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Welcome to MMOrigins, a new weekly series here at Massively where we take a look at what makes us who we are as MMO gamers. Much in the style of our Redefining MMOs series, several members of the Massively team will have their chance to take a look back at their influences, favorite classic games and what got them to where they are today. Then, as we've done before, we'll ask you to compile your own blog posts on the same topic and we'll showcase it for the finale.

So I thought I would kick this new series off with my own influences and origins in gaming and what molded my current enjoyment of MMOs. As anyone who grew up in the 1980s might know, the dawn of personal computer video gaming was an exciting time. With inexpensive hardware such as the Atari 2600 and the Commodore 64 and 128, you didn't have to always get your mom to drive you to the arcade to play some good games.

North American Closed Beta Test 1 is beginning on November 10th for Allods Online, and we're happy to throw a few keys out to our loyal readers. We have 500 to give out, thanks to our friends at gPotato, so they may go quickly. Simply head on over to our giveaway page and follow the directions there.

You can download the game from this link, but it won't be available until 2pm EDT today. You can also take a look at their main website to find out some interesting tidbits about the expansiveness of the game and its award-winning development team.

[Update: Make sure to only enter the numbers after the comma in the beta code you receive. Thanks!]

Join me as I brave my way through lands unknown in an adventure dictated entirely by you, the Massively readers! Vote for everything from game played to character creation to ultimate goal and watch it unfold in a series of journals and galleries here on the site. Then, as the ultimate goal is reached, we'll do it all over again in a new game!

This week, we've made our way through the rest of the Waterworks quests in Dungeons and Dragons Online and into the Marketplace and the Cerulean Hills. Despite our limited time together, the Critical Mass bunch are really making headway through these quests.

We've finally brought back the polls for this week, as you'll have a chance to not only vote on where we go from here, but also enjoy a revisit to the use of Turbine Points earned so far. Follow along after the jump for Fahryn's in-character journal, my impressions and the return of the polls!

Massively Speaking Episode 75 is back this week as Rubi Bayer once again joins Shawn for talk of MMOs news, including Star Trek Online Eurogamer impressions, Jagex's cancellation of MechScape, WAR's free trial and much more.

Have a comment for the podcasters? Shoot us an email to podcast AT massively DOT com. Maybe we'll read your letter on the air!

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The world of Free Realms is about to get a bit bigger this holiday season as even more content is being added and improved for the game. According to Sony Online Entertainment's Creative Director for Free Realms, Laralyn McWilliams, the game is about to see a new job, new job structure, new pets, player housing and more added by mid-December.

We caught up with Laralyn to get a few more details on the upcoming improvements before the first stage of these updates goes live this week. Follow along after the jump for the complete interview, and in our gallery below for some exclusive screenshots of the new content.

After our Alganon Q&A fell flat on its face yesterday, we decided to lick our wounds and proceed with something we've been planning to do for developer interviews anyway: let you ask the questions! We ran the idea by the folks at Quest Online, and they're up to the challenge.

So if you have something you'd like to ask the Alganon developers, send an email to shawn AT massively DOT com by Friday, November 6th at 8am EDT with the subject line "Alganon questions." Questions asked as comments to this post will not be considered. We're going to pull 10 of the best questions from the bunch and toss them at the Quest Online team. We're looking for thought-provoking questions, not just general bashing or praising, so be constructive. Negative or positive, they are ready for what's on your mind.

Once the answers are back, we'll post them on the site as a reader-submitted pre-launch interview. So don't be shy! Get those questions in.

Massively.com officially turns two years old today, and while that may be quite young for an MMO news site, we'd like to think we've really made a name for ourselves in that time. Starting out as the secret love child of Second Life Insider, WoW Insider (now WoW.com) and the rest of the Joystiq network, we've come a long way in our 730 days.

As we fondly reminisce about the good times we've had, we thought it would be best to not only compile our own favorite content, but also reach out to our readers for their own favorites. After all, without you, we would be nothing. Literally. No, seriously, we love you all. Even Graill and Mr. Angry!

So we reached out to our Twitter followers earlier today to grab a few opinions and combine them with our own. Follow along in the gallery below for our showcase of best content, and feel free to add your favorites in the comments below.

After a newly-announced launch delay, we now have just under a month before Quest Online's Alganon releases to the public. Now in its beta stage, Alganon has enjoyed mixed reviews since the NDA was lifted two weeks ago. We thought we'd take this opportunity to ask some of the questions floating around about this new fantasy MMO, and how it sets itself apart from existing fantasy MMOs.

Quest Online's president and co-founder, David Allen, was kind enough to answer our questions, which include everything from those of PvP content to his thoughts on being compared to World of Warcraft. Keep reading below for the complete interview.

It's been a little over a month since Fallen Earth launched, and we think it's safe to say that quite a bit has changed since then -- but what, exactly? For those who may have found themselves unhappy with the game's state at launch, this article is for you. For those of you who may have tried the game during a beta stage or stress test event, and come across some technical issues that made the game completely unplayable, this article is for you, too.

We want to continue our tradition of revisiting games after launch, and this time it's Fallen Earth's turn. So we're going to spend the first half of the article discussing the facts, and what the community has to say about the last month's changes to the game, and the second half will be spent giving my own impressions of what I've experienced in the first month. Follow along, won't you?

As for my own personal impressions, I would say anyone who listens to our podcast knows where this is going. I love the game, and I won't hide that, but I can still hold an analytical and experienced eye to what we have now versus what we had at launch, which is the point of this article.

Likes

As a die-hard fan of anything post-apocalyptic, the game already gets points with me for that. The environments and atmosphere are what initially drew me to this game, but I've been hooked in by something entirely different: choice of style. You can play this game any way you want, and I love that. You can be a medic with a shotgun and heavy armor if you want. You don't have to be restricted by robes and a big stick just because you like to buff and heal.

Throughout beta, I rushed through much of the game to grab screenshots and find out what they had to offer on the surface. Now that it has launched, I've been playing more slowly, reading quest text and discovering why my character is a clone in the Grand Canyon Province. It's a wonderful storyline and I'm quite enjoying myself. The sense of humor is unmatched, if you catch the pop culture references and dry jokes, which I love.

I'm currently only level 17 on my main, but I'm trying to get the most out of Sector 1 before I venture into Sector 2 and start getting into the Factional content. Sector 1 is supposed to give me an idea of how each of the six factions are defined, so I don't consider it something to rush through. Even by playing it slowly, I still have yet to visit every city and do every questline in S1. The world is vast and open, and that really adds so much to a game that takes place after the apocalypse.

Plus, most of what I liked at the beginning are things I still enjoy. The open leveling system, the offline crafting system, the deep involvement of the six factions in the storyline, heck, even the combat -- these are all things that brought me in and hooked me for good. The fact that none of this has changed in a month is a very good thing. Despite talks of new content already, their major patches have revolved around current bug fixes and easing new players in with an improved tutorial. These should rightfully be the first improvements, in my opinion.

Dislikes

While I could literally spend 5,000 more words talking about my likes for the game, there are certainly dislikes as well.

As someone who's pretty finicky about quests in the first place, you can imagine how unhappy I am about doing them over and over again each time there's a server reset. It seems the resets have stopped with recent improvements and updates, but that was a point of frustration for those first few weeks. To me, this is something that should have been taken care of at beta, not after people are paying for the game.

During beta, I was a bit turned off by the art style and graphics quality. Many people joke about it being outdated, but this is not the real aesthetic problem for me any more. My current nit-picky concern only revolves around the fact that the character animation is lacking. It's not enough to stop me from playing the game, but it certainly detracts from any type of immersion factor. In a game where the horse animation is some of the best I've ever seen in any game outside of one specifically made about horses -- not to mention the hysterically-accurate dance emotes -- you would think the character run and jump animations might be a bit bigger concern.

Other than that, I could nitpick even more, but there has not been anything in the game to keep me away -- especially after the most recent update.

Conclusion

Fallen Earth is a refreshing game. People have demanded something different from the typical fantasy-based "WoW Clone" for years, and here it is. After Star Wars Galaxies presented their NGE, it left a gaping hole in the MMOverse for those players who enjoyed that pre-NGE gameplay. Fallen Earth fills that gap, and adds so much more. It is ironic to me when people say they want something different, but when it's here, they complain that it doesn't have all the features they're used to in their other game.

That said, no one should have to put up with bugs, glitches and client issues that steal game time away. Now that the Fallen Earth team has proven to us that they're dedicated to listening to our concerns and smashing those initial technical bugs, it gives us hope that this game will be around for a long time, and continually improve on the technical side.