Blue's News has a story about the transition to free-to-play for Granado Espada. They first announced their intentions at the end of November, but details were not available.

Five months after the launch of the multiple award-winning game, it is now available to gamers free to play (F2P) with the launch of the Bahia Island Expansion on the 20th of December.

With a pledge to bring a whole new dimension to the GE gaming experience, IMC Games, HanbitSoft, and local operator IAHGames will introduce a stash of new premium items which will feature exquisitely designed costumes to compliment the tropical beach scenes in the new expansion.

The expansion will feature new maps such as Bahia Island and Tierra De Los Muertos (Land of the Dead).

Read it all here.

Scotland has announced intentions to target gamers with anti-drunk driving advertising. It's an interesting approach from a government to place advertising of this nature inside games and further legitimizes the in-game advertising industry.

How much success Scotland will have with virtual billboards in NBA Live remains to be seen.

Read about it here.

The period on December referred to as the "holidays" has come to mean many things and in this article, Robert Cox looks at what people can expect in some of the major MMORPGs. How do these virtual worlds celebrate this time of the year when so many have the time off work to peek inside?

If there's one thing the Horde and Alliance can agree on, it's a party. All across Azeroth and Outland, festive decorations adorn towns and cities as both sides begin their annual celebration of the Feast of Winter Veil.

Read more after the click.

No rest for the holidays, Jonathan Steinhauer keeps his MMO design column on schedule with part one of "Killing Experience". In this, he looks at the primary form of advancement in every major MMO: combat.

Why is it that the dominant method of character growth in almost every game in existence is through the killing of monsters and villains? Whether you are looking at the oldest of pen-and-paper games, your mainstream single-player RPG, or the newest MMO, character growth always seems to boil down to "I killed that goblin warlord so I get 100xp." On the other hand, if the same goblin was hacked and beaten to an inch of its life and then left alone to recover (which usually averages less than thirty seconds), the same player would get zero experience from the battle.

Read more after the click.

An article appeared in an India Times article stating that Zapak Digital Entertainment Ltd, was in the process of buying SOE for 300 million dollars. SOE has denied the report, and the original news source has now removed the story from their site.

India's Economic Times, citing anonymous sources and an unnamed Zapak official, had earlier reported that Zapak was set to buy Sony Online for about $300 million.

"Sony Online Entertainment is not for sale and the report that Zapak is purchasing Sony Online Entertainment is completely erroneous and false," a company spokesperson for San Diego-based Sony Online told Reuters over telephone.

You can view the source over at Yahoo.com

What a year it has been for PotBS. With Closed beta starting up, then Open Beta starting in December. And now with Open Beta closing shop tomorrow, we all rush in to play one last time for free, or do we? The Devs have heard your responses for an extension and look what they had to say!

We've been planning to end the Open Beta this Sunday the 23rd. But we've heard from so many players who want to play over the holidays that we've changed our minds.

The Pirates of the Burning Sea Open Beta will now run until the morning of January 1st, 2008! That gives everyone one more week to play the game, see what we're doing, and check out the very latest improvements and changes.

What a surprise to the fans, but wait there's more! Read the rest after the jump!

IGG and WarCry bring you a chance to win an iPod Shuffle or in-game prizes for Tales of Pirates, Myth War or Voyage Century.

There are three tiers of Tales of Pirates prize packs: Five people will receive a "Chest of Enigma" valued at $50 each, 10 people a "Chest of Demonic World" valued at $30 each and 100 people a "Novice Package", valued at $9 each. From Myth War we have five "Constellation Packs", which are valued at $100 each. Finally, from Voyage Century there is are 10 limited edition "Christmas Packs" valued at $46 each. Winners can redeem any of these prizes in-game.

Click below to enter.

In the final developer journal of the year, Tasos Flambouras chimes in with answers to a bevy of community questions. Topics include arrow physics, solo-ability, trophies and much more.

We also get three exclusive screenshots of the game that show off an Ork female, Human male and Alfar female respectively all in monster armor. There is an image on each of the three pages of this extensive article.

Ork Female (Exclusive)

In another post the uniqueness of Darkfall's characters was put into question by one of the posters. We've talked about this many times in the past, and I think that in testing where most of our screenshots are taken from we don't pay so much attention to modifying or dressing up our characters so you end up seeing a lot of the same stuff all the time. We won't implement character creation morphing because we're shooting for performance during massive battles, rather than spending time drawing everyone's uniquely disfigured character. Still...we've done everything possible to give your character variation and uniqueness and your character will definitely stand out in a crowd if you want him/her to. Henning took some quick screenshots with some new facial / hairstyle / equipment variations of characters exclusively wearing armor they looted off of monsters. The female ork is wearing face paint and angra skeleton shoulder pads, beastman bracers, and a servants of Malaut girdle, and revenant greaves. The Alfar female is wearing face paint, zombie shoulder pads, hobgoblin bracers, and Ciel Fey boots. The human male is wearing face paint, black knight shoulder pads, gloves, girdle and boots, and a hobgoblin helmet. That's a tar lake behind the alfar by the way.

Read more after the jump.

Today we have a brand new pair of screenshots as we resumes the bi-weekly Age of Conan screenshot series. This time we have an image of a character and a demon, as well as a shot from character creation that shows just how broken a nose can be.

LucasArts and Sony Online Entertainment have announced the launch of a Buddy Referral Program for Star Wars Galaxies that offers current players rewards for bringing friends into the game. They're calling it the Galactic Settlement Initiative:

The Empire is looking for new citizens to join the galaxy and is offering collectible in-game items to current players who recruit new settlers. Starting today, players can earn up to four collectible in-game items for referring buddies into Star Wars Galaxies.

Click below to read more about it.