Massively^™

At Gen Con, we spoke with Turbine's Andy Cataldo, the Community Manager for Asheron's Call, about the future of this historic game. Cataldo told us a lot about AC's epic 100th update. The update is coming within the next few weeks, and it's a doozy. According to Cataldo, AC players will get a whole new faction system, three land areas to battle over, tons of new loot and spells, and various other improvements to the game, particularly to enemy AI.

In addition to working its regular monthly event and patch schedule, Turbine is attempting to respond to player demand for a variety of new features in the 100th and all future updates. Particular emphasis is being placed on adding features common in modern MMOs, such as a quest tracking menu. AC has been around for almost ten years, so it has some catching up to do!

Learn more about Turbine's big push to modernize the game, add lots of new content, and more in the interview after the break.

Given that the game has been around for so long, do you see this addition of modern MMO features as something that the player base is really clamoring for, or are you sort of scaling that against what other games have right now?

Really, it's what the players are asking for. That's one of the things we pride ourselves on: listening to the players. Feedback and player concerns are very important to us.

Star Trek gaming podcast Hailing Frequency interviewed Cryptic Studios Chief Creative Officer Jack Emmert in the wake of the big Las Vegas unveiling of Star Trek Online. The two part interview is available in both audio and video, and it's one of the best sources of details beyond the unveiling video itself at this point.

There are a lot of reveals and hints in the interview. Some examples of interview topics: post-launch plans for user-generated content, an economy without a monetary currency, and details about starship combat. Emmert speculates that cross-platform play and non-region-specific servers are possible, but that no final determinations have been made. Listen to the interview for more!

Hailing Frequency also spoke with STO's new community manager, JR Sutich, who is better known to folks in the MMO community as Razor. He was a regular writer at WarCry before he started with Cryptic. That interview, also available in both audio and video, deals exclusively with the game's community and forums.

If you've got a few minutes to spare, we recommend taking a look at the Champions Online official website. They just posted up their newest Meet the Team article all about their online community relations manager Victor Wachter. This is the guy to find to if you're going to PAX next month, as he'll be there with a playable build of Champions Online and answers to your questions. Well, as many answers has he can reasonably give without punting you down the exhibition hall.

Strangely enough, if you want to get on Victor's good side you could probably bring Japanese pop-music paraphernalia and lots of Diet Pepsi. We know that we'll be doing just that, because a person can never have enough community manager friends. They have access to those mythical, magical beta keys that everyone wants sooner or later.

Attendees of this year's Comic-Con International at San Diego will be able to catch up with members of the Age of Conan team, as Funcom has confirmed that two of their big names will be visiting the convention. Product Manager Erling Ellingsen and US Community Manager Glen "Famine" Swan will both be in attendance and ready for the fans.

The AoC crew will be at the San Diego Convention Center from July 24th through July 27th, in Exhibit Hall G Booth 5129. To assist in your journey to meet them, you can check out the center's floor plans ahead of time. Just remember to be on your toes at their booth -- Conan fans are among the bloodthirstiest of gamers, so keep an eye on any twitchy cosplayers with sharp weapons.

Just a bit over a month ago, SOE introduced EverQuest II fans to a new Community Manager by the name of Amnerys, and this week another CM will join the team. Christie Renzetti (or "Kiara"), formerly of Ten Ton Hammer and Allakhazam, will now be looking after the EQII community along with Amnerys, Gnobrin and Grimwell.

Having started playing EverQuest in 1999, and EQII since its beta, Kiara is certainly qualified to be representing the interests of Norrathians. She has also been very active on the community forums, something which she enjoys and is now lucky enough to be paid for. You can find out more about Kiara and her love of Dark Elves, and add your own personal greeting, at her welcome thread on the official forums.

Masthead Studios has given beta-hopefuls another taste of what's to come in their sci-fi MMO Earthrise. Following the format of their previous two newsletters, Masthead Studios showcases some of what they've created to date on the road to the Autumn 2008 Earthrise beta.

The Earthrise newsletter 'Issue III' announces a fan art contest with autographed concept art to be given away as prizes. On that note, they've also posted concept art of the Eastern Gardens creatures. Earthrise's Community Manager, Moll, highlights a number of interesting discussions on the official forums, namely player accountability (spying, scamming, alt play) and the factions that will polarize players in the game. Check out the latest Earthrise newsletter for the full low-down on how the game is shaping up.

If there's one individual whose position we're glad we haven't been in for the past few months, it's that of Age of Conan Community Manager, Glen "Famine" Swan. We've long been aware of the trials and tribulations that are part of the every day life of your average CM. It's an experience that is trying enough to have forged the bonds of a community management... community. We've seen only small snippets of the almost illogical anger that Age of Conan's troubled launch has provoked, and we can only imagine what it must be like being the front man for such player disappointment.

We were a little disappointed then to see that a recent interview with Famine really failed to dig into any juicy tidbits. Of course, we understand that he wouldn't be able to recount any of the truly horrible details of the last month in print, lest he raise the ire of his community, but we'd have hoped some of the questions would have at least attempted to give the poor man an outlet. At the very least, he mentioned that they're trying to put together a class lead system on the official forums that should help channel feedback to the developers more efficiently than at present.

Some new changes in EVE Online will be deployed on Tuesday, July 1, Community Manager CCP Wrangler announced today. Empyrean Age patch 1.0.1 will reportedly bring fixes to EVE Voice and will also include the previous two optional patches. Further details on what Empyrean Age patch 1.0.1 will include are not currently available, but will be noted at EVE's Patch Notes site, with updated information highlighted in green text. The patch will add roughly 30 minutes to the regularly scheduled downtime, meaning Tranquility will be down from 11:00 to 12:30 GMT.

EVE Online's website -- in its entirety, including the EVE API -- will also be down on July 1, from 12:00 to 16:00 GMT, as CCP Games upgrades its website database server. CCP Wrangler began a discussion thread on the patch at the EVE Information Portal.

Those waiting anxiously for today's Age of Conan patch notes have been left wanting for the last few hours, as the Update Notes forum shows no signs of stirring. An official response was dug up on the German forums, and later confirmed by US community manager "Famine" -- apparently, the cause of the delay is to do with the translation of the patch notes, which must be released in all languages at the same time.

In the meantime, in a similar vein to previous weeks, the community has started up an undocumented patch thread in the forums (from European players who are already playing the new patch since their servers have gone online). However, this week everything is undocumented for now; the OP has promised to sort the thread later on when the official notes come out, removing things that are listed there. If there are enough things that are unique to the community thread at that point, we may revisit it for discussion. Even now, there are some very interesting points in that thread that we would love to bring up, but we'll leave it for you to browse for the time being, and get back to you when the real notes are released.

Update: Patch notes are now available! Dissection coming up.

Masthead Studios has released the second newsletter for their upcoming sci-fi MMO Earthrise. As with their first newsletter, it's full of hyperlinks to images and audio related to the game, however there are a few new additions this time around. We've read about the game itself in recent months, but until now little has been known about the people behind the scenes who are working to make Earthrise a reality. The newsletter features an introduction to the members of the Earthrise development team at Masthead Studios in the form of a short Q&A for each developer.

Each of the devs discusses what brought them to work on the project, their influences, and what they do at Masthead Studios to further the creation of Earthrise. There's also screenshots of a new area on Enterra called The Nest and a hyperlinked recap of Earthrise's media coverage in the last month. But the real focus of the Earthrise newsletters is on the community, and a number of issues are showcased in the latest iteration.

Funcom is hiring for seven Age of Conan-related positions -- three in Europe, and four in the United States.

The European opportunities are all "community coordinator" positions, and bilingual candidates are preferred. If you're looking for work in the United States, you can apply for one of Funcom's customer service positions. The Durham, NC office seeks CS reps in the English, French, German, or Spanish languages.

Funcom is facing some serious community and customer service issues right now, such as exploits and ensuing bans. We don't doubt that the current staff is overwhelmed by all that's going on. Bringing in reinforcements is probably a good call.

Craig "Grimwell" Dalrymple is the Senior Community Manager at SOE, and handles EverQuest 2 specifically. He's been going through his first Beta process with the Rise of Kunark expansion, and jotted down some notes about the process as he went along. His personal site, Grimwell Online, is playing host to some of his thoughts on what it takes for a Guild to get into a Beta test. It's a great, simple guide on what the development team is looking for from the players, and is easily applicable for any Beta experience.

Suggestion #4: Be coherent
"This zone sucks! The Designers are idiots!" That is not coherent feedback. We see stuff like this daily, and the part that is honestly frustrating is that the negative feedback has nothing to act upon. Obviously someone is angry, but why are they angry? What specifically do they not like? Even negative feedback can be delivered coherently.

"I do not like the changes in the zone because the danger factor has been significantly reduced, and the loot is now trivial. All the work my guild put into earning the loot from the boss in the zone is now solo content, and I feel like my work has been devalued."

That's useful negative feedback. It points to risk/reward levels and becomes a valid topic of discussion.

Reports are coming in on the award-winning Lord of the Rings Online's official forums that players are being prompted to enter their username and password when trying to use the in-game help facility. This thread contains posts from some people worried about security issues, some saying that in-game help has always asked you to login, and others disagreeing with them.

It is all cleared up, however, on the second page, when Turbine's Community Manager makes a post confirming that it should not be happening. The quote from CM Patience: "it's definitely borked, and we'll get it fixed as quickly as possible". So if you're worried about entering your login details twice, hopefully there will be a fix going live soon. Just add the name of that annoying gold spammer to your list, and start a voodoo ritual fire the whole thing off when the issue is resolved.