Oh Smedley you’re such a kidder. Where’s the real online game announcement you promised? So much for hoping you’d resurrect one of the scrapped MMO’s you’ve got hiding in the SOE broom closet like the MMO RTS game that disapeared over 4 years ago.

Legends of Norrath is an online-only trading card game, based on the richly-detailed sword-and-sorcery world of Norrath from the massively multiplayer online role-playing games EverQuest and EverQuest II. Playable from within the MMOs and separately, Oathbound, the first set for Legends of Norrath features over 375 digital cards and is available in both a 55-card digital starter deck and 15-card digital booster packs. Play as one of many Oathbound avatars and decide your own fate as you choose between the paths of good or evil.

EverQuest® and EverQuest®II Interactivity: Catered specifically for the EverQuest and EverQuest II gamer, Legends of Norrath has been specially designed to work both with and within your existing EQ and EQII games. Launch LON from either game or individually via the stand alone client.
Earn EQ and EQII In-Game Special Rewards: Earn special loot cards from Legends of Norrath including mounts, potions, baubles, cloaks and more! Redeem these cards for your in-game loot items and deck out your EQ and EQII character.

Single-Player Campaigns or PVP: Test your skills against a sophisticated, re-playable AI system and earn special reward cards by completing campaigns or challenge players all over the world in online game lobbies where you can play both casual games and high-level tournaments.

Sophisticated Online Play: Featuring tools perfected through five previous collectable trading games, utilize the Deck Builder, Collection Manager, Trade Lobby, Tournament Lobby and numerous Casual Games Lobbies where you can find opponents any time of the day or night.

Multiple Ways to Win: Win by completing a series of four quests or reduce the health of your opponent’s avatar to zero. Be the best ultimate strategic mastermind as you choose your path towards victory.

Original Fantasy Artwork: Featuring original interpretations by experienced fantasy artists, players of EverQuest and EverQuest II will find themselves reacquainted with legendary EverQuest and EverQuest II characters, creatures, locations, and items. In addition, witness new avatars and minions introduced for the very first time.

What does this mean for EverQuest players? Well, if it wasn’t bad enough geeking out playing a MMO or CCG by itself, Sony is now letting you play a virtual collectible card game while IN EQ or EQ 2 with a FREE starter deck. No need to thank them, they’re more than happy to hook you and sell additional $3 booster packs to feed your loot card fix, redeemable for items on your EQ characters.

Is this a new trend for SOE? We hope not. Just as with in-game advertising, too much exploitation of a playerbase for profit regardless of good intentions ($3 micro-transactions per virtual booster set is a lot of extra revenue into SOE’s coffers) can have a negative effect on their games when embedded such as LoN in EQ & EQ2.

This type of addition to online games isn’t always going to be complimentary and can even detract from the game experience for those of us that have zero interest in CCG’s that want a pure MMORPG experience.

Check out The Official Legends of Norrath site for more information.

All of the rumors appear to have been dead-on as the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King expansion has been officially confirmed via goodie bag.

BlizzCon Attendee’s got the inside scoop early with their Souvenir Show Guide briefly detailing the new expansion (shown above). Further details on the expansion will be released by Blizzard during the show.

What do we know so far?

• The Death Knight class will be added to game for both Alliance and Horde as sort of a anti-Paladin necromatic warrior. This will be the games first Hero Class.
• Aproximately 10 New zones for level 68+ players, quests, items and monsters all packed into the news Northrend continent, home of the Lich King.
• No new lowbie zones, nor any changes to the existing 1-70 areas.
• New Battlegrounds with seige engines and destructable buildings, at least one instanced, and one outdoor zone.
• New profession, Inscription.
• Expanded character customization options
• Level Cap increased once again up to 80
• Skill Cap increased to 450

The new Outdoor PvP Zone introduces new gameplay with seige weapons and destructable buildings. This will be a non-instanced battleground zone, but is completely avoidable for carebear types to go around and skip.

The first ever Hero Class Death Knight is a plate wearing badass hybrid for tanking and DPS. From what we understand so far this will be attainable by completing an epic quest that unlocks the ability to become a Death Knight. When the class is unlocked you’re expected to remain at the same level so grinding isn’t necessary.

Death Knights will not use rage, energy, or mana, instead you’ll be able to select and “etch” six different runes (Frost, Blood, Unholy) onto a rune sword status bar underneath your health bar. Using DK abilities will consume the runes until their cooldown timers are up, at which time you can use them again. Specifics such as talents and spells are not finalized yet, and race restrictions are still unknown (Gnome Death Knight anyone?).

The Inscription profession may sound a bit confusing for some at first, much better than expected this has nothing to do with inscribing items, but with the customization of spells and abilities. Those that have this profession will be able to tweak spells or abilities to increases damage, or reduce cooldowns, obviously with some penalties to balance their changes.

In the spirit of Despair Inc., Blizzard will be offering BlizzCon attendees first dibs on three World of Warcraft inspired motivational posters at their BlizzCon Store. Perfect for Disaffected college students and WoW Addicts alike.

I’d expect to see these prints available for purchase online in the Blizzard.com Store and likely eBay sometime after BlizzCon wraps up.

Bethesda Softworks, makers of some tiny little RPG series have announced the creation ZeniMax Online Studios.

August 1, 2007 (Rockville, MD) – ZeniMax Media Inc., parent company of Bethesda Softworks, announced today the creation of ZeniMax Online Studios. The division will be headed by Matt Firor, a well-known expert in the field of online gaming, and will focus on the Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMO) market segment.

Headed up by Matt Firor, former Producer of Dark Age of Camelot, the company will be focusing exclusively on the development of MMO games. Needless to say, they are hiring if you happen to be in the market.

Now if only Interplay wasn’t holding onto the Fallout Online rights with their cold dead hands. Damn you!

Source: ZeniMax Press Release