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The story leading up to the beginning of Star Trek Online is filled with conflict and catching up on all the lore can take a lot of reading. However, this week Cryptic sent us the second video in their Future Past series, detailing events that lead up to the setting of Star Trek Online such as the Klingon war with the Gorn and the growing tensions with the Federation. The plot thickens with the return of Species 8472 as they try to infitrate the Klingon and Gorn empires.

• Check out the video here.

Star Trek Online is less than 3 months away from launch, so it's time to start brushing up on your ship to ship combat and customization skills. This week Cryptic sent us two videos to help sharpen your knowledge with the Bridge trailer and Space Combat Part 1 narrated by Craig Zinkievich, Executive Producer and Daniel Stahl, Producer, Star Trek Online.

• Check out the videos here.

Sony Online Entertainment recently announced that pre-orders for EverQuest 2: Sentinel's Fate are now available and with the announcement came several new screenshots and a new game trailer, which includes a look at the newest content in the game's latest expansion. Find out how the lands of Odus have changed over the last 500 years in Norrath.

• Check out the new video here.

Update One to Dungeons and Dragons: Eberron Unlimited launched last week, and a whole new adventure pack is available. Jump into the Vale of Twilight for levels 17 and above and purge the malevolence. The thirteen moons of Zen'drik have aligned and the battle is at its peak.

Watch the video trailer here.

Ten Ton Hammer is pleased to showcase Cryptic’s latest video for their superhero MMOG, Champions Online. Champions Online allows players to create super powered heroes, with an incredible amount of options, allowing players to create the unique heroes that they want to play. With features such as being able to pick from any power set plus the ability to create your own arch-villain to act as a nemesis to your hero, Champions Online really packs the punch into comic book POW!

Click here to watch the video!

Dragon Oath is giving players a chance to earn their own turkey pet this Thanksgiving. Starting today, players can make their way to Pet Island to collect turkey tickets by killing creatures and bosses. Once a player collects 10 tickets they can redeem them for their very own turkey pet. This event will run through December 3rd, 2009.

Dragon Oath will celebrate Thanksgiving by giving players a chance to catch their own turkey pet. Starting today, and running through December 3rd, players can travel to Pet Island to collect “turkey tickets” by killing rabbits, turtles, and swallows. They can also collect turkey tickets by killing bosses in the “Thief Raid” and “Intruders” events. These turkey tickets are extremely rare and will take a lot of dedication and killing to collect.

• Read the full press release for more details.

Today NCsoft Executive Producer Lance Stites sent out his address to the Aion community touching upon a few of the important topics that have been big discussion amongst the playerbase.

Lance shared that while a team is being dedicated to bot squashing and mentions this week's tirade that resulted in the ban of 27,000 accounts players may be disappointed to hear that server transfers are being held off.

Hello everyone,

It’s been a busy couple of weeks here since the launch of Aion. The post-launch period of many games means that you have time for a bit of rest. After an MMO launches however, your job is just beginning.

Recently, we released a lot of information on the sales and success of Aion in respect to Europe and North America, and also globally. We are off to a very, very respectable start.

We are constantly delighted that so many of you purchased and are now playing Aion. Shortly after Aion’s launch we experienced longer queue times than we would have liked. We reacted by working immediately on a server transfer system. However, the server transfer we began to implement was a rush job, and we are not happy with the result. As it currently stands, transferring characters is a manual process that would shift a significant percentage of our customer service staff members’ focus from issues like real money transfers/trading (RMT) and botting that we feel should take priority.

It’s a difficult decision, but we are delaying the deployment of our server transfer system until we can do it right for you. We will eventually honor our promise to give eligible players the opportunity to transfer for free, but we’re shooting to implement transfers in the first half of 2010, though we don’t have a specific deadline for you.

Moving on to much more positive news, in the past week we deployed a new patch to address a CryEngine.dll crash that we’ve seen reported commonly. (If you’re still seeing this issue, please report it in our tech support forums.)

Speaking of forums, our Community Team is focusing again on the forums and the website. The members of the team are investigating ways to improve the player experience in the forums and website. We are taking your feedback to update and improve the Aion web services overall.

It’s no secret that we’ve had our share of RMT spammers and been plagued by the associated problem of bots. We’re working to eliminate these persistent pests through a multipronged approach. We have instituted a dedicated Game Surveillance Unit (GSU). The GSU is a team whose primary mission is to identify and ban users violating our terms of service: bot users, RMT chat spammers, and the like. We just did an in-depth and focused sweep through the game to ban users in violation using some new methods with exciting capabilities that I’m personally very happy about. These new methods are going to catch a lot of bot users who thought they were safe. This week we’ve banned over 27,000 of these accounts, and we’ll keep searching for other offenders to continue improving the quality of your game environment.

Finally, outside of the complaints about bots and the RMT vermin, perhaps the biggest criticism from our players comes in relation to the pacing, experience curve, item drops, and overall difficulty and risk vs. reward in Aion current gameplay. I’m glad to share some preliminary responses from the Development Team and affirm to you their willingness to address these issues. Obviously, data tuning on a live MMO isn’t something you do carelessly, and it will take some time to fully implement. In the near future, we hope to deploy a short-term enhancement to address some of concerns that you have told us about across the board. We’re currently testing some game variables to increase experience gain and other factors. We look forward to sharing some good news on this soon.

Stepping away from the game as it is, we’re showing off Aion and its future plans this week at the G-Star convention in Korea, as well as DreamHack in Sweden! If you haven’t already had the chance, take a peek at the future of Aion.

Take care and see you in the Abyss,

Lance Stites

Executive Producer, NCsoft West

Is this what you wanted to hear or is the mix of bad news and good news a little too bittersweet? Let us know by clicking the "Post your comments" link below.

The Lord of the Rings Online's upcoming expansion Siege of Mirkwod won't only be offering new high end content, but the lower end game, in particular, the Lone-lands, will be getting some brush up work as well. Senior Designer Allan "Orion" Maki has posted a new developer diary explaining changes to the Epic Quests of Books 1 and 2 Volume 1 to improve the roughly 15 level disparity players encounter upon completing the first Epic Quest line. The diary also explains a new faction, some additional land changes, the addition of Challenges (Daily Quests), and more.

With the release of Siege of Mirkwood, all players following the Epic storyline will find that Gandalf now sends them to Saeradan to enlist the aid of the Rangers, to assist with finding another of Gandalf’s order. After making their way to Saeradan, players will find that he will now offer them a free ride to Candaith’s camp in the shadow of Weathertop. Be careful and watch out for any folk in need of assistance on the ride to Candaith! Once at his camp, players follow Candaith’s tale through the battle at the peak of Weathertop and learn of a new faction within the Lone-lands, the Eglain. (This is discussed further in the diary.)

• Read all about the new Lone-land changes here.

Eve Online: Dominion is just less than a week away from launch and a new trailer has surfaced on the Dominion website to show the game's latest expansion in all its glory. With massive fleet battles and stunning visuals, the new Eve Online: Dominion trailer is enough to tempt any player to give the game a try.

Dominion is the 12th free expansion to the Eve Online universe and will bring new changes to the sovereignty system, ship changes and balancing, the new player experience, new story-arcs for players to enjoy, and more. The new expansion will go live December 1st, 2009.

• Check out the video on the Dominion website.

Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) is celebrating the five year anniversary of EverQuest 2 (EQ2) with the Heroes' Festival. Few games are able to make a lasting impression on gamers and continue to grow like EQ2 has, so SOE is celebrating by providing gamers with festivities that include new quests to aid each city's respective leader in preparation of their monumental speech. The event can be found in North and South Qeynos or West and North Freeport and will run November 24 -*November 30, 2009.

The Heroes' Festival has begun! A call has gone out to all Norrathian adventurers to commemorate the five years that have passed since the Refuge Islands first began collecting those lost in the turbulent oceans. Celebrators, happy to share in the festivities, can be found in North and South Qeynos or West and North Freeport 11/24/2009 through 11/30/2009. The event will be turned off at 10am PST on December 1st!

• Click here for more details.