Although not officially confirmed yet, the grapevine has named the casualties of Electronic Arts' "cost-cutting measures." Studios that experienced significant layoffs are Mythic Entertainment, the guys behind Warhammer Online, and EA Tiburon, the studio responsible for Madden and other titles under the EA Sports banner.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures has been out for almost month and a half now. Now the question in my head is whether or not I should continue my subscription to the game. Well, if you're thinking the same thing, then head on over to the full article by clicking on the "read more" link below!

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (Xbox 360, PC) is shaping up to be quite a game. Jorgen Tharaldsen, the product director for Funcom, has shared quite a number of details about their plans to include cross-platform connectivity between the Xbox 360 and PC version of the game, the possibility of a PlayStation 3 version, and more. To find out what he had to say, check out the full article.

If you're not satisfied with the features found in the recently launched Game Play section of Flying Lab Software's Pirates of the Burning Sea, then the customer service would probably do the trick.

The developers were kind enough in adding information on this latest feature. Hopefully, the customer service could provide additional help to those who need it. Check out the details after the jump!

Think you have what it takes to be crowned the best? Here's your chance to prove yourself: the Customer Service team for SOE's Vanguard: Saga of Heroes will be hosting a Best of the Best-style tournament open to all classes on all servers. Check out the full article for the tournament details.

Time Warner Cable's (TWC) Road Runner Internet service in New York City may have taken a turn for the worse as complaints of one of its cable Internet service rose to a peak today. Blizzard received distressing feedback on Time Warner's Road Runner service, which reportedly ended in random pockets of lag in World of Warcraft.

 

All in all, the issues severely degraded the gameplay experience for a fraction of the U.S. realms' players. People were led to believe that the issues experienced could have something to do with TWC's shift to "packet shaping," although they were quickly denied by representatives of the company.

"We don't have a network management policy called packet shaping," spokespersion Alex Dudley told Shacknews. He remained firm in the belief that the company would not implement any changes that would affect gameplay in Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft.

In contrast, however, investigative Internet surfers identified a portion of a press release gathered from connection technology site Broadband Reports. The text definitely stated the term "packet shaping" and implicated the name of Time Warner and the announcement of the technology's release around the U.S.

According to posters in the forum where the partial press release was discovered, the text information was e-mailed to them by customer service representatives in light of the recent increase of service complaints. But in a final note, Dudley has assured that Time Warner Cable is looking into the issue and promises that the problems will be resolved as soon as possible.

A new anti-spam solution was recently implemented on the server side of Sony Online Entertainment's EverQuest II and it looks to be pretty efficient.

This new system reviews messages sent and flags those which have been identified as spam. All the flagged messages will not be sent to the players in their initial form, but in an abbreviated form with a tag saying "[Spam]" right before it.

Players will have the option to see the message in full by clicking on the [View] option right at the end of the message. Players can also choose to completely remove all traces of the identified spam by modifying their Chat Options and opting out of receiving the system message.

Of course a few spam messages will probably be getting through the system. If that happens, players can file a /report and /petition noting the person who sent the message so that the Customer Service department can take action on the spammer and further improve the filter. For an illustrated step by step guide, feel free to click on our read link. More updates as they happen.

Now that an in-game web browser has been added to EverQuest II, filing petitions within the game has become a whole lot easier for players. If you haven't tried it yet or don't know how, here's a quick little how-to.

In order to file and check on the status of a petition, all you need to do is type "/petition" (without the quotation marks, of course) at the EQ2 command prompt. Doing so will automatically launch the in-game browser and pull up the Knowledge Base window for customer support.

To check on the status of your petition, you need to click the "Service History" tab at the top of the Knowledge Base. Once there, click on the "Questions" link. The Service History page can also be used to check out the most recent announcements from the EQ2 Customer Support department.

Anyway, once you get to the Questions page, you'll see your existing petitions listed in order with the oldest tickets first. Clicking on any one of them will let you check out more information so you can review what you submitted or read any Customer Service responses to your petition.

Easy, eh? Try it out the next time you're playing Sony Online Entertainment's EverQuest II.

Sales and distribution network company AsianMedia is happy to announce that it has acquired the rights to NCSoft's MMO video game Lineage II for local distribution in the Philippines. This means that the said country, and nearby markets as well, will finally have their own dedicated servers.

Truth be told, the Philippines is one of the emerging "gaming countries" but it's currently being wrecked by piracy. Despite that however, don't assume that fans in the Philippines wouldn't be getting the same quality of service other top markets are enjoying. Information and Communications Technology Head Apol Salud shared,

The Lineage II servers are also tightly integrated with Telco grade network equipments from Cisco Systems to increase its efficiency in handling large amounts of data traffic. This allows "direct peering" with our partner telecommunication companies such as PLDT DSL, Globe DSL, Telekom Malaysia, and SingTel.

Aside from this, AsianMedia also noted that it will be putting up a 24/7 customer service center using servers from Dell to address regional and local gamers' concerns. According to AsianMedia Chief Operating Officer Ronald Allan Aquino mentioned that these kind of services will further endear Lineage II to the Southeast Asian player,

We have a great product in Lineage II and we've done everything we can to ensure that we provide the best gaming experience possible to those who log in to our servers to play. This is the kind of game where you simply cannot afford to be lagged if you expect to get anywhere in PvP or PvE scenarios.

Just around two months have passed, and Nexon America's recently released game Audition already has 100,000 users signed up for it. From the fame of Maple Story, Audition is yet another light-hearted MMO. Players won't be smacking monsters this time around, but competing on the dance floor instead.

Aside from being cute enough to get the interest of a wide audience, one of the appeals of Nexon games is being free. All you have to do is download the client, patch up, then you can already try your hand at this dancing rhythm game.

Being free doesn't mean there won't ever be new content or customer service. Nexon America promised "Our development team will be adding more features and events to the game over the next year, like cool haircuts, trendy clothes, and game contests, which will continue to fuel the game's growth and popularity."

Of course, you'll have to buy some of those for real money. Nexus Group, the mother company of Nexus America, earns US$ 230 million revenue from these microtransactions alone.

If you want a fresh online game with cute characters you can fully customize, Audition is worth a try.