It’s never an easy launching and sustaining a new MMO and the genre landscape is sadly littered with the remains of failed games.  Here TPCG presents the three shortest lived MMOs to date. SEED Developer: Runestone Game Development Publisher: Runestone Game Development Runestone Game Development’s innovative combat-free sci-fi MMO ran out of money and was cancelled on 28 September 2006 after 149 days....

The Chinese version of World of Warcraft is back online after an enforced 2 month hiatus following Blizzard changing local operators from The9 to NetEase. The whole process, which could have cost Blizzard and its partner NetEase an estimated $9 million, should have been a simple swap from one operator to another but was held up by Chinese government bureaucracy. Blizzard needed a new permit from the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP) department of the Chinese government, but ...

We’ve all joked for years about just how addictive World of Warcraft can be, but some UK addiction experts are taking it so seriously that they’ve decided to jump into the 11 million strong MMO  with WOW characters to provide ‘online counselling’ for younger gamers. According to a report by the Telegraph, Dr. Richard Graham, a psychiatrist at London's Tavistock Center is so concerned that he plans to provide in-game therapy ...

Today is the day CCP celebrates six years of EVE Online. Since its launch on the 6th May 2003 EVE has tirelessly integrated user feedback, released something like two free expansions per year and gradually built up a solid user-base that's broken clear of the quarter of a million subscriber milestone. 2009 has already proved itself to be an incredibly successful year for EVE thanks largely to the latest free expansion, Apocrypha, and the release of a new retail-box edition. In fact, in the last five months alone CCP tells us ...

Wouldn't it be refreshing to see that headline for a change, no? Instead I've got this for you - it's been relegated to the blog section for being too bloody inconsequential and trite to warrant a news post (bearing in mind my last news post was about a Spore expansion pack – whoop!): "A 17-year-old Fairfield Twp. teen… was arrested Monday, Dec. 29, for inducing panic after patrol officers and medics responded to the boy's home in the 3000 block of Pimlico Court. The ...

Lizard Interactive has announced that the first expansion pack for free to play MMORPG Sho Online is just around the corner. Entitled “Two Emperors”, the expansion brings with it a host of new features, one of the more interesting being a pet training system whereby players can raise creatures to assist them in battles or provide speedier forms of transport. Get the lowdown here

Avatar boobs have been shrunk in a recent Age Of Conan: Hyborian Adventure patch, according to a thread on the official AOC forum. Not that affects the MMORPG in any real way, but for one AOC forumite, Dusk, it was enough to prompt a degree of outrage and to post a thread containing these shots: Before... And after......

More than half of all MMORPG players play characters of an opposite gender, we're sure you'll be horrified but completely unsurprised to learn. According to a study by Nottingham Trent University, 54 per cent of male MMO gamers play as the fairer sex when online, while 68 per cent of girls play as guys. The results showed that the guys got more favourable interactions from male gamers while playing as gals ("Nerd plus boob equals loot," apparently) and the majority of gender-swapping women just wanted to lose the online sex-pests. ...

David Jones, creator of Lemmings, Grand Theft Auto and Xbox 360 hit Crackdown, demonstrated Real Time World's next project at the recent Game Developer Conference in San Francisco. APB is an GTA-esque MMOG set in a contemporary urban environment where players take the role of criminals or enforcers. Those on the wrong side of the law can get involved in ram-raiding, hijacking and other nefarious activities, while police will receive all-points bulletins alerting them to crimes. Unlike other MMOs there's no levelling, grinding or statistics, instead your character will gain access to more powerful items and new clothing and accessories. The four videos below show some gameplay, but most impressive are the character creation tools which should ensure that no two players ever look alike.

City Of Heroes creator Cryptic has unveiled a teaser trailer of its next project, a superhero MMO called Champions Online, based on the pen and paper board game. Until recently Cryptic was beavering away on an official Marvel Comics MMO, but following the cancellation of that project they acquired the Champions licence. This early footage shows a game that doesn't look a million miles away from City Of Heroes, though its cell-shaded visuals are looking very slick. NCsoft now owns City Of Heroes and its evil spin-off City Of Villains, and continues to regularly update the game with new content. See the trailer after the jump, or visit the official homepage.