Get ready to hustle out on the field! Sony Online Entertainment has sent out their newest Free Realms game update out on the greens today, Goal Time. Features and more details after the jump.

World of Warcraft''s Wrath of the Lich King expansion is sure to usher in an epic new era in the virtual world forged by Blizzard. One of the new things in this expansion is the implementation of Achievements that will give players bragging rights. Lead game designer Jeffrey Kaplan tells us a little something about it in the full article up ahead.

It was announced on the official Steam Website that gamers can now try CCP's popular MMORPG, EVE Online, for free. Considering this is the very first MMORPG to be made available via Valve's software distribution arm, it might be interesting to see how many people will take advantage of this offer. For more information about this promo, check out the full article by clicking on the "read more" link below.

Those of you who have Valve Corporation's digital distribution platform installed on your PCs might have already noticed the newest game to join the Steam roster of downloadable titles. CCP Games' EVE Online gains the distinction of being the first MMO game made available via Steam and gives players a chance to try out this futuristic Sci-Fi game for free.

More details in the full article after the jump!

It's a growing pain that some classes just seem to be laid out for a single gender, but they still remain that way anyhow. Blizzard's World of Warcraft may be a newcomer to the MMORPG scene - and a successful one at that - but it isn't immune to the MMO issues regarding sexism, no matter how light it may be ("over-generalization" if you would like to put it softly) be.

 

Irelance of Moonrunner may consider himself/herself as a sexist for assuming healers to be female gamers and warriors to be male gamers, but then so do millions of other people in numerous other MMOs in the world to date. Is it so impossible to accept that maybe women can handle well as a brawny melee fighter and some men feel more helpful as a supporter of a great party of players?

Some games such as Wizet's MapleStory and Aeonsoft's Flyff (Fly for Fun) managed to effectively blur that line, with many male gamers coming out as clerics or supportive classes - and effective ones at that. So skillful the female gamers became in melee and tanking, that rogues and the favorite warrior classes appear equally populated with women.

Yes, some games may be more openly sexist than they should be, though they don't attempt to be purposely. Games such as Gravity's ROSE Online Evolution may be a tough one to crack, especially if you've had nightmares after watching a man clad in the controversial Mana Steam gear pass you by.

 

It may not seem right that a male, or even a male character for the most part, can't become part of a particular class without passing off as a woman at their highest level, but it goes for ROSE and it may not stop there. Should healers be generalized as a female class and warriors accepted as a male-only class? That dear readers is left for you to discuss.

At the Sony Gamers' Day this year, ShackNews' Chris Remo was able to try out Sony Online Entertainment's new Station Launcher. So what can we expect from the Steam-like program?

For those unfamiliar about the Station Launcher, it was announced last year and would be most comparable to Valve's Steam service plus more. The software client is slated to be released this summer and will bring a lot of new things to the table of this sort of service.

First off, players will be able to manage their video games in a neat little package including game purchases (expansions, TCGs), updates, and even billing. The service will allow players to install SOE and run games without CDs, they just need to register the CD-keys.

There are also a number of launching options where players can choose to launch games to a certain character in a specific server so they won't have to go through the choose server and character pages. Players can also set games to automatically launch as soon as Windows boots. There's even an option that allows players to skip the End User Agreement unless there's something modified on the document. It will also have a monitoring feature for CPU usage and download status for patches, as well as game specific news panes for updates on a particular title.

Station Launcher will be sporting cross game chat so all players across the SOE MMO universe can stay connected with each other even when they're playing different games. The feature will not be limited to that, though, as it also "retroactively locates the current location of friends met in the past and shows a breakdown of their SOE gaming histories as well as pinpointing where they were first encountered online." Basically, it locates a friend from you met previously in another game.

Nathan Pearce, creative director at SOE had this to say: "What I expect when this goes live is a massive online reunion in all these games." Interestingly, SOE plans to have the service cross over even to games distributed by other publishers. They currently contract services like billing and customer service to other MMO games like Final Fantasy XI.

Even other chat services like AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, Xfire, and Yahoo! Messenger will be integrated to the software client. Windows Live Messenger is also planned to be included in that list. The chat compatibility does not end there. SOE will have "shared game-related functions" between Xfire and the Station Launcher and hopes to have the same thing with Yahoo!.

The Station Launcher will also be mod friendly since the program is based on an open Jabber standard. SOE also plans to exploring giving out kits so that people can make their own skins. The possibility of the software client being available for the PlayStation 3 is also being explored though there wasn't any confirmation from Pearce.

We'll wait for further info about Station Launcher which is currently in internal beta. Reportedly, the software client is going to go on public beta test this spring and will go live in late summer. The current application being used, Launchpad will be subsequently phased out.

Keep this up and the PC Gaming section here at QJ might have to drop the Windows tag. Well, might. CodeWeavers' CrossOver Linux application allows Linux users to enjoy Windows-exclusive programs on their OS. Sort of like PlayStation gamers being able to enjoy Xbox-exclusive titles (and from here we say no more, lest we brew up someone's wrath by the mere suggestion).

Their latest version of CrossOver Linux, v6.0, is also the first to offer official support for Steam-powered Windows-based games. Yes, this includes Blizzard's World of Warcraft and Valve's Half-Life, among others. Steam-downloaded demos of these two, along with Heroes of Annihilated Empires and Medieval II: Total War have been tested and found working.

Quite the interesting find. CrossOver Linux 6.0 comes in Standard for US$ 60.00, and Professional for US$ 70.00. Version 6.0 has "moderate hardware requirements, and most Linux distributions should satisfy its software requirements". Aside: wonder if this will work in PS3 Linux? If the thought of WoW working on Wii would cause Blizzard's Jonathan LeCraft to toss his cookies, the potential thought of having it run on a PS3 via CrossOver Linux might just give him a heart attack.

Scammers are downright despicable, people who hoodwink others to get whatever they want. Apparently, they're perfecting their phishing methods now. Nope, they won't need fishing poles for that. What they need is bait.

Phishing or spoofing is one method scammers use to con players into giving their account information like account names and passwords. How? They send spam emails that look like official email. They also mimic official websites that forward players to a different site. Phishing is one of the top security problems encountered by gamers and internet users alike.

It seems that scammers have taken Valve Corporation's Steam and World of Warcraft as a good phishing spot. Fraudulent emails were reported by Gamespot and were compared with the real thing. Blizzard says that it's one of their biggest security problems, along with Trojans disguising as add-ons and hacks.

Blizzard reminds players of suspicious emails and websites asking for account info. According to a Blizzard rep, "People should be suspicious of anything that doesn't come from a Blizzard.com email address, or attempts to forward you to a site that isn't Blizzard.com or worldofwarcraft.com." Players are advised to check questionable mail and forward it to - billing@blizzard.com - and wait for a message confirming it's legitimacy before doing anything.

While action is being taken to prevent these scams from happening, players should still be wary and should take good care of protecting their account information.