It may get a little old looking at CCP's flagship EVE: Online for the purpose of guessing what White Wolf's MMORPG variant of the World of Darkness may look like, but it never hurts. This article sheds some light on EVE's "walking in station" feature as presented during EVE Fanfest 2007 and 2008, as well as a new illumination technology that may be employed in EVE in the future.

Now that timezone after timezone has adopted year 2009, it is a good time to have a look over White Wolf's shoulder and see what they have accomplished within the last 366 days. Of course I have a special interest in the World of Darkness pen and paper line as it will undisputably have a significant influence over the MMORPG they are developing.

Icelanders' struggle to survive after banking collapse on The Guardian has a look at the impact of the current economic crisis on businesses in Iceland, a country where the economy has been particularly impacted. Word is CCP may be forced to move against its wishes: "On three shiny floors of a former fish factory is CCP, a company best known in computer gaming for Eve Online, which has 300,000 participants all over the world - as many inhabitants as Iceland itself. However, restrictions on access to foreign currency for individuals and businesses and on foreign investment into Iceland are making life difficult. "To make new games, we need foreign investors," says Eyjolfur Gudmundsson, formerly an assistant professor at the University of Akureyri, who supervises Eve's virtual economy. "The present currency restrictions are putting us in a straitjacket. We are in talks with the government, but if we can't let capital in, we might be compelled to leave Iceland, even though this would be against our wishes."

Harl: Interesting... wonder how, or if, this will effect the development of WoD Online...? I will see if there is anything more I can dig up.

I hate for a 'news' site to have a front page that stands still. So until more news for WoD Online sometime next year starts rolling in I am going to post news bits from a broad range of topics, from other gaming to archeology to tech to the occult. I feel it will not only be interesting but give us something to post comments on and discuss inthe mean time. Feel free to rate or/and post a comment by clicking on the 'comments' link at the top of every news posting.

Here we go... :)

SAQQARA, Egypt – A pair of 4,300-year-old pharaonic tombs discovered at Saqqara indicate that the sprawling necropolis south of Cairo is even larger than previously thought, Egypt's top archaeologist said Monday. The rock-cut tombs were built for high officials — one responsible for the quarries used to build the nearby pyramids and another for a woman in charge of procuring entertainers for the pharaohs.

"We announce today a major, important discovery at Saqqara, the discovery of two new tombs dating back to 4,300 years ago," said Zahi Hawass, as he showed reporters around the site Monday. "The discovery of the two tombs are the beginning of a big, large cemetery."

The discovery indicates that there is even more to the vast necropolis of Saqqara, located 12 miles south of the capital, Cairo, he added.

In the past, excavations have focused on just one side of the two nearby pyramids — the Step Pyramid of King Djoser and that of Unas, the last king of the 5th Dynasty. The area where the two tombs were found, to the southwest, has been largely untouched.

"This means the royal cemetery is bigger than we thought," said Saleh Suleiman, the archaeologist responsible for the excavation of the two tombs.

Hawass, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said excavations will continue and further finds should shed light on the 5th and 6th dynasties of the Old Kingdom, which ruled over 4,000 years ago.

One of the tombs, about a yard wide and 2.75 yards long, has a description above the entrance about the man, Yaamat, for whom it was built. The second tomb is twice the size and includes inscriptions and an image of a seated woman.

Aidan Dodson, a research fellow at the University of Bristol's Department of Archaeology and Anthropology in Bristol, England, who was not involved in the dig, said that while the tombs themselves aren't especially significant, the possibility of a much larger cemetery is.

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