Computer Games - Will there be any new spaceships to fly in Rage of the Wookiees?

Julio Torres - There are four new ships being added with Rage of the Wookiees directly from Episode III Revenge of the Sith: Anakin’s Starfighter, Grievous’s Starfighter, ARC-170 Also new with this expansion is the Y8 Mining Ship, capable of holding up to 20 players adventure throughout space, mining the most precious and valuable of resources.

Computer Games - What other new gameplay enhancements will be included in Rage of the Wookiees?

Julio Torres - As mentioned above, we’re adding Space Mining with Rage of the Wookiees. This new expansion will include the space component of the game as well, so everyone with Rage of the Wookiees will be able to venture into space.

Space mining will provide players with some very valuable natural resources for sale back on the planets. Most any current craft can be modified to allow for some mining. Space mining is a fast paced – and at the higher levels dangerous – way to earn a living. The action will be arcade-like and there will be plenty of pirates to contend with, especially for the more valuable ores to be found.

The MMORPG will launch in summer 2006 alongside the next film in the series, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. The game will be developed internally by the "Walt Disney Internet Group’s acclaimed VR Studio," the same shop responsible for Disney Online's other MMORPG, Toontown Online. No specific platforms for the game were announced, nor was a pricing structure laid out.

Disney Online describes Pirates of the Caribbean Online as "a world of high seas action and adventure where players will personalize their own pirate character and organize with other players to form a pirate crew." Unlike most other pirate games, Disney's MMORPG will incorporate the supernatural elements of the films, allowing players to "embark on swashbuckling missions to battle both each other and the evil, undead pirates of the high seas."

Turbine, Inc., a leading publisher of online subscription entertainment, announced today that the highly-anticipated massively multiplayer online game Asheron's Call 2: Legions™ has gone gold. Legions, the first expansion pack for the graphically ground breaking phenomenon Asheron's Call 2: Fallen Kings®, arrives on retail shelves throughout North America in May.

After an extensive beta program, including feedback from thousands of online gamers, Turbine has put the finishing touches on the long-awaited expansion pack. The forthcoming game provides players with an ambitious new storyline and content for hours and hours of additional online adventuring. Gamers will get to explore a massive new continent, play an innovative hero system and choose new races including the mystical Empyreans as well as the Drudge.

While Atari is publishing the game in North America and Europe, Turbine retains publishing rights in Asia. Shanda will act not only as the localization partner for the game, but also lend a hand with content nuances for the Chinese market. The two companies will "cooperate extensively in developing and localizing" that game and others for Chinese gamers, Turbine said yesterday in a statement.

"Shanda has become a gateway into the Chinese online gaming market," said Jeff Anderson, president and CEO of Turbine. "This agreement signals Turbine's commitment to a long-term presence in China."

In the contentious world of game publishing in China, Shanda considers itself the largest in terms of revenue and number of concurrent users on its game servers. The company says it often tallies 2 million concurrent users playing its games.

ArenaNet today announced that Guild Wars has gone gold and will be available nationwide on April 28 for the PC. This is the first game from NCsoft subsidiary ArenaNet, which comprises several ex-employees from Warcraft developer Blizzard.

Guild Wars is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game that emphasizes strategy over experience-point hoarding. Players will be able to acquire numerous skills at various points of the game, but can only bring a limited amount into battle. By cleverly combining skills between party members, gamers can unleash powerful spells or counter their opponents' attacks.

The game features campaign-style quests that can be attempted with non-player characters or other human-controlled characters. Guild Wars also features an extensive player-versus-player portion, where teams of characters battle for prestige.

Guild Wars is rated T for Teen and will come in two formats: the $49.99 standard edition and the $79.99 collector's edition, which includes an exclusive weapon, the game's soundtrack, a Logitech headset and three months of Teamspeak, and a book featuring art from the game. Unlike most MMORPGs, Guild Wars will not charge a monthly subscription fee.

The main reason? As you probably know, we did some closed focus testing with several groups of players last month, in preparation for the upcoming general Player Preview. Before we put the Preview in front of the toughest audience in the world, AC players, we wanted to put the game in front of, well, some of the toughest audience in the world, just to make sure we had the game we thought we had. This seemed only prudent, and we made sure we had players from a wide range of servers, including Darktide.

The upshot is: Boy, are we glad we did that. It was interesting, if your definition of 'interesting' is having your flaws pointed out in graphic detail. The feedback we got from the players was great, very detailed and specific and delivered with tough love. What they told us is that we had some changes to make. And we took that feedback to heart and have started to make some of those changes, but it is going to take some time.

Don't get the idea I'm blaming the delay on the players; if anything, we should have caught some of the issues they noted earlier. As we all know, however, we can all get too close to our babies; that's why you have testing. The testers have improved Throne of Destiny with their comments and we're indebted to them. Besides, I don't know the development team that doesn't want more time to optimize code.