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The Podcast of Reckoning recently had the chance to sit down with Josh Drescher, the Associate Producer for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Their lengthy discussion covered a lot of aspects of the upcoming Guild Beta, information we imagine you'd be keenly interested to see in print. Thankfully the GreenSkin is all over it, offering up another '50 bits of information list' culled from the podcast. Some of them are just wacky fun, but others are really interesting and give us a good sense of EA Mythic's dedication to the art of WAR. Some examples:

• The developers have joined some of the major pre-release guilds in secret, to get a better 'feel' for player interests.
• Exploring the world and engaging in multiple parts of the game will offer players a more 'well rounded' character than one who simply power-levels through the game.
• There are extensive guild tools in the game built from the ground up by and for guild leaders and members.
• The developers see the testers as a part of the team, and treats their feedback with a great deal of gravitas.
• Drescher's wedding was actually scheduled to avoid Warhammer's development period. That's dedication.

Make sure to check out the 'cast as well.

With Star Wars Galaxies, unbelievably, celebrating its fifth anniversary (and winner of the Spinal Tap, "Where are they now?" category, 2008) I was asked to reflect on my experiences in the beta program. Most likely, time healed a lot of wounds and I've probably got my new rose-colored glasses on, so forgive me I'm overly nostalgic. Like a lot of people, I'd applied to the beta program and would compulsively hit the refresh button on my webmail client whenever Kevin O'Hara (Q3PO) sent out the "we added more testers" e-mails. On February 18, 2003 (clearly, I keep too many e-mails to pull that one up) I got my acceptance letter and promptly ordered the CDs.

Read on for an account of my love/hate relationship with Star Wars Galaxies' Beta program.

The long-anticipated Warhammer Online guild beta appears to finally be moving forward, as we've heard via the grapeline that European guild leaders are being notified about the imminent start of the guild beta. According to this email, guild leaders are being given until July 2 to submit the information for members hoping to participate in the beta. Interestingly, the NDA for the beta will remain in effect for the duration of the guild beta, so don't expect to see full-fledged personal accounts for a little while yet.

This information will likely bristle some who were likely hoping that they'd be able to enjoy the open beta sometime this summer. It's probably too early to rule that out at this point, since we don't have any information yet about how EA Mythic will be handling the North American guild beta, and that has to be an important stepping point before they're willing to show Warhammer Online to the greater public.

In the mean time, why not enjoy the recent MMOG Nation podcast, where our own Michael Zenke sits down for a candid chat with WAR designer Paul Barnett?

Gnobrin has dropped into the official EverQuest 2 forums to announce a unique event this weekend. Players just returned for the Living Legacy event, or lone wolves looking to come in from the cold, will be happy to hear there's a guild recruitment fair set for June 28th and June 29th. Where you are going to be headed for the fair depends on what kind of server you're on, because of the dangers of open-world PvP. Folks on the hardcore servers will have to brave city lag, with goodies heading to the Claymore monument and evil-folk aiming for Execution Square in West Freeport. On PvE servers, you'll have an easier time. The Claymore in Antonica is the site of the fair for goodly players, while Evil players will want to head to the Crossroads in the Commonlands.

If you're looking for a guild right now, why not check out their guide to the guild search functionality? Gnobby also offers up a few previews for EQuinox #2, the official EQ magazine. This next issue is going to have a bunch of guild-related information; if you're interested there is a pdf preview available online. He also links to a massive image of the 'Guild Bill of Rights' from the magaizine. It's funny and smarmy; just like a gnome.

Exteel is set to release its newest patch very soon, and in it we'll see the implementation of Clan Mode where players will be able to create and manage their own clans from the Exteel website. These clans will have their own set of restrictions on use, but seem to be something the Exteel players have wanted for a long time.

To create a clan, you'll need to be at least level 20, and to join a clan, you'll need to be at least level 15. The clans are only able to enter clan battles once they have 8 or more players, but if that number ever dips below 8, they will have 37 days to re-enlist, or the clan will dissolve. The clan battles themselves are much like Team Deathmatch, but the points are deducted from the opposing team's score for each kill and assist, instead of adding to your own score. This new Clan Mode patch also brings with it 7-day items, changes to the online store, four new weapons and much more. Check out the complete patch notes for more details.

In a recent forum post, Funcom developer Twicer acknowledges that Age of Conan's crafting professions are completely behind the curve, and are currently the subject of intense scrutiny by the development team. Considering that Alchemy in its current state is completely broken (when we say broken, we mean: it crashes your client when you try and do it), this message is certainly long overdue.

While he was unwilling to commit to a specific time frame, he did go through a fairly comprehensive list of changes. Alchemists will get their most pressing bugs patched later this week, and will also start seeing alchemical ingredients dropping off of caster mobs. Architects will purportedly get new abilities to supplement combat (related to siege combat perhaps?), but no specifics were mentioned. Both Weaponsmiths and Armorsmiths will see some new blue recipes from vendors and world drops. And finally, Resource and Building regions will be fleshed out more to make them full of NPCs and enemies, instead of the relatively barren areas they are currently. Oh, and you'll actually be able to drop crafting professions if you so choose, what novelty!

With no specific timetable set, it's probably too early to get excited about these fixes for AoC, but acknowledging problems is the first step to fixing them.

Have you returned to EverQuest as part of the Living Legacy promotion? Or are you a veteran player who is just looking for a new home? Perhaps you're just curious about the state-of-play in one of the MMO genre's oldest, yet still thriving, games? Maybe you're a guild leader looking for some new blood? If any of these is you, why not stop by the Norrathian Guild Recruitment Festival and have a look around, or sign your guild up so prospective new recruits can see what you're about?

From the makers of Luminary: Rise of the Goonzu comes a new MMO with some distinctly interesting features. Atlantica is a turn-based game that lets you command a large roster of mercenaries, up to a total of 27 in all. These mercenaries can be gotten as infants (legally, we hope), and actually age as the game progresses. When they get older, their stats decrease, so you'll need to keep bringing in new blood to keep your team strong. You can even marry mercenaries and raise their children to fight for you.

PvP gets an interesting take as well -- guilds can control cities, which provide them with a power base with which to attack other guilds, but these cities need to be managed well. Doing so provides rare items and more mercenaries. The game will go into closed beta in July, but until then, check out the trailer above and the screenshots below!



[Thanks, Katrina!]

When you have the right group of people, everything is just easier. When your guild members communicate well with each other, and each person knows her role and responsibilities, there isn't anything you can't overcome. At least, in that particular game. But what happens when you try to transfer that guild to a different game?

Although many MMOs have similar classes and structures, it isn't always a one-to-one correlation. Your tank might suddenly find himself with a much more challenging job than in the previous game. Your healer could see a new class and decide he's done with his old job and wants to try something new. Maybe the functions of the group just don't work in the new game. When your guild wants to tackle the challenges of a new MMO, how do you go about settling in? If it isn't happening, how do you fix it?

The creators of the sci-fi MMO Earthrise have been very active in recent months -- granting a number of interviews, releasing monthly newsletters, and participating in dev chats. Stratics recently hosted the third Earthrise 'House of Commons' dev chat, with three members of the Masthead Studios team.

The Masthead Studios devs that took part were Atanas Atanasov (CEO of Masthead Studios), Apostol Apostolov (Lead Game Designer), and Moll (Community Manager). Their discussion ranged from the professions available to players to the extensive crafting system in the game. Read on after the jump for details straight from the devs about what we can expect from Earthrise.

There you are, poised at the ready. The guild you've created is almost complete! You've gathered a few friends for potential guild-mates. You've discussed the general focus of the guild. Now all you need is a name! You've come up with a few, but for some reason, your friends keep rejecting your suggestions concerning LOLcats, Prince Caspian or the latest song by the Jonas Brothers. What gives?!

Well, according to a recent blog post by Syp over at the Waaagh! blog, you're just doing it wrong. Not to worry though, because Syp compiled a comprehensive list of what to avoid while considering a guild name or tag. Even if you've already created your perfect guild and you're just curious about the effectiveness of your name, check out the blog post. Chances are, you did it wrong.

[Thanks Syp!]

The most recent iteration of Tabula Rasa's Feedback Friday brought the announcement of a change to how the client will work in future deployments of the game. "The Bubble," as they call it, is an optimization that the developers hope to roll out in a future build of Tabula Rasa's Deployment 9. Until now, all static map objects such as rocks and trees loaded up front, but at the cost of decreased system performance. The Bubble will limit the client to loading only those static objects within a certain distance from the camera. The end result promises to be a client that uses less memory and delivers increased performance. They would, however, like help from the players with testing the bubble feature once it's viable.

As always, Feedback Friday also addressed player questions and concerns, namely that logout countdowns in PvP will stop being exploitable in Deployment 10. As it stands, players can evade combat during clan-wars by simply logging off. Another issue in the game that's being resolved is the common complaint about how difficult it is to keep track of friends. Presently each time a player creates a new character, they must reinvite all of their friends, ad nauseam. So beginning with Deployment 9, both the friends and ignore list are now user-based instead of character-based. This change alone will eliminate a number of headaches for TR players, but check out the Feedback Friday page for more details on how the game is evolving.

Warhammer Online's ongoing series of production videos are almost too informative sometimes. For the bloggers at Massively, they pretty much do our job for us. Not that we don't mind taking it easy, but as you've probably gathered right now we really enjoy talking about MMOs. Thankfully, some topics are complicated enough that they warrant a second look. Warhammer's Living Guilds system, for example, was the subject of a great video just a few weeks back. And yet, there are still a number of questions you can walk away with.

Where can you use the guild banner (now called a standard)? What kind of tools will guilds have for coordinating events? What about the big picture? How to alliances work? And, perhaps most importantly, where can guildies get drunk together? All of these questions and much, much more are explored in the latest of our ongoing series of articles about Warhammer Online.

If you're so inclined, you can jump straight to to part 2 or part 3, or join us below as we chat with Mr. Drescher and Ms. Christian Bales.

<-- Jump back to part 1

We note there is a website and an email address down there at the bottom of the tab? What are those?

Christian Bales: That's just my web, that's test for now, but that's when the guild leader wants to set the actual guild's email address and the guild website.)

Josh Drescher: You can set that to be whatever you want, so ... Obviously, one of the cool things that you really want from a guild is a sense of belonging, the team jersey, you go and dress up in your Redskins jerseys or wherever you're from. It'll have the guild heraldry. The heraldry is a customized, unique sort of heraldry for your specific guild. So a symbol on it, specific color scheme, shape, patterns and so forth that's applicable only to your guild, that your guild will have the ability to place on various things.

Christian: On your standards and on your guild cloaks.

<-- Jump back to part 2

Is there a formal in-game mechanic for alliances?

Christian: There certainly is. We do allow formal alliances in the game, you can form an alliance with up to ten guilds, and you can assign officers within that alliance structure, though that is very limited. We actually have a roster for the alliances, you form it just from this window, and then it populates with your alliance roster. Note that every member from your alliance is not displayed in this roster, only your guild, the alliance leaders and the officers, because that would be - if you had ten guilds in your alliance, that would be a lot of people.