Staci Krause and Sandra Guajardo will be attending the Austin Game Developers Conference next week and as part of the programming, will be liveblogging several panels that may be of interest to the MMO community. Want to know what Damian Schubert, who works for Bioware Austin, thinks of high end gameplay? Have an interest in seeing what people are saying about taking the grind out of the MMO grind? Or want to know what the keys are to free-to-play MMOs? Attend our live blogs and your comments and questions might even make it to the panelists ears during the open Q&A; at the end of the panels!

Even if you miss the live blog, you can replay it and see all that occurred during the panel afterwards. Check out our schedule for the conference and mark your calendars!

While looking across some forums for news, I came across this: a player created mapping project. Apparently it's part of a community of people creating applications and mods that help people play the game. It's good to see the fans keeping busy and putting out new stuff.

We have launched the newest of our Vault sites - this time the very exciting title coming from the fantastic Liquid Entertainment and Codemasters crew - Rise of the Argonauts Vault is your one-stop shop for all your Rise of the Argonauts needs. We have launched with content that will have the fans of the game and mythology stumbling over themselves! A prime example is our Myths and Lore Wiki.

The most excellent segment of the site is the movies database in which we are in the process of uploading every single movie the codies and liquid crew throw at the community... and these guys rock! If you aren't hyped about the game now, you will be by the time you have finished watching the movies!


Be sure to stop by, in the upcoming months we'll be stuffing so much info into this site that both the struggling gamer and the pro gamers will find all they need to know! It hasn't set sail yet but feel free to get on board at RotA Vault!

GenCon is coming up quickly! It's just 18 days away. Vault will be attending GenCon and we're curious who will be there among our readers and who might like to come hang with us Vaulties one night.



Go post on this thread to talk GenCon 2008.

We here at Vault are staffing up for a new site dedicated to Codemasters' and Liquid Entertainment's upcoming RPG being released on PC, XBox 360 and PS3, Rise of the Argonauts. It is set around the story of Jason and the Argonauts, with some liberties taken for the sake of entertainment.



If you are at all interested in helping build this site, please send an email to rosethorn (at) vaultnetwork.com. We are looking for a site manager, database fillers, guide writers, general editorialists and newsies.

Craig Morrison, director of Anarchy Online sat down with the people at Thirteen1.com for an interview about the new patch. Check out the 4th online issue of Thirteen1 to get all the details.

July 2008 Desktop Calendars

Available in lots of resolutions (do people even use half of these resolutions?!?) there's sure to be one for your desktop. Unless you're using dual screen. Then you could... tile, or something. Heh.

You can download them now.

Anarchy Online takes place on the planet Rubi-Ka, some 27 500 years into the future. The history of mankind has changed a lot since present day. In 2019, a terrifying nuclear holocaust wiped out most of Earth’s heavily populated cities and humans were in the blink of an eye returned to a primitive society of hunters and gatherers. But the story didn’t really start there.

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From the Official Site

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The Anarchy Online backstory is rich and incredibly deep. Going back as far as twelve years, born from the minds of a few friends, it was first a concept built around the idea of a sci-fi game. A book was written and published, giving players a unique chance to delve into the story that touches on several ideas that mankind have pondered for hundreds of years. Who are we? Where did we come from?

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Awesome:

The 17.10 update brings with it a new raid management and instancing system that will allow players to come together like never before and get a much better overview of their raid forces.

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From the Official Site

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Raid Interface

The new raid interface will allow players to manage the teams and individuals within the new raid groups. Players will be able to use the following features:

- Assign leaders for recruitment to the raid.
- Switch and assign players between teams within the raid.
- Each profession within the raid can be identified by profession icons next to their names.
- Manage a maximum of six teams together as one raid. For raid instances the limit on the number of teams will vary playfield to playfield up to a maximum of six.
- Use a specific raid channel for communication.
- Move the players health and nano bars to appear anywhere you wish on the screen.
- See how much health a player has lost both by their bar and through a numerical display over the bar showing how much health they have lost.
- Assign different loot rules including a leader mode where the raid leader can assign loot rights to anyone in the raid.

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On the official AO site, three game directors, a story creator, and a lead designer on the Anarchy Online team sit down and discuss their experiences over the last seven years of developing Anarchy Online.

The video weighs in at a whopping twelve minutes long and is quite large, so we strongly suggest that you download it in advance of wanting to watch it! Our friends at Curse Gaming have also put up an online Flash Player version of the video.

The official site is currently announcing a sweepstakes with an absolutely unmissable prize!

The sweepstakes has a first prize of a custom Anarchy Online Gaming PC System from GameRigs, including GameRigs Aluminum ATX Case with custom artwork, Intel Core™ 2 processor, NVIDIA GeForce® graphics card, Crucial Ballistix™ memory, NEC Accusync 24" LCD Display, Razer Lycosa™ gaming keyboard, Razer DeathAdder™ gaming mouse, GameRigs "Anarchy Online" BattleMat™, Lifetime account of Anarchy Online with all expansions, Jobe Deluxe Apartment, Leet Pet.

Open (unfortunately!) only to residents of the US and Canada, this is a can't miss opportunity! You don't even need to do anything but fill in your details!

Kind of sad that this is their last journal update, but the good news is they will be moving to yet another Funcom MMO project. After Funcom's enormous success of Age of Conan I'm anticipating The Secret World will just as exciting!

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From the Official Site

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This is (sadly) the last entry of Nina "Aythem" Sund's Anarchy Online Developer Journal at TenTonHammer.

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The Anarchy Online backstory is rich and incredibly deep. Going back as far as ten years, it was first a concept built around the idea of a sci-fi game. A book was written and published, giving players a unique chance to delve into the story that touches on several ideas that mankind have pondered for hundreds of years. Who are we? Where did we come from?

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From the Official Site

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Anarchy Online takes place on the planet Rubi-Ka, some 27 500 years into the future. The history of mankind has changed a lot since present day. In 2019, a terrifying nuclear holocaust wiped out most of Earth’s heavily populated cities and humans were in the blink of an eye returned to a primitive society of hunters and gatherers. But the story didn’t really start there.

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Here is the newest letter from Game Director Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison.

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From the Official Site

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Here we are, seven years on from the week when bold pioneers took their first steps on Rubi-Ka and I couldn’t think of a better occasion to talk a little about the past, present and future. This letter might be a little longer than our usual messages but given the anniversary you’ll have to forgive me the chance for a little retrospective of the game as well as a little peak to what’s ahead for the future!

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On June 27th, Anarchy Online turns 7 years old, and we have prepared several great offers and fun, in-game surprises for the players. We look very much forward to celebrating the anniversary of the game together with you!

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From the Official Site

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Keeping in the theme of “7”, we’re delighted to present several great offers to all of you, both the old and the new, and the free players.
Anniversary gifts and offers

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Kind of sad that this is their last journal update, but the good news is they will be moving to yet another Funcom MMO project. After Funcom's enormous success of Age of Conan I'm anticipating The Secret World will just as exciting!

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From the Official Site

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This is (sadly) the last entry of Nina "Aythem" Sund's Anarchy Online Developer Journal at TenTonHammer.

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We are happy to present a preview of the content we plan to release with the 17.9 update.

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From the Official Site

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Steps of Madness – the nightmare continues


Neleb the Deranged sits in his cave, oblivious of the world outside and lost in the dark pits of his insanity. On the outside, a handful of people have long been convinced that Neleb is not a deranged mind with delusions of grandeur, but rather a misunderstood visionary. One of these people is more than happy to talk to people and will even supply quick and easy transport to the cave itself…if you dare venture inside that is!

Steps of Madness, which was the first dungeon added to Anarchy Online back in 2001, is not going to be quite as you remember it! Recently, nostalgia got hold of us and we decided to give it a small facelift. Targeted for levels 30-60, Steps of Madness now has modified monsters (yes, before you ask, we have taken them off their insane diets and their hit points should be a bit more manageable now!), new and improved loot and some revised items and drop rates. We hope that both new and old players alike will find their way to this curious place where sanity balances on an edge.

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IGN Vault has the following openings for enterprising and intelligent individuals who would like to make the world of MMOs and RPGs a better place to hang out. All positions are VOLUNTEER unless otherwise stated:

Network Newsie - This individual will post news on our IGN Vault main site. They will also post news on some of our individual vaults. The right person for this job will have time every day to post MMO and RPG related news, be able to search out and find interesting news, have a lot of personality and be very entertaining and informed. THIS POSITION IS PAID.

Video Expert - We are looking for someone who can help us create and put out a Vault Video each month. This person would be knwoledgeable about the ins and outs of producing video for the web.

Editorial Writers - These individuals will write editorial/interview content for the IGN Vault main page. We are looking for several individuals who would like to contribute in a network-wide position, who are opinionated and informed and would like the opportunity to break into writing about MMOs and RPGs in a substantive way.

For these positions, please contact skrause (at) IGN.com. Please include examples of your writing, where relevant to the position, and contact information via instant messenger.

The following positions are available on our individual game sites:

Age of Conan Vault

Night Time Newsies: Able to pick up on official announcements and community news from 7:00 PM EST / 4:00 PM PST onward.

XML Editor: We need someone who is familiar with XML and is playing Age of Conan.

If you are interested in either of these positions, please contact jube (at) vaultnetwork.com.

Guild Wars Vault

News Reporter - Someone who can keep up with basic Guild Wars developments on the Official Site and beyond in the MMO world.

Strategy Writer - Someone to write PvP guides, Skills Spotlights, and help fill the Template Database.

Please contact dom (at) vaultnetwork.com to apply for these positions.

Lineage 2 Vault

News Reporter - Someone who can keep up with basic Lineage 2 developments on the Official Site and beyond in the MMO world.

Translator - Fluent in Korean and English and capable of viewing Korean sources and translating.

Lineage 2 Vault application information

Lord of the Rings Online Vault

News Digests
Description: Write a summary of the news for each week.
Deadline: One article each week.

Strategy Writers
Description: Write LOTRO strategy guides.
Deadline: One article of at least 500 words every 2 weeks.

Columnist/Editorialist
Description: Write columns or editorials. Not looking for ranters or expose' writers.
Deadline: One article of at least 500 words every 2 weeks.

Please contact angelina_rayne (at) vaultnetwork.com to apply for these positions.

Vanguard Vault

Vanguard Vault is in need of the following staff:

Fanfic Writer

DB Workers

Artistic Staff

Guide Writers

If you are interested in these positions, contact avalon (at) vaultnetwork.com.

Warhammer Vault

Warhammer Vault has need of the following individuals:

News Reporters

Artists

Please contact swanny (at) vaultnetwork.com to apply for these positions.

Witcher Vault

Witcher Vault has the following openings:

Database Admin - Someone to add to the databases

News Reporters - Someone to post news as it comes available

Quest Guide Authors - Someone to write quest guides

Column/Fanfiction Writer - Someone to provide stories related to the Witcher content.

To apply for these, please email rottingflesh (at) vaultnetwork.com.

World of Warcraft Vault

Crafting Master

Description: Oversee the crafting database. Make sure all craft skills are being updated and cross reference guides.
Requirements: You will need to be a self starter and have the discipline to accomplish a set number of entries per week.
For more information please fill out this form.

Wiki Master

Description: Set up and manager the WoW Vault's wiki section(s)
Requirements: Must have a working knowlege of wiki and be able to complete tasks in a timely manner
For more information please fill out this form.

Editorial Manager

Description: Oversee all staff writers. Make sure deadlines are being met. Select and spotlight reader submitted fan fiction and articles.
Requirements: Must have good people skills and work well with others. Organizational skills and ability to meet deadlines is needed.
For more information please fill out this form.

MMOFury got a chance to get some nice intel on the highly anticipated 17.9 update from Game Director, Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison.

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From the Official Site

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"In this interview Craig discusses the changes to Steps of Madness, Upcoming Summer Events, AO's commitment to both PVP and PVE content. Anarchy Online continues to be one of the most popular Sci-Fi MMORPGs on the market, and with the upcoming 17.9 update, it will only get better. Have a look." --MMOFury

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