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During their most recent Media Day, Cryptic Studios gave journalists a look at the current state of development of Champions Online. After several interesting presentations, including a talk about the IP by Jack Emmert, we were allowed a sit-down with the game, playing through two zones: Stronghold Prison and Snake Gulch.

While both sessions were somewhat managed, the experience was still exciting and rich, owing in no small part to the action-based gameplay -- a deliberate decision on Cryptic's part. Directly below, new screenshots for the gallery, and our impressions of what we played follow, after the jump.

Lockpick Entertainment has been hard at work on the relaunch of their fantasy MMORTS Dreamlords the Reawakening, and their efforts have not been in vain. This title is just as rich and complex a game as you'd hope for. If you're the type of gamer who likes getting your hands dirty, the level of micromanagement alone will please you. As for the rest of you, you'll have to decide for yourselves whether DtR is your cup of tea.

To help you with that decision, we've put together this First Impressions post. Keep in mind that this is not a guide -- we have no insider knowledge to report. This is merely a record of our opinions and experience playing this game for the first few hours. As always, you can click on the pictures for their hi-res versions. Onward!

Mysterious dark clouds shot with some evil energy have appeared all over Norrath, in every zone. But they are more than they seem -- they are not storms at all, but portals into the endless realm of the Void itself. The Void Storms gather up the local creatures and implant creatures of blackest shadow within them, then hold them in thrall until the creature has complete control.

In EverQuest II's Game Update 46, you will be tasked with uncovering the mystery of the Void Storms, and freeing the native creatures of Norrath from their baleful influence. Your dedication will not go unrewarded; full sets of appearance armor (and one set of ... non-appearance armor) are yours for your hard work. Unusual weapons, a cart-load of house items, and even a pet goblin are also waiting for you ... in our exclusive GU46 gallery, that takes you through the entire quest and the rewards offered for your continued dedication to Norrath's cleansing.

We stood in front of a peaceful shrine, adorned with a book and an inlaid gem. This little shrine in the lower level area of Delera's Tomb is a monument one of D&D's greatest champions, co-creator Gary Gygax -- it stands in the middle of the area where the man himself narrated some of the ingame DM text. Paiz also told us that there would be event quests and items associated with Gygax in the game, and though we didn't get to see any of those, it seemed like a fitting tribute to one of the men who came up with the foundation of all these games we play.

Then, we were whisked away (via admin commands in the client) to another updated low level area, Three Barrel Cove. This area was one of the first created for the game a long time ago (all of the Turbine employees present at the play session admitted that it "preceded" all of them), and since so many players will be leveling up again with the Monk class, the devs decided to revamp the approximately level 5 area, and make it bigger, clearer, and completely redistribute the monsters within. This is only one of a number of changes made to the entire game to accomodate the new class -- Paiz said that they did a "full equipment pass" on all the items to make sure that Monks were itemized throughout the levels.
The first area within Three Barrel that we got to see was The Black Loch, a huge pirate ship in a cave that serves as the tavern and hub for the area. Everything was very pirate-themed (though the pirate vs. ninja battle, we were told, would have to wait for another game update), and the devs said they had a lot of fun playing with the pirate asthetic, and turning all of the different races and groups in the game into pirate versions of themselves.

This showed in our first quest, too -- in order to prove our worth as pirates, the party was asked to make it through Rackham's Trial, a test that a pirate captain gave to recruits. There were traps aplenty inside the quest, and as we carefully (and sometimes not so -- we sprung quite a few traps just by walking into them accidentally), the devs talked about how they try to both mix up the gameplay with different types of puzzles, but also give players who aren't as interested in mind games and tricks ways to avoid them if preferred.
One example given was an "agility test" -- there were a series of ladders heading up a vertical tunnel, and as players, we had to jump from ladder to ladder (sometimes even from one side of the tunnel to the other) to make our way up top. After a few tries, we weren't getting too far, so the devs pointed out that there was another entrance in the instance that led past the trap, so only one player had to beat the test and then let everyone else through.
But on the other hand, the devs said, they didn't want to make the puzzles too easy. They also showed us an extremely elaborate puzzle that could have been designed by Rube Goldberg, consisting of a number of different floor designs, levers, dart machines, and rotating directors. With the short time we had to try the trap, we didn't even get through the first phase of it, but as tough as it was, that didn't even compare to the second trap we saw:
In a quest to save a fellow pirate, we made our way through a dungeon, and eventually ended up in a room where the man we were looking for stood in a cage in the middle. As we entered, he beckoned us not to move, but at the devs' hinting, we took a look up around the walls of the room -- every single square inch of the large pedestals of the room was covered in a kind of rotate-able jigsaw puzzle (this one will be familiar to D&D Online players, as you play a much, much simpler version of it early on in the game). The idea was to rotate the pieces to line up and make light paths, but in this gigantic version of that puzzle (the dev who made it, we were told, "is probably certifiably crazy"), there's one twist: every wrong move gets our friend in the cage shocked, and too many shocks means a dead friend and a failed quest. Players who like puzzles will find no shortage of things to do in Module 7.

Our final stop in Three Barrel Cove was in the outer area, to get a look at one of the two new monster types in Module 7, the Sahaguin, a race of fishmen armed with spears living on the coast near the pirate ships. Their design and animations were suitably impressive (their spears did a fun flip before planting themselves in the sand when the creatures died), and we were told that this is only the beginning of the story for these creatures.

After a look at the updated lower level area, we then headed to a wreckage that will also be very familiar to D&D Online players, and that serves as the mouth of the new higher level quests dungeons in Module 7.

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Yes, it's our old friend the Marketplace Tent, now completely destroyed, with a small hole in the middle leading to the Subterrane. The devs told us that there will be a world event to open up the entrance -- the Grandmasters of the Twelve have gathered at the ruined Marketplace Tent and face a barrier, and they'll need players' help to open it up (how that's done wasn't fully explained, but Turbine did say that, in order to balance out server population issues and other differences between the servers, they may be tweaking the quest per server). The server we played on, however, had already had the quests completed, so we jumped down into the instance after the devs, and checked out the new higher-level content.
Inside, you will find a huge cavern, and three different entrances to three different areas within the raid level. The first vortex we entered went, we were told, to the Undead Giant area, where huge skeletons rose from the ground to start beating down our little Monk with all their might. We were playing with just the three of us, but in the actual game, the instance will be open to a full twelve players at a time, and from the forces we met down there, players will need a full group to survive.
The other new enemies we saw down below (besides the fishmen) were "living spells," animate versions of various spells. A Finger of Death spell nabbed a few ability points from our Monk, while a Fireball spell beat on the devs' characters -- while the spells don't have a lot of form to them, they aren't any slouches in the damage and annoyance department.

With not much time, we moved ahead quickly to an area the devs called the "Treasure Room," where, when a lever was pulled, a platform fell out below us and we plunged through a long, deep cavern (past glowing circles in the air), into a room full of gold. We didn't have any time to grab it, though, as a few giant skeletons, one of them a boss, and a whole lot of spectres flew in to beat the life out of us.

The devs explained that during this battle, the boss would eventually throw players back up into the air, and that those glowing circles we had passed represented safe zones, so players would have to aim for those to avoid large amounts of damage. And here, our old friend Abundant Leap came back into play -- as we were thrown up in the air, one of the Monks with us did a quick Abundant Leap sideways before being hit by a trap, and suddenly he was safe in the middle of one of the circles. Seriously: best Monk ability ever.
After the Undead Giant area, we headed next to the Xoriat area, where we saw a few familiar D&D foes -- Beholders patrolled the caverns, while Mind Flayers stalked the party from all sides, and pools of acid threatened every step we took. The DDO team, we should say, takes great pleasure in the Beholders -- not only did we see a new type called a "mini-beholder" ("It's like a little dog," says Paiz, "you just want to love him and hold him and let him take your levels off of you."), but we were told that somewhere in the Xoriat area, there "may or may not be a room full of ancient Beholders" for players to discover, or, probably more wisely, avoid.
The final area we visited in the Subterrane was the Devil area, and here's where players will see some familiar devilish faces from the previous content, as well as get some hints on the next Module, when players will actually take the fight to the plane of Shavarath itself.

But what is a dungeon without raid bosses? We also got to take a look at two big boss fights that will challenge players inside this new high-level content.

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Dungeons & Dragons Online continues to hold their own in a quickly-growing MMO world. When DDO first showed up as a licensed MMO of the grandaddy of roleplaying games, their main goal was just to meet expectations -- so many people have been a fan of the pen-and-paper game for so long that putting it into MMO form was no easy task. But since release, the DDO team has made improvement after improvement, and added so much content to the game that it's moved beyond the license to stand on its own as a very singular kind of MMO.

Massively got a chance to sit down with the team and take a look at the latest update, Module 7, due out on June 3, and currently in public testing. In addition to some extended playtime with the new Monk class, we got to see updates to the lower level Three Barrel Cove area, a shrine to recently passed-on D&D creator Gary Gygax, and the new raid area under the destroyed Marketplace tent, as well as a few new monsters and raid bosses that can be found down there.

To start your tour through Module 7, just roll a d20 and click on through. To jump to any section of the walkthrough (including directly to our exclusive video preview, if that's what you're looking for), hit the links after the break.

Tabula Rasa is a peculiar game compared to many in that the difficulty of enemy encounters usually isn't measured by enemy strength, but by their numbers and composition. Man to man, your typical AFS soldier is more than a match for even the toughest units the Bane can throw at them. While that would seem to make the game a cakewalk, this is balanced by the fact that the enemy usually travels in roaming packs, containing enemies of different types that complement and balance each other. The difficulty of the game is largely derived from finding ways to pick apart these units before they can burn you down.

Among the many changes to come to Tabula Rasa in the most recent patch on the public test server is a new, enhanced enemy AI. For whatever reason, the Destination Games team decided to amp up the difficulty of enemy encounters by increasing so-called "aggro sharing" between enemy monsters. Having given the new build some time on the test server, we've got some thoughts and criticisms.

Looking for something to do on this lazy Sunday afternoon? Have a Vanguard character just out of your early teens? The official site has a tip: why not check out the area surrounding Ksaravi Gulch? The entire zone, including a sort of open-air dungeon, was revamped back in the December game update. Now they're highlighting it as the perfect place to level from about 15-20. Their walkthrough makes for entertaining reading even if (like myself) you're not a player.

The great thing about the gulch is that there's a very specific story being told - it includes a number of villains, some fantastic rewards at the end, and even a temporary flying mount. The flying mounts were just added in the fourth game update last month, and access to them normally requires a high level character. Within the confines of the gulch, though, you'll have access to a black wyvern to assist your lightning strikes on the brutal Ksaravi pirates. Yarr!

Coming this Tuesday, April 8th, along with the rest of EQ2's Live Update 44 is the Shard of Hate. It follows last year's Shard of Fear and Estate of Unrest free, nostalgia-drenched content updates. Unlike those other two, though, the Shard of Hate is a raid zone. EQ2 lead designer Akil "Lyndro" Hooper was kind enough to take some time out of his day to show us around the spite-filled roads and alleys of this small, deadly fragment of Innoruuk's demesne.

You'll find the portal to the Shard of Hate in the dark elf section of Nektulos Forest -- go all the way east, then head north. You may see the Avatar of Hate lurking nearby, but he'll let you in. It's safe to zone in, but don't move around much; patrols come close to the zone in.

Mabinogi is an engaging MMO by Nexon, the makers of Maple Story, Audition, and Kart Rider. The name is derived from the Mabinogion, a collection of old Welsh stories. In that sense, it's well-named; Mabinogi is billed as 'your fantasy life', and much of what happens in the game follows a gentle, pastoral atmosphere -- even the combat, to a certain degree. We had the chance to check this out, now that it's in open beta, and here's what we found. Keep in mind that this is not a guide -- we have no insider knowledge to report. This is merely a record of our opinions and experience playing this game for the first few hours. Excelsior!

You've got to love that "new world smell". Sword of the New World or Granado Espada was created by imcGames and the creator of Ragnarok Online, Hakkyu Kim. K2 Networks has brought the game to North America and has made it free to play via the GamersFirst network. I'm not one to pass up a free to play game and since I had already been eyeing Sword of the New World with interest, it seemed like the perfect setup.

The first step was to create an account on GamersFirst. The site/network plays host to a number of free to play games you can gain access to and manage from their site. They also have giveaways and who doesn't love giveaways? Brace yourself, however, the game client is a 3-gig download and then you need an additional 600mb patch once you start the game. My advice: start the download before you go to work, provided you have a job. Then, start the patch when you come home for lunch. By the time you get home, the game should be ready to play and you'll be ready to go where no one ... well, where a bunch of people have gone before. But it will be new to you!

Do you like anime? Do you crave Kung-fu? Do you salivate over anything with "Naruto" in the title? If so, Zu Online might be a game for you. Zu Online is the latest free-to-play game to come from the Internet Gaming Gate (IGG), a prolific MMOG developer. It seems this crew launches a new MMO every month. What does that mean for the masses of players out there? Well ... good and bad news.

I decided to take a little tour of Zu Online by giving it a few hours of my time. What I found might surprise you.

It's pretty fair to say that Turbine's Dungeons and Dragons Online has never been one of the biggest players in the MMO space-- it was released with relatively little fanfare, and though the setting (Wizards of the Coast's Eberron setting from the pen-and-paper D&D game) appealed to a lot of roleplayers, Turbine's choice to make the game a real-time combat experience turned off many of the hardcore D&D crowd.

But since release, DDO has definitely forged a small but strong fanbase. In the game's just under two short years of existence, they've already released fourteen major updates. The latest, Module 6, is due out next week, and Turbine offered us a chance to take a spin in the new content, and join Senior Producer Kate Paiz, Lead Designer Stephen Murray, and Quest Designer Joe Barry in a run through the brand new raid instance, The Shroud. Read on to learn where they took me and what it was like to take down a big red demon in the newest raid.

For as long as I can stand it, I'm going to commit the next batch of First Impressions to free Mac MMOs, a list of which I found on the Apple Geeks forums (thanks, DarkChronic!). We start the fun with Eternal Lands, which is very much a homebrew effort, meaning that no one's getting paid for developing this game. In fact, the home site makes a point of welcoming volunteer help and encouraging donations. Having said that, I will say that I'm impressed by what's there, even if it's not something I'll be spending any more time playing.

Why won't I be going back to Eternal Lands? Call me spoiled, but even free MMOs have to compete with mindshare, and it's difficult to 'dumb down' expectation of graphical quality and user interface sophistication. I'm going to be as gentle as I can be here, given that this is a for-the-love-of-the-game effort, but some snarkiness may sneak through. Remember, kids, this is not a guide, this is not an in-depth look. It's a post about how the first hour or so of a game strikes me, with no preconceptions or foreknowledge. Pray for Mojo.