Rumors have been circulating that Jack Black will be voicing one of the characters in EA Mythic's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Unfortunately, this was denied by a rep from EA. To find out more, head on over to the full article.

Remember when we reported that NASA was planning on releasing an educational Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG)? After NASA revealed the details of the licensing agreement, there was some confusion on how the developers were supposed to make money on the venture. Well, this has all been clarified as of late, so check out the full article for more information.

Electronic Arts' John Ricitiello made a bold statement regarding the state of entertainment media. He spoke of video games and movies. With the way things are developing now, he said that Hollywood needs video games more than it needs them. Find out the details in the full article.

It's been a while since anything new popped up for the announced Warcraft movie, leaving it another dormant movie hopeful like many others hinted or announced before. After a gathering of movie producers and game developers at the recently concluded Hollywood & Games Summit, however, it appears that the movie project is still active and Blizzard has been monitoring its progress closely.

Blizzard has toyed with the Warcraft theme in RTS and MMO genres, so it wouldn't be surprising that they've mentioned about being serious in expanding its universe beyond games and novels. And although Legendary Pictures won't be using any of the stories or characters that Blizzard or the novels have used, Big Blue's intent on making the movie an authentic experience of the Warcraft intellectual property.

"We’re supplying quite a bit in terms of story and script development. We’re concentrating on the world and making sure that the experience and feel of the IP is there," said Blizzard's VP Rob Pardo. He mentioned that Legendary Pictures was handpicked from a selection of movie makers, and they made it into Blizzard's cut.

"We got a real good sense that they had a certain amount of geek to them, as we all do," said Pardo, concluding that their movie partner was a natural choice for the expansion of the Warcraft IP to movies.

 

Legendary Pictures chairman and producer of 300 Thomas Tull and game publisher Brash Entertainment CEO Mitch Davis recently delivered the Hollywood & Games keynote entitled Driving Mythology Forward. They gave a very riveting speech on the difficulties in crossing over from one medium to the next, but what might interest most people though is Tull's references to the up and coming movie based on Blizzard's World of Warcraft.

He addressed the community of gamers who have grown to become rather wary of movies based on video games and why the World of Warcraft movie would be different. He cited 300 as an example of a medium which has traversed the boundaries of media.

We’re doing World of Warcraft, and making it into a movie. I have very strong feelings -- from the movie side -- that making movies based on games just because they sold well is a really bad idea. There’ve been some like that that weren’t up to snuff just out of the gate.

It doesn’t matter to us if it’s based on a graphic novel like [Frank Miller's] 300, or a TV show – if there’s a great universe and story, that’s what’s interesting to us. Sure, there are 8 million people playing WoW, but even if all of those people saw the movie multiple times, we’d still be screwed. It’s a jumping off point and we see it as larger than that. World of Warcraft has the right stuff to make it happen.

Those are very interesting statements coming from the man who created a movie very faithful to the source material, yet entertaining enough for those who haven't read the graphic novel.

Will he be working his magic with this movie and bringing the game to the big screen with the amount of accuracy that gamers will be looking for and at the same time providing a memorable experience for those who have never played a single Warcraft game?

If you want to read more on this, click on the full article.

The main problem with most MMORPGs is the grind or killing the same monsters over again either to level up or get loot. Anyone who's played and devoted time to leveling a character can attest to that. Apparently, Colony Studios CEO Michael Wallis feels the same way.

He cited World of Warcraft as an example of a genre getting old. While he gave the game props since it did some good things, he also stated the problem with it: "If you look at any of the current MMOGs, much of the gameplay is exactly the same as that in WoW which is pretty much the same as that in EverQuest which is eight years old already.

Pretty strong words but he did raise valid points regarding the current trend of MMORPG in the market today. Most of the games follow the routine: collect "X" items and trade them in to finish a quest. This may have been fine eight years ago but most would think the genre should have evolved after many years.

Despite that, Colony Studios is still undecided on the path they will take in the MMORPG market. So far, they are planning on licensing and releasing a yet unnamed major Hollywood science-fiction property. If the deal doesn't push through, then they plan on coming out with their own original IP.

If you want to read more about, click on our Read link to take you to the full interview.

We love machinima. Those in game movies span in variety (just like Hollywood, we note) from socially conscious to movie and television series spoofs. Just goes to show just how many things you can do in the World of Warcraft - other than end game that is. Today, we've got the trailer of Azerothian Espionage by Cameron Gadsby and edited by Ciavarella Studios.

Azerothian Espionage looks like an epic movie, but will this be comparable to Fanatik's work? We'll see that when the actual movie comes out. According to fubarius2 (of YouTube, who also did an amazing job with "It's All Coming Back to Me Now"), the movie will be posted in "several days" and will run approximately 16 minutes.

We'll keep our eyes peeled for that and for the meantime, you can watch the trailer for Azerothian Espionage. Stay tuned for more World of Warcraft movies.

Tabula Rasa's fall release is getting closer and closer by the day, and today we've got more words from NCSoft's Richard Garriott. This time, it all comes from his recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Read on for a few snippets.

The past. Garriott points to the stock "fundamental creative differences" answers when asked about his departure from Electronic Arts. Going more in-depth, he explains, "EA's core business is making sports games, and they've got a machine and a process that does that very, very successfully. Frankly, EA wasn't convinced that the MMOG business model was the way of the future and so that ultimately led to my retirement from EA."

The present. While most analysts say that the MMOG market is already saturated, Garriott begs to differ. "Lineage is already up to six million players in just Asia alone and something like one out of 10 people in Korea have a Lineage account," he says. "If you compare that sort of penetration to the U.S., we still have a long way to go to reach saturation."

He further adds that while World of Warcraft is clearly a gaming phenomenon and is currently selling millions of copies right now, most blockbuster games also sell in the millions of copies nowadays. "I don't personally think that any game has hit market saturation, including Warcraft."

The future. Garriott says he believes that MMOGs are "still in their infancy," and that World of Warcraft is still in the first MMOG generation. "I love the game and have nothing but compliments for it," he says. "But it is also extremely derivative of the other online games that have come before it."

He acknowledges that change will come slowly, but the process is already starting. "The winner in the competition for the next-generation MMOG will be the developer who can create a game with the same real tension and excitement that solo-player games offer."

For the full interview, click on the "read" link below.

Here are some pictures of the surprisingly quiet Burning Crusade launch at Chicago. Opening at midnight, the retail stores proved to be rather efficient with their service to the people lined up outside the icy, cold night.

True, there weren't any fancy fireworks, Hollywood-ish events, nor rare appearances from the head honchos of Blizzard. But nonetheless, the launch pulled off without a hitch, and, well, the fans were just happy to finally have this expansion of WoW. And nobody was robbed at gunpoint.

Knowing that there are eight million of them fans out there, we sure hope there's enough to go around for everybody.

 

As the CES 2007 warms up in Las Vegas, the Visual Effects Society has announced their nominees for their Fifth Annual Visual Effects Society (VES) Awards. Among the nominees are the Ubisoft Montreal-developed game for the Xbox 360 and PS3, Assassin's Creed. The game, specifically its X06 trailer, was able to rack up two nominations - Outstanding Real Time Visuals in a Video Game and Outstanding Pre-rendered Visuals in a Video Game. Jade Raymond, Nicolas Cantin, Raphael Lacoste, Christophe Martin, Thomas Giroux, and Anne Mai Le Bouyonnec were named as potential recipients of the award.

Assassin's Creed isn't the only game blessed with nominations. Its sole competition in the Outstanding Real Time Visuals award is the PS3 title from Electronic Arts,Fight Night Round 3. In the Pre-rendered Visuals category, Assassin's will go head-to-head with the E3 2006 trailers of Hellgate: London and Warhammer: Mark of Chaos.

To the nominees, congratulations and good luck! The VES Awards will be handed out on February 11 at the Kodak Grand Ballroom in Hollywood. To check out the full list of awards and nominees, and if you feel like attending the awards night, you could click on the read link that we have for you below.