In their latest Developer Log, NetDevil's president Scott "Scorch" Brown talked about Jumpgate's journey from a personal obsession to an advanced and highly polished reincarnation, appropriately titled "Evolution":

When we started Netdevil 10 years ago to create Jumpgate Classic, we were just a handful of people. Most of us were still working fulltime jobs, but every free minute we had was spent developing the game. For us it was the game that we always wanted to play. At the time the most popular space games were Elite and Wing Commander and those games were our inspiration.

Jumpgate Classic was a true labor of love and because of it we have some great stories to tell. It really shaped us as developers and we gained a lot of experience from it. We often joke that the game was finished on passion alone. Well, passion and a lot of Pizza...

Knowing what we know today and being in possession of much better resources then we were 10 years ago, we felt very confident that we could make a much better game that was based in the Jumpgate universe. A game that would be really special. Thus, the decision was made and Jumpgate Evolution was born.

Read More for the full log plus the latest released screenshots!

If you are one of the 500,000+ people that signed up for the Warhammer Online beta, James has just posted some very good news over at the Warhammer Herald. Apparently there are a few more people in the beta test now.

Waaagh!!!

No, you're not dreaming!

We've sent out a handful of invites to folks who have been waiting for a while now and met our current eligibility requirements. This includes event attendees, contest winners, and various other associations.

This is just the beginning, keep your eyes peeled - there are more to come!

Make sure to check your Email!

1Up.com is featuring a story about the departure of Lucas Arts president Jim Ward. Citing personal reasons for the departure, Mr. Ward said:

"I am so proud of all [the] people and the work we've done together at LucasArts over the last four years," Ward wrote. "It's been an incredible experience. Together we've rebooted the company and set LucasArts on a path to even greater success. This is a fantastic team and they are positioned for their best year ever."

Lucas Arts will put Howard Roffman in as the interim president while a search is conducted for a replacement for Ward.

Read the rest at the link above.

As struggling Ryzom fans continue to populate their beloved universe, Community Manager "boroshi" posted the following grim announcement:

Dear players,

I'm very sorry to inform you that GameForge Germany has today told us that there is the possibility that the Ryzom servers will be shut down this week. Currently I'm being told that Arispotle will not be restarted in the near future.

This doesn't signal the end of Ryzom however; the liquidation procedure is still ongoing and there is still time for us to get new owners, so don't lose hope.

I'm afraid I might not be able to answer all the questions I'm sure you have, but I'll keep you updated when we know more.

If/when the forums go down, don't forget that we have the forums at http://arispotle.yubovision.fr/ - once again I'll post any and all updates there as well.

Player reactions are flooding the official forum, as many are still hopeful the liquidation process will get done in time for a new owner to step in and save Atys.

We'll keep you updated on this story.

Now that PotBS has been gold for a couple of weeks it's time for a patch. Version 1.1 shows to fix things that didn't get changed in beta. A new Devlog has been published showing all the changes that will be made to ships and ship combat in version 1.1.

NPC ships will surrender under certain circumstances. The way the surrender math worked, an NPC could suddenly surrender even though you hadn't fired on it recently. This is because it's evaluating damage over time and other factors that don't necessarily correspond to having just been shot at. While the math was reasonable, it was very strange for the NPC to suddenly surrender if you hadn't fired at them for a bit...

Check out the full Devlog after the click.

If there's one recurring theme on the forums it's the outcry for new realms for the small section of players obsessed with powering new characters to cap on a virgin server. Well they've finally gotten their wish...sort of.

The first new server to be released since the launch of Burning Crusade, Ghostlands is using a different type of launch, one that disables character creation for a period of time, instead allowing players from higher population realms to transfer there first. This has been the standard since slightly before the release of BC, with many new realms having locked character creation for a set period of time.

The realms available for free transfer are:

Aerie Peak
Aggramar
Alexstrasza
Alleria
Argent Dawn
Blackhand
Cenarius
Doomhammer
Hellscream
Whisperwind

The free transfers will start on Thursday, January 31 at 3:00 PM PST and run until Thursday, February 7 at 3:00 PM PST.

Along with this a variety of other free server transfers have been announced. For the full list click 'Read More'.

EA and GigaMedia have entered into an agreement that will see the later operate Warhammer Online in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau when the game launches this year.

Details after the leap.

An end of the month treat is now available the official Warhammer Online website. The treat is about a minute of footage from the game depicting tons and tons of group battle, with spells flying everywhere and lots of slashy slash slash (some choppy chop chop too!) as Paul Barnett would probably put it.
You can find the video here, or click below to watch it right here at WarCry.

The SWG dev team has released its first update for Chapter 8. This update mainly includes some bug fixes, including one for the much-discussed ARC-170 hitbox problem:

Ships:

• Corrected the hit box for the ARC-170 and the Naboo N-1 Starfighter.
• Collection Reward Engines now look like Style 1 (normal round engines) on the X-wing Advanced ship.

Click below to read the rest.

In anticipation of Book 12, Turbine has released new rendered images of Elrond and Amarthiel from Lord of the Rings Online.

You can see all the new images by clicking "Read More"