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Yesterday evening at Fan Faire, SOE announced expansions for EverQuest and EverQuest 2: Seeds of Destruction and The Shadow Odyssey, respectively. This will be EQ's 15th expansion and EQ2's 4th, with SoD promising 20 new zones and a new level cap of 85; and SO promising new zones, new dungeons, new quests, and additional achievement points. But what we're wondering is: how long can a game last? (15 expansions at least, apparently!) How long can expansion packs up the excitement factor? Tell us, will these new expansions keep you playing? Will they bring you back into the game? And if so, what has you excited about the latest additions to SOE's online world?

Recently, we made a trip over to NCsoft's offices in Austin, Texas, to get a preview of the Tabula Rasa's newest dungeon, the ultra top secret Omega Labs. We had a chance to chat with Senior Designer Wynne McLaughlin, who brought us up to speed on where Omega Labs fit into the game's story in between staccato bursts of gunfire from his computer speakers. So for those of you who haven't been keeping up with TR's lore [and for those of you who don't want to spoil any surprises, we recommend averting your eyes], we're visiting Penumbra Headquarters in the level 40ish subcontinent Torden Abyss. Penumbra is the black ops branch of the AFS, under the questionable leadership of a man known only as the Director. As you work through quests given by Penumbra, you'll gain higher levels of security clearance and be allowed into section 1, 2, 3, 4, and finally 5.

Omega Labs is an instanced wing off Section 5, where Penumbra and the AFS have lost all communication -- and no one is quite sure what's happening inside. As he jumps through the instance portal, McLaughlin explains that with Omega Labs, they were trying to bring more of a survival horror feel to the game, and we have to say they've done a decent job of it with dark corridors, flickering lights, and zombie-like Machina rising from the ground when you least expect them.

Warning: If you're the sort of person who does likes to experience the content first hand and unspoiled -- stop reading now. The text to follow is filled with spoilers. If you click ahead and see something you didn't want to see, don't say we didn't warn you! However, if this sounds like your cup of tea, read on!

If you're familiar with Penumbra, you may already have some reasonable guesses as to what's inside Omega Labs: high-end weapons research. Inside you'll find the half-robot, half-zombie Machina, made from the bodies of Bane soldiers... or even Human soldiers. Genetic experiments of all sorts. Biological warfare. McLaughlin explains to us that this is intentionally the hardest content in the game, because it's after you've hit the level cap, but you continue to improve your skills and your armor -- so it should be tough. Even the small team of NCsoft developers decked out in some of the game's best gear didn't manage to get through it unscathed: there was more than one death as we watched them tackle the instance.
Once through the instance portal, the initial missions paint an unpleasant picture of the situation inside. The first mission giver tells us, "The situation inside the complex has gone from bad to worse. The com-lines went out and now the entire internal teleporter network is down..." You're asked to venture inside the labs in order to:

• Reactivate the five teleporters in the labs (as you activate each, reinforcements will be sent in to aid you). In addition to the five required by the quest, there are two bonus teleporters hidden within the base, which will reward you (and everyone in your party) with 50k credits on activation
• Access the five databanks in the labs, one in the Involantary Commitment Ward, Bioweapons Unit, Network Operations Center, Re-education Ward, and Pharmogenetics.
• Locate the advance team that's gone in, last heard from in the Bioweapons Unit.
• Locate Dr. Mathias Sandorf, formerly the head of Omega Labs, and terminate him with "extreme prejudice." We're told he's lost his mind or "went completely Colonel Kurtz," the mission-giver tells us. "His men follow him like he's the second coming; they call themselves 'Believers'. I can't stress just how dangerous this situation is. The technology inside this facility is some of the most dangerous stuff in the galaxy. If Sandorf really has lost his mind, we need you to take him out."

As your group progresses through the instance, the story of what's happened here unfolds with each databank you access. As you make your way further into Omega labs, the messages become more psychotic:

To: The Great Prophet Sandorf, Savior of All Humanity
From: Your Humble Servant, Believer Stephan
Title: Our Holy Purpose
The lord has spoken unto me. These Eloh are false prophets and those touched by their deceits are demon-possesed. They shall burn in the fires of eternal damnation. Our cause is just and holy. The clensing shall free us all. Praise unto you, our savior, the Great Prophet Sandorf.

And:

The so-called 'super-soldier' serum is a holy sacrement. My mind has never been clearer nor has my purpose. Theirs are the sins of sodom. They are arrogant, over-fed, and unconcerned. They are haughty and do detstible things before me in the name of the Eloh devils. Therefor I must do away with them as you will soon see. I am Sandorf. I am the alpha and the omega. I am the beginning and the end. I am the first and the last. The day of judgement is upon us.

When the cut-scene ends, you receive an incoming transmission from the Director: stop the rocket!

The missile's launch sequence has been initiated and there's no way to stop it. We believe Sandorf programmed it to detonate in the upper atmosphere ans spread its payload across the planet. You can't stop the launch, but there should be a manual override panel. if you can get to it, you should be able to alter the missile's trajectory.

McLaughlin pauses to give us a bit of back-story, "Recently we've found out, in our end-game to date, that the AFS has released a virus that anyone with Eloh DNA (all Thrax, all Bane, but also all logos receptives), and they were going to activate that virus as a last resort if they needed to. They would kill half of their own people but they would win the war." The Omega missile's payload is that virus, designed to eliminate the the "Eloh devils" Sandorf feared.

You'll have to fight your way across a large open space to the launch platform -- with time running out. In between bursts of gunfire, McLaughlin tells us that the inspiration for this part of the instance came from the final scene of a James Bond movie, mixed with Beneath the Planet of the Apes, where they have the Doomsday Missile. Once you reach the override panel and set things right (or as right as they can be), you get another cutscene of the missile launching, and The Director himself shows up at the nearest teleporter to congratulate you.

Of the cutscene and your meeting with The Director, McLaughlin tells us, "One of the things we're trying to do in the game is have a nice big finale to the instances -- not just 'Oh we killed everything, time to go.' But have something that really pays off."

On the development side, Omega Labs has actually been planned on paper since well before the game shipped -- but the team didn't start working on it until recently. They estimate most of the work was done in about twelve weeks (the rough version of the instance, anyway), with extra time for polishing and tweaking it to be just right. Says McLaughlin, "I'm really happy with it. It's faster paced than a survival horror game where you're creeping around corners. When a monster sees you in Tabula Rasa, he goes right for you." The instance is on the home strech of completion at this point: the development team expects that Omega Labs will be on the next deployment to the PTS (which should be happening soon), with deployment to the live servers around the end of August.

There are so many upcoming MMOs to anticipate, we honestly can't say which one we're looking forward to most. Champions Online looks like good fun (with a good sense of humor!), DC Universe Online has us wowed with its array of super powers (that thing where you can freeze someone in a block of ice and throw them around? We're led to understand it never gets old.), Wrath of the Lich King is sure to turn our attention back to Blizzard (we may or may not have the beta client open as we type -- we'd never admit it if we did), Warhammer Online is just around the corner, Star Trek Online calls to the inner geek in all of us, and Knights of the Old Republic Online (or whatever it might be called) is a siren's song to any geeks not falling head over heels for STO. We're in such a state of giddiness over upcoming games, we can't quite determine which one we're most excited about -- and that's where you come in. Which of the many new titles out there are you most looking forward to?

We may have spoiled Cryptic's little surprise, but even though we were pretty sure we knew what this whole countdown business was about, when midnight pacific time rolled around, we headed over to Cryptic's website to see what would happen next. We were immediately met by errors saying the server failed to respond as geeks world-wide attempted to do the same thing, but when we finally got through, we received the exciting launch message above and the count-down link had been swapped for a banner linking to the Star Trek Online homepage. For those of you concerned by the thought of your favorite sci-fi franchise being shoddily moved to MMO territory (and, come on, if you're Star Trek fans you must be used to the name being a bit abused), we were reassured by Jack Emmert's letter to the community:

There are few other fictional backgrounds that fit the MMORPG medium so well. After all, Star Trek was never about a single character, ship or even planet; Star Trek was always about an entire universe. And MMORPGs are uniquely suited to create such a thing and allow players to explore every inch. Admittedly, Star Trek has its challenges. We want to make a game that best captures the real essence of Star Trek. We see Star Trek as much about exploration as combat. As much about the variety of alien civilizations as it is about the core Vulcans, Klingons, Humans, etc. It's going to be an exciting ride over the coming months as we begin to unveil STO. I can't wait.

For those of you who can't get enough STO news, on August 10th Cryptic will be unveiling the first gameplay footage at the Official Star Trek Convention in Vegas (if you aren't going to be there, never fear -- they'll stream it on the web, too!) and there are new forums packed full of fans for you to geek out with.

We were as giddy as any fanboy (or fangirl!) to discover that Star Trek Online was alive and well -- and in Cryptic Studios' capable hands. However, like any fanboy (or fangirl), we're never satisfied with the information we have... we always want to know more! What classes will we be able to play? What races will we be able to play? Will we be able to pilot our own starships? Will we be able to meet Kirk or Picard? What will space combat be like? What planets will be available? And, above all, when can we play it? So today, as Cryptic's not-so-mysterious countdown winds down, we ask you: what features do you hope to find in STO?

For a game that's not actually browser-based (though it will only require a small download and stream content in the background, Free Realms is a client-based game), Free Realms will have an unprecedented amount of browser-based content. Free Realms will have all of the web content you would expect from a modern MMO... and some of the web content you would expect to see in a social networking application like Facebook. Each player will have an online player profile listing all of their in-game friends (with links that will launch the game client and take you right to your friends' location) and newsfeeds that give you information about what's going on with your character. Not even Free Realms' game elements are restricted to the client. Many mini-games will also be playable via the web -- and give you in-game benefits for doing so (as long as you're logged on). So if you played the Bejeweled-esque mini-game via the web during your lunch break, your character in-game would gain ore and experience.

In-game, characters will connect through a non-traditional guild system. When we asked Lead Designer Laralyn McWilliams about guilds at E3, she informed us that SOE is "exploring other kinds of social arrangements, like different types of friends. So you could have your BFFs, your regular friends, and your family." They're also exploring a "club" system. McWilliams said, "Guilds are exclusive -- so we'd like to really recognize the fact that someone might want to be in the gardening club and the dog-lover's club and the ninja club. Those would all have collections associated with them because Free Realms is ultimately a collection. There's a collection of jobs, a collection of clubs... we're all about letting you collect things in the game and show off your achievements."

	Interested in Free Realms? Then check out all of our E3 coverage of SOE's latest free-to-play online game!

We know that SOE's upcoming title Free Realms will be free to play, but that begs the question of how SOE might profit from the title. (Especially considering that Lead Designer Laralyn McWilliams stressed that Free Realms is just as important to SOE as the other titles being shown off at E3, The Agency and DC Universe Online. Said McWilliams, "We have the same size team working on this as we do on those titles.") The answer is two-fold: memberships (which, for a monthly fee, will allow the user access to more content) and microtransactions (allowing you to buy items for your character for small amounts of money). When we had a chance to catch up with SOE's John Smedley back at CES, he told us that they were looking into the microtransaction model, saying "In order for people to see the games, they have to be able to play them; we're opening them up to that possibility by letting them play for free." Free Realms seems to be the final result of a lot of soul-searching on SOE's part as this traditional MMO company tries to find its way in a genre increasingly crowded by free-to-play titles.

Because it's not required in order to advance (characters will be able to level up without ever killing a monster), combat in SOE's upcoming free-to-play MMO Free Realms is a bit different than you may be accustomed to. When we sat down to chat with Lead Designer Laralyn McWilliams at E3 this week, she described the combat system by saying, "Combat is our biggest mini-game." Monsters will never attack you as you're exploring the world -- only when you enter clearly marked combat zones. "We took a very Disneyland apprach," said McWilliams. "You're walking around Disneyland, you see Space Mountain, it looks awesome, and so you think, 'I want to go on Space Mountain!' Our content broadcasts itself to you." In the screenshot above, you see the entrance to a combat zone: a gate clearly proclaiming danger. So like any good MMO player, what do you do but walk up to it and see what dangers await you on the other side? Interacting with the gate, like launching any other mini-game in Free Realms, will give you a choice of several different combat encounters associated with the area.

At E3 we had a chance to sit down with Laralyn McWilliams, Lead Designer for SOE's upcoming Free Realms game, who gave us a demo of the game and talked about how it's changed since we saw it earlier this year at CES. For those of you who don't know what we're talking about (and since SOE doesn't yet have a web page for Free Realms, the game isn't exactly shouting itself from the rooftops), it's SOE's answer to the success of casual, free-to-play games targeted at kids, like Club Penguin, RuneScape, Webkinz. The result of their efforts? A game that provides players with endless possibilities: allowing them to level up without ever killing a monster (if that's what they want to do!), allows them to switch classes at any time with the click of a button, and provides players with an unprescidented amount of web integration, including mini-games that can be played in the game world or on the web.

Of the MMOs we've seen at E3 this year, Free Realms is the closest to launch, with a beta scheduled for September and a launch scheduled for early 2009. (For those of you wanting in on the beta, attending Fan Faire this year will be a sure way to get in to closed beta.) Curious yet? Let's take a look at the world of Free Realms.

Touring SOE's swanky E3 press room, we noticed a trend while chatting up various developers: the PlayStation 3. Though up to this point, console MMOs haven't been the norm, Sony seems to be pushing hard in that direction. The three major titles SOE is showing off this week -- DC Universe Online, Free Realms, and The Agency -- are all planned for release on the PlayStation 3 as well as the PC. DCUO and The Agency are both currently planned for a simultaneous PC/PS3 release (though that may change) while the Free Realms team is planning to make sure they have a smooth PC release before making the jump to PS3. Everyone we talked to seemed to recognize there are some hurdles to overcome to bring an MMO to a console market -- but they were also confident about overcoming them.

We admit: we're addicts. Addicted to the drug that is collectible trading card games. So when SOE recently announced their latest online trading card game, Champions of the Force, we knew we were destined to be consumed by it. (Not to mention the in-game loot to be acquired. Who out there doesn't want their own household Jawa vendor?) Massively sat down with SOE Senior Game Designer Joe Alread at E3 to talk Champions.

Where did the idea for a TCG based on Star Wars Galaxies come from?
Joe Alread: People were really enjoying Legends of Norrath, really enjoying the game and the unique story that came from it. This gave us some incintive to branch out with Star Wars Galaxies. Champions of the Force is going to have its own unique story-line and raids, much like Legends of Norrath.

As you may have noticed, today SOE has been showing off their upcoming MMO DC Universe Online at E3 today. Though we'll have a detailed writeup soon (as soon as our fingers can type it!) featuring all of the details we squeezed from the development team, we wanted to share some of the game's concept art and screenshots. All we can say is that we can't wait for Comic-Con, when we'll have a chance to get our hands on a playable build of the game.