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You may remember the announcement this summer from the cable channel SCI FI about their collaboration with Trion World Network to create the first-ever television series connected with an MMO. While this news perked the interest of many gamers and SCI FI fans, we have only heard sprinkles of news here and there about the project.

Today, both companies announced the hiring of two new top industry talents for this MMO/TV show project. One is Kevin Beardslee, who you may know as a founder of Carbine Studios and a former developer on Blizzard's World of Wacraft. He will act as the Senior Development Director for the game half of the project. For the television side, Peter Egan (no relation to our own James Egan) will be writing the pilot episode on SCI FI. His previous work includes Playmakers (ESPN), Over There (FX Network), Medium, Medical Investigation (both on NBC) and SCI FI's own The Dresden Files. We wish both men the best of luck in their roles with this new innovative project.

In a recent interview with Allakhazam, BioWare's Sean Dahlberg discusses their newest MMO project, Star Wars: The Old Republic. As Community Manager for the project, Dahlberg was able to give some great insight into the game's storyline and direction, or at least as much as he could say for now.

One particularly interesting part of this interview is the discussion on PvP. As Allakhazam points out, the Republic and Sith Empire are not exactly friendly towards each other, so PvP would be an obvious game feature. Dahlberg explains that PvP is definitely part of the game, yet points out that TOR "is not looking to be the jack-of-all-trades game. Instead, we are going to focus on what we do best and make sure the game and all its elements are fun and entertaining." He goes on to explain away what may have sounded like a suggestion that the game will be PvP-heavy by saying, "TOR will offer fun and rewarding gameplay no matter what your play style is. If you're not a PvPer at heart, there are definitely other things within the game to do."

Sounds very promising, and we're excited to hear more about the game, and relay it all to you, when more news becomes available.

The second Stargate Worlds community newsletter has descended upon us, and with it comes what can only be described as a sweet crocodile Jaffa armor. We also get a peek at some Jaffa abilities such as Ground Blast and Kree!, an AoE knock-back and mez ability. Of course, a community newsletter wouldn't be complete without some sort of video to sink our teeth into and CME doesn't disappoint here with the YouTube insider page for Stargate Worlds. Since its launch, this page has become packed with all sorts of clips for fans to ravenously consume.

We're quite curious about what other sorts of Jaffa armors are in store for this game. Our vote goes towards a Beagle armor, because who'd want to mess with a face like this? Like the saying goes, "Always let a Beagle win."

The numbers are in and Blizzard has broken their own record once again. After selling 2.8 million copies in 24 hours, World of Warcraft's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, has set the record as the fastest-selling PC game of all time, according to Blizzard. The irony is that the previous record holder was also Blizzard with their first WoW expansion, The Burning Crusade, which sold 2.4 million on the January 2007 launch day.

Blizzard's CEO and co-founder, Mike Morhaime, commented on the occasion, "We're grateful for the incredible support that players around the world have continued to show for World of Warcraft." Now the company is setting its sights on breaking the next record of 3.5 million copies sold in the first month; a record also set by The Burning Crusade. At this pace, they should easily break that next week.

As we noted yesterday, The Agency isn't canceled. Despite that mixup from Gamefly's automated notification system, the FPS/spy title from the SOE Seattle studio is still going strong. Joystiq spoke with the SOE subsidiary briefly yesterday, and we had the chance to do so as well. Being the MMO nerds that we are, we just had to go a bit outside the scope of this latest mixup - mechanics are far more interesting than drama!

Join us as we talk over the current state of The Agency's development with the animated and always-interesting lead designer Hal Milton. Hal shares with us a bit of insight into what they're currently working on, give us a few fun facts to chew on, and makes us actually look forward to next year's summer con season. We didn't think anything could do that. Spy social engineering at work!

Read on below the cut for our full discussion.

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.

Over the last week or so we've been asking you how you've managed to decide between the big releases hitting the MMO genre these days. Last week's Lich King launch, followed by this week's launches of EverQuest 2: The Shadow Odyssey and Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria seem like challenging decisions for the fan of the MMO genre. We're not going to ask you how you picked, though, because we think we know how you decided which game to play. Like Codex and Zaboo up there, you hang out online where your friends are. At least, we think you do.

So our question this morning is, first, do you decide which MMO to play based on where your friends are? Second, how important are other people to your continued MMO gaming? If your friends weren't playing the game they are, would you be? How much does the directly social nature of massively multiplayer games affect your gameplay? Let us know, and good luck making those hard choices!

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

Rumors abound that Sony Online Entertainment's MMO-in-development, The Agency, has been cancelled. This stems from a GameFly email sent out that the title is now removed from GameQ's, with the explanation message that "For unreleased titles, the game has been canceled by its publisher... We apologize for any disappointment this may cause. If you have any questions, please contact us."

Well that's exactly what our sister site PS3 Fanboy did. Only they went right to SOE, not Gamefly, to check on The Agency's status. Andrew Yoon from PS3 Fanboy confirmed with SOE's Katie Hanson that the project is, indeed, alive. So there you have it. The Agency has not been targeted for assassination. You can check out the declassified intel over at PS3 Fanboy.

The folks at Kotaku were tipped by a reader to the possibility of a new twist in the MMO console wars. The popular job board/want ads service Craigslist is currently playing host to a job posting from Cryptic Studios. Developer of Star Trek Online and Champions Online, the company already has deep roots in development for the Xbox 360. They've shown their second superhero game playing quite well on Microsoft's console at events all through the summer con season. Now it seems as though they're looking to bring those games to the PlayStation 3 as well.

The Craigslist listing specifically calls for a "PS3 Engine Programmer", and the job description includes daily duties touching on the company's massively multiplayer games. "We have developed a flexible, cutting edge MMO platform to power games like Champions and Star Trek Online. It runs on PC and XBOX 360 - now we want to support PS3 too." Kotaku labels this as a rumor, and rightly so; no confirmation or announcement from Cryptic means that this may be nothing more than fact-finding.

When they're not donating their time to host charitable events like Pwning for a Cure, to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, the good folks at Hi-Rez Studios are creating some gorgeous concept art for their upcoming MMO Global Agenda. As you may remember from our hands-on time with the game, Global Agenda is a fast-paced action MMO using Unreal® Engine 3 set in Earth's near future, a spy-fi world of advanced technology and player-driven conflict. These concept images represent the type of exotic and futuristic locations that players and player-run groups will visit as they compete in a global conflict for territory, resources and advanced technology.

These first three images are only the tip of the iceberg on what's to come with new concept art out of Hi-Rez. Keep a close eye on our entire Global Agenda Concept Art and Screenshot gallery linked below for more from the Hi-Rez team very soon.

New concept art has been announced for BioWare's recent MMO project Star Wars: The Old Republic. This new concept art shows a few new character, weapon and environmental designs such as as Assassin Droid, a Medical Droid, a Jedi and Sith Lightsaber, a few forms of the Blaster, Jedi and Sith scenery, buildings and more.

Plus, the team has also added ten new forum avatars to their community section. These new avatars allow you to customize your profile with even more races, additional female options, and Republic and Empire allegiance icons. Head on over to the SWTOR forums for more information, and check out the new concept art added to our SWTOR Concept Art Gallery linked below.

Despite the poor condition of the global economy these days, Ubisoft's president and CEO Yves Guillemot is optimistic about the amazing year that 2009 will bring for video game software sales. As he told investors at a BMO Capital Markets conference, "If we look at this industry, one thing to consider is that when hardware sales are peaking, software sales are peaking 18 months later."

One highlight of Ubisoft's expected growth next year is the release of the Avatar MMO. Now, keep in mind that this isn't an MMO based on the Nickelodeon show Avatar: The Last Airbender. This online game will be based on James Cameron's Avatar feature film set to release in December of 2009, and will most likely release in conjunction with the film. The game (and movie) will be based around a plotline where "a man tries to make his way as a miner by combining with an alien during an interplanetary war in which aliens can manifest themselves by possessing human bodies – avatars." Considering the fact that we've heard next to nothing else about this MMO, it should be interesting to see if it will release before or after the film's release.

We get a double whammy today from Turbine, as they've just released five new screenshots and a new developer diary video for Lord of the Rings Online's Mines of Moria. The screenshots are all from Silvertine Lodes, one of the new areas releasing with the Mines of Moria expansion on Tuesday.

In the video diary, Art Director Harry Teasley and Lead World Designer Matt Elliott talk about how they built the Mines of Moria and how important it was to get everything just right, according to the lore. As they point out in the video, "Moria is really the inspiration for every dungeon adventure, in every game, since the advent of RPGs." Check out the new screenshots in the gallery below, and the video just after the cut.