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Everyone and their brother seems to be writing about Age of Conan over the last few days, but hopefully you're hungry for a little more. I've spent the last day and a half trying out different classes and playing through the various starting missions, and I'm ready to serve up some impressions. If you want the quick and dirty version, I'm really impressed with what Funcom has done. This game is worth your money. I'll try to talk about the aspects of the game that I haven't seen discussed much yet, as well as the stuff that everyone is talking about.

It's also important to note that I've been playing with the closed beta client -- not the open beta one. There is a serious difference. I should mention that when I wrote Friday's article, I hadn't yet played the game and I was basing my arguments largely on the claims of people who had had bad experiences with the open beta client. I still stand by my arguments about making games with outlandish system requirements, but I think Age of Conan will run just fine on many systems. Keeping all of that in mind, here's what I think of the game.

The upcoming release of Age of Conan has brought this question farther into the light, with its foray into real-time battle. Sure, there have been others -- the late, not-so-lamented Fury being a great example -- that have tried to redefine what MMO combat can be like, but many games are content to offer the tried-and-true click to attack model, with slight variations.

When it comes to fighting in games, surely the biggest defining factor is, or should be, "Is it exciting?" Given that singular criterion, then, which game has the best combat? Which one gets your blood racing? Which MMO really lets you, as the kids used to say, throw down?

The guys over at 1up.com have a great two page preview/interview covering Champions Online. The preview itself covers quite a bit, including Cryptic's time with the Marvel MMO, customization in Champions Online, combat, the Xbox 360 version and of course some hints at what we may see for villains. Overall the preview expands on a lot of these subjects, with quotes for Jack Emmert giving away a detail or two here and there.

The big tease about the villains has really piqued our curiosity, as Emmert says, "But it's something we're thinking about in Champions: Is the gameplay experience the same for a hero and a villain? But that's part of our top-secret plan we're not talking about."

A lot of people on the official forums have been clamoring for some kind of villain gameplay and Cryptic has previously shown they pay attention to the community. We would love to see the villain side play dramatically different from the hero side of Champions Online. The big question left to Cryptic is exactly how villains will be a different experience from heroes?

I've played a lot of MMOs in my life, but to be honest I've grown very tired of the tried-and-true combat most games offer. For a long time I've thought that maybe adding extra layers of mechanics on top of the combat -- like WAR seems to be doing -- would help, but now I'm not so sure that's quite the right answers

Do I think that real-time combat is the only answer? No. While I love that type of gameplay, there is definitely something to be said for the combat styles of Everquest, Everquest II, World of Warcraft and the upcoming Warhammer Online. However, to maintain overall player interest, traditional combat in MMOs seriously needs to evolve.

Face to face with a monster. Its soulless eyes glint blackly from the light of the Deadspell Storm. Its smell -- that awful stench -- may be its greatest weapon, but you do not come unprepared. You have your trusty falchion, worn but true. Your armor has been nicked and scratched and is no longer as shiny as when the blacksmith sold it, but it's honest chain and will turn a blade, or a claw. And of course, you have your trusty deck of cards. "Let's do this," you snarl. You turn the top card over...

Combat in Chronicles of Spellborn isn't the simple deal (cough sorry) we've come to expect in our MMOs. Instead of having a fixed set of abilities governed by cast timers and cool-downs, the abilities in Spellborn are controlled by cards, one for each action. You set up your cards in up to five columns -- for instance, one for mêlée, another for mêlée and debuffs, one for magic, another for ranged, and the last for healing. As you use an ability all columns move to the next row (or tier), and so on. Want to guarantee a finishing move is always available? Put them diagonally across your columns. For tips on how to make combos, and how to construct your deck so that the buffs and debuffs support your attacks, Spellborn dev El Drijver brings us his Combat for Beginners game design journal. Check out our previous coverage of this innovative MMO coming out of the Netherlands in the near future.

Just when you thought you couldn't get any sicker of news surrounding the 2.4 patch for World of Warcraft, here we are again with another edition of Ask Massively. Here at Ask Massively, we like to consider ourselves the "Anti-Trendy" crowd, not because we all shop at Hot Topic or put bumper stickers that preach non-conformity on our SUV's (Mass produced non-conformity? I digress...), but because we like to take stories that have been beaten to death and take a look at them from a slightly more skewed perspective.

This week's inspiration comes from a young lady named Tara.

Dear Massively Massive Guy,

I've been playing World of Warcraft for quite some time, but I wonder what other games do that WoW doesn't. What games offer features that may someday be implemented by Blizzard? Surely, Blizzard doesn't innovate everything that is popular in MMORPGs.

Curiously Yours,

Tara

If you would like to be immortalized in electronic print, send us a question via our tipline, or by email at ask AT Massively DOT com. To the nice Nigerian gentleman who wants to enter into a business arrangement, the check is in the mail. For more on this topic, feel free to read on after the jump.

Everyone seems to be aware of one or two great features coming with Age of Conan, but we realized that not everybody has a complete view of some of the coolest ones -- which has led us to sort of a blind men and the elephant situation. So in an effort to give a more complete view of why Funcom's newest title looks exceedingly cool, we've gone and thought of six reasons to truly be excited about Age of Conan. Our barbarian urges are beginning to take over, so we'd better get to the good stuff before we run into the hills and slaughter a bear or something.

Take a look by simply clicking the image above or the gallery link below.

The first in a new video series called The Hyborian Insider has been listed on Age of Conan's community site. The opening episode looks at the combat mechanics in the game, with a detailed breakdown of the system. Hosted by the game's product manager Erling Ellingsen, the video looks at things we've mostly seen before (like the attacking and defending mechanics), but it's still a good watch that sums everything up in just a few short minutes. We're looking forward to seeing what The Hyborian Insider #2 will focus on, with the big combat issue out of the way.

Quite a few MMOs are eschewing the standard auto-attack combat for newer and -- some would say -- better methods. Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa were two of the first major MMO titles to try this with varying success, but we've still got a good amount of games coming down the pipeline with a real-time combat focus. Age of Conan, The Agency and Champions Online are the games which seem to be creating the most buzz at the moment.

So we thought -- in the spirit of curiosity -- that it would be interesting to see just how many of you are genuinely looking forward to real-time combat over the auto-attacking standard of most modern-day big budget MMOs. Would you like to run around in the world of Hyboria, swinging your great-axe every which-way to your heart's content? Or would you rather keep closer to the current system of locking on, auto-attacking and stringing together binded special attacks?

Say your cruising around an asteroid belt in the upcoming sci-fi MMO, Jumpgate Evolution. Since you buddy is due to hop online any minute so the two of you can shoot the light fantastic, you'd rather not engage in any heavy combat until your wing man pops on. What to do?

Well, according to Hermann Peterscheck, JGE's producer, there's a lot more to do then just shooting womprats (or whatever the equivalent will be in the JGE universe). The big three activities for the game are combat, resource gathering and crafting, but there will be many other things to do. Players can speculate in the market, get paid to help cargo haulers on dangerous runs, engage in PvP to earn top spot on the various ladders and rankings, or collect the many different medals, titles, ships and powerful equipment. NetDevil is also looking to include mini-games that break up the core game.

Melee combat. It's one of the main reasons that a lot of people have so much interest in Age of Conan, and it's definitely something that makes the game stand out next to other MMOs. Having thrown out the traditional "auto-attack" altogether, AoC plays more like an action game, and in the newly released Developer Video Diary 5, we get an explanation of some of the finer points of this combat system.

Every Tuesday think "T" for Turpster and take the "a" in "day", capitalise it, remove the little bit in the middle, turn it upside down and you get a "V". Put the two together and you'll have TV for TurpsterVision -- the best Internet video podcast on Massively! (Never mind that business about it being the only video podcast on Massively...)

It's Tuesday! Hooray! If you like having intellectual discussions about current political events and their impact on the everyday life of the brave men and women serving abroad fighting for our freedom then I am afraid you have come to the wrong place. I don't have a clue about the wars going on here on planet Earth. What I do know about however, is a MMO universe so vast and EPIC that I makes the petty struggles of this world seem insignificant. That is right folks; today we are flying and fighting for our very lives in the turbulent universe of EVE Online!

Join us after the break if you think you are truly hardcore enough to play in a universe where you can Alt-Tab while you are meant to be working.

With the recent death of Gary Gygax, one of the original creators of Dungeons and Dragons, lots of people have stopped to reflect on the way his work continues to affect the games we play. In many ways, the dominant style of MMO combat we see in games today, particularly in the Everquest and World of Warcraft vein, is a direct descendant of tabletop gameplay. As much as that model has served us well over the years, some, like JoBildo over at TTH, believe that the future of MMO combat is almost upon us, and once we see the light, we'll never want to go back.

It does certainly seem like combat is one of the most obvious areas where MMOs can use improvement, which is why it's really not so surprising to see so many developers try and attack it in order to become 'the next big thing.' Still, new combat systems haven't really done anything to help the success of DDO or Tabula Rasa, and rumors are flying around that the combat is just about the only thing going right in Age of Conan. You just don't see gamers defecting from World of Warcraft and its relatively old-school combat system, which leads one to believe that gamers are still more interested in the package deal. Including new ways to swing a sword will get you some curious attention at first, but in order to keep players coming back you've got to have a lot more than that.

For most of us the term 'MMO' conjures up images of combat, whether within a medieval fantasy setting, or a science fiction milieu. Other images are mixed in there, too, of course, but I'd wager that fighting is the one that pops up most often. It's so common, in fact, that when a game deviates from this norm, attention is called to it. Take Mabinogi, for instance -- many of its features are non-combat-based, like the aging system, or the ability to create MIDI-based music, or the creation and management of a household with a spouse.

I didn't realize how refreshing the thought of not having to constantly battle creatures to progress in a game was until Mabinogi offered me these alternatives. This makes me ask the question: is combat really an integral element of an MMO? Would you play a game that lacked it completely?

Watching a recent Cinemassively, it occurred to me that in MMOs, everyone is a warrior. By that, I mean that everyone fights -- some with weapons, some with magic, etc. There are probably games out there that don't require combat as a method of advancing the game, but I'm not privy to any of them. No matter what you look like, or roleplay, you will do battle at some point.

But what if there was a game that let you progress through other means? What if you were a diplomat or politician, with different goals and abilities? What if you had to be protected by other players as you made your way through the game world, dependent on them for your survival? Would that be fun? Would you ever choose to play a noncombatant and watch other players hog all the glory?