RF Online

If you were a fan of RF Online, you know that the European and North American servers operated by Codemasters Online were shut down on Nov. 9 because a contract renewal agreement could not be reached with CCR, the Korean developers of the title.

Well, CCR is currently in the process of bringing the game back to North America and western Europe. The closed beta test began on Dec. 11 and will end on Dec. 31. More information can be found on the official Web site.

The English version of RF Online will be free to play, but you can purchase items from the cash shop. It will tentatively be released around the first quarter of 2009.

It's never pretty when an MMO closes its doors. So it's with deep sadness that I bring you the news that RF Online is ending.

It is with much sadness that today we announce our intention to close the European and North American RF Online game servers operated by Codemasters.

Our license for RF Online is due to expire shortly and unfortunately, despite several weeks of negotiations with CCR, the Korean developers of the title, we have not been able to reach an agreement to renew the contract.

This means that Codemasters will no longer have the right to operate the service in the Western territories it currently provides service in and therefore we are obliged to shut down all associated game services before the licence expires.

The last full day of service will be 9th November, 2008. All RF Online world servers will shut down on the morning of Monday 10th November, UK time.

I'd like to offer my deepest condolences and regrets to those of you who played RF and wish the Codemasters team nothing but the very best in their new ventures. Read on for the rest of the announcement.

If you'll be attending Codemasters Connect08, you'll want to hear this news!

Codemasters are delighted to announce that any RF Online players who purchase a Connect ticket will each receive a full, exclusive, level 50 Shirow armour set of their choice for one character they have in RF Online.

These armour sets were designed by the internationally renowned manga artist
Masamune Shirow . Most famous for manga’s Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed, he was commissioned to design some RF Online armour sets, and the results are outstanding.

The armours can be viewed here and have been designed to provide an awesome look for each class in the game.

Every ticket purchased will enable the player to reserve one set of armour for a character of their choice (to be gifted to character upon addition of the armour to the game) however tickets are limited so to be sure you don’t miss out on this amazing offer head to www.codemastersconnect.com now to purchase your ticket.

Screenshots of the armor are available, as is information on buying tickets!  Keep in mind, the event is in England, just in case you were planning on going!

Over on the Codemasters forums community guy Ulric made a great post about their RF Online recent activity against the real money transaction (RMT) folks!

As part of todays maintenance we have permanently banned and taken actions to block over 1200 RMT company, related accounts and various other batches of offenders (Bots etc).

We do not expect many if any 'genuine players' to be affected by this, however if you are please pm me and we will investigate, however the most likely reason for this would be accounts that have paid for power levelling services, accounts that have bought gold from RMT companies or accounts bought from RMT companies / websites.

this is just a start, we will continue to deal with these and appreciate continued support from the playerbase.

As an additional part of our investigations we identified various guilds sharing multiple accounts, this time we have not taken action, however in subsequent investigations this check will be included, so I advise guilds to discontinue sharing accounts or they risk losing accounts in the next investigation of offending accounts.

Baby steps, and each little one counts!