Allods Online is a sci-fi fantasy MMORPG developed by Astrum Nival, creators of Heroes of Might & Magic V.

Two warring factions, League and Empire, vie for control of allods—islands floating in Astral space. The truly unique aspect of Allods Online is the Astral ship system. Players can create their own ships, crewed by entire parties where each player has a distinct role, from navigator and helmsman to engineer and gunner. From their astral ship, players can navigate the randomly generated astral space where they can explore uncharted allods, fight massive Astral demons, and engage in Astral piracy on unwary fellow travelers. The game features an unprecedented amount of content for a free-to-play MMORPG: 2 factions, 6 races, 8 archetypes, 28 classes, and over 2,000 quests. The production values are top-notch with full motion-capture animation, top award-wining artists, and a soundtrack by Mark Morgan, composer for the hit TV-series Dexter, Fallout & Fallout 2, and Planescape: Torment.

With this Vol. 1: Revelations of Gipat, Allods Online will introduce a new zone, new content and many more quests. To make life easier for all players, some parts of the game mechanism will see a change.

Thanks to intensive testing and feedback from the Allods Online community, the controversial and unpopular debuff ‘Fear of Death’ – a death penalty that occurred 100% of the time and reduced all of the statistics of the players by 25% – is removed with the new expansion.

Nevertheless, Volume 1: Revelations of Gipat won’t make life too easy! With the introduction of the ‘Cursed Items’ all players will have to face a new challenge when dying. Randomly, a slot in their equipment will be chosen to receive a curse on that item by inverting its statistics bonus. For example, if a belt normally gives +8 Wisdom, when cursed, it would take away -8 Wisdom instead.

But don’t worry - not every item will receive a curse; only rare quality (blue) or higher items can be cursed. Maybe you’ll be lucky and the chosen slot will be empty or have an uncommon quality (green) or lower item equipped, and then you won’t get this penalty at all.

Volume 1: Revelations of Gipat will come to the European servers on Tuesday, July 6th 2010.