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EVE anniversary lottery offers over 40 billion ISK in prizes
Since the beginning of time, or at least the beginning of the EVE Online universe, players have gambled their ISK for a chance to win it big in the BIG lottery. First launching on May 13th 2003, the BIG lottery has sold over 48,000 tickets worth a total of over 613 billion ISK. Each year, a special bumper edition of the game is launched to commemorate the birthday of both EVE Online and the BIG lottery, with CCP donating some awesome prizes. Last year's seventh anniversary lottery included billions of ISK in prizes, including a free year of game time, a battleship model from the EVE store, and more donated by CCP. This year's eighth anniversary lottery has a similarly massive prize fund, with official prizes of 25 billion ISK and 10 billion ISK for the first and second place winners respectively. The EVE Online Hold'em poker league has sponsored two additional prizes of 5 billion ISK and a full year of EVE game time. To top things off, CCP will be giving each of the four winners a $50 gift certificate to be used in the EVE store. Head over to the official forum thread or website for details on how to enter the contest. Tickets must be purchased before Sunday 15th May, and the drawing will occur on Monday the 16th at 2:00 p.m. EDT (18:00 EVE time) in the "BIG Games" in-game chat channel. Good luck to all those who enter!
LEGO Universe unveils May contest schedule
May in LEGO Universe is all about faction pride, and as such, players are invited to participate in a host of exciting contests to demonstrate their factions' superiority. Well, that and win prizes. You can have your blocky cake and eat it in LEGO Universe! The site has posted its May contest schedule for your edification: All month: Join the community effort is underway to build the Nexus Tower via donations. May 7-8: Race in the LEGO Grand Prix, which will take place at a soon-to-be revealed location. May 14-15: Take aim and fire during the Shooting Gallery Showdown, where players will try to hit enemy ships and creatures in the water. May 21-22: Submit your best faction screenshot for a shot at several prizes. May 28-29: Unite with your faction in the Battle for Nimbus Station! Take a gander at the contest details and the many, many goodies you can win over at LEGO Universe.
Reminder: Guild of the Month contest April entries due tonight
You still have time to enter April's WoW Insider Guild of the Month contest, as long as you're reading this before midnight EDT tonight. The prizes are a $100 gift certificate to use toward custom guild apparel from SwagDog and a profile of your guild here on WoW Insider. Here's how to enter: You must be the guild leader for your guild to enter. Email 200 words or less describing why your guild deserves to win April's Guild of the Month to contests@wowinsider.com. Send it from an email address you check often. Include your guild's name and realm. Enter by 11:59 p.m. EDT April 8, 2011 (tonight). There are a few restrictions. The full contest rules include: You must be 18 years or older. You must live in the United States or non-Québécois Canada. You haven't won before. (It's okay to enter if you have entered before, however, as long as you didn't win.) We are looking for guilds that are active, unique and have a lot of evidence to back that up. A link to your guild's website is helpful. Good luck!
SOE announces Fan Faire 2011 open registration
Summer is fast approaching, and if you're partial to Sony Online Entertainment's various MMOs, you know that Fan Faire is coming up quickly as well. This year's event is going down at Bally's Hotel in Las Vegas from July 7th through July 9th. Attendees can look forward to developer panels, live game tournaments, live quests, and of course, rubbing elbows with fellow SOE fans and industry luminaries. All-Access passes are currently on sale for $119.00, and the early-bird pricing gets you admission to forums, panels, and round-tables as well as a t-shirt, gift bag, exclusive in-game items, and digital copies of both EverQuest and EverQuest II expansion packs. Single-day passes are also available (they'll set you back $39.00), and you can view all the details at the official Fan Faire website.
Skype for Mac design competition announced
Designers, start your creative engines! Today, on its official blog, Skype announced a chat styling competition to find the world's best theme for Skype for Mac. "We want you to create the chat style for an upcoming version of Skype for Mac that will be enjoyed by millions of people around the world," states the official website for the competition. "When we first launched our new Mac app, we were delighted to see so many custom styles emerge from the design community, so we thought we'd make it official," Krishna Panicker wrote on Skype's Big Blog. "We're inviting you to design your own chat style for Skype for Mac." Skype officially begins accepting entries for the first stage of its three-stage competition on Friday, April 8. Each stage of the contest will last three weeks and result in a people's choice winner selected by users of the site and a judges' choice winner anointed by Skype's panel of experts. The six winners, two from each stage, will continue to compete for the grand prize: Skype will include the winning design in a future version of Skype for Mac. The grand prize also includes an 11-inch MacBook Air, iPad 2 and a one year subscription to Skype's Unlimited World Extra calling service. In addition, the five runners-up will receive some useful trophies that include an iPad 2, an AppleTV and a copy of CSS3 for Web Designers. Skype's software allows users to connect with other Skype users using instant messaging, voice and video conferencing. The company's telephony services also enable customers to place and receive voice calls between a device or computer running Skype and nearly any traditional landline or mobile phone. According to an SEC filing from 2010, Skype has approximately 560 million total registered users worldwide. Full details about the design contest, including prize lists, judging criteria, key dates and terms and conditions, are available on Skype's official competition page. Good luck to everyone who enters. We can't wait to see the winning design.
Train Global Agenda newbs for $200 in prize money
Hi-Rez Studios' Global Agenda is that rare MMO that manages to combine player skill, team tactics, and accessibility, all in one spiffy spy-fi package. While newer players have ample time to learn the ins and outs of squad-based combat over the course of the game's 50 levels, competent agents are few and far between when it comes to high-level merc PvP. To the rescue comes Hi-Rez's new Agent Training contest, in which skilled Global Agenda vets may compete for $200 in prize money for producing the best instructional video in both the objective-based PvP and boss fight PvE categories. The contest kicks off today, and entries (which are limited to a maximum of two minutes running time) will be accepted through April 15th. Winners in both categories will take home the prize money, and the victors will be announced on April 29th. There are a few other requirements (including voiceover and resolution guidelines), which you can read about on the official Global Agenda website.
Blizzard announces Memories of Blizzard video contest
Blizzard has just announced the Memories of Blizzard video contest as part of the company's 20th anniversary celebration. Fans can capture their favorite Blizzard memories on camera and submit them for a chance to win loads of prizes from Razer, Steelseries, Creative Labs, TavernCraft, DC Direct, PrintWarcraft, and even an all-expenses-paid trip to BlizzCon. Fire up your video cameras and get creating. Check out the official details here. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.
City of Heroes reveals billboard contest winners
The devs at Paragon Studios recently threw open the doors of creativity for City of Heroes players in the form of the CoH Billboard Contest. Players were asked to come up with signage for a theoretical new business that would be opening somewhere in Paragon City or the Rogue Isles. The competition ran from December of 2010 through the end of last month, and NCsoft has finally announced the winners (many of whom walked away with substantial prize packages that include free game time, in-game items, and oh yeah, the pleasure of seeing their artwork plastered all over various billboards in the long-running superhero MMO). Hit up the official website for more details, including images of the winning entries.
Aika Online opens its doors to Europe
European players rejoice! Aika Online is officially throwing open its doors to the old world with today's "Europe, We're Up" celebratory kickoff. The week-long festivities include double experience and a contest that gives players the opportunity to snag $10,000 in prizes. Logging into Aika also makes you eligible to receive powerful premium items like 3x and 4x experience scrolls. Today's update also sees a new dungeon introduced to the game. The Prison Despero will test the mettle of Aika's elite players and offers a chance to earn a new level 70 armor set. Aika is a fantasy MMORPG from the creators of Neo Steam. The game features five warring nations vying for control over the world of Arcan and its massive castles, priceless relics, and various battlegrounds.
Mog Bonanza winners announced for Final Fantasy XI
If you're playing Final Fantasy XI these days, you can't have missed the most recent Mog Bonanza giveaway, and it's quite likely that you bought a few marbles hoping to get at least the last digit right. But considering how quiet the game has been in terms of updates, you can be forgiven for not realizing that today is the day when the winning numbers are announced. That means that players can see if they won some of the valuable prizes, which include Empyrean weapons, piles of gil, and various furnishings. The winning numbers are 35041, as shown in the system message displayed when logging into the game. Players have until Monday, February 21st to claim any and all prizes, so it's best to log in quickly and pick up your winnings. Remember, the more digits you get right, the better the prize, so as long as your number ended in 041 you get to pick up a Rank 3 prize. If you didn't win, however, don't despair -- the event does tend to turn up in Final Fantasy XI more than once a year, it seems.
Voting opens on EVE t-shirt design competition
In mid December, geeky t-shirt manufacturer J!NX announced an exciting art competition for fans of EVE Online. Following on from the popularity of CCP's earlier DeviantArt ship design contest, J!NX and CCP Games gave people the opportunity to design their very own EVE t-shirt. The deadline for submission has now passed and public voting is now open on the 85 submitted entries. The creators of the three best shirt designs will each receive $750 US dollars in cash, $250 dollars worth of J!NX store credit, a full year's subscription to EVE Online and a whole pile of items from the EVE store. Perhaps more exciting is the fact that the best designs will be also be turned into t-shirts for sale. The choice of which shirts make the cut will be based on both the public vote and input from CCP and J!NX. If you're looking to expand your wardrobe with some internet-spaceship-themed clothing, now's your chance to pick your favourite designs from the hoard of entries. Voting will be open for all J!NX account holders until January 10th, with the winners announced one week later on January 17th.
Show your artistic talent to win prizes with EVE Online's design contests
Back in September, EVE Online developer CCP Games teamed up with the folks at deviantArt to bring us a fantastic starship design competition. Dozens of artists from around the world worked tirelessly to create the ultimate starship designs, producing some incredible entries that wouldn't look out of place in New Eden. When the winners were announced, CCP revealed that there would be a second starship design contest to give players another chance to win prizes. There's just under a week left to submit your entries for the final round of the starship design contest. With a grand prize of $900 cash, a year's subscription to EVE and a whole host of items from the EVE store, it's definitely a contest worth entering. Four additional runner-up prizes of $600 and some items from the EVE store will also be given out. Entries will be voted on by players, and the top 20 will be passed to the EVE art team to select the winners. The deadline for submission is December 21st, with voting beginning the following day. As if that weren't enough, t-shirt producer J!NX is also running its own EVE art contest with similarly huge prizes to be won. To enter, all you have to do is design a new EVE t-shirt, the best of which will eventually be sold on J!NX. Three prizes are available, each with $750 cash, a further $250 in J!NX vouchers, 12 months of EVE game time and several items from the EVE store. Public voting opens on December 27th, so get your entry in before Christmas to have a good chance of getting it in on time.
Fallen Earth Holiday Apocalypse Challenge starts today
Want some wasteland in your Christmas stocking? Icarus Studios has just the thing, and it's called the Fallen Earth Holiday Apocalypse Challenge. Aside from managing to put the words holiday and apocalypse in the same sentence, the contest gives you a chance to win a custom PC, an iPhone 4, and various and sundry additional goodies. Enter for your chance to win (and check out the phat lewt) via the official contest website, and make sure you log in to Fallen Earth as often as possible from today through January 7th. Each day you log in earns you an additional contest entry. Also be sure to use the email address associated with your Fallen Earth game account when entering the contest. Finally, if you're not currently subscribed, Icarus has temporarily extended the game's trial to 30 days, so what are you waiting for?
Get issues of E-ON Magazine for half price this Christmas
EVE Online is one of the few MMOs with its own dedicated paper-based magazine. With its high production values, the quarterly E-ON Magazine by MMM Publishing is a great example of how to do a game magazine right. Each issue contains featured articles, guides, fiction, interviews, sneak peeks at future expansions and more. Even the advertisements in it are for exclusively in-game corporations and services, making it pure EVE from cover to cover. Here at Massively, we've reviewed the past three issues of the magazine and found them all to be well worth reading. If you'd like to give E-ON Magazine a go or fill in some holes in your collection, now's the perfect time to do it. All this month, issues of E-ON are better than half price at the EVE Online store. Each issue is reduced from $14.95 US down to only $7 if you apply the code EONDEC1050 to your purchase, making the magazine a great Christmas gift for any big EVE Online fan. If you're a big fan of the magazine, you'll also be pleased to know that last month's contest has been extended until EVE's daily downtime tomorrow. To be in with a chance to win, just mail win@mmmpublishing.com with your name, your EVE character name and an explanation of why you think you deserve free swag. The best entry will win a pile of EVE goodies, with winners to be announced in E-ON issue 22. Enter quickly, as the contest ends tomorrow at 11AM GMT.
Xbox Live Rewards loyalty program goes live in the US and UK
Spend an embarrassing amount of your life immersed in the Xbox Live universe? It's cool -- we all do. But now, you'll actually have a better reason to ignore whoever's yelling at you to disconnect. Microsoft has just launched its Xbox Live Rewards loyalty program after testing it out last year, but for now it's only available to US and UK-based gamers. As our compadres over at Joystiq mention, it's a lot like Club Nintendo, but instead of getting gear, you'll be awarded Microsoft Points for doing things you'd already be doing anyway. Gamers can look for a ten point boost for renewing a one-month membership, a 400 point increase for buying / renewing a family plan or 100 points for activating Netflix -- and that's just the start. Hit the source link to join up. It's free, you know.
Step 1: Design a new Enterprise for STO. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Cool prizes!
The starship Enterprise has appeared in a number of iterations in both real life and through Star Trek's series and films. Next month, Cryptic is excited to launch the newest edition of the Federation's flagship, which will be designed by... you! Or someone else who plays Star Trek Online. Either way. The design contest will kick off on December 9th, on which date Cryptic will make design tools available to the public. The winner will get the immense satisfaction of seeing his Enterprise model warp into STO and will also receive an Alienware laptop, a lifetime subscription to the game, the Collector's Edition of STO, and a 3-D model of their creation for keeps. There will also be a number of other prizes for runners-up, including lifetime subs, another laptop, and posters. We're looking forward to seeing what the Star Trek Online community can whip up, and if the first place design really is deserving of the Enterprise namesake! Check out the contest page for more details.
Another Mog Bonanza coming to Final Fantasy XI
The Mog Bonanza is coming back for another celebration of a new year in Final Fantasy XI, giving players the chance to earn insane prizes without doing anything more arduous than guessing a number correctly. Of course, it's a five-digit number that you only get one real shot at guessing right, so there's a good cause behind the quality of prizes -- mountains of gil, Empyrean weapons, and unique furnishings for your in-game home. As with prior events, you get prizes as long as you guess the last number correctly, with better prizes awarded the more digits you get correct. Marbles go on sale for the price of 2000 gil starting on December 22nd, and with a grand total of 10 marbles per character, you can at least ensure that you wind up winning a statue -- or try to go for broke with maximum possible earnings. Take a look at the full list of prizes on the official site, and start guessing your numbers now, as it's a chance to earn fantastic Final Fantasy XI prizes for just a little bit of work.
Aika expands enemy loot list to include NVidia video cards [Updated]
If there are two things that MMO players love, those things would probably be killing enemies and getting prizes. (The third would be cheesecake of either variety.) Aika seems keen to capitalize on this, and the game is running a promotion for players through the 13th of the month allowing those two passions to combine into one. For the duration of the event, every time you kill a monster, you have a chance of winning a brand-new graphics card from NVidia. The system for entry is simple. Any enemy fought within your level range will drop a token, which can produce one of two items. The first is an NVidia box which includes useful in-game items and certainly is nothing to sneeze at. The second is a raffle ticket, which automatically puts you in the drawing for one of the graphics cards, with more tickets meaning a better chance of winning a card. Aika players are also given a special page to track their entries, something that will no doubt become quite frequent as the event marches on. [Update: We've changed up the graphic with the most current one per the folks at gPotato. Note, the event runs through the 13th, not the 18th!]
Log into Aika, win fantastic prizes
If you're one of the lucky souls who doesn't need to work over the summer, or just a discerning player with an eye toward conserving your online time, there are a lot of games clamoring for your attention. Aika's newest event is hoping to entice players with a fairly routine but no less efficient approach: the team is offering players prizes. And all you have to do as a player to earn them is to show up for at least an hour a day. From August 5th until September 8th, players will be automatically granted rewards after logging in for at least one hour. Tears of Aika are the most common reward, with special prizes coming at each five-day interval. Players who manage to log in for an hour a day over the full run of the event will also be entered into a drawing for several powerful in-game rewards. It's not a bad spread for just showing up, so take a look at the full list of rewards, check the FAQ, and start setting aside some time for your Aika characters.
Lost Pages of Taborea: Call to arms!
It's only been a few months since I started writing the Runes of Magic column, but it seems much longer than that. I love writing these guides, tips, and opinion pieces for fans of this awesome MMO, but I felt something was missing. Even after all the terrific comments and discussions from players, there seems to be many people who haven't tried RoM yet. Seeing comments -- almost weekly -- about people saying they are going to try RoM is really cool. I am a huge fan of the game, and it's my intention to bring the fun and excitement of it to you, through my articles. I'm not hoping that I stop hearing about new players, because those comments are a small sign I've succeeded in my writings, but I do want to take the opportunity to present a "call to arms". RoM is an amazing one-of-a-kind MMO that has captured my imagination and adventure for fun. It can be all too easy to lump this game into an already complicated world of free-to-play MMOs, and dismiss it as "more of the same". It really isn't more of the same. Let's take a look at how this MMO is different, fun, steadily growing, and branching out into the MMO community. This article should catch everyone up on the current status of the game, and how it has faired in the spotlight.
