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GameDaily has put together a short piece titled "Game Developers Resolutions for 2009", which is essentially a look at the state of the industry and how they think it can improve. While the piece focuses on video games in general, it does fire a shot at the MMO industry specifically -- namely its dominance by one company, and one title.

GameDaily's fourth resolution it hopes the gaming industry adopts is: "Beat World of Warcraft." They're not knocking the game when they say this. In fact GameDaily says, "World of Warcraft is great, and deserving of its status as the 900-pound gorilla of the gaming world. But as fans of video game football can tell you, competition is a good thing, and it's not healthy for the massively-multiplayer online RPG arena to have one name dominant for this long."

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	One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!

As the Wrath of the Lich King expansion gets closer to release, World of Warcraft players have a number of questions about how the game experience is going to change for them as the title moves forward. Co-lead designer Tom Chilton and producer J. Allen Brack spoke with Oli Welsh from Eurogamer at the Games Convention in Leipzig, about where the Blizzard title is now, and where it's heading.

The interview touched on how Blizzard will handle instances in the Death Knight starting zone in Wrath of the Lich King, with Brack stating that instances won't actually be used. Rather, a player's environment will shift between different world states dependent upon quest progression. Other highlights of their talk include the design aspects of the hero class, faster leveling, and whether new players can really have the same experience that drew so many gamers to World of Warcraft years ago. Be sure to check out the Eurogamer interview for the full story on Wrath of the Lich King, particularly the Achievement system and how Blizzard feels about its growing competition.

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	One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!

We know there are a lot of mixed feelings towards Age of Conan from the MMO-playing public, but for the next community competition, Funcom would like to focus on the good times. Over the next week, players can describe their best AoC moment for a chance to win themselves a custom title on the official forums.

The usual sort of rules apply (no racism or harassment, one entry per account), but there are some you wouldn't guess on your own. Firstly, they're looking for a meaty response, so answers must be more than 5 lines in length. Secondly, you cannot describe an exploit, so even if your very best moment was when you exploited the heck out of the game, you'll need to think of your second best memory for the purpose of this competition. Entries close at 1AM EDT on Friday the 25th of July, and five winners will be chosen after that time. Visit this thread to enter, and heed this final cryptic word of advice from forum moderator Sekhmet:

There may be certain, "ninja" event bonuses to this event during the coming week. So keep watching the thread.

After a tense week of mounting expectation, in which we waited for the promised big news to hit the City of Heroes multimedia forums, the Toyota Matrix Machinima Contest has just been announced. Contestants are asked to put together a video using City of Heroes and/or City of Villains, in which the theme is to be getting in touch with your dark side. After all, even heroes have a dark side of some sort, right? Videos have to be 2-4 minutes long and no more than 200 mb in size.

The Grand Prize is spectacular: 'A 2009 Model Year Toyota Matrix S model filled with a year subscription to "City of Heroes" and "City of Villains," an XBox 360, a Playstation 3, a Nintendo DS gaming console, and tons of super hero video games!' We know there's an ocean of talent out there, so we're anticipating some stellar entries from the CoX machinima crowd.

Details of the contest, along with full rules and regulations, are available at the official website.

You know how epic you are. You know that you're the best dragon-slayer there is, you've saved the most maidens, and have shiny gear that blinds mere mortals as you ride past. It's time to show the world what a hero you are -- and get rewarded for it. As part of EverQuest II's Living Legacy promotion, SOE is running a contest called "Become a Legend", asking entrants to snap a shot of their characters in their best digs, in an interesting location, and include a short history of their character's legendary adventures.

The winning entries will be treated to a digital copy of the next EQII expansion, and Living Legacy merchandise. As well as this, the winning pictures will be displayed at the Station website, and probably at the EQII sites. As always, there are some terms and conditions for this competition. You must be 18 years or older and live in the U.S. to take part -- visit the EQ2Players website to get the full contest details, including picture sizes and word limits.

Dusan Writer has decided to put his money where his mouth is and hold a competition for UI designs for a newbie-viewer, offering a total L$800,000 prize-money for the top three designs.

You don't need to be a coder to participate. This is about designs, so mock-up images are what's required. If you've been foaming at the mouth about how Linden Lab can't make a decent newbie-friendly UI, this is your chance to demonstrate that you're not just full of smoke and wind. The first prize of L$500,000 doesn't exactly sour the pot, either.

We're already itching to see the results, so check out the competition rules and conditions.

I always think it's interesting when I hear developers talk about how World of Warcraft opened up the MMOG market for new entrants. We have all these new and exciting games coming out: Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, The Chronicles of Spellborn, and plenty more. However, the overwhelming response that I get from WoW players when I talk about these games is a blank stare and something along the lines of, "Okay, that sounds all right... but why would I ever want to leave WoW?" I think that developers tend to underestimate how attached people get to their MMOG of choice. There are now over 10 million World of Warcraft players. The question is, do they even want something different?

I've read a number of bloggers in the past few months and talked to a number of players who claim that they're only playing WoW right now because "it's the best thing out there." They're yearning for something else. Not something totally different, mind you, since they obviously have a blast in Azeroth. But something fresh enough to be new and exciting without bastardizing the game style they know and love. However, I've noticed something interesting. This breed of player tends to overwhelmingly be comprised of people for whom World of Warcraft was not their first MMOG. Otherwise, people just want WoW to put more content in and are willing to make do with what they have until then. I think there's an intriguing bit of psychology there that's worth examining.

For the veritable cavalcade of new titles in development to make it in the lucrative massively multiplayer genre, they're all going to have to face the challenge of standing up to the "holy trinity" that is World of Warcraft, Everquest 2, and EVE Online, at least according to Lauren Michele on her blog Mystic Worlds. While there is certainly room for niche titles to make their mark (a category she sets aside for the likes of CoX and Guild Wars) every new game in the MMO space, whether they like it or not, has to compete with the big three. Casual-friendly games have to compete with the polish and spit-shine of WoW, more intense games, both in terms of graphics and mechanics/lore have to compete with EQ2, and any game with aspirations in the PvP or economic niches have to go toe to toe with EVE.

While I might not be inclined to agree with the specifics of her characterization, I think the larger point Lauren makes is extremely salient to developers working within the genre. While second-tier first-person shooters get compared to Halo in the same way that new MMOs get compared to WoW, those new shooters aren't typically competing for those same dollars. The same can't be said for MMOs. While it's true that MMOs are one of the few growth spheres left in gaming, a fact which is largely responsible for the rather dense gaming horizon ahead of us, those new games aren't just going to have to compete with one another -- there's a whole litany of old titles that continue to hold players and represent direct competition. It's about to get a lot tougher out there.

Forsworn, the first expansion to the popular Legends of Norrath trading card game, goes live today. It includes 235 new cards, and 40 loot cards that can be used in EverQuest and EverQuest II to redeem in-game items. Some of the other features that are being introduced to LoN in Forsworn are 2-on-2 multiplayer, raid encounters for groups of players, new single-player scenarios, and the choice to have High Elves and Iksars as avatar races.

We've been given some exclusive card art from the new expansion cards to show off, so be sure to check out the gallery, and after the break there's more information on Forsworn, including details on a competition that will win you some expac cards.

The Forge tackles an interesting question: are fantasy sports MMOs? Some of the more traditional sports fans would probably deny it, but Matt echoes a great case made by Charles Hudson: they feature repetitive gameplay, a combination of luck, skill, and strategy, and there is the obvious social element. I don't know if I would call fantasy sports "virtual worlds" (so this is likely the last you'll see of them on Massively for the foreseeable future), but it's definitely true that both fantasy sports and MMOs share the same type of social gameplay that's made them both so popular.

Now, Matt says they also have a story, and to a certain extent, he's right. The real allure of sports is knowing all the stories behind it-- that Brett Favre's father passed away right before he played, or that the star hockey player is leaving right after the game ends to go see the birth of his baby. Behind all the stats, sports is one big storytelling session, and Sportscenter is the biggest daily soap opera of all time.

But I don't think it's the story element that pulls in fantasy sports players-- it's the competitive element. The numbers all break down, and at the end of the year, you have a clear ranking that says who's better than who at predicting sports outcomes, and by how much. There is a certain amount of that competitive draw in PvP, but MMOs, I think, are far too distant from the actual numbers to make a sports fan happy. They may be interested in story, but at the end of the day, the game comes down to runs, strikes, and outs, and I think that's the way they like it.

Depo Consulting is hosting a fashion design contest in Second Life to support the World Society of Protection of Animals.

The clothing should contain some sort of reference to the charity, whether it be the charities logo or simply an animal- feel free to use your imagination! The more creative the better! There is a 50,000L$ prize to the best design entrant.

Please contact Marissa Meltzer for any further information, or to send your entries. The closing date for this competition is 12/31/2007.