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SOE deployed Update 60 on The Matrix Online's servers this week. The update doesn't just fix bugs. It also marks the beginning of Episode 10.2 of the story, introduces some new enemies in Datamine, and adds a reward for players who complete live critical missions.

If you're looking to earn the new reward items (a consumable of some sort), said missions are scheduled every Thursday up through the 12th of June; the first of those occurred yesterday, but a recap has been published. The update also introduces a whopping 342 new level 50 weapon variants, some of which will drop during the high level critical missions.

We're glad to see that MxO is still ticking despite the announced departure of Paul Chadwick, the esteemed comic book writer who had worked on the story until recently.

Every week, hardworking Massive gaming fans put their voices on the line to bring us news, opinions, and 'critiques' of their favorite games. Podcasts are a staple of many hobbies nowadays, and fans of online worlds are especially fortunate in this regard ... there are a ton out there.

As such, every so often we'll try to update you on the podcasting world. Keep your eyes on this space for links to your favorite MMO-commentary celebs. Good and bad, straight-man or blue-mouthed, they all have something to offer about this amazing style of gameplay.

This week it's well worth mentioning the entire VirginWorlds network of podcasts. Started by Brent Lassi and the VirginWorlds podcast itself, the network now plays host to some 16 podcasts ranging across the entire spectrum of MMOs. If you're an MMO player, you're going to find something in the network to like. Lore, PvP, raiding ... all your bases are covered. They've even got a guy talking about about how you can interact with folks better IRL. It's worth noting that in my off hours I contribute to the collective via my personal site. So ... I'm biased.

It's still a great site, and you should definitely check it out.

Are you excited yet? Age of Conan's Early Access Weekend is soon upon us, and the forums -- both official and unofficial -- are ablaze with information, speculation and anticipation as that final retail launch date closes in on us.

The good people over at Ten Ton Hammer have gathered a wonderful compilation of the best of the best when it comes to AoC forum posts, fan site info and all the general information you'll need to get started on the right foot this coming May 20th. If you were lucky enough to get into the Early Access Weekend, feel free to leave some comments to this post as to your impressions of the game outside of beta.

MMORPG met up with Age of Conan composer Knut Avenstroup at the Oslo launch event and spoke with him about the beautiful score he created for the game. During the four minute video interview, Avenstroup talked about adapting his creative process to the video game medium and staying motivated when faced with the intimidating task of creating three and a half hours of music.

He explained that he wanted to learn about ancient forms of music, since the game is set just before the dawn of recorded history. Unfortunately, he had a bit of trouble because "there is very little material to look into because the only thing they know about ancient music or music from two thousand years ago is based on the instruments that have survived. They are basically trying to find out what kind of music would be possible to play on these instruments, so there's not a lot to go on."

Despite that problem, he was able to draw on inspiration from several cultures -- including Arabic, Celtic, and Nordic -- and the scores of films set in the distant past.

A twelve-question Q&A session with the developers of Final Fantasy XI up at WarCry covers a laundry list of long-term player questions. The discussion centers on some particularly thorny issues for the highest of high end players. It also tackles with some persistent quality of life issues germaine to any Vana'diel adventurer. High-end players will enjoy the exploration of Dynamis, the ultimate conflict known as Absolute Virtue, and the ongoing problems with Named Monsters. All players will recognize the problems inherent in spellcaster food, battle music, and the possibility of changing nations.

WarCry also has up a few notes from the upcoming June patch. Quality of Life sounds like the big priority for Square/Enix right now, with Synthesis, Armor Storage, and player housing Furnishings topping the list.

The announcement was made recently that NCsoft developer HawkSteel has assembled his own unofficial Exteel tournament, without the official support of NCsoft. The idea behind this tournament is to get teams of players to battle each other in a round-robin style format to determine the overall winner by accumulating Tournament Points (TPs). Each team battles another team per round in three separate matches in the following battle modes: Capture the Flag, Team Deathmatch and Territory Control.

There are no prizes, as the tournament winners will only feed off of the prestige and honor of being the best of the best. Be sure to check out the extensively-detailed rules over at the official site for more information. May the best laser-gun-wielding-robot win!

Perhaps it was a bit naive of us to have assumed that the Destination Games crew was going to fix all the problems with Tabula Rasa's Sniper class on the first pass in patch 1.6. Despite the increased rate of fire more than compensating for the nerf to Torqueshell Rifle damage, Snipers as a group still felt like their DPS wasn't up to snuff and their role as a "one shot, one kill" nuker was compromised by confusing or underwhelming buff mechanics.

In a spin on the usual feedback format, this week Critters picked the brain of developer Lee Ridout to ask him how he goes about playing his sniper. He goes through everything from what he feels the best Sniper builds are, to how he sets up his toolbar trays, to what situations he uses Shredder Ammo. This blogger has a feeling that some Snipers will take affront to this sort of pandering, but it could be a pretty handy guide for people only just cresting that Tier IV milestone.

World of Warcraft producer J. Allen Brack and designers Jeff Kaplan and Tom Chilton were interviewed by Eurogamer today. Most of the interview dealt with Wrath of the Lich King content like the Death Knight, 10-person raids, and world PvP objectives. The most interesting bits of the interview were on the last page, though; the Blizzard reps talked about WoW's future.

According to Kaplan, a major graphics engine overhaul is "probably" part of that future. While he himself is not convinced it's necessary (he cited players' lukewarm reception of similar moves by the developers of Ultima Online and EverQuest), he said: "That's actually something we talk about every expansion ... and I'm positive we'll talk about it next expansion."

In the meantime, WotLK will allow "people with high-end machines some additional graphical effects." WoW Insider joked that future graphics engine updates might be dedicated entirely to producing even larger, more detailed shoulder pad armor. We wouldn't be surprised!

[Via WoW Insider]

It's been a great week on the west coast, for the second annual MMO-centric Seattle conference. Now called ION, everything we've heard has indicated that this week's event was a tremendous success. Massively was there in force, and below you'll find the ins and outs of the sessions and meetups we attended.

	Focusing on the community manager One of the strengths of MMOs are their communities. The stronger a community around an MMO is the more likely that game is to last into the foreseeable future.
	State of online games keynote Globalization is one of the session tracks here at ION 08, as befitting an industry seeking the holy grail of a truly global marketplace for online games. Tuesday's keynote was delivered by Won II Suh of Neowiz, a Korean online games company with 20 titles currently supported or in development by 1000 employees across 8 regions around the world.
	John Smedley keynote shows off Free Realms and The Agency When you think of Sony Online Entertainment, what comes to mind? I'm sure that Everquest, Everquest 2, Star Wars Galaxies and Planetside are some of the titles which most people think about. From what I've recently seen in John Smedley's keynote at ION 08 that's all going to be changing in the near future.
	SOE Seattle studio tour Our mission: infiltrate SOE's Seattle studio, obtain intel on The Agency, regale the awesomely hyperactive lead designer Hal Milton with questions from left field.
	MMOs and the television content model (SGW) Joseph Ybarra, SVP of strategic operations at Firesky, the publishing subsidiary of Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, presented a session today at ION 08 about the Stargate Worlds production model that borrows heavily from Hollywood and TV models.

Chances are good that if you read Massively, you either currently play or have played multiple MMOGs in your life. Whatever your reasons are, you're one of those players for whom "MMO" is a genre instead of a game. Not all players are like this. A lot of players get their start somewhere and then stick to that game for years, denouncing all other games as being incapable of being better than their chosen virtual playground. I used to be like that with EverQuest (can you tell?). For four years I played it pretty much exclusively, not even trying other games. But eventually, I got bored.

Thus started my lengthy and storied history of game-hopping. Traveling from world to world like some sort of virtual nomad, fueled by my love of the online massively multiplayer game, I sampled much of what the genre had to offer. While I eventually found a new home and anchor in World of Warcraft, it only served as a nice place to return to every few months. I still ventured out into each new and exciting world that various companies served up to me. They all had things I liked and didn't like about them, and I honestly have yet to play a game that I couldn't find something good to say about. Every online game has its own cool quirks that are pretty neat from a design standpoint. This is why it's tough to identify an objectively "best" game -- they're all so different! I thought today I'd talk a little bit about what I've played over the years and how I ended up with the many and varied opinions on the MMOG genre that I have.

Are you the type of person who watches every second of behind-the-scenes and deleted scenes footage on your DVD bonus disk? If you are, then this recent EverQuest developer blog from Keith "Merloc" Turkowski might be right up your alley.

In it, Merloc shows us a photo of the whiteboard he used during The Buried Sea expansion. This is where his ideas (and those of a few others mentioned in the post) were sketched out into what would eventually be real game content. Of course, not all of it made it into the game -- such as a giant green tank sketch in the middle of the board -- but for those sketches and ideas that did make it in, it's exciting to see the initial thought processes involved.

Angels Online, the free-to-play MMO based around factionalised angels adventuring in various bizarre realms, recently released its new expansion, Eden. In addition to offering players such MMO conventions as elite equipment and tougher monsters, Eden revealed a long-awaited in-game marriage system. (There's a lot of it about, you know.) Over the coming days, the players have the chance to celebrate the new expansion with an in-game event.

Called Mysterious Exploration, the event offers the chance to win impressive rewards. There's an overall theme of mystery: Production Angels who enter the Mysterious Area have rare materials to collect, while Fighting Angels can gain more in-game money and experience by fighting the Mysterious Monsters. An abundance of new items is also available.

Mysterious Exploration runs from May 15th to 29th.

CCP Games have put together a new site for EVE Online's upcoming Empyrean Age expansion. Recent months have given EVE's players hints as to what is on the horizon, largely through news reports seen at login and viewable through the billboards found in space. CCP has raised the bar with video footage of a crisis in the making, as reported 'live' by The Scope, New Eden's galactic news network.

The reporter relays a situation tense with panic and chaos, as a peace summit between the Gallente and Caldari races is disrupted. A Nyx mothership pilot, the Gallente Federation escort, sets a deliberate collision course with the Caldari Ishukone space station. Thousands of people force their way to evacuation vessels in vain; the 'FNS Wandering Saint' explodes against the Ishukone megacorporation's headquarters, claiming thousands of lives and igniting war between the Caldari and Gallente. The attack quite literally obliterates all hopes for peace between the races. The news broadcast cuts off abruptly and is replaced with the words "War is Coming," a harbinger of the strife which is set to engulf New Eden in the Empyrean Age.

It's time, once again, to unleash the prognosticative and philosophical pulchritude of Ask Massively, where the only thing we take seriously is alliteration. As frequent readers (both of you) of this column might know, we are rapidly approaching the release date for Age of Conan, and while I'm sure it will be difficult to find any information on that new and exciting upcoming title, I thought we would touch on something a little more "real world-centric" while getting in the requisite amount of hype at the same time.

Dear Ask Massively

I'm eagerly anticipating the upcoming launch of Age of Conan along with what appears to be 90% of your writing staff. I was fortunate enough to play in the beta, and I have some serious concerns about performance on my machine. I don't think it can all be explained by "debugging code" as you mentioned in a previous column, do you have any suggestions for things I can do in order to get better game play? I know that I'm going to be stuck on the hardware treadmill and eventually be forced to upgrade, I just don't want to have to do it right now. What is a Barbarian-in-training supposed to do?

-Junior Barbarian

Junior, today is your lucky day. Like you, I have been playing the Age of Conan beta, and , like you, I had some fairly severe issues with frame rate. In the interest of full disclosure, I will provide my own system specs after the jump. Suffice to say that my system isn't exactly a "budget gamer" system, but at the same time, it isn't "top of the line" either. I was able to tweak a few settings in the game that improved my game play experience immensely. In fact, it improved it so much that I created a new character and leveled her to 10 in the time it used to take to load a zone in some of the older beta clients. (Editor's note: that's only a mild exaggeration)

If you would like to have your questions answered by our staff of sleep deprived caffeine junkies, drop us a line either via our tip line or via email at ask AT massively DOT com. My most sincere condolences to my long lost Nigerian uncle's family. Had I known that he would leave me 25 million dollars in his will, I may have sent you guys birthday cards every year or something. For more on our topic-du-jour, read on after the jump.