While Linden Lab allows you to submit a DMCA notice via post or fax, there is a third option that's valid while you're waiting for the promised new DMCA process to come along.

While many service- and platform-providers insist that they do not accept emailed DMCA notices, if you submit them correctly, the provider is lawfully obligated to accept them. Interestingly, a proper DMCA notice by email can actually give the recipient more surety about the identity of the submitter than faxed or posted notices.

It's a new day, and a new subscription. Fresh outfit, powers, setting, rules and things to remember. If you don't know that Champions Online has launched, then you've been hiding under a sizeable rock.

The odds are you didn't read the manual, and face it, most folks just aren't going to, despite its brevity. There's also some tips and tricks that you're just not going to get out of it, and the last thing you want with a new MMOG is to screw up your build and tactics, right?

So, with that in mind, we've rounded up a number of simple things to remember to help you get more out of your Champions Online character.

Everyone's favorite annoying Windurstian Black Mage is back, and she's kicking Chaos's butt in Final Fantasy Dissidia for your PSP. So why are we telling you this? Well we figured you might want to pick up this powerful little tarutaru to not only show your love for online games, but also to completely screw with your friends. It's pretty embarassing when you lose to someone playing Tidus, but it's even more embarrassing to lose to a small, cute, self-rhyming tarutaru. Especially one as self-centered as the Professor.

If you're looking to grab Shantotto, first beat Dissidia and collect all of the crystals. Once that's done, Cosmos (our intrepid FFXI Altana-esque character) will remember spending a period of time with Professor Shantotto.

At its heart, tier (as it is called in Second Life) is the capacity to own land. This capacity is paid for in a number of steps (or tiers, hence the name). Each ownership capacity tier is double the area of the previous tier.

Tier is a ubiquitous concept in Second Life, but a frequently misunderstood or an incompletely understood one. Understanding land-tier in Second Life is important, whether you are owning, renting, or part of a group that owns land, so read on, and we'll tell you all about it.

No, not the torture of avatars – who cannot be harmed, nor even restrained against their will – but what is called prim torture. You see, prims (those deliciously smart building blocks from which almost everything in Second Life is made) can be made to behave very oddly, if you do things just right. With just the right settings in the right order, you can make a host of shapes that they were never actually designed to have.

The gentle art of prim torturing (also called prim twisting) has been documented extensively in a catalogue of shapes by Second Life user Ayumi Cassini. It isn't every possible shape you can make, but there's a bewildering array of unusual and useful forms. By all means, check out Ayumi's guide, and be inspired.

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	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

Realistically, there are ton of things that can go wrong with scripted systems in Second Life. Most of them can be worked around comparatively easily, if you're willing to pay a little attention to the details.

Skimping on those details can lead to runaway objects, or even executing a distributed denial-of-service attack against your own systems. A lot of people do skimp, however. Sometimes it's sloppiness, but more often it's just a matter of inexperience. Sometimes you need to be bitten before you think of these things. Some of us have been bitten more than once.

Over the last couple of weeks, a larger number of our readers than usual have decided to give Second Life a try (in some cases, a second try after some years). It seems appropriate therefore to lay out some essential tidbits to help you get to grips with your first few hours in Second Life.

From quick graphical tune-ups to how to get help, we've got the stuff you need to know first.

This is a topic we get queries about every day of the week. I've previously written a more general "How go get yourself unbanned" piece, which you should definitely also read, but this guide will be specific to Second Life.

What should be helpful advice, and something we strongly urge you to consider is that you shouldn't do things that will get you banned to start with. However, the regrettable fact is that you're quite probably reading this because you didn't take that advice in the first place.

Your options are now very limited, but let's go through what you have to do to get unbanned.

Did you ever want to see what Azeroth would look like if you could push all of those toolbars to some other screen? Amanda Rivera over at our sister site, WoW Insider, did. She's recently conquered getting your computer to display World of Warcraft on one screen and your toolbars on the other, giving you a clear picture of the beauty of Azeroth without all of those clumsy bars.

The only downside to this technique is that the game can really only be rendered on one monitor and not across two full monitors. Rendering across two monitors causes your character, who would be standing in the middle of the two monitors, to be annoyingly split across both of them. Now, if you only had the expensive gaming rig to support those three monitors.

As anyone who's ever tried to use EVE Online's item database knows, it's woefully out of date. Given the complexity of EVE, and the fact that the collective knowledge of the players is a resource unto itself, the developers announced they would create a sort of Wikipedia for EVE.This player resource, dubbed the "EVElopedia", would also be available via EVE Online's in-game web browser, as confirmed in July. Indeed, CCP Games is putting more emphasis on making EVE into a game that's better integrated with the web and social networking in general.

What we didn't know, however, was when this would actually start to happen. At least, not until today. EVE developer "CCP VonSometime" announced this afternoon that a beta version of the EVElopedia is live, and already has over 6000 pages of content. The official EVE wiki is still in its infancy, but already it's looking to be a useful resource that EVE players didn't have before (beyond combing the forums.) Have a look at the EVElopedia and see for yourself. Or, in the words of CCP VonSometime, "Go forth, explore, and grow the EVE universe. Your community awaits it."

While dealing with these sweeping global issues would seem to be impossibly complex, Superstruct's gameplay -- fortunately-- is not. The game is comprised of a kind of storytelling on the part of its players, based off of the scenarios and updates presented by The Institute for the Future. Some of these scenarios, like the superthreat videos seen earlier, are there to establish the game's backdrop, but more info is on the way. Superstruct players will spin off their own ideas based on both the IFTF-provided scenario updates and (especially) player-generated content. In this respect, the gameplay is quite freeform.

Playing the game breaks down to a few easy steps:

• Join the Superstruct community by registering at the official site.

• Create your 'future self' through your personal survival profile.

• Discover the superthreats (via the breaking news videos).

• Adopt a superthreat.

• Tell a superthreat story, through whatever medium you choose, via the Tell-a-Story form.

• Search for allies.

• Start superstructing on the wikis (sharing your ideas for redesigning the future.)

Check out the video below and let one of the game's creators, Jane McGonigal, show you how the game is played, and be sure to note her tips on how to succeed in Superstruct.

One of the most misunderstood concepts in any online medium is lag. Lag essentially refers to a delay. Most commonly we're referring to the delay between when you expect something to happen and when it actually does happen.

What makes lag difficult to understand is that it is a syndrome. There are multiple possible causes for lag, some under your control, and some not -- all of which contribute to that molasses-like feeling, and occasionally crashes or disconnections.

To help you make the most of your Second Life experience, we'll look over how to easily and simply identify what kind of lag you're getting, and what (if anything) you can do to reduce it.

Jump to a section:

• Your computer
• The servers
• The network
• Final thoughts

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	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

There are a few essential things any pilot in EVE Online should do before they undock from a station and get themselves into a potentially hostile situation. Come to think of it, anytime you undock there's at least some chance of hostility. Keeping that in mind, think of this as a visual checklist you should go through before entering space, as you're not only risking your ship, but your skillpoints if you bite off more than you can chew. This happens all too often, to novice and veteran pilots alike in EVE. So to help you avoid this fate...

Jim Rossignol has become well-known in the game journalism scene, more recently as a regular contributor at RockPaperShotgun and the author of This Gaming Life. Along the way, he's become a veteran EVE Online player, and he's passing along some of that combat know-how to readers in a series of articles at Eurogamer. Rossignol is starting out slow with the first installment, easing readers into "the basic principles of killing people," but he'll progress to more advanced aspects of combat and conflict in EVE. Ultimately, he hopes to introduce players to the ambitions and tactics of New Eden's alliances, which can number well into the thousands of players.

In 'combat basics', Rossignol relates the basic principles of combat in EVE Online to the standard groupings of damage, tank, crowd-control, and healer that most MMO gamers are familiar with from other titles. He notes that these combat roles are quite different in EVE, as a given ship's module fittings give players a great deal of flexibility, but of course makes for a more complex PvP system. Rossignol touches on the idea that speed is king in EVE, and he's correct. Just keep in mind that the nano-era's days are numbered, a fact which Rossignol stresses as well. Have a look at Rossignol's combat basics, and his take on the ever-changing state of PvP in EVE Online.

[Via CrazyKinux]

EVE Online blogger Morphisat recently unearthed a good video tutorial on the profession of exploration, by a player called SRRAE. In a vast, open galaxy like EVE Online's setting of New Eden, the option of becoming an explorer is an appealing one. However, despite the name 'exploration,' players cannot actually discover new solar systems. They can, however, find hidden content throughout space, both in highsec and lowsec. This can include hidden asteroid belts (presumably with rarer ores to mine), hacking and archaeology sites, harvestable gas clouds used in drug production, and numerous combat encounters.

Admittedly, exploration is not an easy profession to pick up for beginners, but with enough skills related to scanning and covert ops, paired with a decent understanding of game mechanics and the value of a cloaking device, exploration can be lucrative -- particularly in 0.0 space. Of course, there will inevitably be times where an explorer is simply burning off scan probes in the futile hope of finding something new. Perhaps SRRAE has become a victim of his own success, as he recently lamented the downside of exploration's growing popularity among New Eden's capsuleers.

[Via CrazyKinux]