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Aventurine's Darkfall has been in development pretty much since the dawn of time (alright, since 2001, but that's not far from the dawn of time for the MMORPG genre), and we have on more than one occassion wondered whether or not those promises of an eventual beta test would be fulfilled. Turns out that for some, they have been.

The developers have posted a large collection of quotes from beta players' feedback. They claim it's representative, and it's mostly (but not all) positive. Sounds like players are impressed with the hugeness of the world and a solid crafting system, but a bit turned off by a complicated and unconventional control scheme. The devs say they're working on it.

If you fall into Darkfall's hardcore Ultima Online-esque PvP niche, feel free to scan through to see what you've apparently been missing out on for the past seven years.

So we heard a couple months ago that The Chronicles of Spellborn would be released in North America and the United Kingdom on November 27th, coinciding with the continental European launch. Turns out it's been pushed back -- kinda. The European launch will still commence on the 27th, but the North American closed beta will begin on that day, with the actual, final launch occurring sometime in January.

Sure, we're a bit disappointed, but chances are we'll still get to play the game soon. Acclaim, the game's publisher in the region, went out of its way in the press release it sent us to stress the "Freemium" business model -- a newbie trial area will be available to all players, who can reach level seven before they have to upgrade to a premium subscription at the usual $15/month rate.

The idea of an unlimited free trial area with a level cap isn't fresh -- both Meridian 59 and EverQuest II have done that, but it's not a bad way to sample a game to decide if you want to invest your hard-earned cash in it. Might be worth trying just for Jesper Kyd's soundtrack

In many respects, watching the MMO industry in Asia is a litmus test of sorts for the western markets. While the preferred game mechanics of your average Korean MMO, for instance, differ markedly from what a North American MMO gamer expects from a title, the broader ideas -- in terms of business models -- represent what may yet be for those of us in North America, Europe, and Australia. So when industry leaders aren't doing well in their primary market, it may not bode well for their smaller titles running in other regions of the world.

We've come across an interesting piece in The Korea Times about some sea changes in Korea's MMO industry, focusing on NCsoft as well as its competitors -- Nexon, Webzen, and Hanbitsoft. We've previously reported that the Aion: The Tower of Eternity beta has, thus far, been quite a success in Korea and is perhaps a ray of hope for NCsoft in some troubled times. NCsoft's fiscal health is a big issue for fans of City of Heroes, Guild Wars, Tabula Rasa, and Lineage II, among others. So it comes as good news that NCsoft has nearly 200,000 concurrent users playing Aion: The Tower of Eternity in beta. The Korea Times, however, describes the country's MMO industry as being in a state of flux.

When it comes to virtual worlds, Massively's main focus to date has clearly been on Second Life, but we're also interested in some of the other choices that are becoming available to residents in virtual spaces. Blue Mars from Avatar Reality is one that's caught our eye -- it's a sci-fi themed virtual world, set on a terraformed Mars in the year 2177 AD. The potential is there to have some stunning visuals, as Blue Mars is built on CryEngine2, best known for giving Crysis its look.

The official Avatar Reality site lists a beta release for the end of 2008, but they've told Eurogamer that Blue Mars enters beta in January 2009. "The first-time developer expects this to last for around three months, before the full game launches in April," Eurogamer's Rob Purchese reports.

While we had some grim news related to NCsoft's dip in profits yesterday, there may be a silver lining to this, in the form of Aion: The Tower of Eternity. A press release from NCsoft states that the Aion beta has surpassed all previous records for a beta test in Korea: "Concurrent user numbers have already jumped to more than 170,000 players, making it the most popular beta event in Korean history." That's a significant achievement, given how mature the market is in Korea. 11,000 people were logged into the Aion beta only two minutes after service began and hit 40,000 players within an hour. The rapid influx of players necessitated NCsoft having 25 servers running to accommodate them.

David Reid, president of publishing for NCsoft West in Seattle said, "The response we're seeing in Korea is incredibly exciting. Our Aion community in North America and Europe is rapidly growing. We've got aggressive plans for the western launch in 2009." On the subject of Aion's launch, the press release lists Korea's commercial launch as being just a few weeks away. As Reid stated, the North American and European Aion launches are set for 2009, but NCsoft hasn't nailed down a specific launch date for these markets at this time.

It looks like the sci-fi MMO genre is going to experience quite an influx of new titles in the months and years to come. Beyond the more standard sci-fi MMOs we've reported on in the past, one that's caught our attention at Massively is the upcoming post-apocalyptic title, Earthrise. It seems that beta testing is going to begin "in autumn", as confirmed by Masthead Studios CEO Atanas Atanasov in an interview with Polish MMO-centric gaming site The Art of MMO.

While the interview brought to light some interesting revelations about Earthrise as a sandbox MMO, it also nailed down some details such as the system requirements to run the title: minimum requirements are 2 GHz CPU, 1024 MB RAM and 256 MB VRAM video card supporting shader model v3.0, according to Atanasov. But the interview also gives confirmations about guild-based PvP (which Atanasov refers to as 'Guild-vs-Guild' or 'GvG'), character advancement, and the roleplaying opportunities he sees being available to players in the Earthrise sandbox. Check out the entire English version of the interview over at The Art of MMO for more on this title.

Korean-owned developer YNK Interactive has just announced that their free-to-play MMO Rohan: Blood Feud has just reached 500,000 registered players in the game's open beta. We first reported on Rohan earlier this year when the beta had begun, and we got some extensive hands-on time with the game.

"I'm thrilled to have hit the half million mark, and still counting", said Jun Lee, CEO of YNK Interactive. "As we continue to expand the game, so are we expanding our community base. We look forward to continuing to announce milestones like this in the months and years ahead." You can find out more information on the game and register for open beta on the Rohan: Blood Feud main site.

In probably one of the most entertaining dev diaries we've ever read, Turbine's Tim "Raskolnikov" Lang gives us a look into what is involved with creating the new creatures in Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria, and more on the upcoming changes arriving with the expansion.

The entire monster creation process is explained step-by-step, which would ordinarily be extremely boring, yet "Man-Bat", as Lang is affectionately called, provides a humorous Q&A throughout the entire diary. That certainly doesn't mean that this eight-page article isn't packed with useful info though, as it gives us plenty of new information on the upcoming monster features we have to look forward to in Moria.

Throughout WoW Insider's extensive coverage of the Wrath of the Lich King beta for World of Warcraft, the "Ask a Beta Tester" feature has answered some interesting questions and given us some insightful information for those not lucky enough to be in the beta.

However, unless you're actually in the beta yourself, it's hard to ask just the right questions. Even some of the basic fundamental questions might go unasked, while players focused in on the hardcore topics. So WoW Insider goes through some of the questions that they wish they'd been asked during the lifetime of the now-deceased Wrath beta. Check out the full article for answers to such questions as "What's the most tempting thing to do as soon as you get Cold Weather Flying?" and "What's the biggest difference between Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King?"

It's all over. Now we wait. After decades (ok, so it may not have been that long), the Wrath of the Lich King beta has finally ended this morning at 2am EST. According to the official announcement released last night, "In preparation for the launch of the game next Thursday, November 13, we will be bringing down our beta realms at 12:00 AM PST. Thanks again, and see you soon in Northrend! "

This last minute announcement inevitably rubbed a few people the wrong way. Why was there no end-beta event? Why wasn't there more advanced notice? Does Blizzard even owe the players anything more than they gave? It is a beta, afterall. These are all questions flooding the forums today, and we'd like to know how you feel about it. Let us know in the comments below!

If you've been following along with our coverage of Masthead Studios' Earthrise, you may be pleased to hear that the post-apocalyptic MMO will be entering "closed, limited beta" by the end of the year. That gives us a time frame of just under two months!

What do they still need to tweak before the beta launches? According to the most recent newsletter, they're integrating features and working on the RPG system, PhysX, improved character control and collision detection, implemented game UI with complete functionality, performance and hardware information gathering, logs and reports. Check out the entire Issue 6 of the Earthrise newsletter for even more information.

Turbine continues with their ongoing Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria teasers through this week's newest batch of official screenshots. This time we get to see some great shots from The Waterworks area, located in the southwestern-most region of the Mines of Moria. Plus, we get treated to a few more shots from The Flaming Deeps, located just to the east of it. Both of these regions are considered moderate-to-difficult from what we've experienced in the beta, and these screenshots do a great job of showing just a few of the areas' features.

You can see these screenshots linked below, and be sure to check through our entire Mines of Moria gallery for much more of the gorgeousness from the upcoming expansion.

NCsoft has just announced that the highly-anticipated Aion: The Tower of Eternity MMO will be entering open beta in Korea on November 11th of this year. Not only is this exciting news for Koreans, but also for the rest of the world, as it means our betas are drawing near. NCsoft addresses this in a recent press release: "We are currently in the process of localizing and culturalizing the game for the western market in order to reach the same level of quality that the game provides for the western world, and are in heavy planning for our testing phases in North America and Europe. We are taking the utmost care in the localization process and we're dedicated to releasing the very best product in NCsoft West territories. With the ball now rolling, expect to hear much more, and see much more out of Aion in the coming months."

To help us get even more excited about this game, they've sent along 2 new videos and a ton of new wallpapers in our gallery below. The first video is a CG cinematic (second video down), and the next video is an amazing 4-minute walk through some breathtaking in-game footage. This game is obviously much more than just winged combat, as these videos will prove.

Among all the current Second Life kerfuffle and protests going on about unexpected price-rises and policy changes surrounding certain categories of virtual land, it might have been forgotten that Vivox is preparing to release the SLim lightweight instant messenger system, and Linden Lab is preparing a Second Life viewer that is able to communicate with it.

The release of the former, and the first-look version of the latter appears to be very close now. We got our hands on both (as they appear to be available for download now), and took them for a bit of a spin to see how they might have improved over the demonstration versions that were temporarily available earlier this year.

If you've been following along at home, you should have a pretty good idea of what Mines of Moria's Rune-keeper is all about, thanks to a previous Turbine dev diary and the coverage we've given you from our beta experiences. But what about advanced game mechanics with this new class? How will you go beyond simply playing the Rune-keeper and advance to mastering the Rune-keeper?

Well Turbine is here to help us with this once again. In a recent dev diary, the design team explains the best roles for this new class, and elaborates on the most effective ways to nuke or heal, depending on the situation. Plus, each skill's description is explained as they relate to each Trait path. Check out the complete 10-page article for all you'll ever want to know about mastering your Rune-keeper.