The MMO week in a minute

Posted Jun 15th 2008 5:00PM by Michael Zenke
Filed under: Features, MMO

Big Download's sister site Massively.com has all the news you'll need about MMOs. Here's the best, brightest, and most interesting stuff from the last week, all in one convenient place for your MMO minute.

	Age of Conan newsletter previews new PvP, dungeons, and dancing! It's only been a short time since Age of Conan launched, but it has already seen some troubles. The newest edition of the game newsletter hints that good times are just over the horizon. Above and beyond bug fixing and regular patches, Funcom has announced they have a slew of new concepts and content ideas on the stove.
	Exclusive images of the new Legends of Norrath: Oathbreaker loot cards A week from today the next set of cards for Sony Online Entertainment's Legends of Norrath TCG will be released. Digital packs of cards will be noisily slotted into virtual racks, to be pawed over by players ... metaphorically.
	First trailer for Square/Enix's new MMO Concerto Gate unveiled Unfortunately the trailer shows almost nothing about what the actual game will be like, but we can make some guesses by looking at Concerto's successor, Crossgate.
	Hellgate staff abandoning sinking ship We never like to see a developer start to go on the down and out. Even in the rare event where we find few redeemable things about a game, we understand that the developers behind the project are generally good people and we hope that they continue to be fruitful in their endeavors.
	EVE Online blazes into The Empyrean Age Massively has been beating the war drums as EVE Online enters a new era in PvP: The Empyrean Age expansion. This time of factional warfare will sweep players of all four races in New Eden into a whirl of conflict never seen before in the game.

	Linden Lab's big content takedown There are widespread reports today that Linden Lab has removed all content from Second Life (from in-world, and from user inventories and object contents) that were the work of a small number of users, apparently over DMCA issues.
	Age of Conan Dev goes on berserk question-answering rampage What was in LordOrion's coffee this morning? The FunCom developer began by making two parallel threads on the Age of Conan forums, one on the US forums and one on the EU. Each one was a 'leak', with the EU getting a preview of PvP gear, and the US getting an image of what looked like a dungeon of some sort, with no further hints as to what it might be.
	First glimpse of Age of Conan PvP gear! Naughty, naughty FunCom Devs. To get Age of Conan players salivating, and possibly to distract attention from some recent hiccups, they've posted a sneak preview of some very pretty new items.
	EverQuest II GU46 -- The Void Invasion In EverQuest II's Game Update 46, you will be tasked with uncovering the mystery of the Void Storms, and freeing the native creatures of Norrath from their baleful influence. Your dedication will not go unrewarded; full sets of appearance armor (and one set of ... non-appearance armor) are yours for your hard work.
	Exclusive interview with AoC Senior Dialog Writer Aaron Dembski-Bowden The credit for a bewilderingly vast amount of this material goes to Aaron Dembski-Bowden, a young British writer already known for his work in the tabletop roleplaying field. We tracked him down and managed to secure an interview.
	Are female characters really penalized in Age of Conan? There's an unpleasant rumor gathering strength in the Age of Conan community. It seems to have begun with this eight-page review, which (despite delivering a relatively healthy overall score of 76) is uncompromising in its criticism of those parts of the game that, in the reviewer's opinion, fall very short of what was advertised.
	Exclusive interview with the developers of Legends of Norrath The next set of Legends of Norrath cards is slated to release just next week. Oathbreaker will be the final set in the 'first block' or 'year one' of the SOE-Denver production. To get some information on Oathbreaker, new raids, and future plans, we sat down to talk with Kyle Heuer, Associate Producer for the game, and Tom Lischke, Producer at the Sony Online Entertainment studio in Denver.
	EVE Evolved: EVE Online PvP vs Age of Conan PvP Before I started playing Age of Conan, I had a very strict mindset on how a PvP MMO should and shouldn't work. From my experiences in EVE Online, I was convinced that good open world PvP was not possible with a level system or exotic gear. I was pleasantly surprised to find that although these games are worlds apart, their PvP styles both work and are both fun.
	A LotRO guide to the new rare crafting trophies we've assembled a little guide to help you get better acquainted with these rare crafting items, namely the new crafting trophies for LotRO. These trophies were introduced in Book 13 as a way to simplify and condense the more descriptive rare trophies that dropped previously.
	MMO MMOnkey: What to do when the Age of Conan servers are down Your Tempest of Set has been set down and your Dark Templar's gone dark. You've really gotten into this whole Conan thing but the Age of Conan servers are down for maintenance. Now what are you going to do? Well, you're sitting at your computer so you could check out the wealth of online forums, fansites, wikis, whatever, that are devoted to the game.

Tags: age-of-conan, aoc, concerto-gate, eve-online, featured, flagship-studios, hellgate, legends-of-norrath, mmo-week-in-a-minute, square-enix

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