Snowcrash has opened a new thread on the official forums, inviting potential pilots to ask question on the subject that Black Prophecy will be F2P (Free to play) or any other questions you may have after reading about the Publisher announcement.

The announcement of the cooperation between Reakktor Media and gamigo, as well as the information regarding the payment model for Black Prophecy has answered some important questions but also raised new ones.

Therefore we would like to offer you the opportunity to ask the questions that concern you the most. In a Black Prophecy Community Q&A, Kirk Lenke, CEO of Reakktor Media and Patrick Streppel, Chief Marketing Officer and Chairman of gamigo, will take some time to personally answer as many of your questions as possible.

So make sure you get your questions in on this thread.

It's the news we all been waiting for. Reakktor have announced they have a publisher for Black Prophecy, who are Gamigo games. (The BP portal at Gamigo can be found here.)

Here is the full press release.

Black Prophecy: gamigo to publish the space action MMOG globally!
Hamburg, March 4, 2010 – gamigo AG and Reakktor Media GmbH have officially announced that they will be working together on the highly-anticipated space action MMOG Black Prophecy. gamigo owns the global distribution and publishing rights for the game. The Hamburg-based publisher thus lays the foundation for a new focus on becoming a global publisher and producer of free-to-play Massively Multiplayer Online Games.

Patrick Streppel, gamigo's CMO, is enthusiastic about the new game: „Reakktor’s Black Prophecy will breathe life back into a genre previously forgotten. The game features graphics of the highest quality, a rich and meaningful story, and strong community features. Since we've begun collaborating with Reakktor, we have expanded greatly upon the concept of the game and thus are able to offer one of the first top-of-the-line free-to-play MMOGs."
A lot has happened in the development of Black Prophecy in the past few weeks. The biggest change has been the new direction as a free-to-play online game, previously unheard of for a game of this quality. Among other things, a crafting system was added and the layout of the game world was opened up. In-game dialogue will be recorded by professional voice actors. The one-and-a-half hour long orchestral soundtrack provides a rich and varied score of background music.

Kirk Lenke, CEO of Reakktor Media GmbH, said "We are excited to have found such a strong partner in gamigo for the publishing and distribution of our space action MMOG Black Prophecy. gamigo has the necessary skills and abilities to turn our product into a global MMOG blockbuster."

Black Prophecy is expected go into closed beta testing in April 2010.

It's great news all round, and I'm sure we will be more news and articles on Gamigo later and the game being free to play later. In the mean time, drop over to the official forums and have a chat about the announcement.

Massively have secured another interview with Reakktor Media today; this time with Lead Game Designer, Lorenz Dames.

The interview carries three new screen shots for you to drool over  and goes into depth about mission design, including details on how missions have been created, their dynamic nature as well as various types of missions players will be able to enjoy - in teams or as a lone wolf! Due to Black Prophecy's action focused orientation it is certainly nice to see an appreciation for good old MMORPG style missions thrown into the bag for good measure.

You can check out the interview in full here; with an official discussion thread available at the official forums, allowing you to throw in your opinions and frothing excitement.

Black Prophecy Technical Director Cyrus Preuss continues his developer diaries with a description of the way that the physics engine allows the movement of the craft, and some of the approximations that have been made to make the game more enjoyable for the players.

A feedback thread on the official forums can be found here... why not add your own thoughts on the physics engine.

There is a new interview at Massively with Jens Kortboyer, the lead artist for Black Prophecy.

He talks about the character creation within Black Prophecy, and there are 4 new screenshots with character to feast your eye on. (I personally like the pilot with the ciggie, I guess smoking in cockpits isn't banned in the 26th Century!)

What will be interesting when Beta comes along is how different the character creation is to other games. (Such as EvE for example.)

Read the full interview here, and maybe drop a few comments at the official forums.

For those of you that can't get enough of Black Prophecy, Reakktor have unveiled a "christmas gift" in the form of five Black Prophecy wallpapers to choose from. These wallapers are huge, supporting up to a dual 1080P monitor setup, with other sizes also available in the pack. The 5 papers avaialble are a general BP background, papers based on the logos and concept art for both Tyi and Genide and a massive ingame screenshot of both a Tyi and Genide orbital facility.

The Community Bulletin that brought us this news also mentioned that publisher negotations were now down to one candidate and that a second gameplay trailer is planned for early next year.

OK, so it's been something like 3 months since the last update on Reakktor's mumblings from the TPN. This started out being due to lack of news, but eventually fell into habit. Anyway, we're back and with a fair amount to cover.

Anyway, the first thing that KK had to tell us about was the launch of the Stellarvox Veritas website. This is going to have storyline news from the game in both the lead up and presumably once the game has begun. So far, the focus is mainly on giving greater details on the events previously described in the Black Prophecy timeline.

Next of interest is the continuation of the art developer diaries. Nick Ebenhoch takes us through the design concept and realization from the Human (recognisable modern day/80s inspired tech), Tyi (Functional, knobbly, techy) and Genide (sleek, Apple-esque, hints of feudalism in logos etc)

ZAM scores an interview with creative director Timo Krahl and ask him a barrage of questions, starting out with the basic overview of Black Prophecy, before delving into Marrack's writing, PvP, flight systems, PvP, special abilities and clans.

Reakktor announced that they were offically no longer insolvent with the sixth community update. As well as the usual warp up here, there was also the mention of some "eye candy" to be delivered before christmas.

Finally, Technical Director Cyrus Preuss gives us an insight into developing the physics for Black prophecy in the first and second of his developer diaries.

Black Prophecy Technical Director Cyrus Preuss continues his developer diaries with a description of the different stages that a physics event goes through in the game to produce the result your see on your screen.

Some of the more technically minded of our contingent here at the TPN (ie most of us) have been asking some further questions on the forum - maybe you want to join in? - after all, they managed to get some answers last time around.

The developer daries continue, with Technical Director Cyrus Preuss taking over from Nick Ebenhoch to talk about the technical side of Black Prophecy.

In Cyrus's 1st entry, he talks about the game physics. You think it's easy doing Physics in a game...well maybe this entry will make you think again.

Head over to the official site to read it here.

The question to whether Black Prophecy is using the PhysX isn't answered, which is leading to a bit of speculation - why not talk about it here?

The final part of Nick Ebenhoch development diary for the artwork of Black Prophecy is now out. This week he talks about the Genide faction.

This is not the last developer diary. In a few weeks time, Cyrus Preuss the Technical Director of Black Prophecy will be opening his dairy to talk about the technical side of Black Prophecy.