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BattleClinic, a popular EVE Online web resource run by players, now has another thing going in its favor. Matthew Woodward, a Game Designer from CCP Games, has put together an in-character factional warfare guide, which is exclusive to the site. Woodward writes under the guise of one 'Sergeant-Major Illivia', and tries to whip the reader into shape as if they were a new recruit in Boot Camp.

Sergeant-Major Illivia's ranting introduction to factional warfare in the Empyrean Age walks you through militia enlistment, battlefield intelligence, your objectives in the war, and most importantly -- how to stay alive in EVE. It's a clever way of conveying what's involved in factional conflict to a prospective recruit, although Woodward/Illivia does make you feel like a whelp at times. Check out the "Faction Warfare Enlistment Debrief" at BattleClinic for fiction with practical applications.

In the realm of Tolkien's Middle-earth, the ideals of general PvP get a bit complicated. For instance, you would never see bands of Hobbits battling with Elves, or vice versa. It's just not something Tolkien ever envisioned. This is a sticky situation for the developers of an MMO based on Tolkien lore, as PvP is a staple in the massively multiplayer genre. The solution, of course, is to allow players to play as the evil creatures that inhabit these lands. Of course, it is still possible to do a one-on-one duel with another player at any time during the game. This is seen as more of a private skirmish deal, which would happen in any land between any two people for any reason. Perhaps a drunken binge at The Prancing Pony enabled the loosening of your tongue a bit too much? Perhaps that ruffian bloke in the alley over there was eye-balling you a bit too long? Whatever the reason, dueling is a perfectly viable option in Lord of the Rings Online. For the sake of this guide though, we will focus on PvP on a much larger scale.

PvP in LotRO is referred more accurately as PvMP (player versus monster player) and it takes place in one specific area known as the Ettenmoors. It is really unlike most other types of PvP found in more traditional MMOs, as it could almost be considered PvP for PvEers. There are quests to pursue, areas to explore and skills to unlock, yet they're done in a way that is essentially separate from the rest of the game.

Continue through to our PvMP gallery for a complete visual tour of the basics of Monster Play.

The Pirates of the Burning Sea community site has posted a neat guide to making videos of their game, covering a number of different programs, and the finishing touches that can turn a good movie into a great one. It's certainly a nice guide, but you might wonder if there is any particular reason that Flying Lab Software is educating their players so -- and of course, there is.

A new series of contests are on the way for PotBS subscribers, and the objective is to come up with some top-notch tutorial videos. The first contest is based around the art of Boarding Combat, and the winning video should be something that can explain to new players exactly how to succeed at this. The creator of the best video will sail away with a GeCube ATI Radeon HD 3650 graphics card, and entry closes on the 30th of June. You can visit the competition page to get all the specific requirements, and begin your career as a pirate teacher.

There are several reasons to roll a Hunter in Lord of the Rings Online. You can usually do the most damage. You are the primary ranged-attacker. You can track virtually anything in the game. You can provide speed buffs that help you and your fellowship run faster. You can name yourself some clever variation of "Legolas". Whoa wait, no. Please don't ever do that. But the fact of the matter is, the Hunter is a powerful and extremely popular class in the game, and it would never hurt to learn a bit more about the actual usefulness of their skills.

In this guide, we're going to focus on one of the most valuable aspects of the Hunter: the wayfaring or "guide" skills that allow you to quickly and easily teleport yourself or your entire fellowship to certain spots across the map instantly.

In many MMOGs, there appears to be a plague of seemingly useless items you find along your travels. These usually include various animal parts in some disgustingly descriptive state. Many of these items are simply merchant fodder, but there are a fair majority of them which are used in crafting. The frustrating part is discovering which ones are worth the 25 copper the merchant gives you, and which ones are worth 5 gold to another player at the auction house.

In Lord of the Rings Online, this can be especially confusing because you're even teased a bit in the item's description. "This item can be used in crafting" is a frustrating statement, because you're torn between saving the item for a potentially useful rare opportunity in future crafting, or selling it for a few silver and that precious extra inventory slot.

When crusty old EVE Online vets give advice, sometimes the simplest questions are the ones that go unanswered, not because we don't know how to respond, but because they're not often asked, and cover things so blindingly obvious to us that we have forgotten that there was ever a point that we didn't know. This article covers one such instance. One of the uncertainties that plagues a lot of new EVE players is never quite knowing where you're safe. Often, when a shivering noob sticks his or her head out into the Rookie Help channel, or into their noob-corp chat, and asks where they are safe, a horde of jaded veterans come back with "NOWHERE!!!"

To listen to some long-time players, there are suicide gankers and can-flippers hiding behind every asteroid or stargate, waiting to drink your sweet noob tears. The truth of the matter is that, while it is technically true that you are not totally safe anywhere, there are some things that you can do to protect yourself from the flippers, gankers, and scammers out there. A great deal of controversy recently arose over one potential solution to some issues of safety in space, so this is something fresh on the minds of many EVE veterans as well as new players.

It's time, once again, to unleash the prognosticative and philosophical pulchritude of Ask Massively, where the only thing we take seriously is alliteration. As frequent readers (both of you) of this column might know, we are rapidly approaching the release date for Age of Conan, and while I'm sure it will be difficult to find any information on that new and exciting upcoming title, I thought we would touch on something a little more "real world-centric" while getting in the requisite amount of hype at the same time.

Dear Ask Massively

I'm eagerly anticipating the upcoming launch of Age of Conan along with what appears to be 90% of your writing staff. I was fortunate enough to play in the beta, and I have some serious concerns about performance on my machine. I don't think it can all be explained by "debugging code" as you mentioned in a previous column, do you have any suggestions for things I can do in order to get better game play? I know that I'm going to be stuck on the hardware treadmill and eventually be forced to upgrade, I just don't want to have to do it right now. What is a Barbarian-in-training supposed to do?

-Junior Barbarian

Junior, today is your lucky day. Like you, I have been playing the Age of Conan beta, and , like you, I had some fairly severe issues with frame rate. In the interest of full disclosure, I will provide my own system specs after the jump. Suffice to say that my system isn't exactly a "budget gamer" system, but at the same time, it isn't "top of the line" either. I was able to tweak a few settings in the game that improved my game play experience immensely. In fact, it improved it so much that I created a new character and leveled her to 10 in the time it used to take to load a zone in some of the older beta clients. (Editor's note: that's only a mild exaggeration)

If you would like to have your questions answered by our staff of sleep deprived caffeine junkies, drop us a line either via our tip line or via email at ask AT massively DOT com. My most sincere condolences to my long lost Nigerian uncle's family. Had I known that he would leave me 25 million dollars in his will, I may have sent you guys birthday cards every year or something. For more on our topic-du-jour, read on after the jump.

Ten Ton Hammer has done it once again, providing us with one of the most entertaining guides we've seen yet on Age of Conan: a video guide to /emotes! If you're still apprehensive (which has its own /emote) about getting that pre-order for AoC, this might just do it for you.

Seriously though, these emotes are not only entertaining, they're a testament to the amount of detail that has gone into this game. Mostly, emotes are useful in social roleplaying situations, but to find a game that has this many otherwise seemingly-mundane character animations this early before launch shows that either they got the important stuff out of the way first, or they decided emotes are more important than anything else. Um, we're pretty sure it's the latter. May we suggest the /chicken?

Something that's always bothered me about EVE Online's skill system is how often it's misunderstood by new and potential players. A few common myths and misconceptions surrounding the skill system are responsible for putting a lot of potential players off signing up. In this final part of the guide, I debunk two classic myths about the EVE skill system and go on to show you how to get the most out of your skill training time.

Myths debunked #1 - New players can't compete with old ones:
A common thought among new new EVE players and people thinking of signing up is that new players can't compete with old ones. In a world where open PvP reigns supreme, it does sound reasonable to assume that a new player in his lowly frigate has no chance of competing against a three year old veteran player in his tech 2 fitted battleship. This common mistake is usually caused by people misunderstanding how EVE's PvP works. In other MMOs, a lot of emphasis is put on the individual player's gear and abilities. You wouldn't invite a level 20 character along on your level 70 raid in World of Warcraft because they'd be useless. This doesn't really translate into EVE at all.

Read on to see this myth get busted along with another common misunderstanding people have with EVE's skill system.

Most MMOs, among them the popular favorites World of Warcraft and Everquest, employ a level-based character progression system where your player accumulates levels during play. Killing enemies and completing quests reward the player with experience points toward their next level. As the player's level increases, they gain access to better skills and equipment. Alternative systems of accumulating points in various skills have been used successfully in games like Ultima Online and Runescape. These systems still share the familiar idea of your character progressing in their abilities by practicing.

The result is that players who put in more effort reap more reward as their time and effort spent playing their character directly translates into increased power. These tried and tested systems are what players have come to expect from MMOs today. CCP's EVE Online uses a different training system that doesn't reward players with increased abilities for playing the game. Given the MMO genre's tendency toward level-based character progression, it's not surprising that EVE's unique skill system seems foreign and inaccessible to a lot of MMO gamers. In part 1 of this article, I demystify the seemingly complex EVE skill system.

Read on for a condensed breakdown of the system for the typical MMO gamer.

Text communication is perhaps the easiest to grasp for a new player. The key difference between text chat in EVE and text chat in many other games is the sheer volume of available channels. By default, every player is in the channel for their local chat, their corporation, and their alliance (if applicable). In addition, there is an uncountable number of channels out there that you could be chatting in.

When you create your character in Age of Conan, you'll end up the tutorial area of Tortage. In typical MMO fashion, you start off with almost nothing in the world, washed up on the beach without a shirt on your back. However, it isn't long before you've stabbed and sliced your way to bigger and better things, as you progress through the jungle towards the city. Join us as we make that journey, and even glimpse the inside of the city itself, in our look at the opening levels of AoC.

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Can't wait to get into Hyborea? Massively has your early ticket. Check out all of our Age of Conan Beta guides starting on May 1st and continuing throughout the month!

So you think you want to get into Guild Wars PvP. Maybe you've taken a look at Observer Mode and thought, "Hey, I can do that!". For the sake of argument, let's assume that you're a veteran Guild Wars player, but you've focused solely on PvE for the duration of your stay in Tyria. Let's continue the hypotheticals and say you've become quite bored with farming the same vermin, or clearing out the same certain Woe of the Fissure-like nature night after night with PUGs. After almost three years of playing against mobs and spawns with predictable patrol patterns, you're looking for something new to spice up your favorite game.

PvP in Guild Wars can be quite intimidating at first. You can enter one of the arenas, jump into a battle and get slaughtered in a matter of seconds unless you know what you're doing. This might be the very thing that has turned you off of PvP in the past, but we're here to make sure you get off on the right foot to eventually enjoy your PvP experience. You'll be flashing a Phoenix before you know it!