We've been seeing a great deal of news and information coming out from Final Fantasy XI -- which probably means the end times are coming, but be that as it may. Just the other day we found out about the upcoming Evolith system, with its cryptic mentions of the integrated "synergy" system and a promise of more details shortly. Sure enough, we already have an idea of what synergy will look like when it drops alongside the rest of the filled-to-bursting November version update. And it promises to be quite a deviation from the status quo for crafting right away -- it's an art practiced not by one person, but by a full six-person party.

In keeping with the extant nature of Final Fantasy XI's crafting, synergy doesn't promise to be simple. A number of reagents and elemental energies are dumped into the pictured "synergy furnace," at which point the entire part must begin carefully modulating and controlling the flow of elements therein. Crystals can be used to help alter the elemental composition, but will not be absolutely necessary from the sound of things. A failed synthesis can cause the whole mess to blow up in your face -- literally -- while success yields both slotted items and "cinders" that can be turned in for equipment to help boost your skill at the craft. There's a lot to digest here, so take a look and get ready for the most mold-breaking crafting yet seen in FFXI.

The next EVE Online expansion will be Dominion, slated for a December release, which will introduce some major changes to the game and new features as well. The "Fleet Finder" is one such feature, explained in today's dev blog by EVE Online Technical Director Jon Bjarnason (aka CCP Atlas).

The Fleet Finder will give players much greater control over forming a fleet and, as CCP Atlas says, there will be "No more 'x up in corp channel' messages." The feature will also streamline how information is conveyed to other pilots.

The term "corporation" in EVE Online is something of a misnomer. While a corp can be run as a full-on business entity, most are just like guilds or clans in other MMOs. It's a group of pilots that join together under one banner for mutual benefit, organised operations or even just to have some nice people to chat to while you mine. For those that can't find a good player-run corporation that's compatible with their aims and goals, there are a few options. One option is to stay in one of the many NPC-run corps but perhaps the most interesting choice is to start your own corp. With the upcoming 11% tax being applied to NPC corps, some of the people currently in those corps may even want to start their own one-man corps to evade the tax.

Running your own corporation provides you with additional tools like corporate hangers and the ability to set up starbases or declare war on other corps. It also opens the opportunity to recruit like-minded individuals and friends into your group so you can work together on anything from mining and mission-running to full-on PvP and piracy. EVE is one of those games that really starts to take off once you start working together with people. Starting your own corp can, however, be a daunting task that carries with it responsibilities and risks.

For all those that have ever wanted to run their own corporation, in this article I explain how to the process of starting a corp, recruiting and keeping the corp secure against threats. I also go into detail on some of the corp operations you can hope to enjoy with friends.

EverQuest II's next game update Shards of Destiny is now live, and that means that players can take advantage of a number of new features. We've summed up the biggest ones just below:

• Chronomagic: Visit some new "mysterious erudites" that have moved into Freeport, Kelethin, Neriak, Qeynos and Gorothyn, to lower your adventuring level for a small cost. This allows for grouping with lower levels, and a lot of older content has been revamped with more frequent bosses and changed loot rarities to make this option more attractive. There are also 37 new missions related to going back and seeing dungeons of differing levels.
  
• Achievements: A new way to compete with other players. Most achievements will just give Achievement Points, but some will offer non-stat item rewards. Achievement categories include Exploring, Dungeons, Quests, Raids, Player versus Player, and Tradeskills.
• Miragul's Planar Shard: a x4 raid zone and the first in EverQuest II to have a scaled difficulty feature.
• The Shard of Love: Choose to help or hinder the Sisters of Erollisi, beginning by visiting either a Disciple of Love or a Disciple of Hate.
• Teleportation Spires Event: Rewards are up for grabs for those who can assist the Quellithulians with the reactivation of the Ulterian Teleportation Spires.

Check out the full patch notes here, and before you head in-game, dip past the break to see the official Shards of Destiny trailer.

We did it in Champions Online, and now we're ready to do it in both Fallen Earth and Aion. In-game launch day events have been quite a hit so far, and we really look forward to a double-header coming this Tuesday, September 22nd.

Whether you're looking to get into one or both, we'll be in-game right along with you for those first few levels. Plus, we'll come bearing gifts! In Aion, we'll have some in-game goodies to hand out, and in Fallen Earth we're looking to do a bit of post-apocalyptic trivia to prepare you for the wasteland. We'll have more details on Monday, including exact locations and times for these events. See ya there!

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 on Choose my Adventure, the Massive Hobbits continued their journey through Bree-land and the Barrow-downs. Your votes last week placed them in the Great Barrow to clear the instance of undead and the evil Sambrog.

What does this week hold for the pint-sized adventurers? Vote on this week's poll, follow along on Gibbi the Hobbit's in-character portrayal and read my impressions of how the game has been going so far, all after the jump.

While Champions Online is designed to allow players to live out their fantasy of being a lone superhero badass taking on all-comers solo, if that's what they're after, there's also content and features aimed at groups of players. A new video hosted at GameTrailers and featuring Bill Roper is focused on the things that await people who are interested in getting together with others to tackle crime and evil. The title of the video leads you to believe that it is all about SuperGroups (Champions Online's guilds), but most of Roper's comments are related to grouping in general.

The reinforcement system, lairs/headquarters, group events, multiple-group content and different roles in groups all come up during the featurette. Head past the break to see how you can help save the world with a little help from your friends.

This will take place all day tomorrow, at various times throughout the day. Instead of meeting up in the initial tutorial though, we've decided it would be best to meet people at each crisis zone, which is just after the initial tutorial. This basically means around level 5, which is not hard to reach. Simply send an in-game message to the following account names for a group invite:

Shawn Schuster - @MassiveShawn (in the Desert crisis zone)
Kyle Horner - @General-Kraken (in the Desert crisis zone)
Colin Brennan - @Octal_Black (in the Canada crisis zone)

Since Champions is set up in instanced shards, we'll get groups together as we can in each crisis zone. As a general rule, we'll try to meet up in instance #5 of each zone. Later this week, we'll put up a small gallery of images from the event and hopefully do this more often for new game launches. Hope to see you all there!

Here at Massively, we're working on several different ideas to get our team more involved with our readers. This sense of community is very important to us, as is evident in our recent forays through the Choose my Adventure series. But now we're ready to do it Champions Online style.

This Tuesday, September 1st, you can meet up with a few members of the Massively staff in Champions Online. We'll run through the initial tutorial together, save Champions HQ and storm either Canada or the Desert, depending on what the group decides. It should be a fun way to celebrate the launch of Champions Online, and an especially fun way to get the Massively reader community together. Look for more details to come on Monday and we hope to see you there!

Whether you are lucky enough to play with a steady group of good friends or you're more of a soloist, you've still probably encountered the stray pick-up group or random team member here and there. Many gamers even spend all of their time with strangers. But if you've played several MMOs, you may have also noticed that there seems to be a difference in the playerbases. Some games are notorious for having more immature players while others can safely say their players are the best. But which ones? Which MMO do you feel has the best PUGs?

I decided to take this question an extra step by adding a poll in which readers could vote. The top games are included in this poll, but certainly feel free to add your own to the comments below, along with examples.

How many times did we hear that growing up? Peer pressure is a powerful thing, but when it comes to the allure of a new MMO, it may take on a whole new meaning. Let's say you've had a favorite game that you've been playing for years now with a steady group of friends. A shiny new game comes along and those friends all want to check it out, and they're begging you to join them. The problem is, you love your current game and have already invested so much time and energy into getting your characters exactly the way you want them!

So what do you do? Do you grudgingly follow your friends to this new game, even if you know you won't enjoy it? Is it really so much about staying in the group that you're willing to endure crappy game mechanics for the comaradarie of friends? Maybe the new game actually turns out to be much more fun anyway! Let us know if you've ever faced this situation and how you dealt with it.

Fantasy MMO Age of Conan launched to one of the most successful MMO sales sprees in recent memory. People were hungry for a new MMO to deliver something different and Age of Conan seemed to offer just that. After record pre-orders, huge launch sales and a month or two of what seemed like solid performance, the game suddenly took a turn for the worse. Players left the game in droves and reports of the game's quality turned into poor reviews and negative blog posts. What happened was simple - the game wasn't finished. It was released too early and once most players left the polished and irrefutably high-quality starting area of Tortage, their game experiences were usually ruined.

Back when AoC launched, I got a good taste of its PvP and wrote an in-depth article comparing its PvP system to EVE Online's. It's now been over a year since AoC was launched and with talk of huge new developments in the game, some of us at Massively have decided to avail of their free two-week re-trial offer. With a year of post-release development under the belt, what's changed in Age of Conan's PVP and what is it still doing wrong? Join me for this hands-on opinion piece where I examine Age of Conan's PvP system, how it's changed in the past year, what it does right and what it still fails at.

It's said that sandbox MMO EVE Online doesn't really begin to shine until you join a good player-run corporation. There's only so much a lone pilot can accomplish and a lot of the game's most rewarding experiences are based around groups and collaboration. Wormhole expeditions, PvP, territorial wars, politics and much of EVE's other emergent gameplay routes rely heavily on forming groups and friendships in-game. In fact, I think you'd be hard pressed to find an MMO which doesn't have its game experience improved by group activities and forming friendships. But just as choosing the right corporation for your play style can make the game a lot better, choosing the wrong one or not joining one at all can ruin a new player's experience of the game.

Over the past few weeks, I've had several emails from readers looking for advice on how to find a good corporation. In this article aimed at new and prospective EVE players, I introduce a simple five-step approach for finding that perfect corporation who can turn playing EVE from a potentially boring experience into a very rewarding one.
(UPDATE: I had accidentally disabled comments, comments are now enabled on page 2)

While there are some MMOs that try to handle their progression differently, the bulk of them probably offer some form of combat-centric leveling. Killing large quantities of NPCs, doing quests and exploring dungeons is the norm. However, whether these things are done alone or with others is usually still left up to the player. These days games are very accommodating when it comes to classes having the ability to solo. Sure, some will be better than others, but for the most part soloing should at least be an option.

What we'd like to ask you today is how you approach this choice. Do you like to join up with a band of fellow adventurers and take on harder content to get your levels, or even just tackle solo content faster together? Perhaps you have a regular group that negates the need for the often-tiresome "Looking For Group" process. Alternatively, you might enjoy the ability to log on and get straight into leveling on your own, without relying on others. Maybe you've been scarred by too many bad groups! For some, leveling solo is just a time thing -- you have no time to wait around for LFGing and the group formation process, which can sometimes take longer than you were planning to be online. To these folks we ask: when you do have the time, do you make use of it to group, or are you happier just soloing anyway?

EVE Online's Faction Warfare system was released almost one year ago with the Empyrean Age expansion and was initially a complete success. It provided a stage on which thousands of players waged war. From fleets of over a hundred players to gangs as small as two or three pilots, everyone found their own place in the conflict. After the initial wave of success, questions began to arise on the lack of rewards to offset the cost of losing ships in PvP. In addition, while the point of faction warfare initially revolved around capturing systems, holding an enemy system provided no benefits beyond bragging rights. Almost a year on from its initial release, faction warfare has barely changed, prompting very real concerns from players that EVE's developers CCP have entirely abandoned it. These issues have even made it as far as the Council of Stellar Management.

In this article, I take a retrospective look at how faction warfare has (or hasn't) progressed in this past year and ask the question "Has Faction Warfare been abandoned?".