Millions of dollars changed hands this week as Blizzard fans emptied their wallets for another cash shop mount, while Perfect World paid roughly $50M to become the new majority owner of Cryptic Studios.

Winged Guardian Flies Off the Digital Shelves

When the Winged Guardian flying mount went on sale at the Blizzard Store a few days ago, a vocal few proclaimed the $25 ride to be a recycled hippogryph with a slightly better graphics skin.

But this diss didn’t stop World of Warcraft players from lining up in the thousands, making Blizzard some nice chump change. It was roughly a year ago when the company also began selling the Celestial Steed, which managed to bring in an estimated $2.5 million on its first sale day alone.

There’s been no word yet on how many lion-eagle rides have sold, but a casual stroll in the forums shows that the new cash shop exclusive is quite the roaring charmer. And of course, there’s the usual groaning on why WoW Gold-bought mounts can’t look half as awesome as the Winged Guardian.

Perfect World Now Made More Cryptic

Atari wasted no time unloading Cryptic Studios off its balance sheet, inking a roughly $50-million deal with Perfect World for all equity interest in the MMO developer.

It’s an East-meets-West takeover. China-based publisher Perfect World has said that it purchased the US-based Cryptic Studios to extend its presence in the US, Europe and other western markets.

But the biggest question now is whether the acquisition will push all Cryptic Studios games like Champions Online, Star Trek Online and City of Heroes to become free-to-play. Perfect World has a full stable of free-to-play MMOs with prominent cash shops, so there’s an expectation that the subscription model will be chucked out the window.

OK This Time, Let’s Make It More Than An Hour…

Trion Worlds takes the first crucial steps to testing RIFT Patch 1.3, with the world event now on the Public Test Shard for what seems to be a one-day run-through. You can still catch the testing event – and don’t worry about RIFT Platinum or hitting max level. All your needs will be provided by gearing and leveling merchants on site.

The Children of War, Emphasis on Children

EverQuest II brushed off the delay woes caused by the SOE server outage and launched The Children of War patch as (revised) planned. This marks the 60^th game update for the fantasy MMO, and focuses on sprawling PvP changes plus a few new instances and raids about supernatural kids with a serious case of the Bad Daddy complex.

E3 Showdown

And lastly, the big E3 conference commences next week, but there’s already been confirmation of who among the big guns are attending.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is sure to make a splash in the EA conference, while TERA and Guild Wars 2 are expected to blow people away with their preview reveals. RIFT is also opening a booth, although its big message might only be to try out the Ascend-a-Friend and Free Trial programs.

We’ll fill you in on what goes down there in LA as it happens. Till then, knock yourself out in the comments section. Did you buy the Winged Guardian? Why not? And did Cryptic Studios luck out with their new Perfect World owners?

MMOs from the Sony Online Entertainment family are back in business and throwing everything but the kitchen sink as freebies to appease their fans, while over at neighboring Cryptic Studios a big change is brewing as its parent company Atari announced plans to sell the developer off ASAP.

No Longer Offline

For two weeks, SOE endured the embarrassing moniker Sony Offline Entertainment as it underwent a cyber attack-related server shutdown, but no more.

The veteran MMO game maker has reopened the virtual worlds of its dozen or so games, from DC Universe Online to EverQuest II. Returning players will be glad to know that each title offers unique perks and rewards under its overarching Welcome Back Program. (See the full list of goodies here.)

Aside from these game-specific freebies, all Station Account holders “in good standing” will be given 45 days of game time for the shutdown inconvenience. You can claim this bonus game time by logging on to your account by August 31, 2011.

Lifetime subscribers who obviously won’t benefit from free game time will receive an equivalent game currency instead, while Station Access subscribers in good standing also get 500 Station Cash. I don’t know about you, but this pretty much covers the “We’re sorry!” part. Now about the “Please love us again!” we have to see how the new security features hold up.

Anyone Interested?

While SOE goes into fan service mode, it’s a huge wait-and-see at Cryptic Studios as the developer for Champions Online, City of Heroes and Star Trek Online readies to be sold at the auction block.

Parent company Atari announced plans to divest its interest in Cryptic Studios, basically saying that it will focus more on a smaller number of profitable titles and venturing more into mobile games.

Fans of the current titles and the in-development Neverwinter MMO need not worry. So far, the official statements from both Atari and Cryptic indicate that it’s business as usual for all MMO projects involved. Still, we can’t help but be jittery on how ownership switch plays out since it will surely come with major directional changes.

Colossus Contest

RIFT swings into week two of Patch 1.2, and everything seems to be going smoothly for the second major patch, with hotfixes and minor updates going live every day to tweak the rolled-out content.

Just yesterday, deviantArt launched its Create a Colossus contest that asks players to submit original artworks depicting their idea of a Colossus from any of the six major elemental planes. Players are momentarily pausing from their RIFT Platinum farming duties to study the design of Colossi now plying Stillmoor and other zones.

Patch 4.2 Previews

In World of Warcraft, information about Patch 4.2 is slowly but surely leaking out into the general public. From Tier 12 armor sets to the on-proc ability of new legendary Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa’s Rest, the information floodgates are beginning to open wide for the fiery Firelands patch.

Players are still making their way into the troll dungeon heroics that launched with Patch 4.1 for those exotic mounts and large WoW Gold drops, but many see this as a tropical stopover to the next real challenge –  Ragnaros and the next Cataclysm raiding encounters in Patch 4.2.

Twin Events

Aion decided to rally in the second of May with two bonus events. From May 18 to 25, Daevas will experience an Increased Drop Rates event while from May 18 to June 1, the For War and Glory Abyss Points event will be activated.

While the Increased Drop Rates event is simple enough to understand, new players just about to experience their first AP event should know that Abyss Point loss will be reduced during PvP encounters in the Abyss and Silentera Canyon. Not only that, AP gains from killing monsters in both said areas will be upped.

So if you plan on farming for gear and Aion Kinah these coming weeks, you know where to head for maximum gains per hour.

Which MMO are you planning to focus on this week? Will you be busy taking advantage of the SOE rewards, queuing in the new LFG tool in RIFT, or maybe catching up on the latest reveals for Star Wars: the Old Republic?

Welcome to the Epic Verdict where we report MMO trends fast, straight, and most importantly, with a bias. Here you’ll find snap judgments on game developments in the World of Warcraft, Aion, and dozens more. Sometimes we even pick on a baby murloc or two.

We begin in the land of forum flame wars where expletives and sarcasm are the weapons of choice.

January, in particular, sees a spike in online trash talking after MMO websites have handed out their “Best of” awards. Players get their knickers in a knot debating if Aion deserved its accolades, for example, or if Age of Conan winning ‘most improved’ is but a hollow victory.

While I personally think those games are great, I bet all my Aion Kinah and AoC Gold that detractors will drag out the argument for weeks. Sabotage/fixing claims will be slung like Molotov cocktails. Egos will butt heads until the forum mod shuts down the thread.

I believe people should just see MMO awards for what they really are: luck of the draw.  Luck that an editor likes a game better than the rest. Luck that a game had more fans that bothered to answer the poll.

For the unconvinced, I just ask that you mind the three m’s. Make your case, mind the manners, and then move on.

Ninja PuG Groups in WoW: EPIC FAIL

Speaking of bad behavior, there has been an increase of ninja PuGs in the World of Warcraft that came together with the new Dungeon Finder feature.

A little bit of background first on the Dungeon Finder, for the WoW virgins.

Before the latest Patch 3.3, casual WoW players regarded 5-man dungeons like a root canal. There was danger of things going horribly wrong, but in the hands of expert professionals–or in this case, capable party members–the temporary pain was worth it in rare loot.

The problem for Blizzard was that many casual players couldn’t be bothered to take the risk. Too much hassle, they said, in finding cooperative strangers and wasting one hour or so of the little time they had to meet up in the dungeon entrance.

But with the release of the Dungeon Finder feature, players could simply click a few buttons in their menu; wait for their ragtag team to be assembled automatically across different realms, and voila! A pick-up group (aka PuG) is born.

“Wham, bam, thank you for the blues and purples ma’am!” most casual players thought.

But enter the ninja PuGs who are made up of three or four guild members/friends who enter the Dungeon Finder, team up with a random dude who helps them kill the final boss, but then kicks the random dude out of the group before the loot is distributed fairly.

Poor casual player just got dumped like wet toilet paper.

I believe there should be a running list of ninja PuGs. A public list of shame. But since it’s New Year and we’re in a constructive mood around here, we could settle for a loot safeguard system to prevent abusive vote-kicks.

If that doesn’t work, we’ll just have to pay WoW Gold to shame these thieves into obscurity. Watch out ninjas!

TOON IN:

- Nothing warms my heart more than seeing developers work hard to make their games better. Champions Online wants your feedback (the only one who I’ve seen ask for it specifically) on their “Attack of the Misfit Toys” winter event, here.

After a week of fiddling and cursing, I finally got my GTX 260 functioning the way it should be (-ish), and to celebrate I bought Crysis off Steam, and after a glowing recommendation from some of the folks here at EpicToon HQ, also added Dragon Age: Origins for an ISP-hand-wringing total of 17GB of digitally downloaded goodness in one week. Life is good

Well, it’s good as long as you aren’t Funcom, whose revenues have fallen 69% year on year… ouch. Why aren’t you lot playing Age of Conan more eh?

Still, at least they’ve still got thirty odd million dollars in reserve, and the aforementioned Age of Conan is launching in Korea next year (along with Rise of the Godslayer) not to mention that work seems to be progressing quite nicely on The Secret World.

Remember how the Star Trek Online official website was down for a while earlier this week? Well it’s back, and even better, it’s all shiny and fancy now. If only I had some wow gold for every day there was a spurt of new STO media and information, including screenshots and interviews on ground combat, however, probably the most exciting STO news is that the open beta dates have been announced. According to the STO website, we’re looking at a nearly two week period from January 12th – January 26th, set phasers to fun!

You can tell we’re getting closer to launch as we’re starting to get the first tutorialish videos complete with user interface that give us an idea of what tactical ship combat will be like in game. I just wish they’d show some non-combat stuff too. I’ve said it before, and I know it’s not sexy, but I can’t help but wonder what else there is to the game besides flying around engaging in border skirmishes. At least this new bridge gameplay trailer makes it look like there might be some variety.

From one Cryptic MMO to another, we’ve got an announcement for the first Champions Online lair, The Nemesis Confrontation;

Champions Online is pleased to announce the upcoming launch of our first new lair! The Nemesis Confrontation will test the limits of the strongest heroes, as their Nemeses team up with a darker foe to bring chaos and destruction to the world!

Beginning November 24th, all UNITY heroes will be able to access this new 5 man lair and attempt to defeat your Nemesis as well as your teammates’ Nemeses, culminating in a final showdown against Shadow Destroyer himself.

Get the lowdown on Nemesis Confrontation here.

All this reminds me that it’s been a little bit since we last heard anything from SOE about DC Universe Online. Also, that’s a lot of Nemeses…ses

Massively also has a few new “epic story moments” screenshots from Siege of Mirkwood, these are probably the best I’ve seen so far, hopefully we”ll get some more like this before the game’s December launch.

FYI, there will be some combat changes made to gameplay once Siege of Mirkwood hits, primarily in the area of weapon speed and damage, which have both been standardised across various classes of weaponry, there have also been changes made to combat effectiveness, pacing, and weapon responsiveness, for a full run down, look no further.

FYI-I, the NDA on Siege of Mirkwood has now officially been lifted, you can now spoil the game for everyone! (Dumbledore dies!)

Remember a while back when we heard Square Enix was planning on making some changes to the Final Fantasy XI marriage system to make it easier to well, get married? Looks like the update is finally live. If you’ve been waiting a month to get married, now’s your chance, just remember to save some FFXI gil to spring for a decent band.

It’s true it’s been about two months since Aion was released in the West, but I’m a firm believer in reviewers giving MMO’s a decent amount of time before reviewing them, it gives the developer some time to iron out launch period kinks and the community some to settle. As such I was pleased to see Gamespy finally post their review, one that seems carefully considered and measured, ignoring the game’s massive hype and initial server queue problems. While it’s not a glowing review, it’s a pretty good one, and the guys reckon you could do much worse really, one thing they kept coming back to was how wonderfully polished the whole game was. Fingers crossed that we see a trial some time soon.

Alright, that’s all for me this week, I’m off to get lost in Dragon Age.

Dessert:

Sixth Sense Technology will blow. your. mind.