For pen-and-paper RPG players, Pathfinder remains a perennial favorite game setting. Those players may find themselves excited to know, then, that Goblinworks has announced Pathfinder Online. This MMORPG adaptation of the extremely popular system will be a "hybrid sandbox/theme park-style MMO roleplaying game." The title will feature a "robust trading system [that] puts players in control of the world's economy," which should be wonderful for players who like to work the market. Characters can also establish settlements and expand them into full kingdoms while raising an army to help defend their turf.

The announcement boasts randomly generated events, as well, stating that "as settlements develop, the surrounding wilderness develops more complex and challenging features." The goal appears to be not just to create a game, but in fact to bring to life a real, evolving world. Pathfinder fans should keep their eyes on Goblinworks' official site, where further development updates will be posted.

Runewaker Entertainment, creator of the popular free-to-play title Runes of Magic, has announced its newest upcoming title, Dragon's Prophet. Players will be able to capture a large variety of dragons, each with its own statistics and attributes. After a dragon has been captured, players will be granted a stat bonus based on the stats of the dragon. That's all the information we have for now, but jump past the cut for the game's announcement trailer, and stay tuned for more information.

In a piece of news that we're betting surprises precisely nobody at all, Aion has just broken the 400,000 pre-order mark. What's notable about this number is that it's enough to make Aion the largest number of pre-orders on an MMO for 2009. As Aion is also holding strong in the Steam and Direct2Drive sales charts, we wonder how many more we'll see added to that number before the official launch next Tuesday.

With highly polished graphics, over two million words of quest text, and a series of tweaks to make Aion more Western-friendly, NCsoft seems to have finally hit the right stride with Western MMO gamers. That said, as we've learned from all the other games that have come before it, the real numbers that count are the retention numbers after the initial launch. Whether or not Aion is the goose that lays the golden egg - at least in terms of the Western markets - we'll have to wait and see.