The DORK Club is now a games developer. If Nibris can get away with being classified as one in the eyes of the gaming “press,” than consarn it, so can we. We’ve got a $100 game engine and everything!

We’re setting the bar high with our ambitious first project: An MMO based on Stephen King’s cherished library of award-winning novels and short stories. Being good friends with Mr. King, I secured the rights for just $19, meaning I got a much better deal than J.J. Abrams.

While the game is obviously still in the very earliest stages of development as we look for cheap out-sourced programmers, today I will reveal the first details of this tentatively titled project, and give you an overview of some of the game’s most exciting and innovative features.

Players can choose from one of four playable classes as they pledge allegiance to The White in the ongoing war against The Red. Gunslingers dual wield deadly six shooters and command cunning hawk pets. Elderly Jedi can teleport short distances as well as control others and lift heavy objects with their minds. Impossibly Mature 12-Year-Olds use their wise-beyond-their-years maturity to outwit enemies four times their age. And finally, Popular Artists Trying to Escape Their Past walk a thin line between hating and embracing post modernism. Possible expansion classes include the Mildly Racist Magical Negro and the Gentle Retarded Mongoloid.

As players level up (wait until you hear our ding sound!), they will actually transcend to higher levels of The Dark Tower itself, gaining access to more and more of Stephen King’s “other worlds than these,” including locations as diverse as Derry, Maine; Castle Rock, Main; and Haven, Maine.

While our planned partnership with Microsoft fell through with the cancellation of their DC Universe MMO, we’re proud to announce that we’ll be partnering with Turbine to help make our Stephen King MMO the best possible game it can be. Players will be able to transfer their characters between our game and Turbine’s upcoming Harry Potter MMO, and vice versa, at no extra charge.

Our partnership with Turbine also allows us to present every aspect of our game in terms of The Lord of the Rings Online. Ka-tets (like fellowships in LotRO) will allow players to forge everlasting alliances and friendships that grow over time. Using our robust music system (similar to the music system found in The Lord of the Rings Online), players can play brief snippets of popular songs that best represent their current situation. Players will even be able to temporarily take on one of Randall Flagg’s many persona – the hard case, the walkin’ dude, the dark man, the ageless stranger – and fight against their former allies (not unlike LotRO’s monster play).

Like The Lord of the Rings Online, we also have some exciting raid content planned for our upcoming MMO. Planned raid bosses include Stephen King’s alcoholism, Stephen King’s drug addiction, and Stephen King’s head on a stick (like the last boss of Doom 2—a reference to The Lord of the Rings Online). Stephen King fans will also be excited to hear they’ll be able to face off against the Crimson King himself, standing idly by as a previously unmentioned NPC quickly and easily defeats the game’s ultimate evil. Following the final boss fight, players can enter The Dark Tower and begin the game again at level 1, but with an additional, class-based musical instrument.

I hope everyone who reads this site will be free for GM duty when the game finally ships. We can all hang out in Stephen King’s virtual house, the game’s equivalent to GM island, and ban any player unfortunate enough to find it.

[EDIT: Bango "vector_black" Skank was here<---]

Funcom, Eidos, and IGN have partnered to give 50,000 FilePlanet subscribers access to the Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures open beta, which be hosted exclusively at IGN’s popular download site and other IGN network sites such as Gamespy, Tentonhammer, and Warcry.

The open beta begins on May 1st, but FilePlanet subscribers can sign up as early as next week. No word on when the open beta will end.

More of a stress test than an actual open beta test, Age of Conan open beta players will only be able to level to 13, but Funcom promises “hours and hours of entertainment” just the same.

FilePlanet & Funcom Announce Age of Conan Open beta [Voodoo Extreme]

Another day, another new Unreal Engine 3-powered MMO.

Vogster Entertainment has revealed their upcoming urban GTA-like MMO Crimecraft, slated for release in March of 2009. The game will take place in a fully modern setting, “[transporting] gamers into a lawless city filled with gangs, crime and street-style justice.” Players will be able to buy real estate, own cars, and find gainful employment from a large number of professions on either side of the law.

More interesting, however, is the fact that the game will be free-to-play, keeping it away from direct competition with another ‘craft MMO.

‘Crimecraft’ announced, a free GTA-style MMO for the PC [Strategy Informer]

Flying Lab is bringing down seven of Pirate of the Burning Sea’s eleven servers and is giving players over a month to decide which of the four remaining servers to transfer their characters to. The developer hopes this will lead to more densely populated servers and help their pirate-themed MMO overall.

Pirates of the Burning Sea just launched on January 22nd of this year, and obviously isn’t meeting Flying Lab’s subscription goals. While shutting down more than half of an MMO’s servers and scattering established communities so early in a game’s life is never a good thing, the remaining servers should provide a more entertaining experience for the players who do stick around.

My advice to Flying Lab: Offer a free trial so I can finally add Pirates of the Burning Sea’s ding sound effect to The Sound of Progress old and new players alike can experience the improvements three months of post-release content and more condensed server populations bring.

Character Transfers are Now Live! [Burningsea.com via Massively]

Star Vault AB has announced their upcoming first-person MMORPG Mortal Online. The game is powered by Unreal Engine 3 and has a summer 2009 release date.

This first trailer was “produced using in-game content and technology,” meaning this is what Star Vault AB hopes the game will look like a year from now. In any case, it certainly looks pretty, even for a low-quality streaming FLV.

The trailer also promises “a different kind of MMORPG world,” “sophisticated skill trees where practice makes perfect,” and “a realtime combat system where your skills as a player really matter.” In short, Mortal Online will be no different than every other fantasy MMO currently on the market. At least it will look nice.

Mortal Online [Official Site via Bluesnews]

The9, the company that operates the Chinese version of World of Warcraft, announced today that a record-breaking one million players were recently simultaneously connected to the MMORPG.

With 5.5 million of WoW’s 10 million players playing on Chinese servers, nearly 20% of the country’s WoW-addicts would have been logged in concurrently to set the record, a feat The9 attributes to the arrival of the Burning Crusade expansion in China.

Poorly conceived claims that the majority of these players were actually gold farms - players who are logged in around the clock, collecting gold to sell for a profit - have already started springing up on the Internet. Of course, most Chinese gold farmers play on Western servers alongside most of the gold buyers, but who ever heard of logic getting in the way of a blog post?

Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Surpasses One Million Peak Concurrent Player Milestone in Mainland China [The9 via Massively]

It turns out it’s not all doom, gloom, and PR disasters for Hellgate: London in Korea. In fact, the action RPG has become the most successful online game to launch in Korea in the past three years, with over 1 million accounts registered within the first two weeks of its open beta and “record sales” in its first week of presales.

“To become the most successful launch in Korea for over three years is an incredible achievement,” said Bill Roper, renaissance fair performer and CEO of Flagship Studios. “This milestone wouldn’t have been possible for us to achieve without the incredible support of our publishing partner, Hanbitsoft, and our dedicated community in Korea. We look forward to expanding the Hellgate universe and building upon this success in the future.”

If subscription-based Hellgate: London can find an audience in Korea, then the sky’s the limit for Mythos, Flagship Seattle’s hugely superior dungeon crawler that employs the free-to-play, microtransaction-heavy business model most Koreans MMOs use.

Hellgate is the Most Successful Online Korean Launch in 3 Years [IncGamers via Blue's News]

In case the “CLOSED BETA FOOTAGE” text at the bottom of the video doesn’t give it away, this is the latest footage from the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning closed beta.

With each tiny morsel of information EA Mythic leaks, the game looks more and more promising. Though the game’s strange ability to visually fluctuate between being stunningly beautiful and dull and interesting is somewhat worrying. Still, they’ve got until Fall to spit shine the game into their promised WoW-killer.

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Closed Beta Footage [Gaming Today]

The Chronicles of Spellborn has been delayed from Q2 2008 to Fall 2008, meaning it will go head-to-head with Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning and potentially Wrath of the Lich King, World of Warcraft’s next expansion.

Developed by the Dutch company Spellborn International, the Unreal Engine 2-powered MMO has few features that differentiate it from other MMOs on the market. Like most modern MMOs, The Chronicles of Spellborn focuses on quests rather than mindless grinding, and allows players to customize their characters by evolving their chosen class as they play.

While the game will undoubtedly find its own loyal audience, as all MMOs do, releasing The Chronicles of Spellborn in the same quarter as the two most-anticipated, heavily-funded upcoming MMOs is downright suicidal.

Has MMO Chronicles of Spellborn doomed itself? [CVG]

Besides scoring a blowout preview of the recently-announced Warhammer 40K RTS Dawn of War 2, the latest issue of PC Gamer also has the first details on THQ’s Warhammer 40K MMO.

The title will have more in common with World of Warcraft and other traditional MMORPGs than MMO shooters like Planetside, but will feature a deep combat system that focuses on cover, suppressive fire, and flanking.

THQ promises combat on a much larger scale than what we’ve seen from MMORPGs like EA Mythic’s Warhammer Online, with players forming squads to explore “alien temples, Chaos shrines, deserted battlefields, mysterious ruins, ancient structures, and … space hulks.”

Most exciting, however, is creative director Joe Madureira’s claim that the Warhammer 40K MMO will have the “coolest looking characters of any MMO ever.” Madureira promises “tons of stuff hanging off your character, weapons, scrolls,” and that once THQ begins releasing images of the game, fans are welcome to call him on his claim.

And while the world needs another big budget MMO vying for our free time like it needs a kick in the teeth, consider me cautiously excited in spite of THQ’s non-existent MMO track record.

Actual WH40K MMO details here [CVG]