Eidos has begun selling pre-orders of the much-anticipated MMORPG Age of Conan — and they have a special offer for those who pre-order.

If you pre-order Age of Conan, you’ll get a special code that will allow you to enter the game three days early (on May 17 instead of May 20). Players who pre-order will also get a special Amazon Curved Bow item and a hardcover mini-guide to the game.

It’s a nice extra that will help them anticipate the number of players in their game at launch, while giving some bragging rights to those who get in the game early. A head-start in an MMO is never a bad thing!

The game is available for pre-order from Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Gamestop, Walmart and other locations.

A new MMO game is coming to a platform near you — and its sounds a lot like an open-world Grand Theft Auto title.

CrimeCraft will be an MMO game from Vogster Entertainment. Powered by Unreal Engine 3, the game will take place in a large city where players can interact with each other and take part in the various facets of the city life.

The game promises strength in character development and in the AI demonstrated by non-player characters. Players will be able to choose their own career paths on both sides of the law, as well as own cars and property and fight over turf in the game’s city.

What’s more, the game will be free to play. We’re assuming the standard charge for purchasing the game will apply, but Vogster says there will be no monthly charges for the game.

The game is due out in less than a year — March 2009 is the anticipated date for release on the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC platforms.

I was a little disappointed a while back when Bethesda mentioned that Fallout 3 would have a smaller explorable area than its previous blockbuster, Oblivion. The huge explorable areas are one of my favorite features about Bethesda games, and I was hoping they’d be brining some of this to the Fallout series. (Of course, they’ll be brining some, just not quite on Oblivion’s scale.) Well, this past week, Bethesda let out a redeeming quality that shows off the flexibility of the game.

In an interview with IGN, the game’s executive producer Todd Howard said that Fallout 3 will have over 200 endings. “Being that we are Bethesda, everything gets a bit big,” he said. The game’s many endings depend on the actions you take throughout the game.

Of course, this doesn’t mean 200 completely unique endings. Howard goes on to explain that there are about ten main endings, with many subtle changes, extra scenes or other additions that are affected by your game choices.

Also, although the gameplay area is smaller than Oblivion’s, it’s larger than was originally planned, with hours of gameplay that Bethesda has been throwing in whenever they’ve come up with a good idea. “Fallout is probably twice the size that we originally had on paper,” he says, pointing out that the 20-40 hours of main gameplay grew quickly into 100 hours of potential fun.

So, 200 endings? I definitely like the sound of that. I enjoy the choices you can make in some RPG games, but in most cases they still boil down to one or two possibilities (like in Bioware’s Mass Effect and Knights of the Old Republic). The choices make for interesting gameplay, but it will be even more exciting to expect lasting consequences of your actions.

Fallout 3 sounds better every time I hear about it. Howard does warn both Bethesda and Fallout fans — this game will take new turns, so don’t expect Oblivion and don’t expect the same old Fallout.

Fallout 3 is set to be released this fall for the Xbox 360, PS3 and Windows. “I’d be shocked if it were not out then honestly.”

Amazon recently dropped the price of Tabula Rasa down to $9.99. Now, I know this might not be the most outstandingly excellent MMORPG out there, but I’ve definitely gotten over $10 worth out of it. (After your first month, you’ll have to pay monthly fees, of course.) If I recall correctly, I paid $30 (Canadian) for this when Best Buy had it on sale in January. Regular price is $40 U.S.

If you’re not familiar with it, Tabula Rasa is a sci-fi MMO that takes place in a world where humanity has evacuated Earth and is fighting to survive constant attacks from hostile aliens.  The interface and gameplay is very much like World of Warcraft, but with guns and technology replacing swords and magic.

I’m not sure how long this will last, but it’s a great opportunity to snag the game if you’ve been curious about it: Tabula Rasa on Amazon.com. Unfortunately Amazon.ca is still listing it at $30 Canadian.

Last week I gave a rundown of the March update for Final Fantasy XI. Well, today the version update arrives — with a few new surprises. Here’s an overview of the new details from Square Enix. (A few details need to be tested. The maintenance isn’t over at the time of this writing.)

• I don’t think it was explicitly stated before, but there are new areas in the past world of Wings of the Goddess
• New spells have been added:
  • White Mages get the following new teleport spells, which send you to areas in the past: Recall-Junger, Recall-Pashh and Recall-Meriph. All three spells are level 53.
  • Black Mages get a new level 55 spell, Retrace. Retrace will apparently send you back to your home nation (or possibly a second home point) in the past.
  • Dark Knights get a new spell, Absorb-ACC at level 61.
  • A new Scholar spell, Klimaform, has been added at level 46.
  • Ninjas can now sneak at level 25 with Monomi: Ichi. The new ninja tool sanjaku-tenugui has been added for this spell.
• New job abilities have been added:
  • Warriors can now use Retaliation to add a counter-attack status, but it will reduce their movement speed
  • Thieves have a miniature version of Accomplice — Collaborator will take 25% of enemy hate and redirect it to the thief. Accomplice and Collaborator share a single recast timer.
  • Samurais get a new ability also — Sekkanoki will reduce the cost of the next weapon skill to 100%, allowing you to retain some TP. As a SAM75 myself, I’m happy to hear about this one!
  • Summoners can steal MP from their elemental spirits using Elemental Siphon.
• Dragoons are getting a change to their wyverns. Wyverns will now experience an increase in their attributes based on exp earned while they’re summoned. So once you summon your wyvern, it will get better the longer its out, until it dies or is dismissed. Presumably, it will return to the status quo each time you summon it, giving Dragoons incentive to keep their wyverns alive and healthy.
• New weapon skills are now available for Puppetmasters.
• The new Emperor Band replaces the Empress Band as the best exp ring. It’s been confirmed that you will need to drop your Empress Band to get it, as you can only have one ring of this type at a time. The EXP bonus is the same as with the Empress Band, but the maximum bonus is doubled — so using an Emperor Band is like using two Empress Band charges back-to-back.

The full details are available on PlayOnline.

There’s lots of talk floating around on Final Fantasy XI servers about the changes coming up in this month’s update to the game. Here’s a quick summary of what’s going to change:

The most interesting stuff:

• New missions will be (finally!) added to the Wings of the Goddess storyline.
• Artifact Armor quests for Scholar and Dancer. These jobs will also be able to “push their limits”, which could mean merit categories [Update: Nope, it means a limit break quest for Level 70 to 71... only needed for those leveling one of these as their first 75 job].
• New changes will be made to Campaign Battles. The technological level of whatever force is controlling an area will determine certain features that will be available, including the ability to call reinforcements from a Belfry or to restore your HP at a Mantelet. These new elements must be defended from Beastmen, or destroyed when the Beastmen control them. Beastmen will own their own strongholds which can be attacked when player forces become stronger in surrounding areas. Beastmen will also get siege turrets — devices that can spawn enemies and launch devastating ranged attacks — when their technological strength reaches a certain level.
• A new EXP ring is being added. The Emperor Band will be added to the Conquest Points purchase menu, as an upgrade from the Chariot Band and Empress Band. How much extra EXP is earned from this ring is unknown. It’s likely that you won’t be able to use your Empress Band anymore if you do switch to this new one, but this hasn’t been confirmed yet.
• Adventuring fellows (NPCs) will get new equipment, and will benefit from party spells like Protectra. They’ll also stop using area-of-effect weapon skills.
• Macros will be able to stored on PlayOnline’s servers, so you can use the same macro set on multiple platforms, anywhere you log into your account.
• New armor and weapons will be added.

Job-specific updates:

• White Mages are getting new teleport spells. Where the new teleport locations are remains a mystery, but they’re most likely in Wings of the Goddess areas.
• Black Mages are getting a new type of Warp spell. The most common speculation is that it’ll be a “Warpga” spell that would essentially cast “Warp II” on all party members simultaneously, as a time-savers for disbanding parties and completed linkshell events.
• Ninjas are getting a new ninjitsu spell that gives the Sneak effect. They’ve had Invisible for quite a while with Tonko, so this is only natural.
• Puppetmasters are getting new weapon skills for their automans.
• Summoners are getting an elemental spirit MP absorption ability… we’ll have to wait for clarity on that one.
• Scholars will get an upgrade in the number of stratagems charges they have available, as well as a reduction in charge time.
• Dancers will have their waltz recast time shortened to six seconds when Trance is active.

Other miscellaneous changes include:

• New icons for some status effects will be added.
• A new reddish-purple colour will be added to the colours for mob names. This will indicate a mob that is controlled by another party in your alliance, while the pink colour will continue to indicate a mob owned by another party outside of your alliance.
• Battle music will play for mages when they start casting magic on the mob or on party members in battle, even if they aren’t engaged to the mob.
• The ongoing problem of getting “stuck” when a cure spell is cast on you will be addressed — with the quasai-bind effect shortened, at least.
• Four new commands, /dance1 - /dance4, will be added. These will allow your character to dance, even when you’re not a dancer. Hopefully these will be a little different than just Dancer moves mapped to emotes, but don’t count on it.
• Two new hats are being added to the Adventurer Recruitment Program.

What I’m most looking forward to: New WotG missions and the new EXP ring. What about you?