It seems to be a World of Lawsuits (TM) recently in our industry. Bloggers are being sued for libel, NCsoft is being sued for patent infringement, Linden Labs is being sued for trademark violations, Turbine is suing Atari, and now five companies are all being sued over a patent dispute.

The Boston Globe has reported that Paltalk Holdings Inc. has filed a complaint in Texas against Sony Corp., Activision Blizzard Inc., Turbine Inc., NCsoft Corp., and Jagex Ltd. all for games that violate their patent on computers sharing data so that all users can see the same virtual environment. The games in question are EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Guild Wars, and RuneScape (in order of the companies as named above.)

What makes this lawsuit different from the standard patent shakedowns that we've been reporting on is that the patent has already been successfully used in court. Paltalk has already sued, and won against, Microsoft.

If you're a Guild Wars lore-junkie, we have found the perfect Guild Wars 2 interview for you. Ravious over at Kill Ten Rats claims he can talk GW lore for hours and after reading the deep questions he put forth to ArenaNet World Designer and Writer Jeff Grubb, we'll take his word for it.

If you're looking for information about instancing, world PvP, and progression rates, this isn't the interview for you. If, however, it makes you giddy that one of either the Bahltek, undeciphered Asuran banner, or giganticus lupicus will be further explained in GW2, then it might be right up your alley. Jeff also drops some hints about the origins of humans, the dragon prophet Glint, the complex relationship between the world of Tyria, the human gods, and dragons, and a number of other things. The anticipation for everything GW2 related is heating up, so stay tuned to Massively as our very own Shawn Schuster will be speaking with someone from ArenaNet soon.

For those of you who spend their time in Guild Wars-landia, you might want to stop for a moment and take a look at game designer Linsey Murdock's most recent journal entry. In it she details some major changes coming to the PvP formats of Guild Wars, specifically the closing of the Hero Battles format and the conversion of Team Arena into a new Sealed Deck format.

Sealed Deck is a game type that has been used at past Penny Arcade Expo showings of Guild Wars, and it has become popular enough to warrant being added into the game. The main drive behind changing up Team Arena and Hero Battles are due to the waning number of players that participate in those formats, as well as some very brutal flaws in the Hero Battles format.

Beyond the addition of Sealed Deck, Linsey also details some other changes to PvP, such as the addition of henchmen that have builds designated by the community, temporary downtime for the Xunlai Tournament House, and many other tasty tidbits. If you're looking for the full info, check out her post over on the Guild Wars wiki.

Feeling in an artsy mood? Then you'll be happy to know that Guild Wars 2 now has a forthcoming official art book entitled The Art of Guild Wars 2. The book will be hardbound and stuffed with 128 pages of work by ArenaNet's award-winning artists.

The official website touts that this book is a must-have for Guild Wars fans. If the concept art available online is any indication, that doesn't really seem like an overstatement. We wouldn't be too shy about putting some of these pieces of art on our walls in a nice frame, so huge a hardbound art book wouldn't be such a bad coffee table item. If you don't believe us, just take a look at the gallery.

There have been rumblings for weeks about an open beta for Aion, NCsoft's latest MMO and the company has finally confirmed details about what we can expect. North American and European gamers who may not have gotten access to the Closed Beta Tests will get an opportunity to sample Aion, exploring the beautiful world of Atreia as either an Asmodian or Elyos. The beta will take place between September 6th – 13th and will include the new Westernised character customization options, as well as a chance to see The Shadow of Balaur, the newest patch which was added to the Korean version of the game in August.

As with the final CBTs, the open beta will have a level cap of 30, which means new players to the game can experience ascension to Daevahood as well as the PvPvE area known as the Abyss. Gamers who pre-ordered Aion will also get access to the pre-select and a two-day headstart before the game officially launches on September 22nd in the US and the 25th in Europe. The pre-select will take place on September 18, while Aion's headstart period will begin September 20. So if you want to take part, it might be wise to pre-order now, especially given the new Guild Wars cross promotion we told you about earlier in the week.

Gordon of the We Fly Spitfires blog wrote a post that has generated some pretty good discussion on this very topic. His original argument is that people don't seem to mind spending upwards of $70 on a singleplayer game that will deliver anywhere from 10-80 hours of gameplay, yet you will rarely find someone willing to pay $50 for an MMO to enjoy it for the same amount of time and then put it aside (insert unnecessary WoW tourist joke here).

By their very design MMOs are built for long-term committment. How many times have you been able to hit the level cap in an MMO and experience even half of what it has to offer in a single month of play? The goal of MMOs it seems is to suck players into a long-term committment and get them to either subscribe at $15/month or spend money on microtransactions. Semi-successul MMOs can be quite lucrative, so maybe we aren't expecting enough? That said, a game like GTA IV has worldwide revenues of $1.1 billion (or more) yet gamers don't expect to get as much enjoyment out of it over the long term as they do from MMOs. One wonders how a game like Guild Wars fits into all of this.

We've all seen the brand new Guild Wars 2 trailer from last week, right? The one that starts out with lightly-animated concept art, but eventually breaks into actual in-game footage? That in-game footage caused one of the strangest sounds to erupt from the Guild Wars fan community: a mix of a sigh and a squee. It's quite a unique sound. You should try it.

With so much time being taken between our last bit of news and this full-blown trailer, GW fans were beginning to seriously lose hope. I have been an advocate for Guild Wars 2 since the day it was announced, although I did have some reservations about the divulged game mechanics at first. It seemed ArenaNet was giving up on its unique approach to online games and what the founders learned at Blizzard, and converting it into every other MMO out there. The original Guild Wars broke so much ground that it literally raised a new generation of gamers. Solved were the problems of finding a group, grinding for XP, discovering which server your friends played on and camping spawns. Guild Wars popularized the solutions to these problems and offered them in a streamlined package that didn't cost you a dime each month. It's exactly what many gamers were waiting for to get them into the MMO space, including myself.

Everyone loves wings right? That's one of the reasons Aion appeals so much. Well NCsoft has launched a little cross promotion based on that fact. Essentially it boils down to this: if you buy a first edition of Aion (either the steelbook or the shiny Collector's Edition) you'll get a special emote which will be tied to your account. This will then allow you to summon a pair of wings in Guild Wars!

Unfortunately the wings are purely cosmetic, your Guild Wars avatar won't be able to take to the air but the wings will move and look awfully authentic (as seen in the image to your left). The emote itself can be triggered by typing /aion in any Guild Wars title. Before you ask, it's completely free, has unlimited uses and will become active on September 22nd, the day Aion launches in North America. However it is worth stressing that the code can only be gained by getting physical versions of the game, not through digital download. The code emote is also available to gamers both in North America and Europe and will be tied to your account forever.

For more information on how to get and redeem your emote, as well as check out what it will look like, click here.

With so many people indicating they too cannot wait for Guild Wars 2, we'd make a bet a whole bunch of people who haven't been in Guild Wars for a little while jumped back in to enjoy some time there this weekend. Then you have people who regularly play like today's One Shots contributor, Brittle Bullet, who sent in this frosty, luminous Guild Wars image. He writes in: This screenshot is from Guild Wars: Eye of the North. The final level of the Frostmaw's Burrows dungeon, where Frostmaw the Kinslayer, the second largest creature in the game, resides. It's a long and treacherous journey to this place, so it's nice that the lair of a dangerous beast is so beautiful.

If you're one of the many returning - or still present - Guild Wars players, we'd love to see some screenshots from you! All you have to do is email them to us at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name, the name of the game, and a quick description. We'll show them off and let others know of your adventures.

It has been such a long time since we've heard anything on ArenaNet's Guild Wars 2. In fact, the game has been so quiet over the years (yes, it has been over 2 years) that we often find ourselves reporting on every single tidbit we find, and then some.

Well, now we get official word from ArenaNet's president himself that solid news is coming. According to Mike O'Brien's wiki talk page, we should expect some information on Guild Wars 2 in what he's calling "an exciting week ahead". With PAX coming in two short weeks, could this be an announcement of GW2 being shown there? We're excited to find out ourselves, but in the mean time, check out the animated logo on the main Guild Wars 2 website, and follow along after the jump for Mike O'Brien's exact quote.

This particular chunk of info came from the game's official FAQ, which was recently updated. Well, it sounds like a reasonable price.

Sure, we could say more about the news. We could discuss how Guild Wars seems to have done amazingly well with their business model, and that it's surprising that nobody else has followed in their footsteps until now. Also, we could say how almost every aspect of this game breaks the standard MMO mold and that it's incredibly refreshing.

These are all things we could say, but that really don't need to be said, because if you're reading this now we assume you're just as excited for Realtime Worlds' All Points Bulletin as we are -- and really, that's all that needs to be said.

Being something of a monster hunter, at least in the virtual sense, I've certainly come across my fair share of monsters. In many ways, the monster defines the MMO genre, providing the adversity by which adventure can happen. We head out and conquer, freeing the world of peril and are heroes as a result, but none of this can happen without the monsters putting the world in jeopardy in the first place!

The great majority of the enemies in our MMOs are often quite unremarkable, existing as little more than wandering piñatas stuffed with loot and advancement. Plundered from commonplace mythology and incarnated again and again, we've all beaten plenty of skeletons, orcs, wolves and bandits, often in alarming numbers during the typical quiet week-day evening. This kind of riff-raff is very much the bread and butter of our online adventuring, but every now and then, something a bit different comes charging at us. Follow me into the Billiard Room, where I shall show you the stuffed heads of some of my own personal favourite monsters!

Here in Redefining MMOs we've been over terminology, working with lore, the place of soloing in our online games, players acting as developers, and attempting to get away from the carbon copy feel of the genre. With all of that in mind, where could we possibly head to next? Well, how about dealing with persistence?

One persistent world holding thousands of players simultaneously, a world that continues even when you log off. That was the dream, wasn't it? Having an insane number of players all occupying the same game space? Having you and 100 of your closest friends (or perhaps enemies) battling it out over loot, bosses, pvp, and anything else the game had to offer? Persistence has long been one of the central aspects of the MMO genre, where "one continuous world" rules over all. So is persistence what defines an MMO or is it not that clear cut? Perhaps persistence is nothing more than a pesky piece of unpleasant pie and maybe we shouldn't define our genre by it as we do now.

In this issue of Redefining MMOs, I'm going to tackle the thorny issue of persistence, from its definition down to what we perceive the word to mean. I'm also going to include a discussion on two very different games -- 1 vs. 100 and Chromehounds -- and put both to the MMO persistence test. Then, as the article all comes together, I'm going to tackle the biggest question of them all: "Does persistence matter?" If you have an opinion on this week's subject, feel free to leave a comment on page 3 or even write your own "Redefining MMOs" blog post and leave a comment with the URL.