China has levvied a 20 percent personal income tax on all virtual currencies. It specifically targets all those that profit from the redistribution of  virtual currencies, with officials being able to determine the value of the virtual currency if an individual fails to prove the original price. This will affect those that redistribute currencies for web portals and messaging services as well games.

The repurcussions in the western world will prove very interesting: China is the infamous host to a large majority of almost untouchable MMO gold farmers. This latest development can only come as good news to the likes of Activision-Blizzard, Codemasters Online and GOA, whose terms and conditions for their respective MMOs strictly forbid real-world trading of virtual currencies for cash. If our limited knowledge of economicss are anything to go by, then no doubt we will see a uniform increase in the black market price of all MMO currencies even a small decline in trade.

A Dutch court in Leeuwarden has sentenced a 16-year-old boy to do either 160 hours community service or 80 days jail time after stealing virtual property. The ruling comes after the defendant was charged with beating a 13-year-old boy and forcing him to hand over money and virtual property from a character on his Runescape account. The defendant was accused of wielding a knife with intent, but the civil case dealt not with the threat to the boy’s life but with the theft of the virtual amulet and mask. It’s the first time a Dutch judge has treated theft of virtual property as an illegal act, stating that “Goods don’t have to be material for the law to consider them stolen.”

Lucasarts and Bioware have confirmed what has been suspected for some time: they’re developing a Star Wars-themed MMO. They’ve named it Star Wars: The Old Republic, which isn’t much of a stretch from Bioware’s last foray into the Star Wars universe with the RPG Knights Of The Old Republic. In fact, founders Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka joked about the size of the game, saying that “Internally, we’re making KotOR 3 through 10.”

The Old Republic is set thousands of years before the time of the Star Wars films, players can be a Jedi, Sith or other character and Bioware claims that this is the first truly story-driven MMO. To date, there’s only been one other Star Wars MMO - Star Wars Galaxies, though Sony can probably expect a sizeable migration from their SWG player base once The Old Republic is released a year or two from now. Check it out here.

Mythic Entertainment has now banned in excess of 10,000 accounts for its recently released MMORPG, Warhammer Online: Age Of Reckoning. These accounts aren’t your garden variety MMO gamers, though: these belonged to gold farmers, widely regarded as spammer scumbags by honest gamers and despised by MMO developers for breaching intellectual property rights and the T&Cs of the game. The figure currently stands at 10,578 accounts banned – which pretty much equates to sticking heads on poles as a stern warning to the 750,000 other subscribers. Check out the current Banhammer figure here.

Codemasters Online’s Lord Of The Rings Online is to get an in-game social networking site. Developer Turbine’s boss Jim Crowley announced this morning at the Tokyo Game Show that it would be “a version of Facebook or MySpace that sits directly on top of the gaming world.

“This is a fully featured, rich, robust social network. It has every single feature that you would find in the major commercial social networks such as Facebook and MySpace.”

It will launch at the end of this year and feature profile pages for all LOTRO player characters, with friend lists and communication tools as an extension of the current social networking system. It will also launch for Turbine’s other MMOs around the same time or next year.

Lizard Interactive has announced that the first expansion pack for free to play MMORPG Sho Online is just around the corner. Entitled “Two Emperors”, the expansion brings with it a host of new features, one of the more interesting being a pet training system whereby players can raise creatures to assist them in battles or provide speedier forms of transport.

Get the lowdown here

Avatar boobs have been shrunk in a recent Age Of Conan: Hyborian Adventure patch, according to a thread on the official AOC forum. Not that affects the MMORPG in any real way, but for one AOC forumite, Dusk, it was enough to prompt a degree of outrage and to post a thread containing these shots:

Before… And after…

Amid the sniggering and lame masturbation jokes, there was a more serious undertone to the thread: Dusk’s character had been alterated without his consent. Happily, Funcom is addressing the issue, which means we can create all the stereotypical buxom hotties we like. How’s that for fairness and equality?

Eidos and Funcom celebrated their latest venture, Age Of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, with a massive launch party in Oslo on 13 May. The event included over 50 actors dressed in barbarian garb, a fantasy battle scene and of course, King Conan himself who oversaw the festivities from his lofty perch and only deigned to move when a fight broke out and his warriors were in grave need of assistance.

Music came courtesy of the Age Of Conan soundtrack director Morten Sørlie and Norwegian punk rockers Turbo Negro, who received a warm reception from the 400+ event attendees. More details and photos to come on the TPCG blog site.

Blizzard, creator of World Of Warcraft is suing the maker of a software tool that it says infringes its copyright. Michael Donnelly, creator of the MMO Glider program that automates everyday actions in the game, denies any infringement. He states that no copy of World Of Warcraft is ever made using his program.

Blizzard is demanding that he cease selling Glider and hand over all profits he’s made from the program. This could amount to several million dollars as Michael claims to have sold over 100,000 copies, which ranges in price from a $5 month subscription to a $60 lifetime pass.

More than half of all MMORPG players play characters of an opposite gender, we’re sure you’ll be horrified but completely unsurprised to learn. According to a study by Nottingham Trent University, 54 per cent of male MMO gamers play as the fairer sex when online, while 68 per cent of girls play as guys. The results showed that the guys got more favourable interactions from male gamers while playing as gals (”Nerd plus boob equals loot,” apparently) and the majority of gender-swapping women just wanted to lose the online sex-pests. The paper is called “Gender-swapping and socialising in cyberspace: an exploratory study” by Zaheer Hussain and Mark Griffiths, and surveyed 115 participants through a number of forums.