SOE released a preview of the upcoming fabled dungeon, Sanctum of the Scaleborn, due out next Thursday, January 23.

Starting Thursday, January 23, 2014 EverQuest II players can experience the Kingdom of Sky zone, Sanctum of the Scaleborn, as a Fabled dungeon. This means that this contested dungeon will return as a place where the highest level players can explore and defeat the challenges for level appropriate loot. Are you prepared to do battle with the fanatical Awakened (again)?

“We must be steadfast to the last command given to the Awakened before the Shattering” - a herald of Dar

Continue after the jump for the full preview.

Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen launched its Kickstarter this afternoon. The Kickstarter campaign will run for 40 days and seeks to raise $800,000. A $45 minimum pledge will get you an alpha invite plus a digital copy of the game (which means including 30 days of game time, meaning it will likely be a subscription-based model), with an estimated ship date of January 2017. Stretch goals include additional classes, races, features and content. Here is the press release sent out by CCO Brad McQuaid's company, Visionary Realms.

Visionary Realms, Inc. announced today their plans to meet a growing demand in the Massively Multiplayer Online Games market by developing Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, a game targeted towards the challenge-seeking gamer. The game's design and ideas were inspired by feedback from many MMO communities that have been looking for a return to a classic style of MMO gameplay and group-focused game content.

"I receive emails almost every day asking for this type of game," said Visionary Realms' Chief Creative Officer, Brad McQuaid, who is best known for his critical and early involvement in the forming and influence of the MMORPG genre. "No one else seems to be answering this call. It's the kind of game we've been wanting to play for so long and we're finally getting a chance to make it, thanks to major advances in game development technology and crowdfunding."

Visionary Realms Inc. in launching its Kickstarter campaign, now turns to the public for funding. "We believe there are many, many people out there who have been wanting a game like Pantheon for so long and we're asking them for their help in making it happen," said Director of Development, Salim Grant. "It's the perfect opportunity for us to work with the fans and have everyone be a very real and important part of this exciting project."

Welcome to 2014’s first edition of the Eorzea Examiner, ZAM’s column on Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. For this issue we’re finally going to talk about something I was going to do before Lightning Strikes and the holidays interrupted me: crafting. We’ve already talked about what makes FFXIV’s gathering classes and mechanics unique and how I would improve them, so now it’s time to take all of those materials and turn them into shiny things.

Last month, Colin Johanson posted a 2013 year in review blog post on the official Guild Wars 2 website. In the post he reviewed the features that players saw over the latter half of the year before announcing that the next four patches would finish off the first season of the Living World initiative with the first patch not coming until January 21st.

Subscription for All Access is being lowered to $14.99/month, and the previously announced change to Station Cash bonuses for Gold Members is being done away with. The monthly 500 Station Cash bonus will stay in place with the only change being that members will have to actively claim it each month.

This information and more comes from another update by John Smedley (by way of the EverQuest Forums, by way of Reddit):

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the feedback. We listened.

Here are the basics of our revised plan. Please note - we have not had the time to do estimates of the work involved, and also we're continuing to listen. so this isn't baked just yet. Do not expect that this is all going to happen immediately. We plain don't know yet. we're doing that meeting tmw.

1) We're lowering the price of All Access to $14.99

2) We're going to make it so every subscriber to all our PC games an all access member. Basically there will be one SOE membership for our PC games. Please note there are some minor restrictions around our kids titles (simply put - if you're a 12 year old who signed up for FR you won't have access to the adult games so we'll likely leave the lower priced kids offerings as separate subscriptions for under 12 for the same low prices).

3) We're keeping the 500 SC included with the subscription instead of going to the "pick an item" system. We heard you. You didn't like the change. The only change we are making is that we're now going to make you claim it monthly. You can still hoard it though I realize this is a bit of a pain but honestly it's the best compromise we could come up with that solves the problems I mentioned in the other thread.

This holiday season ZAM celebrated twelve of their favorite games of the past and present, as well as some that we're anticipating! In case you didn't catch all twelve days, here's a recap:

With Flex Raiding proving to be more popular than Normal in World of Warcraft, it came as little surprise when, at Blizzcon, Blizzard announced its intention to apply Flex scaling to both Normal and Heroic difficulties (10 and 25).

Following its previous Q&A on PvP on Elitist Jerks and the "Creating Cyrodiil’s Keeps", Zenimax Online gave us more info on The Elder Scrolls Online's skill progression by publishing a new "Ask Us Anything" on the topic of Cyrodiil.

New information were given on Cyrodiil's maps, keeps and resources, siege weapons, rankings and various game mechanics.

The winners have been selected and notified for our EverQuest Franchise Holiday Contest! Thanks again to everyone who participated and shared their wonderful stories, and congrats to all those who won!

• fcoty: Grand Prize Winner of Collector’s Editions of both the latest EverQuest and EverQuest II expansions and an EverQuest Next Landmark Trailblazer Founder’s Pack
• Tragai, Nibz and SakuBowh: Runners-up for the $10 Station Cash (1000SC) prizes
• Mugsynj, scarecrow30, Uthere, Guaria, Noodleydo, newquseio, Charisa, Xenariel, stardast1 and Kluiana: Runners-up for three months of premium on ZAM

All of the winners’ stories can be read after the jump!

Wurm Online is a unique game that I had the pleasure of discovering almost three years ago (although the game has been out since 2006) and it has held my heart ever since. In it, players are able to sculpt the land, battle fierce creatures (including each other), craft an extensive number of items and claim property as their own. Each year has brought numerous updates that further enhanced the worlds as well as the players living there.

This year players have seen some of the most intense updates yet, starting with graphic revamps. Artists have been posting their progress to the forums where players can communicate and openly share their opinions. Having such a hands-on approach has done wonders for the game, and of course it doesn’t stop there.