We all go into autopilot sometimes. So, you know, we're on a marathon session to level up, and we're mostly just sort of clicking by instinct. You belatedly realize, however, that you were in the middle of a quest chain. The reason you realize this, sadly, is because you're at the penultimate stage of said quest chain, and the questgiver is making references to all the work that you've been doing to reach this point... when you don't really remember most of what you've been doing up until now. There might have been something with fish men? Or the other fish men. It's all kind of a blur, really.

Lore is important, and few people would argue that, but when have you managed to completely miss every bit of what's supposed to be going on? Did you not read up the backstory in the manual and therefore not know that the person you're fighting unleashed horrors on his own people? Did you forget about an NPC that is actually kind of important in retrospect? Or did you just steamroll through things and only find out later that there was an overarching reason for all of this?

Characters die. It's not usually a permanent thing, but MMOs are kind of built on the premise that your character is going to die at some point, since something hitting you until you hit zero hit points and then wandering off out of boredom removes the flavor of the game. More often than not, when you die, there's no real shame involved. It's just a muttered curse word at worst and then whatever you have to do to get back into the game again, ranging from running back to your corpse to trying to get your level back to apologizing to that megacorporation.

However, there are certain deaths -- getting eaten by a goobbue, for instance -- which you privately agree to just not talk about.

What death do you remember that's so embarassing, silly, or unnecessary that you normally don't mention it? Maybe you really should have known better beforehand, maybe you just find the circumstances too humiliating, or maybe it still makes you annoyed to even think about it. Whatever the case, today is the day to share your death stories -- and we've all got them. What's the story you wouldn't tell on any other day?

There's always that one game. We all know what it is, even though which game it is changes for person to person, but we know about it because we're adamant that we won't play it. We don't want to. Half the time we've read up on the game and explained in detail how many things we dislike about it and why we're certain -- certain! -- we would never enjoy it. Other players can praise it to high heaven, over and over, but we won't even touch it. We don't want to, no way.

Cue two months later when we're playing it and won't stop talking about how awesome it is.

What game is slowly wearing down your resistance? Because there is one, we all know it, and it's half a question of whether or not you admit that your resistance is slowly eroding. Is it the newly free-to-play Dungeons and Dragons Online, because you don't like the business model? The nine-hundred-pound gorilla that is World of Warcraft? Maybe you're pretty sure you'd enjoy EverQuest II but you still have a lingering resistance to playing ti for whatever reason. Which game have you sworn up and down you won't play that you're growing more attracted to -- or, which ones did you swear you wouldn't touch in the past that you're now thrilled with?

It's National Boss Day today, which means you should probably be doing something nice for your boss (which might include not browsing the web while you're at work, but that's not our call). However, if you're a frequent player of MMOs -- or video games in general, at that -- you have a very different definition of boss. And after years of playing MMOs -- or even for a few months -- there are certain bosses who hold a soft spot in your heart for whatever reason.

Perhaps they were a truly challenging fight the first time you faced them, maybe they just looked impressive and they stuck in your mind, or it could even be something as simple as getting exactly wanted from them the first time you went through the encounter. In honor of National Boss Day, we're asking you what boss holds the nearest and dearest spot in your memories. If you were sending a missive to one of your personal favorite bosses, who would it be? What would you say? Would you thank them for being generous in their drops when you fought them, or would you offer consolation at how easy they are to kill these days? And if you want to get creative and phrase it like a greeting card, on this day, it's certainly appropriate. Just take a moment to give thanks to the bosses... before you go back to killing them for loot, anyway.

Well hello there intrepid Massively readers! This week, instead of my usual selection of complaints crammed into the tight space of a single column, I've decided to do something different. This Monday, I opened up a call for questions on anything MMO related on the Massively Facebook fan page, the Massively Twitter, and my own personal Twitter. You guys didn't disappoint, and you certainly sent me more than a few intriguing e-mails.

So, for the past three days, I've been preparing responses to some of the questions that landed in my inbox. What did intrepid readers ask me to answer? Whose e-mails did I select from the pile of text I received? What is the airspeed of an African Swallow? These and many other questions (except that swallow one, that one's been done to death, go Google it or something) shall be answered after the break! Thundercats, hoooooooooo!

So you've done it yet again. You landed straight in a huge cluster of enemies, who are now going to mob and kill you. The real problem here isn't that you've got Death right around the corner marking down Yes in the column asking Is It A Shame, it's that you really should have learned this lesson back when you had a flying hero in Champions Online. Or when you had your flying mount in World of Warcraft. Or when you had that other flying hero in City of Heroes. Or, for that matter, back when you were still playing Everquest and kept running around the corner before anyone had a chance to tell you that the boss was right there.

Sometimes, even though we ought to know better -- and have had multiple games worth of experience to tell us this -- we just keep doing the same thing. Maybe it's not landing in the wrong place - it could be arranging your bars with a crucial spell next to a very different spell, or you think you can take on more things than you can, or you stock way too many healing items on your characters. Still, even though you've had every chance to learn from it, what bad habits can you not kick?

If you ever thought to yourself how cool it would be to work for a video game company - well, obviously you're not alone. However, the team at Fallen Earth, LLC have decided to release a video that's part-trailer and part behind-the-scenes at their indie studio. Entitled only "Fallen Earth Marketing Meeting" it shows off not only the team's passion for Fallen Earth, but reveals that one guy who still hopes for "elves... magic" in the mix. Aww, poor misguided soul.

For a very silly look at an up-and-coming studio (and of course, their new MMO) be sure to check out the very tongue-in-cheek "marketing meeting" video behind the break.

ManaEnergyPotions.com has combined three seemingly unrelated inanimate objects into a dangerous contraption rivaling that of a medieval torture device: the Aion fitness machine! Okay, we'll admit that it's actually kind of cool even though we don't think there's a huge market for MMO-related exercise equipment just yet. (/munches on Cheetos and /sips Coke guilt-free, while /relaxing in comfy chair.)

In an experiment worthy of the pages of Popular Mechanics, these fellows interfaced a basic treadmill, road bicycle tire, and two modded Nintendo Wiimotes with a PC running NCsoft's newest MMO, Aion. It's really only one stick of gum and a few matchsticks short of Richard Dean Anderson material folks.

Anyway, running on the treadmill propels your character forward and flapping your arms while holding two Wii-motes makes your character fly. They also mapped various controller buttons to directional commands and use a mounted keyboard for combat. Take that Billy Blanks! Check out a video after the cut and head on over to Mana Energy Potion for the "system specs."

The people who follow my personal blog or follow me on Twitter or listen to the Massively Speaking podcast probably saw this column coming from a mile away. Aion and I... we have some business to take care of.

This week is Aion's launch week and I do believe that I need to put my thoughts down on the game, like so many other journalists are doing this week. Now, please, even before we start, I need to make it clear that this isn't a review. This is my collected thoughts about the game as I've played it through closed beta, open beta, the head start, and now the live game. I've made alts on all of the classes, I've gotten past level 10 as the templar, I've done grouping, and I'm actually going to continue playing after this column is done. I delayed these thoughts because I wanted to make sure I was confident in what I was about to say.

So what are my collected thoughts on the game? Well let's start off with the good, and go on to the bad, and then finally hit our synopsis. Hit continue reading, because I can assure you that this is going to be daevafinitely interesting. (And, most likely, full of bad, bad Aion puns.)

So you pre-ordered Aion and you're super excited to jump into the game during the headstart release that's going on right now. You've set aside a whole block of time for your game play, you have your snacks at your side and your DVR ready to play some great entertainment while you grind your night away. You type in your username and password, accept the EULA, select the server that you made your character on during the pre-selection annnndd.....

...you get slapped in the face with a 2 hour wait time.

Don't worry, we've been there. Trust us on that. But here at Massively, we're not going to let you down in your moment of need. We've compiled a great list of fun things to do while you wait for that server queue to drop. Follow along after the break, and we'll be happy to show you the golden road to boredom elimination.

All of our MMOs sometimes have odd festivals, but they don't get odder than Final Fantasy XI's annual Buffalo Blitz. Each year during this festival buffalo are released into Ronfaure, Sarutabaruta, and Gustaberg, the starting areas outside of each city, and players must help the mog house moogles in wrangling them up!

Wrangling one of the herds of buffalo is as easy (or as complicated) as approaching a herd and seeing how they react to you. Use their behavior to lead them into one of the moogles stationed in the zone and claim some of the event rewards! It's silly, and it's fun, and it gets you stuff. What's not to like about that?

This year's Buffalo Blitz starts on September 25th, but the buffalo will run off into the sunset on October 5th.

Recently there's been a handful of MMO bloggers who have decided to go on a game purge. The idea is to take a really close look at all the games on your drive and blow all the MMORPGs off your machine that you're not playing anymore - and don't expect to play again. While I'm not suggesting everyone do drive maintenance (of course, if you're in the mood to, feel free) it did stop to make me think. Apparently Ardwulf had 13 MMOs on his drive before he purged them down to 4, Heartless_ went from 6 to (potentially) 2, and while Syncaine doesn't report the number of games blown away in the reformat, he's down to 2 as well. Gordon from We Fly Spitfires isn't quite sure what to uninstall, since - as he rightly notes - MMOs are a pain in the arse to reinstall and patch again later.

In the spirit of a good hard look at your desktop, this morning I figured it would be fun to ask how many MMOs everyone has on their machines currently? I'm a bit of an abberation at 30, however I built my office desktop with 2+ terabytes of drive space specifically so I could leave MMOs on it. (You never know when you'll need to log in for work.) In comparison, my other half (also an MMO fiend) generally keeps only about 4-5 on his drive at a time, if that many. How about you? How many MMOs are currently on your machine? How many are collecting dust? How many are you actively playing?

I am in love with the Champions Online character creator. I may not have a character past level 8 in the open beta, but I'm already wishing I had more character slots. I guess it's a good thing we can save our costumes!

With the recent GI Joe movie hype, and the simple fact that I'm a ginormous GI Joe fanboy since I was probably 6 or 7, I decided it might be fun to see how close I could get on recreating GI Joe characters from my youth in Champions Online. We've paid homage to this amazing character creator before, but we just can't get enough! Follow along after the jump (warning, large pictures ahead!) to see if you can name the five characters I created. This is not an official competition, and the only thing you'll win is my respect and love. Isn't that totally worth it?