MMOHUB.org has worked with the folks at Saga to now bring MMOHUB users the FULL VERSION of Saga for FREE! Normally costing $19.95, you can now register and download the full version of Saga using this special link; Yes, I want to register for the FREE FULL VERSION of SAGA.

What is SAGA?

Saga is a 3D Fantasy MMORTS where each player creates a nation from one of the five races: Orcs, Dark Elves, Giants, Elves, or Dwarves. Each player's nation is a separate instance that can be attacked by other players at any time. Field squads, join alliances and complete quests with friends in this unique online experience.

The full version has several special benefits such as:
· Receive 3 additional booster packs (normally $2.95 each!)

· Ability to join a Guild, which allows for many new options

· Engage in Ranked PVP battles, matches and hold PVP enabled territories

· Trade units with other players on the market

· And much, much more!

For the game review of Sage click here!

Each player starts with the necessary major structures: a Stronghold, Temple, and Market. The in-game tutorial is easy to follow and even has voice acting, new players will get a grasp of thing within minutes. In many respects the game resembles an older RTS called Rome: Total War. Most squads consist of multiple units and sending in troops in the right formation against the appropriate targets is vital to achieving victory. In Saga each players nation is not geographically connected but is instead an instance which can be freely raided and plundered. New players must rely on quests since they lack a force capable of participating in PvP. The quests are mostly tedious and involve destroying several AI controlled Squads. Luckily these quests yield experience for the nation and the individual squads that participate. Aside from experience, the quests also offer resources as rewards which are required to build additional buildings such as farms, lumber mills, and mines. Almost every quest is repeatable on four difficulty levels: Copper, Silver, Gold, and Heroic.

Over the past few months, the developers of an MMORPG called LGP Online have been working hard at getting their project off the ground, doing closed beta testing and most of all, getting rid of some of the bugs that inevitably plague any game still under development. They have now announced that they are due to begin the open Beta testing of the game shortly.

By Dean Sherwin

They have announced that the open Beta testing of their game, which has now been renamed Destiny Online, will begin on 13th of January 2009. They company are expecting a rush of player and reviewers onto the servers all with sceptical eyes for the slightest fault or crash. To cope with this expected influx of gamers, they are also due to officially open a new server by the name of 'Penguin' on the same day the Open Beta begins.

Some of the features incorporated into the 2D MMORPG will include mounts, loyal pets, and sword fighting and powerful weapons of various sorts. The game is set in the theme of conflict between rival groups, the main choice of plot for the vast majority of MMOs. The games developers are also boasting features of the game such as Online Romance and something called Wild Wedding Party.

Other changes to the game that are in progress before the open beta will be upping the max level from 100 to 120, adding more quests, maps and bosses, and a system, which allows you to customise your equipment to make them unique for that of other players. The developers have also announced that they will be adding in 40 new different choices of clothing for your character as the influx of new players will cause a greater demand for individuality.

We all have an ideal situation that we would love to have in reality when it comes to playing video games. Personally, mine consists of my own room with a huge TV, hooked up to an XBOX and a PS3 with a killer PC in the corner. Beanbags, dark wallpaper and décor with shelves crammed full with cool games and DVDs that I accumulated over the years. That is my ultimate dream that I had for a few years now.

By Dean Sherwin
However, this is the real world and dreams do not always just come true like that. That poses a problem for me and millions of other gamers from LA to Tokyo and everywhere in between. At certain parts of the day when there are people buzzing around the house, coming home from work, school, or kids just being kids, it can be hard to find a nice quiet couple of hours once or twice a week for some great gaming. What ever your situation, chances are if you share a humble abode with someone this issue came up in a few arguments. That is why the importance of having a gaming 'hub' if you will, is extremely important for the average gamer.

By even cordoning off a small corner of a room with shelves, a TV etc… it can create a well-known area of the home that people know is for gaming and shouldn't go there unless the want to do some multi-player. It also saves you the bother of having to unplug your laptop and take it elsewhere if you fancy a quick hour of RuneScape. However, most of all, it is just easier. Games will not lying around, consoles damaged whilst being shuffled from room to room and you will no longer get annoyed when a hairdryer starts blowing halfway through a cut-scene!

Since the dawn of MMOs, people have fallen in love with the virtual realms and their characters ability to interact and function in these fantasy worlds. However, confined to the mumble home computer, MMOs have not crossed platforms, until now. The image of a PC based MMO was drilled into the minds of many gamers making the job of creating a console based MMO very difficult indeed for any game developer.

By Dean Sherwin

Despite how the odds were stacked, Sony has managed to do just that and create Home for the PS3, which has recently reached 3.4 million users to date, a massive milestone for the few month old release. The bosses over at Sony development said that they were pleased with the triumphant success of the game and enjoy developing updates and new content for the game.

The MMO world, which is free to download and play, has made the multinational company money too. Users can create a free account as well as engage in activities such as bowling and chatting with their friends on the server. However, they can also buy a 'Home' and furnish it with a vast selection of different types and **** of furniture and games and appliances to match so they can have their friends over without having o ask permission first!

The development of Sony's new online world is not limited to Home however. Recently there has been speak of a potential partnership with MTV to offer users video content and other various projects in the work to expand the MMO experience.

In other Sony related news, the company has proudly revealed that their game 'Little Big Planet', a game that filled many stockings this year has reached sales of over 1.3 million worldwide. The game gives the player the chance to create diverse and complex levels that they can then play themselves.

Since the game's release in 2008, some of the industry's best figures have critically acclaimed Runes Of Magic whilst the game managed to hold onto its dedicated fan base after the initial honeymoon period was over. Not only did it manage to do this but it has also won hundreds of positive reviews, which caused thousands of people to go rushing onto the game's servers to join in on the action. As of lately the game's success has been highlighted once again when the publishers and developers released a press statement through a well-known top industry press release website.

By Dean Sherwin

The publishers stated that they were proud to say that during the festive period, the game received numerous prestigious awards from some of the top institutions in the industry and received the "Surprise Hit of 2008" prize. These awards are now getting the word out further that the game is a great piece of work to try out, and overall, it seems to be working.

I say this because as they were receiving all these accolades for being such great developers, the word spread quickly about their game. So much so in fact that the company have reached a major milestone as they have reached the 300,000-user mark. This statistic is staggering considering that the game only launched in 2008 and is less than a year old.

The reason for the buzz surrounding the game is because of just how unique the game really is. Whilst it has the fairytale charm of many MMOs, it is not simply a WoW clone. It boasts a vast array of features such as over 1000 quests available to you when you begin playing, no zone boundaries thanks to great scenery design, mounts from horses to tigers and a reputation system which builds as your character and his/her legacy does.

However, the short simple fact is that the game's success is a testament to how great the game is and I advise anyone reading this to check out the review here: http://mmohub.org/2009/218/mmorpg/runes-of-magic/

Since the dawn of global gaming, which was really when the PlayStation first came out, military sims and tactical sims have been one of the most popular forms of gaming and have gathered up quite a fan base since their initial infancy stages when the simple soldier was all you had to play with. Since then of course, they have developed tenfold which basically means that you, the player has one hell of a lot more fun than you would have had in previous years.

By Dean Sherwin

In many cases, the developers have actually collaborated with real world militaries in order to replicate circumstances, weaponry and combat. Because of this collaboration and tedious amounts of research and life experience, we now have games, which are used to train militaries such as Microsoft's Combat Flight Simulator and Bohemia Interactive's VBS series. Now the battlefield is really starting to creep into online play and is advancing quickly.

With online play in the MMO format, a new world of opportunities opens up in terms of gaming experience. This is due to the simple fact that the troop movement and status of the ongoing war is as realistic as it would be in real life. Let's say you have a map the size of RuneScape's with two armies made up of real people playing as soldiers. This gives a very realistic picture of war and helped by the inclusion of realistic weaponry, commanders and a changing political situation controlled by the developers.

The storyline behind any MMO is basically what makes it worthwhile to play. This gives the players the big picture to strive towards while still allowing them to get on with the short-term playing (normally trading and quests) which in this case would be small skirmishes in the middle of a map. Perhaps not big enough to turn the tide of the war but they would add up depending on the numbers of players involved in said battles. The storyline of military MMOs such as Armed Assault, would be that of a political situation, something that would give the players of these kind of MMOs something to motivate them.

The second and final part of this series will detail how realism in Military MMOs can make or break them and we'll take a quick look at how one MMO replicated World War II.

When Eve Online was first launched way back in 2003, it immediately enjoyed the success it deserves within the gaming community. By the MMO's fifth anniversary it had almost a quarter of a million players on the user database. This is a fact which has kept the game going over the past six years with constant updates and a team of highly dedicated staff working around the clock, behind closed doors. Those doors rarely open, but when they do it's always with spectacular news about the game or its development. And it's no different this time.

By Dean Sherwin

As billions of people rang in the new year, Eve Online clocked its highest ever amount of user activity. This has been a major achievement for the developers and is a testament to just how well a job they have done with Eve Online. The peak of the activity reached 45,186 players logged into a single, shared server.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE GAME!!

The game has been critically acclaimed for its user friendliness in the past also with many top game journalists saying that they are addicted to they game and log in for a quick match as often as they can. Some of these features include a great chat system, good graphics considering the games age and great storyline with activities and quests that not only engage with the layer but also entice him/her further into the world of Eve Online.

However, perhaps the main reason why Eve Online has managed to achieve such a spectacular user quantity on the server is because of how realistic the world feels while you play it. The main interaction zones and rotes are buzzing with user activity and the economy of trade and currency (which is actually monitored closely by a real-world expert economist Dr. Eyjolfur Gudmundsson) keeps the price fluctuation of goods interesting.

Eve Online looks set to sky rocket as early 2009 promises no big releases onto the Mmo market. It will be at least mid-summer when developers are finished beta-testing until we see any real competition.

As I have said time and time again, MMOs only really started to come about towards the end of the 20th century when internet speeds and technology advanced so more information could travel at a quicker pace. But even then, the best of the best MMOs had sub Play Station 1 graphics. In fact, they were really more like NES graphics to be accurate in that comparison. Characters were blocky, moved awkwardly and the scenery was often just a green strip in the distance. Just take one look at a screenshot from the first version of RuneScpae and you'll know what I'm talking about. But we didn't care, did we? As far as we were concerned we were playing a game with thousands of other people and that was cool.

By Dean Sherwin

But then, along came high speed broadband and the worlds in which we find ourselves immersed, have never been the same. Nowadays, developers of games, no matter how small are expected to create games with thousands of gaming features as well as great graphics into the bag too. Look at and MMO out there today bar the few. World of Warcraft, 4Story, Atlantica Online, they all have had great attention to detail and no expense spared when it came to the graphics. It has become unacceptable for bad graphics to be part of a new MMO. This would insult the user who has been convinced to play the game by misleading artwork.

Although this is creating challenges for new independent companies to break into the genre, it is doing something great for the genre too; upping the quality. After all, we grade any video game on their quality, and why should MMOs be any different? This is a step forward in the industry, and I'm willing to bet that as soon as worldwide internet speeds increase, the quality of MMO's content and graphics will have to make the leap along with it.

As I discussed here the other day in another article concerning the proper creation of a guild, the social aspect of MMOs is a vital one and without it, the game would quickly become boring. For that reason, all developers put a lot of time and effort into creating a good socialising platform within their games such as chat and guild creation tools. But as the popularity of online worlds grow, could we perhaps be seeing a decline in the use of online social networking sites and MMOs quickly overtaking?

By Dean Sherwin

I mean think about it. Although social networking sites such as Bebo and My Space are quite popular at the minute, does it seem all too unrealistic that small stage online world could take over?

MMOs the new social networking?

There would have to be improvements made to how user information is displayed in the MMO in order to compete with social networking site's member profile pages. But that really is about it. Servers are getting so advanced that literally hundreds of thousands can be logged in and not a single glitch can occur. With how big servers such as the ones in WAR and WoW can handle these kinds of figures, its not an unlikely prospect.

Sony's recent release of 'Home' for the PS3 only proves my point further. In this game, friends can interact within one world where they can play games, chat, make new friends or simply walk around in other peoples houses or around the area. It provides a basic view of the future of social networking where MMOs aren't simply based around achievements and levelling up, but around social interaction.

What ever the future use of MMOs, I cant see the video game aspect dropping away either. I think that the most plausible outcome is a combination of the two , giving the users the best of both worlds all rolled into one.

It is a well known fact that excessive gaming can cause effects on your life. The most talked about of these problems are health problems. That is why you see warning lables talking of seizures and eppilepse on the back of your new video game. The main reason for these is to cover the game's developer in case a legal action is pursued. However, in the UK, a new form of concequence for enjoying the popular pastime has emerged.

By Dean Sherwin

In a recent story aired on Sky News, the countries leading news channel, reports were made that excessive gamers may find it hard finding employment in such pressing times. The reasons for this are because studies have shown that people who play MMOs and MMORPGs are more likely to stay up late at night gaming or even call in sick so that they can stay at home and play. The report stated that many employers have noticed these patterns in their employees and will be less hasty to employ anyone who states that they enjoy video games on their C.V. or in the interview.

This has caused a number of gamers to become distressed as they believe they are being targeted for their hobbies. One post on a forum stated that a "video game player is just as likely to call in sick to stay at home and play video games as a sports player who is worn out from a previous day's match". This topic is now bringing up old skeletons on the subject of wheither or not the public game too much. However, recent studies have shown that older people are playing video games more and more so perhaps the bosses will start having a 'sick day' to stay at home and play WoW.