Massively^™

After last Friday's exciting announcement from Turbine -- the Mines of Moria LotRO expansion -- we were hungry for more. Fortunately, we got it: we managed to sit down with executive producer Jeffrey Steefel, the man behind the news, to quiz him on MoM and all things LotRO. Read on for more on Volume II, nerfbats and an insight into Turbine's development process.

Kate Paiz, senior producer of Dungeons and Dragons Online, sat down with players today at Connect08 to demonstrate the new Monk class -- upcoming in Module 7 -- and answer a number of questions about future plans for the game.

Photography wasn't permitted so we just managed to grab this quick snap of the character creation screen (above), showing a new armor design to accompany the new class. There's another month of development time left before the module goes into alpha, so expect more polish further down the line.

During the demo of the Monk we saw the basic character animations -- they're very much in a martial-arts style (apparently inspired by Shaolin monks) with kicks, punches and even a backflip. The movement is graceful and smooth, and unarmed combat feels natural.

At Codemasters' Connect08, we had the chance to sit down for a few minutes with upcoming space MMO Jumpgate Evolution and take it for a wee test drive. "Space MMO?" I hear you cry, "Let me guess, it's spaceships flying around shooting at each other and enemies?"

In a nutshell, that's exactly what Jumpgate Evolution is. You pilot a spaceship. You shoot stuff. You get a better spaceship. Repeat. But, as with many MMOs that can be distilled to an equally dull one-line summary, there's far more to the game than that. Read on for our gameplay impressions (bearing in mind this is an alpha pre-release, not the final shipped product).

Speaking to an assembled crowd of excited gamers this afternoon in Birmingham, Jeffrey Steefel unveiled the first Lord of the Rings Online expansion, Mines of Moria. We've got the lowdown on the expansion, which Jeffrey was visibly excited to announce.