In order to incorporate the gamigo account system into the lives of players, the Official Forum will be going offline later this week, Reakktor Media's gamigo AG's Christian 'Snowcrash' Schuett* has posted this regarding the migration:

On Thursday, April 29, at 11:00 AM CEST (GMT+2) we will take down the Black Prophecy forum in order to migrate it to the gamigo web space. We are expecting to be able to have the forum back online on the new domain around late afternoon.

The new forum URL will then be forum.blackprophecy.gamigo.com (.de)

After the migration of the forum software it will be necessary to link your forum account to an existing gamigo account. Otherwise you will not receive permission to post new threads or reply to existing threads. However, the process of linking your forum account will be fairly easy and we will also provide a short tutorial for this on Wednesday, at the latest on Thursday.

Sounds like the cogs of progress are getting us closer to Closed Beta, with a change like this occuring before the end of April (just) perhaps this signals the distribution of Beta Invitations, with the gamigo account system handling forum access for those lucky beta invitees!

Feel free to drop your beta related speculation in the Prophecy Network Forums and of course we welcome those who just can't get enough Black Prophecy onto our more than capable forums to tide you over during the downtime.

*I've been writing that for too many years.

Recently I've gone a bit pod-cast crackers while I find things to do which aren't my dissertation; as a result I stumbled across some information I don't think has come across to the community as of yet, from within Massively.com's GDC Edition of their weekly pod-cast 'Massively Speaking'.

I've written a transcript below; while I've tried to remain as true to the spoken word from the pod-cast as possible, I have taken some liberties for the sake of sense and reading flow.

Speaking of Black Prophecy, I got to see Black Prophecy in motion, well they couldn’t actually show me the game running but the game is up, it’s running on servers in Germany but that was the problem, they couldn’t show me the game live as the servers are in Germany and we were on crappy convention Wi-Fi so it would have looked like a slideshow, so in order to avoid that they had some pre recorded footage of the game in motion and it’s just as gorgeous as you think it is, and more.

It’s really impressive, the only thing I didn’t like were the explosions actually, when one ship explodes it looks awesome but when a battle cruiser explodes it the same animation like 10 times over in a row, hopefully they’ll change that before launch and it’s just place holder animation. It is a beautiful game and it seems to run really smoothly.

It’s definitely a space combat simulator with all the speed and power and you can customise your ship, even the end game PVP is really unique, in EVE you go out and shoot your mining laser at a rock and watch the rock’s resources deplete but in this game you don’t do that, that’s boring.

In Black Prophecy you go out and find a automated mine owned by mercenaries, you then defeat them to capture that mine and it starts feeding your clan resources but; every week or so (they’re still working this out) the mine will open up for attack and enemy player clans can challenge you to take the mine etc so it’s a really dynamic PVP system based on the end game crating system.

While there isn’t a crafting system per se (although they are working on one to be in the main portion of the game) one exists for the end game to let you build your own space station using the resources gathered.

The only other downside I see is they’re focusing on the single player, although there is multiplayer things it’s not as interesting or engaging as the single player story, this great epic story arc written by Michael Marrak.

It looks good, it looks interesting another title definitely to watch and it' free so pick it up and go bananas, if you don’t like you’ve spent nothing, if you do then you can pay a little a month to expand that experience.

Black Prophecy is definitely a game which shows us Free to Play isn’t what it used to be.

You can find relevant pod-cast, 'Massively Speaking Episode 92', here.

Some pretty interesting information there, with the apparent server structure already in place I guess Closed Beta really is just around the corner.

Today Reakktor Media have released a new Cinematic Trailer for the game we're all here for - upcoming Space Action MMO, Black Prophecy.

The trailer is the first to feature gamigo's presence with the game and was originally shown behind closed doors to the attendees of the recent Games Developers Conference. Keeping it short and sweet Community Manager Chris Schuett who we all know as SnowCrash had this to say:

In course of the gamigo press event in Hamburg, Germany, we are proud to present the brand-new Black Prophecy cinematic trailer, which was previously exclusively shown to members of the press on the GDC 2010 in San Francisco.

You can find the trailer at the game's official website, right here.

Let's see which Neocron veterans can spot some interesting advertisements from some all too familiar companies ;)

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.

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.