LOTRO, Lord of the Rings Online, is having a special weekend for previous players. If you have played this game before you will be able to log on with your account and play free through May 8th to May 12th. There’s been plenty of new updates since this game started a year ago. They also have a special new pricing for this month. You can pay for a 3, 6 or 12 month plan and get the special pricing of $9.99 a month! You can also pay for a lifetime subscription for $199. I’m sure there will be new players trying it out but I think AOC, Age of Conan, beta will still be a big draw for ones who have their key. I was lucky enough to get a key and I’ll be reviewing it soon.

• LOTRO Welcome Back Page

It’s coming. Oh yes it is. WiiWare is set to release on May 12th (date above was for Japan) for the United States and people that own Nintendo’s always sold-out next generation console are already getting itchy. If you’ve never heard of WiiWare (and I hope this isn’t true), is Nintendo’s calling to independent development sold on an Internet channel. Anywhere between $5-15USD is the projected pricing and it seems like there’s a whole slew of games out there that is being developed for WiiWare. Once this goes up, Xbox Marketplace will be having a run for its money depending on how Nintendo launches this product.

My thoughts? Nintendo, while cautious, has been pumping out major winners day in and day out. Outside of their usual franchises of Mario and Zelda, they’re also harnessing the Wii as a special controller sector, with the Wii Fit. WiiWare is definitely going to be a good move, and if they start to play this right, there really could be some awesome things come out of this. I believe that Nintendo needs to play this very carefully and eye the MMORPG marketplaces that are extremely popular in Asia, and inject it into their current product.

Regardless? I can’t wait. Oh yeah. More Wii fun.

Photo Credit: (Gamespot)

We split the revenue earned from this blog based on the number of posts/activity from the various VTOR authors and all monies this month have been paid in $USD. The following are the figures compiled for April 2008.

Based on a total of 11 posts and after site expenses the VTOR blog earned in March 2008: $28.94 USD. Our group elected to put Linden$500 or 5%, whichever is greater each month into a promotional fund which equals this month’s contribution: L$500 and a total promotional balance of: Linden$5,182. This left a balance to be split among those who posted in the group of: $27.07 USD as shown below.

# of posts - VTOR Author
February 2008
4 - Darius……..…………………….……= 36.36% = $9.84 USD
4 - Evansmom …….………….……….= 36.36% = $9.84 USD
2 - TD Goodliffe….….…………..……= 18.18% = $4.92 USD
1 - JohnnyRS….….……………..……= 9.09% = $2.47 USD
=====================
11 total posts …………………..…..=100% = $27.07

To learn more about VTOReality.com and the authors visit the VTOR about page. If you’re interested in becoming one of the VTOR authors contact TD Goodliffe inside Second Life for details.

One of my latest time-wasting work-avoidance schemes, besides Second Life, Facebook and email, is Twitter, the micro-blogging site that is either the ne plus ultra of social media/networking/communication or the shiny new toy of the moment, or both. With Twitter, you post a 140-character-max update, or comment, or reply, or provocative statement. And one of my favorite follows is SecondLie Swindlen, whose posts are dead-on parodies of all things Linden, especially the Official Second Life Blog posts. I suppose I should try to figger out who he is in SL or RL, but I guess I don’t want to destroy the illusion with too much reality.

A sampling of recent posts (or “tweets” in Twitterspeak):

“Don’t think of it as ‘SLCC will be in Florida during Hurricane Season.’ Instead, just imagine the evacuation order as a rolling restart. ” (SLCC is the Second Life Community Convention, 5-7 September in Tampa this year, where SL mashes up with RL.)

“Problems with your Land Radio? IM Fonzie Linden, he’ll tp in, and he’ll bop it with his fist. Heyyyy…. problem solved. ”

“[RESOLVED] Sorry about Linden water levels rising to 50 meters. Someone turned the A/C off in the datacenter and the polar icecaps melted.”

“The Federal Reserve cut the federal funds rate down to 2 percent today meaning… oh, just shut up and click Buy Lindens, will you?”

“[UPDATE] No, you’re not dead. We just turned everything Phantom by mistake. Hold on for a few minutes, we’ll deal with that after Oprah.”

“SecondLie Department Of Pubic Works: We’re ready to defile the new continent with roads. Got any mob informants you need buried under them?”

“ [UPDATE] Hold on… (Thirty days hath September, Apr-) OH CRAP! Um… billing and stipends are going to be… um… kinda… ARGGHHHHH!”

My suggestion? Sign up for Twitter, then click here to follow SecondLie so you can see what he’s up to. And on the serious side, you can also follow the real blog here and get grid status reports here.

A new steampunk MMO is in town.

Developed by WindySoft, Rusty Hearts is an amazing side scroller that gives a pseudo three-quarters angle and plays like a console game. If the trailer is anything to sneeze at, then this game is definitely going to attract those that are into playing the those Capcom style games where you go on a quest and there’s a lot of linearity in how it goes. With a mix and match of great movie sequences, this could really turn the tables on usual MMOs where you just “perform some quest” instead of doing the whole movie/fight/movie/fight type action like in many RPGs.

First closed beta will be during the second half of the year. Can’t wait. It looks easy enough to pick up without having to go through a lot of nitty gritty stuff with a high learning curve (can we say, SoTN?). Needless to say, when you have time to sit down with a game, you want one that is just plain visually stimulating without too much thought behind it. After all it’s entertainment. RH looks like it definitely could provide that.

Here are some MMO news I wanted to write about but didn’t.

Yesterday Book 13 was added to LOTRO, Lord Of the Rings Online. This was a new free update with a brand new area to explore. Fishing was introduced as a hobby also. I don’t want to go through too many details yet before I can review it. I still am working on a review of book 12. I just have to say I’m not a happy camper with some changes in this new book.

• Read the press release here

Last month it was reported that Warhammer Online will be delayed until the fall of 2008. Many people have been looking forward to this game and I hope this delay will make the release as good as it can be. You can already pre-order this game and get into the beta.

• Read about the delay and collector’s edition in their march newsletter.

There is some good news about another big MMO coming out. Age Of Conan beta will be starting next month in May! You can preorder the game now and get in the beta or try to get a beta key from online. Fileplanet.com and Mmorpg.com has ways to get you a key before the start! I’m trying to get one just so I can try it out. Not sure if it will be a game I decide to pay and play.

• Fileplanet.com is giving out keys every day!
• MMORPG contest is giving a chance to get a key

He’s Mark Kingdon, CEO of Organic, a digital communications agency, alias Marcus Voom, now alias M Linden as soon as he takes the reins on May 15.

Linden Labs announced the appointment today in a remarkably dry and unimaginative press release, which you can read here if you want. But if you want a more SL-centric account, turn to Reuters’ version here, which at least provides Kingdon’s SL names (first Marcus, his freebie avie on an account he launched in January 2007, and now M Linden, with a profile that reveals nothing but his avie and RL pics).

Apparently, Kingdon was the one who set off the marketer stampede into SL with a column he wrote for the marketing Web site ClickZ (read it here). I remember that column well, because it ran shortly after I wandered into SL to check out the now-vanished Aloft hotel build.
“If Second Life was on the periphery of your marketing initiatives, as blogs or social networks might have been a year ago, it’s now time to take a closer look at the opportunities and risks associated with this experiential medium,” he wrote, apparently before actually going in-world himself. He also cited a Vancouver Sun article claiming that SL’s primary demographic groups, at the time, were at-home moms and young professionals. It is to laugh.

Here’s the new boss, who at least has a nice customized avatar:

And it gets delayed. Again.

Sony’s PS3 Home community was supposed to come out last fall in a open beta for everyone, but currently has been pushed back to this fall. From here, the perspective seems pretty bad for Sony. While I’ve been a fanboy for a long time and will continue to do so, coming out with the online community last out of the next-generation consoles is not really the placement where Sony would want to be.

In fact, this means that not only with Microsoft’s Xbox Live Marketplace continue to firm up its grasp, but it also means that Nintendo’s WiiWare arena will now have a chance to solidify its placement also when it releases. And while the entire hoopla about it looking like a nice Second Life was interesting when it first was leaked… it’s losing its spark quickly. This means that the community online interface MUST have a superior wow effect to gain back interest. Having seen some of the closed beta things, it seems to be pretty mild mannered.

That alongside the current downturn of SL type gaming might spell a negative consumer market coming for Sony Home. Let’s be honest. The amount of VTOR authors that play SL have dwindled. And with that, the novelty of virtual life outside an MMORPG arena might actually have lost the momentum that it could have had if Sony had released this beta when it said it wanted to previously.

As stories continue to filter out from the latest Virtual Worlds Conference, it’s clear that the buzz around virtual worlds as a business or marketing venture has entered what I call Phase Three of Media Groupthink, mainly that they can work if they’re done right.

The publicity about Second Life is classic of this three-phase arc of media groupthink. Phase One is “Coolest thing in the world!” Phase Two is, variably, “(Blank) is dead/overrated/a waste of time.” News stories that indicate Phase Three has launched usually have headlines that include the phrase “A Second Look at ….”

The benefit of being in Phase Three is that we get more clear-eyed new and analysis pieces like the one that ran this week in eMarketer, a respected daily marketing news and research Web site and email newsletter: “A Second Look at Virtual Worlds” reports statistics on in-world use in Second Life and virtual worlds in general, as well as what works and what doesn’t work for businesses trying either to gain a toehold in an established virtual world or to start their own. Definitely worth reading if you need bar charts for a presentation.

This morning I created a monster — literally — called Ugami at MoshiMonsters.com which is in beta and is free to play. Process was quick and bug-free. Just pick from one of several different monster types, pick a main color and a sub color (blue and lime green for Ugami), name your monster, agree to the monster adoption rules (see below) and then provide your owner name.

Once your monster has been created and ‘adopted’ then it’s time to play a game or go shopping in town (click on the door in your home) and buy some food and goodies to put in your home.

The food for the monster looks pretty goopy and gnarly and can be bought using Rox, the official in-game currency. You can earn more Rox by playing puzzles once a day located with a big red button next to the door in your monster’s home. There are other games located in town. I played one puzzler that reminded me a bit of Hexic on the Xbox 360.

You can do other things like pin notes to a corkboard and add friends. Your monster starts out at Level 1 and is Z-list. As your monster becomes more experienced, you can rise up to A-List status.

My home is located here, feel free to stop by and add me as your friend when you check it out:
http://www.moshimonsters.com/monsters/tdavid

Have fun!