NCsoft has announced their first quarter financials, and their net profit is down 43%. How this happened with Guild Wars doing so well is unclear, but it is partially because NC has been developing MMO games like crazy, we think.

This year's Blizzcon has been officially announced. The event will take place at the Anaheim Convention Center on October 10 and 11. Click read more for the full info.

PRESS RELEASE

MARLOW, UK – 12th May, 2008 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced plans for its third BlizzCon™ gaming convention, to be held at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California on 10 and 11 October. BlizzCon is a celebration of the global player communities surrounding Blizzard Entertainment®’s Warcraft®, StarCraft®, and Diablo® franchises. In response to the demand to accommodate more attendees, this year’s event has expanded from two convention halls to three.

Apparently, ex-subscribers to Lord of the Rings Online have been granted a free chance to revisit the MMO and explore updates made to the game since launch. The "Welcome back to LotRO" campaign, as the free experience is called, runs from May 8 through to May 12.

Codemasters is now making plans to bring development of their MMO games in house. Codemasters currently runs four MMO games with another due later this year. Codemasters now plans to bring development of these games in house in order to help with production and costs.

SOE has worked with many companies to develop their extensive library of MMO games. They arew now working with Warner Brothers, and claim that partnerships are what its all about.


"We all love what we do, so we want to work with people we care about, and on games that we want to play."

Vanguard got off to a real rocky start, but is now going strong, according to SOE. A learning experience for Sony, apparently.

PRESS RELEASE

MESA, Ariz. - April 24, 2008 - Stargate Worlds, the massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) from new publisher FireSky, is now taking registrations for closed beta at www.StargateWorlds.com .

From NCSoft:

MMORPG.com presents an exclusive first look at City of Heroes Lead Writer Joe Morrissey's developer journal telling us about the Midnight Squad, a group of heroes that has appeared in past lore, but makes their first appearance in Issue 12.

From Spellborn:

The RPC (Role-Play Convention) made a big step forward since the last year, particularly on Saturday the convention was very crowed and well attended. On Sunday, due to the sunny weather, most of the visitors were outside at the Medieval Fair, enjoying some RP-battles as well as some music provided by really cool German bands (excellent German beer was flowing).

From Funcom:

Spellweaving has been one of those topics our community wanted to know more about. IGN has an article up giving details about this feature for spellcasters.

From NCSoft:

We’ll have more details as to who will be there and what we will be showing as we get closer to these dates, but we want to give those who may be interested in attending advance notice.

Also, we want to mention that we will be doing a player Meet ‘n Greet in the San Francisco Bay Area in mid to late October this year. We had a great time and received a lot of positive feedback from last year’s Meet ‘n Greet event and we’re excited to be planning for another one this year. We’re still working out the details of the event and we will let you know more about it as we get closer.