an enemy’s movement) and other things in battle. Also, and this is true especially for the magic classes, but there are many skill and spells that have special types of effect areas (like the conjurers’ circle and the thaumaturges’ cone). Not only that, but the position of the focus of the effect, be it yourself or another target, also becomes important. Furthermore, direction is also a factor. Hitting the enemy’s blind spot, calling an enemy’s attention to a certain direction, and other things will all have an effect on the battle. “Distance,” “range,” and “direction” are the most important themes in battle in FFXIV, and intermediate to advanced players will always want to have these things in mind.

Information on the alpha and beta test was also revealed, and many of the classes were the subject of several smaller Q&A's.

Check out the information overload over at FFXIVCore.

TQ Digital has announced that Conquer Online will see the release of its third expansion this April, coinciding with the game's 7th year anniversary.

The team at TQ Digital solicited players for their input on what they'd like to see in the game during the game's 2010 New Year's Resolution event, and the "Legends Return" expansion is the result of that feedback. The new expansion contains a new skill system, high end loot, new guild wars, a number of new dungeons and quests, a new Monk class, and more!

Legends Return is going to be released in several chapters, the first of which, Shadow of Darkness, will be released in April.

Details below:

In Chapter 1, the first release of the Legends Return expansion, the Shadow of Darkness will throw players into an age of chaos and destruction. An ancient legend has told of special sub-classes that will be recovered when evil befalls the land, and now that prophecy has been fulfilled. New skills and fabled weapons were recently unearthed by thieves, but their blind lust for gold has seen them unwittingly help an incredibly powerful, unspeakably evil demon rise from the very pits of hell.

For more information on Conquer Online visit the game's official site here.

We've got a number of new screenshots of En Masse Entertainment's TERA: The Exiled Realm of Arborea straight out of GDC 2010!

Check out the new shots in our TERA gallery.

MMORPG.com's Carolyn Koh spoke to Free Realms' Lead Animator Floyd Bishop in this latest interview discussing the challenges and benefits of animating a game targeted at children.

In the second of this series of interviews with SOE developers, about the differences in designing for adults and children, we speak with Floyd Bishop, a Senior Artist working on Free Realms and its lead animator. Floyd has over ten years of experience as an animator, having worked in film, television, commercials, and games, and I was curious to know what he had worked on and how different it was.

“I was a character animator for the first Ice Age movie and also for many commercials,” said Floyd. “With BottleRocket Entertainment, I was animating for a mature title where the ‘Wow factor’ was how visceral we could make the disemboweling but with Free Realms, our ‘Wow factor’ is all about the funniest pet tricks.”

Read the full interview here.

MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood reports on a lecture at this year's Game Developers Conference given by EVE Online's Lead Economist Dr. Eyjo on how CCP fights RMT in EVE Online.

The Game Developers Conference always gives reporters like those of us at MMORPG.com the opportunity to meet up with a large number of developers at the same time to conduct interviews and take part in demonstrations. So much so that we occasionally lose scope on the fact that this show is actually about developers getting together to share their successes and failures with one another all in the hopes of making the games industry that much stronger.

It is with that in mind that we sat in on a lecture given by EVE Online’s Lead Economist, affectionately known as Dr. Eyjo. While we’re most used to hearing the good doctor (PhD, not MD) talk directly about the game’s economy, today he was talking about Real Money Traders and the various strategies that CCP has been using to combat them.

Read GDC 2010: Fighting RMT.

MMORPG.com's Garrett Fuller got a look at En Masse Entertainment's action packed MMOG TERA at this year's Game Developers Conference and reports back with the details in the this first look preview.

This week at GDC we got a chance to see En Masse Entertainment’s newest AAA MMO TERA. The game has been known for a while and is currently in its third closed beta in Korea. It is currently being worked on to bring over to the Western audience as well. TERA is a new subscription based MMO that offers lush graphics and intense action MMO gameplay. The core development team previously worked on Lineage II, and with TERA they are seeking to develop an MMO that can crossover and bridge the gap between Eastern and Western tastes.

Read the full preview here.

Player Perspectives columnist Jaime Skelton writes this latest article looking back on the history of GM interactions with players and how they can no longer be as cool as they once were.

GMs used to be cool. I don't mean that the current GMs across the world of MMOs are all dull, lifeless drones in small cubicles with no love for gaming. I mean that, in the majority of cases, game masters have been stripped of the ability to have fun and do the things that players can love them for. While the people behind the specially marked names may be awesome gamers, often they must suppress their inner geek and put on a suit of cold professionalism.

It didn't used to be this way. There were days when GMs were generally loved by a server's populace because the greatest among them were able to do great, fun things for their server's and game's community. GMs had the ability to run in-game events unsupervised, the ability to teleport at will, to chat with players outside of problem solving, to have a public presence to let their personalities shine and offer a new dimension to the game. There were, of course, the spoil-sports of the GM world: the cold professionals who played by the rules and wanted nothing to do with “the customers.” There were many more, however, who made names for themselves.

Read I Can't Be Cool.