With the release of Mythic Entertainment's anticipated Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning approximately two months away, the developer would like to remind you via this E3 gameplay trailer that online battles will be large, fast-paced, and utterly cataclysmic in their presentation....

Electronic Arts' EA press conference is long over with but we do have a ton of new screenshots for a number of games that the publisher released today. Naturally all of the shots are for titles that will be released for the PC. Unfortunately there's no Dragon Age Origins shots today but we hope to get the first ones later this week...

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. Mark Jacobs announces major features cut from Warhammer OnlineIn the latest of an ongoing series of interviews with MMORPG.com, Mythic Entertainment VP and General Manager Mark Jacobs has dropped big news on the Warhammer Online fanbase: major features are being culled from the game in order to make their Fall launch deadline. In short, the capital cities for the Dark Elf, High Elf, Orc, and Dwarf factions will not be in the game at launch. The Digital Continuum: Diet WARDiet Warhammer Online: same great taste, less content. Is it bad that the recently re-branded Mythic Entertainment just cut out a large portion of our Warhammer Online pie and put it in the deep freeze? Well it's certainly not good when a developer cuts content they've been talking about publicly for so long, especially when launch is only three or four months away. Massively visits Stargate Worlds: The interview This exclusive, in-depth, and conversational interview is overflowing with information about everything in the game, including TV series tie-ins and cameos, episodic content, combat, graphics, mini-games, and much, much more. Massively's E3 Week Prediction BingoEvery year it's customary to roll out predictions on what will and won't show up at the current year's E3 event. With Massively heading in the direction of the LA Convention Center already, we thought it might be fun to offer up some likely (and highly unlikely) predictions of what might get talked about next week. Jack Emmert discusses the Champions IP in fresh new videoDuring a recent media event at Cryptic Studios, Jack Emmert gave a presentation on what the Champions IP was all about, including the history of the Champions universe and its super-powered beings. He also took some time to answer a few questions, and delineated how the Champions Online MMO will distinguish itself from City of Heroes. ...

Earlier this week we reported on the first gaming panel programming that was announced for the first day (Thursday) for the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con on July 25-28. Now the convention's web site has revealed the panel programming for the rest of the show and Friday and Saturday seem to be packed with game and game related events (Sunday seems to be free of gaming related panels).On Friday convention attendees can go to panels about Midway's fighting game Mortal Kombat Vs DC Universe, the upcoming MMOs Stargate Worlds and DC Universe Online, and the upcoming Ghostbusters game (with actors Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson scheduled to attend). There will also be a World of Warcraft panel and the big Star Wars panel will have segments on the upcoming LucasArts Clone Wars and The Force Unleashed game titles. Capcom will hold a panel on how to break into the game industry and there will also be a Penny Arcade panel. There will also be a panel on the upcoming movie adaptation of Prince of Persia (with the game's original creator Jordan Mechner scheduled to attend) and a panel on the upcoming CGI movie Resident Evil: Degeneration.On Saturday, Comic-Con will hosts a Telltale Games panel where the creators will announce plans for a third episodic game series to join their Sam and Max and Strong Bad series. A Warhammer Online panel will also be held and THQ will host a panel on Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II and Deadly Creatures. Cliff Bleszinski and Peter Molyneux will attend a panel to talk about Gears of War 2 and Fable 2, respectively. EA will host a Dead Space panel and Capcom will also host a Bionic Commando panel at the show.If you haven't bought your tickets for Comic-Con yet, you are out of luck if you want the four-day pass or one-day passes for Friday and Saturday. Some tickets for Thursday and Sunday are still available for purchase....

MMORPG.com has posted part two of their interview with Mythic Entertainment's Mark Jacobs, VP and General Manager of the development studio. In the interview, Jacobs reveals that Mythic has partnered with Punkbuster to crack down on the cheaters expected to inhabit Warhammer Online's servers."We think this is a huge win for the players," Jacobs said in regards to the partnership. "We are an RvR-centric game and anything that gives a player an advantage over another player in an RvR-centric game is a very bad thing. We take this stuff incredibly seriously, our history shows that. We wanted, by doing this deal with Punkbuster, to show the players that we're willing to go an extra step for them."Jacobs also confessed that Warhammer Online's reported six capital cities has been downsized to two in the interest of fun gameplay. "We decided to focus our energies on two capital cities; one for Order and one for Destruction, and make them fabulous, said Jacobs. "Not good, not great, but fabulous. We wanted to make our Capital Cities the best cities in any MMO. We think we're doing that, but it came at a price and that price is that the other cities aren't going in the game right now."Visit MMORPG.com to read the full interview....

In 2006, Electronic Arts purchased MMO game developer Mythic Entertainment and changed the name of the developer to EA Mythic. That was then but this is now. With EA under new management they apparently want to give their dev studios a little more freedom and MMORPG.com now reveals that EA Mythic is no more.According to a chat withthe developer's founder Mark Jacobs, EA Mythic has now gone back to being labeled Mythic Entertainment. Jacobs states that the new management at EA is allowing more of its developers to keep its original names (as an example both Bioware and Pandemic have retained their names since their purchase from EA earlier this year) but that Mythic is still owned by EA. Mythic is finishing up work on Warhammer Online which is due for release this fall....

The excitement is building to next week's E3 Media and Business Summit in Los Angeles (man does that sound like some kind of soulless seminar at some Holiday Inn but we aren't in charge of the naming of the event) where over 5,000 journalists have been invited to attend the largest single gathering of game publishers in North America. Big Download will be covering the event all next week but this week we are counting down our top 25 most anticipated PC games we hope we will get to see and maybe play at the event. On Monday we went through our 25-21 picks so if its Tuesday it must be time for the 20-16 picks on our list. As we mentioned previously, these are just our predictions on what games will be shown at the event; many of these titles have not been officially confirmed to be at E3 as of this writing. Also, there's no Activision or Vivendi Games/Blizzard titles on this list due to the two publishers bypassing E3 but a press conference by Activision on Tuesday during E3 is highly expected to show some upcoming titles from that publisher (and maybe Vivendi/Blizzard as well). With that out of the way let's look at our picks for the next five games on our list...

The Game Developers Conference in San Fransisco continues to be the number one event in North America devoted primarily for game creators (as opposed to events like E3 which is mostly for the press). GDC's owner Think Services have announced that they have now launched the call for submissions for developers to speak at the 2009 event which will be held March 23-27.One developer who won't attend GDC is Paul Barnett, the creative director for Electronic Arts' Mythic studio (the folks currently trying to finish up Warhammer Online). In a no-holds-barred chat over at Rock Paper Shotgun, Barnett rails against the event, stating, "I'm not going to GDC because it's combative, it's a peacock display and it's full of people who do what I do or want to do what I do or are doing what I do and don't want me to do it anymore. It's not open-minded. It's very narrow-minded. We're all talking about the same thing." Wow. "Combative" is not exactly a term we would use to describe CDC but different strokes for . . you know....

As we have reported on before, Russia continues to be a big market for PC gaming. In fact it could be a bigger market than the US at the moment. Apparently that fact hasn't been lost on Electronic Arts and its Mythic development studio. We received a press release announcing that their long awaited fantasy MMO title Warhammer Online will be released in Russia in early 2009. The Russian release will be fully localized for that market which could mean that orc you kill in the game could be playing in the Kremlin. The game is still set for release in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand this fall.[via emailed press release]...

Electronic Arts has sunk a lot of time and money into developing their upcoming MMO Warhammer Online since purchasing the game's developer Mythic Entertainment nearly two years ago. However, even EA's CEO John Riccitiello doesn't expect the game, due to be released this fall, to be the World of Warcraft killer that others might think it could be.Next Generation reports that Riccitiello, speaking Tuesday at the William Blair & Company's investor meeting, was quoted as saying, "Warhammer Online [will be] a strong entry in the MMORPG space. No, I don't think it's going to rival WoW, but no one would ever predict that. But it is a strong game that will ... get our returns for us. We're proud of it." EA's previous MMOs have nearly all been failures; it started the MMO genre with Ultima Online but since then it cancelled two sequels to the game before they were completed and shut down three other MMO titles after their launch; Earth and Beyond, Motor City Online and most recently The Sims Online....

Did you know that EA Mythic's Warhammer Online has "a queue button on your UI that lets you cycle through available scenarios to play"? How about the distribution of loot, which works on an aggro basis: "basically, if you're doing the job of your class well (dps, tanking, healing), you'll be awarded the loot you deserve"?At the Gamers Day event held in Baltimore this past weekend, those interesting tidbits, in addition to 48 others, were revealed by EA Mythic. The folks over at waaagh, a Warhammer Online blog, have taken the liberty of organizing all Warhammer facts for your reading pleasure. Head over there now, lest you enjoy remaining ignorant of the fact that "Marauders have debuffs they can throw on casters or melee that, when their skills are used, causes them to take damage."...

All week long, Massively.com has been offering up feature after feature on EA Mythic's in-development MMO, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. The Massively goes to WAR feature series takes you front to back through almost every moment of our time at Mythic's Virginia headquarters. To wrap it all up, we've got a handy-dandy clickable guide to the series. Whether you're into hardcore PvP, dungeon delving, crafting, or are a total MMO newb, we've got you covered. Click on through, and explore the world of Warhammer. Gallery: Warhammer Online Screenshot Gallery ...

As you sit their reading this, sipping your caffeinated beverage of choice... an online battle rages. Subscription-based MMOs versus the microtransaction business model. Cage match. Fight to the death. Gamasutra conducted a round table about this battle royal with SOE's John Smedley, Three Ring's Daniel James and EA Mythic's Mark Jacobs. What unfolds makes it clear that the payment scheme for MMOs is evolving. Into what exactly is anyone's guess.Most of the MMOs in the United States are subscription based. Almost everywhere else they are microtransaction based. The mentality here in the States however is starting to change. So much so that many developer are waiting until the last possible second to decide which route to take. For instance SOE has taken a "wait-and-see attitude" for their spy game, The Agency. They're waiting to see how another of their soon to be released MMOs -- Free Realms -- fairs, which uses something they call "freemiums." You can play for free, but you can also sign up for a club in game that gives you extras (for a fee, which is not unlike some other MMOs). They have built the flexibility into The Agency so they can go in either direction....

Funcom boasts 400,000 players in Age of Conan so farAn official release from Funcom has announced that Age of Conan is one of the most successful PC titles "of all time." Massively previews Dungeons & Dragons Online's Module 7Massively got a chance to sit down with the team and take a look at the latest update, Module 7, due out on June 3, and currently in public testing. In addition to some extended playtime with the new Monk class, we got to see updates to the lower level Three Barrel Cove area, a shrine to recently passed-on D&D creator Gary Gygax, and the new raid area under the destroyed Marketplace tent, as well as a few new monsters and raid bosses that can be found down there. A first look at Mythos' OverworldThough there were more than a few glitches with patching, we were able to eventually get in and take a quick run around some of the Overworld, its dungeons, the villages outside Stonehill, and the city of Stonehill itself. All we have left to wait for now is the open beta, expected in the next several weeks. Massively goes to WAR: Emotions behind the Tome of KnowledgeIn the same way that everyone on the Warhammer team seems to be suffused with passion for the game, Tome of Knowledge lead Carrie Gouskos couldn't help but pass on information about one of the game's most innovative features. Player vs. Everything: Online Games and SexAs humans, sex is something that plays a very important role in our lives and personal experiences. It's a pretty universal and emotionally charged topic that can dramatically influence how we think of ourselves and how we view our relationships with other people For more of Massively's Warhammer Online coverage, be sure to check out the full series of "Massively Goes to WAR" articles, continuing tomorrow and throughout the week....

One of the big features that many MMO players want to see in their games is crafting and today Electronic Arts revealed how those features will work in their long awaited fantasy MMO title Warhammer Online. The game, currently scheduled for a fall release date, will actually have two crafting abilities (Apothecary and Talisman Making) along with four gathering skills (Cultivating, Magical Salvaging, Scavenging and Butchering) to aid in the making of items.According to the press release, EA's Mythic development studio didn't want the process of crafting to be terribly complicated or take hours to complete. As one might figure out from their titles, the Apothecary skill will allow players to make various potions, lotions and powders to handle a variety of tasks. The Talisman Making skill create magical items that player characters wear on their person....