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Iris Online celebrates its first birthday
Iris Online publisher gPotato has a very optimistic outlook on sharing a birthday with a holiday, saying that "you can either be sad that all your friends are busy doing holiday things or you can throw such a tremendous party that they make time to drop by and visit you!" Of course, the studio is choosing the latter (we still feel for you, people with late-December birthdays) to celebrate Iris Online's first birthday. The celebration begins today and runs until November 26th. For the duration of the festivities, players will be granted experience, skill, and battlefield point boosts. Drop and enhance rates will also be increased, and to top it off, any player who's been part of Iris Online since September will be given a unique costume just for logging in. To get in on the celebration, just head to the game's official site. [Source: Gala-net press release]
Vindictus: A one-year retrospective
It's time for a celebration, y'all. It's been a year since Nexon's popular physics-based hack-'n'-slash title, Vindictus, officially launched, and what a year it's been. Between constant content updates, seasonal events, awards, and more, Vindictus has had a rather successful first year, and it doesn't seem to show any signs of stopping. So exactly how far has Vindictus come since the title's inception a year go? Well, follow along past the cut and join us as we take a short look at the game's history and find out how it holds up today.
Time to party for AIKA's first birthday
Wish AIKA a happy birthday, because it's turning one year old this month! To celebrate the occasion, T3fun is hosting a plethora of exciting events for AIKA players. For starters, all players will receive double experience for the entire month of August, making it the perfect time to grind out those levels you need. Also on the calendar is the "WAR is Back" event, in which players "kill hostile characters and get rewarded with whatever is behind the W, A and R medals left behind." For the PvP-inclined, every Wednesday and Saturday the team will host a King of Ka-Hill PvP match, which pits two teams of 24 against one another in a struggle for control. And finally, there's the Run for Glory. On August 19th and 26th, each nation's Lord Marshall will be granted access to a special Invader account containing an extremely powerful Paladin. The Invader must run through an opposing nation with the objective of reaching that nation's Regenshein. It's up to members of that nation to ensure that his job isn't an easy one. The events are going on all month, so jump in and join the festivities.
Happy first birthday Free Realms!
As the song goes -- It's Your World -- and one year later, the team at Sony Online Entertainment have shown that to be true by adding requested content like pets, mounts, player housing, and games like soccer and pirate ship battles! Now, one year after initial launch, Free Realms has crossed the 10 million registered player mark, and shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon as they prepare to head into their second awesome year. By way of thanking their community for incredible growth -- and fun -- in the last year, the team behind Free Realms plans to celebrate by throwing a series of parties all day today! Starting at 9 AM Pacific and going until 5 PM Pacific time, various SOE employees will log in to the game for a series of games of "Ambassador Hide and Seek" wherein one employee will hide, and another will emcee the party and give players hints as to where they can find that particular Ambassador. SOE has also opened up the option to pick up Station Cash through PayPal and SMS (text message), making it even easier than before. In addition, they're adding new items to the store like tints for the beetle pet, and offering other items on sale like the Red Balloon Animal pet. If that's not enough, they've additionally given us 10 codes for Station Cash Cards worth 1000 Station Cash each ($10 USD value each). If you'd like to get your hands on one of these, simply leave a comment (only one per person) to this post before 8am ET April 30th, 2010 telling us your favorite addition to Free Realms in the last year. We'll select 10 random winners from the comments tomorrow morning. Contest is open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 and older. You find the complete Joystiq network contest rules here. There's also a shiny new "yearbook" video touching on some of the fun events of the last year that we've embedded behind the break for you. It's been one heck of a year, and we here at Massively would like to wish the Free Realms team many more years of fantastic fun! [Edit: Comments are now closed. Winners will be contacted soon.]
Looking ahead to WAR's second year
Although we've seen celebrations for some time now, with the Wild Hunt event and a couple of special scenario weekends, Warhammer Online's actual birthday came and went at the end of last week. Executive Producer Jeff Hickman took the opportunity to sum up some of the things that the development team will be focusing on, moving forward into year two: "In addition to the four new careers, numerous Live Events, the medallion system, Keep upgrades, city siege improvements, and other new features, we're now turning our focus to improving balance, performance, and the Tier 4 game play experience."Also on the cards for improvement is the "new-player experience", an area that many MMOs have fine-tuned later in their life with excellent results. The birthday celebrations haven't quite wrapped up yet either, with the "Isha's Sorrow" event taking place over the coming weekend in the Temple of Isha scenario. It may have been a bit of a rocky first year for Warhammer Online, but we'll hold out hope for year two. Happy Birthday WAR!
