It’s been over a year since we first heard of NASA’s plans to develop an MMO video game, but news today assures us that it’s still on track.  The agency has announced a new deal with virtual learning firm Virtual Heroes and simulator developer Project Whitecard, who will create the persistent world for the new game, using Unreal Engine 3 technology.

The game is titled Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond, and is set to simultaneously entertain and educate, as well as promote careers in engineering and sciences. Daniel Laughlin, who heads up the project, explains:

“NASA is committed to attracting more students to science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields of study and careers. We hope this game will inspire players to consider those careers.”

Astronaut is expected to appear in 2010, with a demo planned for this year.

According to a recent financial update from NCSoft (found by Shacknews), Guild Wars 2 is now due out in either 2010 or 2011.

The sequel to the popular online RPG was expected to come out later this year, with a beta release originally set for 2008.  That beta was postponed until closer to the release of the game.

NCSoft released a response to the comments on its release, indicating that Guild Wars 2 has not been delayed — though only by pointing out that no release has ever been announced.  The game will be made available “when it’s done”, says the release, and the financial statement released only represents a broad window.

The company says it is undergoing restructuring and refocusing its resources on Guild Wars 2, but insists that it will not release the game until the group is satisfied with its quality.

Guild Wars 2 will feature a new game engine and some common MMO features, such as persistent areas, but will maintain many of the unique Guild Wars traits, including the abscence of a subscription fee.

Hundreds of Final Fantasy XI players saw their game accounts banned last week by Square Enix, a punitive measure for those who took advantage of a bug in the MMORPG.

The exploit allowed players to acquire rare and valuable equipment in the game’s Salvage and Assault battles more easily than the game normally allows.

Square Enix, which fixed the exploit late last year, conducted an audit of players suspected of exploiting the system.  Looking through a year’s worth of log files, the developers were able to determine which players took advantage of the exploit.

As a result of the investigation, approximately 400 players were temporarily suspended based on evidence gathered.  Approximately 550 players who committed more serious misconduct had their accounts banned.

The company regularly bans large amounts of players for cheating and real-money trade (RMT), but this banning is unusual as it involves more dedicated players, rather than accounts created solely for RMT.  Among the banned players included several long-term members of the Final Fantasy XI community, many of which had been working on their characters since the game began.

Funcom’s upcoming MMO The Secret World is being pushed back, according to Ragnar Tørnquist’s blog.  The game is undergoing some major changes which may result in a delay for the game’s release.

Tørnquist, who was also involved at Funcom with Anarchy Online and Dreamfall, explains:

The gameplay is going through a redesign – for the better, let me assure you – and we’re revisiting content produced in the past two years to lift it up to a whole new level.

The focus of the changes seem to be in making The Secret World stand out of the crowd, offering a unique experience.

We want The Secret World to stand out and be remembered – obviously. To not be just another MMORPG, a WoW clone, of which there are already too many.

The Secret World was originally thought up in 2002, and has been in direct development since 2007.  No release date has been set, but as Tørnquist comments, it’s coming “all in good time, but – again, hopefully – it won’t be too long now.”

If release of The Secret World is delayed, Funcom will need to keep Age of Conan going — despite recent server closures indicating some struggling with that game.  Still, Funcom insists that development of the Xbox 360 version of Age of Conan continues as well.

Cryptic, the developers of the upcoming MMORPG Star Trek Online, have announced a new contest that can win gamers a chance to play in the beta for the online game.

The Planet Exploration Contest goes a little beyond the usual fill-out-a-form-and-wait drill for hopeful beta testers.  To enter, you need to write a brief, 500-word story about the planet shown on the contest page.  Participants are encouraged to dream up ideas about the planet shown, as well as its location, history or potential inhabitants.

Make up a story for this planet and you could
be invited to the Star Trek Online beta.

The Star Tek Online contest closes in less than two weeks, on January 29.  No word yet on when the beta will commence, but it looks as though Cryptic is getting close.

Icelandic developer CCP Games has announced its plans to drop the Classic graphics mode from its popular online title EVE Online.  Players of the game will be left with only the “Premium” visual mode, which debuted in 2007 to update the game’s look.

CCP explains that the game’s Classic mode was hindering development of its MMO, as anything new created needed to support both versions of the game.  “It simply doesn’t allow us to make EVE look as beautiful as we want,” the company explains in its announcement.

Replacing the Classic mode will be a middle ground.  A new “Premium Lite” graphics option will allow some Premium features to be scaled back, helping dated, lower-spec PCs support the change.