Worlds.com Files Suit Against NCsoft for Patent Infringement

On Christmas Eve, Worlds.com filed a complaint against NCsoft for infringing on its virtual world and MMO patent. Worlds.com, which was one of the early virtual world developers from the ’90s, made waves earlier this month when it announced that it had selected an intellectual property firm to defend its two patents related to scaling virtual spaces and enabling users to interact and chat in 3D environments.

Specifically, the suit claims that NCsoft has infringed on patent 7,181,690, “System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space” through its games, including City of Heroes, City of Villains, Dungeon Runners, Exteel, Guild Wars, Lineage, Lineage II, and Tablula Rasa.

The complaint seeks to recover damages for the infringement and asks that NCsoft be prevented from infringing on patent 690, which covers scaling.   Based on NCsoft’s headquarters in Austin as a source of the infringement, the complaint was filed in the Eastern District of Texas, Tyler Division.

Worlds.com Inc. v. NCsoft Corp is Civil Action No. 6:08-cv-508. You can download the PDF of the complaint here.

Paizo wishes some holiday cheer

Paizo Wishing a happy holiday with discount coupons…

Zatozia’s Frostfell Review

Happy Frostfell Everyone!

It’s that time of year again when everyone spends extra time with family and friends; when gifts are bought, given, and returned; when elves suddenly start wearing red, green, white and gold combinations; when a certain ogre makes all other ogres say, “He’s doing what?”; when a torturing dark elf spreads good tidings? To help keep you from missing anything this season, here’s an overview of what’s going on in-game and out-of-game for EverQuest over the holidays.

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How cool is this… Bioware

Happy Holidays from Bioware…

Server Mergers, Everquest

On January 21, 2009, EQ will be consolidating “The Combine” server and “Druzzil Ro (Tarew Marr)” server into one server to be titled “Druzzil Ro (Tarew Marr, Combine).” The merge will begin at 3 a.m. PST and will last approximately five hours.

In addition, in conjunction with the upcoming EQ 10th Anniversary celebration, SOE is expecting to add a new EQ server in March 2009 and players will be able to vote on a new server type. To provide your input on the type of server you’d like, visit EQplayers.com in January.

EQ2 Holiday Video

There is a brand new Frostfell video available from SOE celebrating the holidays!

Runes of Magic posts impressive numbers for beta

The start of Runes of Magic’s open beta phase exceeded all expectations of publisher Frogster significantly. Over 100,000 characters were created in the first hours and are now populating the world of Taborea. Technically the start went smooth despite the heavy rush of players. Due to the high number of players, Frogster opened an additional game world on Monday afternoon. The international community now is spread over seven servers – even though Runes of Magic is only in the early stages of the open beta phase.

In the past few hours Frogster also noted a significant increase in registration numbers. Out of the total number of 220,000 registrations, more than 20,000 Accounts were created on Monday alone and immediately entered the game world: more than 2 million quests were completed in over 200,000 hours of combined playing time in the game world of Taborea. These numbers underline the relevance of quests and immersive background story in the MMORPG developed by Runewaker Entertainment.

First awarded in 2008, the G.I.R.L. scholarship was created by SOE and encourages female students toward career paths in the creative and applied arts, with the ultimate goal of developing video games that are more interesting for women to play. In 2009, the program will be managed by Scholarship America®, a leading nonprofit educational support program. SOE will offer students in undergraduate programs related to video games a chance to compete for the scholarship by submitting original artwork and essays to a panel of judges.

SOE official G.I.R.L. T-shirts are available for purchase through SOE’s Station Store, perfect for the girl gamer on your holiday list! Three different styles of the shirts will be offered, including two styles for women and one for men, all priced at $19.99 (plus applicable taxes). SOE will donate 100% of T-shirt sales to the G.I.R.L. Scholarship.

Star Wars Galaxies – Dev Interview

For this developer diary I thought I would share with everyone the thought process of creating this year’s Life Day event. First and most importantly, I didn’t want to remove anything from previous years’ events, as I knew Life Day was already very popular. However, with lessons learned from the Galactic Moon Festival, I felt we could add even more fun this year.

I can’t with a straight face recommend the Star Wars Holiday Special to anyone, but that’s where Life Day made its first appearance, so it was decided that we take some ideas for rewards from it. This was the first major change; we wanted more rewards this time than in previous Life Days.

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The character database has been wiped clean and the servers has been rebooted as Frogster’s Runes of Magic launches it’s open beta test today, with 190,000 players already registered and ready to go.

Interested players should head over to RunesofMagic.com to register and download the client, now available in both English and German flavors. All of the closed beta characters have been done away with in the last big character wipe, with open beta characters carrying on past the game’s official launch, so if you were planning to play Runes of Magic, now is the time to start.

From Kotaku