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Thomas "Hanse" Eidson, designer on the SOE title Star Wars Galaxies, has released another developer diary detailing his latest efforts to improve the game. The upcoming Game Update 5 will tackle the Beast Master expertise system, a sort of alternate advancement path every class can use to tame and train fearsome beasts. It was introduced in Chapter 6, and in this newest patch will see a number of usability and game design tweaks. Many of them are simple quality of life issues; you'll be able to call you beast in combat, for example, and there's a new dye system in place the will allow you to recolor your pet even after it leaves the cloning vat.

Eidson also notes some major 'under-the-hood' revamps. The way a beast's happiness worked was arcane and hard to understand, both from a player perspective and in the code. Beast happiness has been refactored, with the end result being that beasts can be made happier, more easily. From the player perspective, this will result in beasts doing more damage and earning experience more quickly - a much requested feature. Additionally beasts can now be stuffed, their movements should be more in-line with player expectations, and eggs and enzymes are more informatively named. An interesting look behind the scenes - expect Game Update 5 on the live servers soon!

Deployment 8, the most recent patch to Tabula Rasa, just rolled out to the live servers earlier this week. With that patch came a number of changes, including avatar tweaks, a number of combat balance changes, and a wholescale reshaping of some parts of the world. Probably the most pronounced changes can be seen in the upper-level instance known simply as the Magma Caves, a group instance for players around level 45. Some of the lore elements behind these changes are explored in a pair of Journal entries, hosted over at the GameZone site.

For your edification and enjoyment, we have for you today a pair of developer diaries that explain precisely how that instance was reshaped - based partly on your input. Mission Designer Jason Ford and Michael Hutchinson, the game's Lead World Designer, have comprehensive discussions of map remoulding, NPC prepping, and mission re-writing as it applies to the new/old instance. Read on below the cut for a look at the new face of Tabula Rasa's Magma Caves.

Videogamer.com is featuring a new developer diary for Age of Conan, presented by Erling Ellingsen, all about the mounted combat that will be found in the game. Rather than going into fine details about the system, Ellingsen elects to describe some of the cool things that will be possible when engaging in mounted combat.

Players will get to either fight while on their mount, or actually use their mount as a weapon. With the former, the faster you are moving, the more damage you will inflict upon a target, making old fashioned drive-bys the order of the day -- Ellingsen says that you can lop someone's head off as you zoom past, if you're going fast enough. It will also be possible to make your mount attack, and these attacks vary depending on the animal you're riding. Check out the roughly two-minute video to see the mounts in action, rearing up and knocking crowds of enemies to the ground.

We've been following the development of the Lineage 2 Hellbound expansion, and it sounds like there's some interesting stuff in there for veteran players. A brand new pet upgrade system, new mounts to carry you into battle, and of course the perils of the Steel Citadel itself. Facing down Beleth sounds like a truly epic encounter.

Today NCsoft has sent over a dev diary running down the numerous features we'll see in next week's release of the expansion and the 4th Anniversary edition of the game. Along with all the expansion goodies (a new level cap included), the 4th Anniversary edition has some nice toys, like half-mask, a piggie friend, and discounted veteran rewards. Fun fact: did you know that you can change your avatar's gender in Lineage 2 for the price of $10?

Read on for the full details on Hellbound and the 4th Anniversary edition of the game (and pine with us that we in the states don't get anything as cool as the EU Collector's Edition.)

Writing a compelling game story is no easy feat. Now imagine being responsible for the innumerable and layered storylines in an MMO, constantly evolving and needing to fit with everything else -- sounds like a nightmare, doesn't it? Lead writer for Warhammer Online Matt Daniels would beg to differ. He has penned a new developer diary, in which he goes over his role in bringing the Warhammer setting to life, and it sounds like it's nothing but fun. A big challenge, but still fun.

It seems we somehow missed the previous developer diary as well, which features content director Destin Bales talking about the roughly-ten-thousand pages of documentation that the content team has come up with for WAR. This covers a huge range of things, from the basic premise of the game, to very detailed content information. You'll even get to read an example of the work found in the content documents, with a full description of the "Mount Bloodthorn" zone pasted at the bottom of the article. Check out both Daniels' and Bales' dev diaries, and we'll be sure to keep our eyes out for the next one.

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.

After extended maintenance yesterday, the Lord of the Rings Online servers are finally up with the Book 12 The Ashen Wastes content patch locked and loaded. We've already drooled over all the new features in our earlier post, so we'll spare you the rehash here. Instead, you can watch a trailer for Book 12 where LotRO's Executive Producer, Jeffrey Steefel, rehashes it for us. What a sweet guy.

We also have a second video that tells the story behind the latest content. Even if you're not a LotRO fan, it's worth a look. The voice work and storytelling are very good.

The videos can be clicked full screen and are embedded after the jump.

Making a Massive game is mighty complicated. According to programmer Matt Boudreaux at SOE-Austin, no part of the development process is more interconnected than making the pretty avatars move correctly on the screen. The animation process is the subject of a developer diary at the official Star Wars Galaxies site. Matt explains some of the steps required to get an SWG character looking just right.

The basics of animation start with the artists, he details. They create the 'skeleton' on which a mob or avatar is built. With the skeleton in place, designers step in to apply specific animations to activities. In SWG, animations tend to be focused around the tool you're using. Two players using the same attack might see completely different animations because they're using different weapons. Plenty more on the process rounds out his description, which is well worth exploring.

The Lord of the Rings Online team at Turbine are committed to keeping the playerbase in the loop on behind-the-scenes happenings with their developer diaries. Sometimes these are lengthy written diaries (as with the recent Book 12 Guardian changes entry) but there are also a lot of video diaries available to view. These tend to contain more introductory information, but are always well presented and worth a watch.

Turbine has just announced that they have added a whole bunch of new developer video diaries to their video section, and are giving you the gentlest of nudges to go and check them out. Some of these videos existed before around the site, but they are now all located in one area for easy browsing, so there's no reason not to take a peek at what's on offer.

Turbine has been concocting major revisions to the classes of The Lord of the Rings Online since launch. In the forthcoming Book 12 update (now titled "The Ashen Wastes"), the Guardian and Burglar classes will get full treatment, but Champions will see some boons as well. Those boons have been detailed in the latest dev diary entry.

As we learned on the forums a while back, Champions will receive "Ardour," a new stance which strikes a balance between offense and defense. Previously, they had only the mostly-useless default and the haphazardly offensive Fervour stances until late in life. Glory, the defensive stance that they presently get at level 46, will be moved all the way back to level 30, because the 30s are arguably when Champions are most often called upon to tank.

The class will also get some major revamps to its Legendary Skills. If you want all the minute details, Turbine reps went even deeper on the official forum. We Champs have a lot to look forward to!

Cheyenne Mountain's Chris Klug served another dev diary to RPG Vault. This is the third such diary, and it continues the work that the previous entry began -- an exposition on Stargate Worlds' quest and storytelling philosophies.

Klug describes a mission he had worked on in Earth & Beyond, in which players were forced to make a critical moral choice. Apparently Stargate Worlds' missions will follow a similar formula. This sounds a bit like what you'd find in Mass Effect, but it's (apart from Earth & Beyond) not something we've seen much in MMOs. Tabula Rasa claims to involve some choices like that, but that's about it.

Klug promises to go into more detail later, but for now, the diary doesn't have much. This is what we've come to expect from Cheyenne -- frequent, tiny drops of information.

A new Lord of the Rings Online developer diary has been posted on IGN.com, under the title of Raids. Upon watching it, however, it seems that it is more about explaining the basics of Fellowships and Kinships, only touching on raids briefly.

If you're an experienced LotRO player, this video won't contain too much to excite you, but it is a nice introduction to the game's partying and guild systems for any beginner. Fellowship Maneuvers are brought up, and this is probably the best nugget of information that anyone starting out in the game could take from the video.

So if you feel like some informative light entertainment -- and aren't too busy decorating your new crib -- click below and let executive producer Jeffrey Steefel fill you in on LotRO's team features.