Arenanet, the ex-Blizzard developers who went on to create Guild Wars, arguably one of the few successful games NCsoft publishes, has announced the next game in the series, named Nightfall. Little information on what the game will actually feature is present, but Arenanet and NCsoft are planning an upcoming PvP event for current players to get a taste of the current beta-level features of the game July 28 — 30, 2006. From the few screenshots released from Nightfall, really only a few character renderings, nothing much seems to have changed, but I’ll be interested to see where Arenanet plans on taking the Guild Wars world.

[Guild Wars Nightfall press release]

NCsoft has announced an odd promotional event this weekend for both CoH and CoV players. This weekend (July 21-23) players of both titles will earn double the usual experience points for all acts that involve XP gains. This is giving players the opportunity to quickly level up their characters in order to reach the many new features for higher-level players recently introduced in the “Destiny Manifest” expansions. As dear as I hold CoH and CoV to my heart, NCsoft is having some major problems keeping players interested in the game as it ages and moves forward in it’s story lines. With some of the most recent news out of NCsoft, I hope they can pull things back together, I guess we’ll have to wait and see how Tabula Rasa performs (though I’m not holding my breath).

[Coh / CoV double XP weekend event] (via MMORPG.com)

NCsoft has announced that all Auto Assault players, including EU players, will soon be merged onto one mega-server, known as Nexus and located within North America. According to NCsoft, this move is according to player’s wishes of having all players united on one major server in order to raise server population and give users a more diverse and satisfying game experience. The move will be occurring Thursday, July 13th and appears to indicate that the struggling MMORPG’s numbers are in fact disappointingly low and despite a huge marketing push, failed to really pull in a large enough userbase to justify multiple servers. This doesn’t bode well I’m afraid, both for NCsoft nor NetDevil, the Colorado-based developer behind Auto Assault. I personally am hoping that NCsoft implements their one-price, play-all strategy, which NCsoft reps have mentioned in several interviews over the past year. Lineage II, City of Heroes/Villains, Guild Wars and Auto Assault for one low monthly price, yes please.

[The Nexus is Coming: July 13, 2006]

NCsoft has confirmed previous rumours that they’ve laid off 70 of their over 300 employees at NCsoft-Austin (in Texas). Rumored to get hit the hardest were their QA and GM departments (of course!). Rumours originally broke on a large, private industry-insider’s forum and were quickly picked up by games blog f13.net. Rumored to be at the root of the problems is City of Heroes/Villains dwindling subscriber-base (now supposedly dropping under 100,000 total), the slow-start that new title, Auto Assault, is off to, and the huge flaming money pit that Tabula Rasa has turned into. There’s no news on how, if at all, this will effect ArenaNet and Guildwars development. It’s time to launch that universal subscription fee NCsoft, you’d get me back if only I could play Lineage II, CoH, and Auto Assault all at one low price. Condolences all around to those who are now without work.

[NCsoft fires 70 | (Via TCE)]