Korean MMO publisher NCsoft's chief financal officer Jaeho Lee will now head up the publisher's new Western subsidiary as CEO, replacing Chris Chung, who remains with NCsoft West.

Reached for comment, however, NCsoft tells Gamasutra that widespread media reports suggesting Lee's move implies either remote leadership or a shift in control of the Western division to Korea are misleading.

"Jaeho Lee is moving to Seattle, so nothing has shifted except him," clarifies a rep -- who also points out that in addition to his duties at CFO, Lee ran departments like production and marketing in Seoul.

"A similar change of personnel happened in our Japan office, so this was a strategic move on the part of our headquarters in Seoul to streamline global management," says the rep.

The company saw its sales rise sharply in its recently-announced quarterly results thanks to Aion.

The company's Bellevue, Washington subsidiary ArenaNet, developers of the six million-selling Guild Wars franchise, is currently at work on its next major release, Guild Wars 2, which NCsoft expects to help boost North American revenues when it launches.

Funcom has revealed further details on the status of its free-to-play MMO plans, noting upcoming significant development milestones and project scope.

While a bulk of the word count in its latest financial report was dedicated to reassurances about the state of the big-budget fantasy MMO Age of Conan, the Norwegian developer and publisher was sure to outline its short- and long-term goals with the two current free-to-play projects it has in development, as well as mention that more are on the way.

As mentioned on Funcom's previous fiscal quarter report, one of the company's free-to-play games is browser-based, the other Java-based. A projected final release date was given for neither game, but it was noted that the Java team is currently conducting focus testing and will be delivering a vertical slice this summer, while the browser-based team has a combat milestone due this summer.

The browser-based MMO is apparently targeted at the "gamer demographic," and has a 14-member team in place. The Java-based MMO, on the other hand, is aimed at a younger-skewing demographic and is in development with a 17-member team. Screenshots from the Java-based game have been embedded in this article.

Funcom sees growth in free-to-play database-driven games like Travian and the Gameforge library, as well as in youth-oriented MMOs such as Club Penguin, Wizard101, and FreeRealms.

A previous statement issued by middleware provider Unity revealed that Funcom has licensed the Unity game engine for unspecified MMO projects.

The first tier consists of the existing MMOs Age of Conan and Anarchy Online; in addition to the free-to-play MMOs, the second tier also includes the upcoming MMO The Secret World; and the third tier promises new MMOs of both the free-to-play and "large scale" variety, as well as "virtual world social networking."

Cryptic Studios' subscription-based PC and Xbox 360 MMO Champions Online has been delayed, according to an official statement from the company.

"We wanted our fans to hear this from us first," says a message on the game's official site. "We’re changing our Champions Online launch date from July 14th to September 1st of this year."

The game simply needs more beta time and more polish, according to the statement; "It is critically important for an MMO to be as good as it possibly can be at launch," says design director and executive producer Bill Roper in a statement on the site.

"Through our constant dialogue with our vocal and supportive community of beta testers, we quickly realized that in order to implement certain features that we all considered important the development of Champions Online would require more time. So that's what we're going to give it."

Champions Online publisher Atari owns Cryptic Studios after acquiring it in late 2008. It bought the City of Heroes/Villains creator for $28 million, and up to $48 million in sales-related incentives.

Organizers of the Sixth Annual State of Play Conference announced that this year's event will be held on June 19th and 20th at the New York Law School. The conference will focus on the social impact of virtual worlds and multiplayer online games.

State of Play's sixth annual showing will bring together scholars, games developers, industry figures, and government leaders to examine the development and study of virtual worlds.

Speakers at this year's conference will discuss whether scholars have reached a limit in the understanding of multiplayer online spaces, and will seek to determine whether virtual worlds have stalled at a development plateau.

Confirmed speakers for the event include SOE's Andrew Zaffron, Metaplace's Raph Koster, Rebel Monkey's Margaret Wallace, Indiana University's Edward Castronova, and more.

Additional sessions at State of Play will focus on the challenges faced by public and private institutions in online environments, educational opportunities available in virtual spaces, and the ongoing issues involving ownership of virtual property.

This year's conference will also host the first Graduate Student Symposium, an event that collects 30 graduate students from around the world to present and discuss their work in the field of virtual world studies. Student presentations will receive feedback from a panel of industry leaders and experts.

More information on the Sixth Annual State of Play Conference is available at its official website.

Norwegian developer Funcom has seen revenues of $7.7 million in the first quarter of 2009, but claims stabilized subscribers for PC MMO Age of Conan after a disappointing launch.

According to the firm: "Improved subscriber retention for Age of Conan and a significant increase in new customers in Q1 compared to Q4 has led to a stable and solid subscriber base during the first 4 and a half months of 2009."

However, it's worth noting that improved relative subscriber retention and increased new users may still mean that overall subscriptions are dropping. Since the PC game's May 2008 launch, subscriber figures fell far short of expectations, leading to the closure of 31 out of 42 servers.

In fact, the revenue figure, while massively increased from a year ago's $963,000, when Conan hadn't launched, is actually slightly down from the $8.7 million in revenues in the previous quarter.

Nevertheless, the company further notes that "the subscriber level of Age of Conan has been stable during 2009 and the average playtime per subscriber and the average subscription period have improved."

In addition, Funcom also says it has $40 million in cash reserves as of March 31, thanks largely to royalties from Korean partner Neowiz and increased box product sales -- Funcom's shipped 1.2 million copies of AoC.

Funcom is also currently developing The Secret World MMO, and says its financial position and organizational plans are well-positioned to back its promotion and launch. 100 employees are currently working on the title.

Overall, the company is attempting to paint an improved picture from the end of 2008, when CEO Olav Sandnes resigned alongside $23.3 million in losses - much in one-time charges over the disappointing launch.

[UPDATE: Subscriber retention and new user comments clarified.]

Beijing, China-based online game operator NetEase has reported a rise in profits and revenues in fiscal Q1 thanks to strong performance of games such as Fantasy Westward Journey.

NetEase CEO William Ding said in a statement, “Our online game business continued to perform well during the first quarter as a result of the longevity of our game lifecycles, strong user loyalty among our gamers and robust online communities.”

The company reported revenues of RMB781.7 million (US$114.4 million) for the quarter ended March 31, up 20 percent year-on-year from RMB651.9 million (US$95.4 million).

Ding said Fantasy Westward Journey has been able to maintain a “steady user base,” and the company will be launching promotional activities during the summer to attract more gamers.

Net profit was RMB416.7 million (US$61.0 million), up from RMB269.4 million (US$39.4 million) a year ago.

NetEase recently landed a major deal with Blizzard, which will grants the Chinese game operator the rights to host World of Warcraft in China beginning in June. NetEase edged competitor and current WoW China operator The9 out of the deal.

Ding said, “Adding to our existing licensing agreements for other Blizzard Entertainment games like Warcraft III and StarCraft II and the Battle.net platform, this new licensing achievement positions NetEase with the most popular MMORPG worldwide in addition to our outstanding portfolio of market leading in-house developed games.”

The newly-revealed Gazillion Entertainment, which is working on Marvel super hero MMOs, among other titles, has appointed to VP of studios Stuart Moulder, Microsoft Game Studios’ former general manager.

Charged with overseeing overall management of Gazillion’s internal studios, Moulder will lead NetDevil, Gargantuan, Amazing Society and Slipgate Ironworks as they collectively continue their work on two Marvel super hero MMOs, Jumpgate Evolution and other online games both announced and unannounced.

Moulder has also worked for Sierra before spending eight years with Microsoft, where he helped acquire and manage studios including Bungie, Ensemble and FASA. After Microsoft, he was SVP at Screenlife, helping bring Scene It? to Xbox 360.

Privately-held Gazillion is based in San Mateo, Calif. It emerged from stealth mode earlier this year, announcing major licensing deals and acquisitions right out of the gate.

One of Gazillion’s big licenses is a 10-year Marvel comics deal. The first game to release under that agreement is the kid-friendly Marvel Super Hero Squad in 2010, developed by WA.-based Amazing Society.

"The mass market MMO space is adding new gamers at a stunning pace and, with the team and titles already in place at Gazillion, the company is well positioned to contend for leadership within the market space in the years ahead,” Stuart said in a press release.

In this round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Radical Entertainment, Ubisoft and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted in each market area this week include:

WarCraft III RPG/strategy mod Defense of the Ancients has attracted millions of players, and now Riot Games, a team including DOTA's co-designer is taking the concept full-scale commercial with League of Legends, due out later this year.

It's the first title for the Los Angeles-based studio, which announced the project at the end of 2008. Other games, most notably Gas Powered Games' Demigod, have aimed to spiritually succeed DOTA, but Riot Games is attempting to recreate the game more literally, and has DOTA co-designer Steve "Guinsoo" Feak on board.

Here, Gamasutra speaks to director of systems design Tom Cadwell and community relations director Steve Mescon about the special considerations in evolving a wildly popular Warcraft III mod into a commercial RTS/RPG.

They discuss how League of Legends -- which can't escape being abbreviated LoL -- is both like and unlike original DOTA, and modding as an avenue into full-scale development.

Two of Rockstar Games’ co-founders, along with a former facial animation exec and longtime entertainment industry vet, have formally announced New York City-based 4mm Games, a privately-funded web-based game developer.

The announcement of 4mm finally confirms rumors that have circulated the web for nearly two years.

Jamie King and Gary Foreman, co-founders of Grand Theft Auto house Rockstar Games, will act as president of 4mm and CTO, respectively. At Rockstar, King was VP of product development, and Foreman was CTO.

King left Rockstar in 2006, according to his LinkedIn business networking profile. While 4mm games is just emerging today, he founded the company in January 2006. Rumors of 4mm’s existence originally surfaced on the blog of former Rockstar designer Jurie Horneman.

King’s LinkedIn profile describes 4mm as a “web-based service provider of digital entertainment across a digital distribution delivery platform.” He said the company intends on targeting “multiple age demographics.”