Korean-based online game development company, T-Entertainment, who’ve previously created Last Chaos and Laghaim, has licensed Unreal Engine 3 for an upcoming MMO that’s been given the codename L2, which has been described as a cross between an RPG and RTS with a tentative release date of 2010. The genre of L2 will be that of a “futuristic fantasy with a taste of space opera.”

At this year’s ION Game Conference 2008 (formerly known as OGDC, Online Game Developers Conference), taking place in Seattle at the Marriott Waterfront Hotel from May 13th to May 15th, such figures in the online gaming industry as Craig Sherman, CEO of Gaia Online, Scott Jennings, Lead Designer at NCSoft and Hermann Peterscheck, Producer of Jumpgate Evolution at NetDevil are among the hundred or so business leaders scheduled to speak at the conference.

The ION Game Conference is an annual event where game developers and industry personnel come together to celebrate and discuss the evolution of online gaming, ranging from the overview of the latest business and product developments to in-depth analyses of player psychology and in-game economic systems.

After selling the license of their Fallout franchise to Bethesda Softworks (the company behind the Elderscrolls series) and in addition to working on sequels to Earthworm Jim, Dark Alliance, Descent and MDK, Interplay Entertainment is currently seeking funding for a new Fallout MMO title, as the original licensing deal with Bethesda allows them to retain special privileges to develop a massively multiplayer game based on the Fallout series.

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At the Indie MMO Game Developers Conference this past weekend, BioWare Austin’s co-studio director, Gordon Walton preaches about how indie MMO developers are the ones pushing the boundaries of the genre, as they’re able to take more risks and are more eager to establish their brand in the booming industry.

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Sony Online Entertainment is offering $10,000 in art institute school tuition and a paid internship at one of the SOE studios to the winner of the competition. The program is called G.I.R.L (Gamers in Real Life) and is intended to educate and recruit more women into the video game industry.

Participants must be female, enrolled at one of The Art Institutes schools and submit an online application, in-game design, concept art and two essays. Industry professionals from SOE will judge the contestants and announce a winner on June 30, 2008.

A company called Testronic Labs is eventually going to end the need for MMO companies to schedule public stress tests for their games to evaluate their servers. VENUS Blue is the only performance testing tool capable of emulating a massive amount of players, allowing developers to test their MMOs internally.

This is fortunate for fans of MMOs who follow upcoming games, as it should cut developmental delays, issues and what not by a considerable amount, as optimizations can be performed much more efficiently.

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NCSoft is attempting to extend the lives of two of their longer running franchises by launching a pair of promotional sites to aid in the marketing of Guild Wars and Lineage II and introduce them to new players. The two websites are done entirely in Flash and do an excellent job at highlighting the game’s main selling points.

Just a couple days after NCSoft announced that they had licensed Unreal Engine 3 to produce two new MMOs, Bluehole Studio Inc. from Seoul Korea announces today that they have also licensed the engine for a next-gen MMORPG codenamed Project S1.

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As reported earlier by MTV Multiplayer, Take-Two Interactive’s chairman, Strauss Zelnick, has ideas to bring the BioShock and/or Civilization franchises into the MMO realm.

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The Unreal Engine 3 license will be used by NCSoft to develop two unannounced “top-tier” MMOs.

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Gamasutra has posted an interview with Joe Ybarra from Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment. Ybarra was one of the original game producers at Electronic Arts in 1982 where he worked on the very first version of Madden NFL. He later went on to produce a number of MMOs including Shadowbane and Matrix Online.

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Here’s the official press the release of the acquisition.

During a conference call, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot stated that they would pursue a Tom Clancy MMO.

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Codemasters Online Gaming has confirmed to GamesIndustry.biz that they’re currently in talks to publish two MMOs for console systems.

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