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It's a sad day, my friends. With Richard Garriott starting Portalarium, we may retire the spaceman Garriott photoshop (above). With Garriott back on terra firma and with a new company, it's probably time to bury the image that represents the last couple years of his life, in which Garriott went to space, saw his name on failed MMO Tabula Rasa and encountered professional issues that saw him departing NCsoft and suing it for $27 million. Here are some excerpts from our discussion of Garriott's past and future at DICE.

Joystiq: Before we talk about the future, let's talk about the past a little bit: how was space?

Richard Garriott: Life changing, phenomenal. It is a series of life-changing epiphanies. ... My first thought was when I saw the Earth from space was not, "Oh wow, how high and beautiful it is above this beautiful Earth." It was: "Wow, we are not that high up. I sure hope they made this orbit perfectly circular or we're going to be reentering again real soon." That was my honest first thought when I saw the Earth from space. But it is perfectly circular.

During this whole space situation the NCsoft thing happened. What's the current status of the $27 million lawsuit?

Active, so, therefore I can't talk about it. There's a court date somewhere in the summer. Maybe things will resolve before then, maybe they won't.

Are there any unresolved issues with NCsoft beyond the lawsuit?

No, not at all. In fact, there's even areas where I'm quite supportive of NCsoft, both their products and a number of people there. Not my lawsuit, but there are other lawsuits where I fundamentally take their side on. I really have no bad blood with NCsoft globally, at all. I think they still do great products and have some really great people. I just have issue with one particular aspect of how my employment was dealt with. I thought it was an error and that's the basis of the lawsuit.

Generally speaking, when a company can post a year-over-year growth in the double digits, it's doing pretty well. We write up a lot of financial news here at the 'Stiq, and it's not often that we can report that a company managed a 623 percent increase in its income. And yet, here we are, as GameSpot reports that NCsoft has done exactly that -- thanks in no small part to its latest MMO, Aion. Specifically, NCsoft reported revenues of KRW634.7 billion ($546 million) for its fiscal 2009, an 83 percent increase over the previous year. Actual income (profit, in other words) reached KRW185.4 billion ($160 million), a 623 percent increase over 2008.

Narrowing things down solely to the company's 4th quarter, income was actually up 1009 percent over the same period last year, with NCsoft reporting KRW72.1 billion ($62 million). Fourth quarter revenues, meanwhile were up 99 percent at KRW197.3 billion ($170 million).

Again, all this is mostly on the fantastic back of Aion, which brought in 43 percent of the company's game revenue for 2009, followed by Lineage II with 26 percent, the original Lineage with 23, City of Heroes with 4, Guild Wars with 3 and other titles with 1 percent.

[Via Edge]

Update: NCsoft has informed us the issue has been resolved.

Players on the Azphel server of Aion found quite the surprise recently, as their virtual coin pouch swelled to ridiculous proportions out of nowhere. The culprit: a glitch accidentally awarding players with 30 trillion Kinah. We're not sure about the conversion rates to real money, but when you can tell people you have 30 trillion of anything, we imagine it's impressive nonetheless.

As a result of the glitch, the server's being restored to an earlier point right now, hopefully resolving the newfound financial success of those affected in the game. We'll update you all when the server's back online.

[Via Massively]

As anyone who's ever played an MMORPG probably already knows, in-game gold sellers are a complete blight on the genre. Nothing is more disruptive to your personal, epic fantasy tale than frequent private messages informing you that "GOLD4CASH $5/500 $10/1200 $20/3000 buy now msg plz!!!!" That's why we were so pleased to hear that the GMs in Aion go above and beyond when it comes to banning these currency-hocking players from the game. They don't just suspend their accounts, you see -- they utterly decimate their avatars.

Check out the video after the jump to see the game's unique brand of justice-serving in action.

[Via Kotaku]

Let's see, there's the human race, the nomadic warrior race, the mystical forest people race, the big ugly race, and the miniature race. Looks like all the MMORPG archetypes are covered! Fine, there's a bit more lore contained within the above trailer for Guild Wars 2, which explains all the motivations and backstories for each of the game's five races. Still, who cares about that stuff? Where's all the loot?

For a comprehensive breakdown of the trailer's plot elements, and some speculation on how the story of the sequel will unfold, we suggest checking out our sister site, Massively. This kind of thing is right in their wheelhouse.

The last we heard on the tentative launch window of Guild Wars 2 was a fairly vague "2010 or 2011." Fortunately, if comments made by NCSoft CEO Jaeho Lee during a recent investors' call are on the level, it seems NCSoft has made up its mind about the game's release year. Kind of. Somewhat. A little.

While speaking about the game (and another of the company's titles, Blade and Soul), Jaeho stated, "I believe there will be certain public events in the year 2010 ... at least a closed beta test for those titles. Commercialization will be expected, at this point, probably some time in the year 2011." We can stick it out until the year after next before getting our hands on this good-lookin' sequel -- we just hope it's not pushed back any further. See, we'd really like to invest some time in the game before the world ends.

Approximately 12 hours ago, NCSoft flicked the proverbial switch in the US, thus opening the flood gates to its new MMO, Aion. Unfortunately, many users are still running into some unusually long server queues. If you've already run out of ideas from Massively's server queue survival guide, why not watch this launch trailer for the game you're waiting around for? It's pretty sweet! Don't you wish you could just play the game right now?

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Oh. Right.