Now, if you ask me, this is one of the most fun MMO games to come out in a very long time. I've tried many of them over the years, and it is rare that a game keeps my interest for a while. I don't look for what the usual mainstream market does when it comes to MMOs. I usually want something a bit grittier, a little more hardcore. But at the same time I also tend to look for a game that can be played casually, without forcing a huge time investment from a single play session.

First off, tell us a bit about yourself and what you're filling your time with nowadays.

Iain Compton: Hey there, well I'm part of the community management team for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning in Europe. I used to be responsible for the entire English speaking community by myself but these days I have a sidekick. I've been doing this job for the last year and before that I was doing a sort of hybrid of my current job combined with managing the customer service for the English Dark Age of Camelot servers in Europe.

My days are pretty full just keeping up with the news and the huge mass of data that a community this size generates. Somehow I manage to keep alongside that as well as helping our QA team to run the WAR beta and working with our marketing department and EA Mythic's community team to communicate effectively with the fans.

It sometimes feels like the games industry is backing away from the PC, yet Blizzard have the most successful game around, and it's a PC exclusive. What's going wrong?

Rob Pardo: I totally understand why so many companies aren't developing on the PC... From a hardware perspective, you're developing for a moving target, it's becoming more and more expensive to develop technology, and you have to be careful with system requirements... From a financial point of view, you get more money back from PC games, but you also have to spend more money on marketing and getting shelf space: you need to be working with a strong publisher.

Something else that's been well documented, but I think depends on the game, is the whole piracy element... But I don't subscribe to the notion that the PC is dead. Until consoles have the same sort of inputs as a PC, I see no reason for it to go away. PCs have the biggest install base of any game system. As long as that remains the case, you're going to see a lot of PC games. It just might be a different business model.

Cryptic Studios posted an ad in Game Career Guide e-zine (pg. 42) hiring for Star Trek Online, officially confirming their involvement.

So, Death Knights -- the new character class. After a short intro movie, your goth hero enters the world on the top of Ebon Hold, a floating Necropolis in Eastern Plaguelands, decked out in a full set of appropriately dour, green-quality armor and no weapon. Downstairs, after chatting with Instructor Rasuvious, who you may recall from such pre-Burning Crusade raid instances as Naxxramas, you'll learn Runeforging and create your first Runed Soulblade. Runeforging is a Death Knight-only skill that basically replaces conventional weapon enchants with your choice of six (so far) Runes. At the moment there are no materials required to apply a Rune, so you can swap at will. The Rune of Swordbreaking is designed for tanking (+3% to parry), Spellbreaking looks good for PVP (-5% on all incoming spell damage -- yes please), but for leveling I opted for Fallen Crusader, which is like a buffed version of the old Crusader enchant.

The city was tremendously interactive. Much of it was destructible; You couldn't punch apart an entire building, but you could tear the air conditioning system off of the roof and throw it at people, along with light posts, fire hydrants, and anything else not (securely) bolted down. The many vehicles criss-crossing the roads were fair game for tossing around and made for great weapons. We picked up a bus, then flew up in the air 30 stories, floated over a group of bad guys, and let it fall. The resulting carnage and chaos below as the bus shattered into the pavement, bounced along the traffic, and exploded was supremely satisfying.

Here we go again, getting excited about games that are practically still the stuff of myth and legend. Well, the evidence for this one is pretty convincing. Here’s an excerpt from an interview at E3 with EA’s CEO John Riccitiello, published on Portfolio.com.

“We’ve got two of the most compelling MMOs in the industry in development,” said Riccitiello. The first title, based on the Warhammer property, will launch soon. “And the one that people are dying for us to talk to them about — in partnership with Lucas, coming out of BioWare, which is, I think, quite possibly the most anticipated game, full stop, for the industry at the point when we get closer to telling you about it.”

Does Riccitiello mean the oft rumored Knights of the Old Republic Online? “Yes,” he said.

There you go: the man from del EA, he say ‘yes’. With the less-than-it-could-have-been performance of Star Wars Galaxies and the universal awesomeness of KotOR, our thirst for more details is pretty high right now.

At Fan Faire, join the Star Wars Galaxies teams from SOE and LucasArts for "The Galactic Assembly", a two hour panel discussion on all things related to the game! The y will share new details about game-related subject matter with the attendees firsthand, including more exciting information about the Battle of Echo Base! It's a great opportunity to share your feedback, great ideas, and more.

When Blizzard's writing is good, it's really good. These words are intoned over the Death Knight intro movie, after you've clicked "create" on one of the resurrected warriors belonging to World of Warcraft's first-ever hero class. Only, that's something of a misnomer, because the Death Knight is in fact an anti-hero class. Indeed - in what must be one of the most memorable and entertaining introductions to any RPG, MMO or otherwise - it starts out as a full-blown, thieving, torturing, pillaging, genocidal villain.

Q: What do you do on Champions Online?
A: I manage the Online Community Relations group here at Cryptic. My team works the forums, puts content on the web site, coordinates events like our upcoming preview/alpha/beta and appearances at events like GenCon and PAX. We deliver feedback to the rest of the company from the community on our games so we can make them the best they possibly can be. Basically, our goal is to make the out-of-game experience as fun as the in-game experience for our community.

The toll taken on adventuring gear from questing can be steep, and can come in many forms. Remembering to repair frequently makes repair bills less expensive; it costs more to repair a badly broken item compared to the bill for a slightly worn item. Item repair costs are based on how damaged an item is and the base cost of the item.

In an effort to allow everyone the opportunity to experience as much content as possible we’ve decided to lower the maximum players in raid content to 42 for any new content that is released in the future. Please note that this will not have an impact on the player caps for existing content. They will remain the same as they are now. We will be monitoring this change going forward and undertaking any needed balance changes that become necessary.

GENERAL

* Several causes of crashes and assert failures have been addressed and fixed.
* The Skewbald Pinto Horse has had its stats adjusted to horses of the same tier and price.
* Important notification sounds now won't be interrupted by other sounds.
* Mounts can no longer be sold.
* A fix was implemented for item descriptions when switching between languages on the client.
* Fixed an issue that would cause some playfields to be empty after logging out for some time, and then back in.
* You can no longer send unlimited mail through the tradepost. If you send several mails and are informed via system message you cannot send any more, you will need for in-game time to pass before being able to send more mail.
* Ignored users will no longer be able to send you mail.
* Raid playfields will now kick players who are not in the raid.

U.S. MMORPG publishers may need to offer more free-to-play titles - not games with subscriptions models - to attract new players and grow the market, according to Electronic Gaming in the Digital Home II, a recent consumer study conducted by market research firm Parks Associates.

Of the 2,000+ online gamers polled, only hardcore gamers were found to be interested in subscribing to an MMORPG service, whereas "social, dormant, and leisure gamers all show significant interest in a free-to-play, microtransaction-based model."

DC Universe Online has a difficult road ahead of it; console MMOs have consistently died stillborn, including DC's most obvious natural competitor, the abortive Marvel MMO. And Star Wars: Galaxies has had a terrible and disappointing life cycle. Plus, the intended casual-MMO-player audience is less likely to be tolerant of the awkward starts that most MMOs experience. Even so, the game has potential -- not only from its unconventional style, but from the precedent set by Square Enix's successful PC/console MMO Final Fantasy XI. And one would like to think that SOE Austin has learned from Galaxies' difficult history about what does and doesn't work. DC Universe Online's release is still clearly quite a ways away -- with luck, that time will offer SOE the freedom it needs to get this one right.

I was given a private demo of this content update at San Diego Comic-Con. Control points are something that were added to Rasa a short time ago, but now Destination Games is taking that a step further. Not only will human players be able to capture these points from the evil Bane, but now they'll also be able to grapple for control of them. Clans will also now be able to join in on the fun.

Known as Clan Owned Control Points (COCPs), players can join up with their clan, plant their flag at a given point and reap the benefits. What benefits? Some control points are given NPC characters who act as vendors. Should a rival player make his way to your control point and do a little business, it's you that will see a little extra coin in your pocket because of it.

The first MMO on our list, but certainly not the last. NetDevil’s history with the genre has been somewhat patchy – their last game, Auto Assault, lasted barely a year before the plug was pulled.

That’s hardly reason to get excited about Jumpgate: Evolution, especially when you consider that it’s pretty much a remake of their first MMO, which had its own share of hiccups after launch.

However, in spite of everything, Jumpgate – billed as an MMO flight sim – is at least still going and arguably NetDevil’s entire future is riding on the success of this update. That in itself is no guarantee, but we would love to see them pull it off.

NavyField Europe (Company: eFusion MMOG GmbH) announced the details of submarines. A new sailor tree and new submarine tree will be created and 16 submarines have been preparing for now.

Submarines are a bit slower than other normal ships and the torpedo of submarine has a shorter range and more damage.

Small ships like destroyers and light cruisers can detect submarines. They will have a new role in battle and of course submarines can detect other submarines.

eFusion expect that big battleships need to corporate more with small ships and team-work will be even more important.

Submarines can use guns and torpedoes on the sea but it can only use torpedoes while being submerged.

The Submarine patch date is planned in September and eFusion expect many players will enjoy this addition.

New “Hood” Server launching date will be 24th of July and many events are prepared. 3 months Ranking Event, 50 Level Challenging Event, Nomination Event and Bonus Item for First buying Users Event will be started on launching day.

Event participants have a chance to win Model-ship, NF Crystals, NF T-Shirts, NF Posters and Premium Items.

July patch has been implemented as planned on 17th of this month and host wakeup function, macro-blocking, CV EXP boost and gun power boost added.

New Billing Method "PaySafeCard" will be added in this month, so gamers will have diversity of methods.

GNGWC European Preliminary League applying is finished and the battle will be started from 26th of July.

Navy Field Europe gamers can check www.navyfield.eu for more detail information.

Company Introduction:
eFusion MMOG GmbH is the European official publisher of Navy Field and located in Germany. Navy Field Europe has been started from August 2007 and it’s published to Pan-Europe. eFusion is focusing on MMOG and European Market and will publish more qualified Korean MMOGs to European market.(http://www.efusion-mmog.com and http://www.navyfield.eu)

Sheloman was pleased to tell me more about the content release scheduled for early August. The latest Masteria expansion was specifically created by the American Team for the US market. In it, players will find icons of American Pop Culture such as Bigfoot and a Trading Card Game and they all have been "MapleStory-sized." That is to say, they all maintain the cute, pixel art look and feel of MapleStory characters. There are three new areas that will be available to play in:

Phantom Forest is a 45+ level area which is haunted. There, players will find a Haunted House, Headless Horsemen and Elder Wraiths among other monsters, and may encounter the boss, Big Foot. Sheloman described the forest as a "Forest of Illusion like Super Mario world."

Phantom Forest leads to Crimsonwood Mountains that is a 70+ level area. The first area you must navigate is the Valley of Heroes where huge living pillars of stone known as Menhirs roam. These critters cannot be killed and players must use their timing and jumping skills in true platformer style to get through them. Players will encounter six new enemy types here, and find a number of caves which are actually solo-able dungeons. Finally, they encounter level 120 Guardians which guard the way to the next area.

Our fight did create a lot of blood -- every hit resulted in a big red spray of the stuff and once I dropped the Toadtaurus down to 0 hp his arm flew off -- but it didn’t feel all that violent. That might be in part because, big sprays of blood aside, the combat feels exactly like the combat in every other MMO. Select monster -> attack monster -> spam tactically select spam spells and special abilities -> right click to pick up the pile of dropped loot -> rinse and repeat.