farbot.com

This has been a big month for MMO shakeups in the PC world, and what looks like the biggest announcement of them all is capping it off. World of Warcraft, the biggest dog in the western MMO world, has thrown open the gates to even more of the unwashed masses today with their new free to download Starter Edition, allowing anyone and everyone to play the game absolutely free to level 20.

Last week we learned that Star Wars Galaxies will be closing down in December thanks to the end of their license with LucasArts, the end of an 8-year saga that had its ups and downs.

Sony Online Entertainment has announced that their Station Pass, a one-price ticket to all of their PC MMO offerings (except SWG) and one PS2 offering is getting a price cut and prepayment bonuses. Instead of $30/month, $20/month will get you into Everquest, Everquest II, the venerable PS2 Everquest Online Adventures, the quite new DC Universe Online, and member benefits on Free Realms, among other games. Prepay for a year and the price drops down to $15/month, the current premium price of a single MMO.

LEGO Universe has announced a free to play "lite" mode is coming soon, giving players a limited area of the full game to try things out.

Also jumping into the Free to Play pool will be City of Heroes with their Episode 21 release. A new Paragon Market will debut, and subscribers will be dubbed VIP members and receive 400 Paragon Points a month to spend in the marketplace.

While Champions Online went free to play in January, they only recently showed up on Steam with a handful of other Free to Play games.

Any way you look at it there's something for almost anyone to choose from. Except maybe a sci-fi MMO, hmm.

City of Heroes would just like to take this opportunity to remind you that they are not a Free To Play game. Oh, I mean, that you can re-activate your account and get double XP for it from January 27th to the 31st. Those of you who noticed NCSoft's weekend starts on a Thursday this week get a gold star. Go ahead, stick it on your super hero action figure if you want I won't tell anyone.

Looks like everyone's trying to get a piece of the MMO limelight with DC Universe Online launching, Champions Online going Free To Play, EVE Online's Incursion expansion kicking into full swing, and now City of Heroes rolling out the double XP carpet to let you come back and enjoy a game you might have played before.

I played City of Heroes a long time ago but didn't find it all that gripping an experience. I much prefer the internet spaceships of EVE, but I do plan to try out Champions Online.

Want to reactivate your City of Heroes account? Hit This Link and you'll step this way. But you might want to click through below to read the full information on what exactly to do first.

For the full details, hit the jump.

Over the weekend I took a few minutes to take NCSoft up on their invitation to jump in and play City of Heroes again on my computer. These free-play weekends show up every so often as an excellent incentive to get back in and bust some heads with your super-powered characters and try and get you hooked on the game again. I did have to download the game into my laptop, not having played it on this computer before, and thankfully the download and install process was pretty painless. The game itself, though, hasn't changed much, at least in the looks department.

While I imagine their salvage-based crafting system might have addressed my old lack of interest with the game not having the "loot factor" of other games, not having the visuals get much better is something of a downer. One thing I noticed recently in the news, however, was the upcoming feature of letting end users write their own missions for the game, submit them online for others to download and play, and have player votes determine the best ones to earn fame and fortune. I've noticed more than a little similarity to the level sharing system that LittleBigPlanet should sport at launch. While I used to be a frustrated creative writer in my distant past, this isn't enough to get my creative juices flowing by itself, but it's still something I'll be watching with great interest. A publishing platform, regardless of what the medium is, could be something that becomes a vehicle for discovering good writing talent.

Seen on Kotaku.