Good times seem to be here for Dungeons and Dragons Online -- the game has been enjoying a huge surge in popularity from its new free-to-play model, not to mention making quite a bit of money as a result. The game's executive producer, Fernando Paiz, mentioned the game's surge of popularity in the opening of his recent letter to the game's players, but that was hardly the end of the letter. Most of the letter discusses the upcoming improvements to the game, including the upcoming and aptly-named Update 1 that's scheduled for release on October 28th.

One of the more interesting large-scale bits of information is the differentiation now being made between software updates and simple content additions. the game previously used a "module" numbering system for major patches, but Paiz points out that the changes made to the game have meant that content can be added independent of a full-on game update. Update 1, for example, will coincide with the release of a new adventure pack. It will also feature new options such as Veteran mode (allowing you to create a character starting at Level 4 instead of Level 1) and an Epic difficulty setting, further exploring the strength of the game's instanced dungeons. If you haven't yet tried Dungeons and Dragons Online -- and now that it's free to play, you don't have much of an excuse -- it might be well worth it to take a look at what the game has to offer in the near future.

Final Fantasy XI's November update is just around the corner (what with the end of October fast approaching), and that means we're hearing more about what job abilities are due for an upgrade. This time around, we're getting information about the game's two classic pet-using classes, the Summoner and the Beastmaster, and what new abilities are in store for them. To summarize in brief: pure, unadulterated awesome.

Summoners will learn a new ability called Avatar's Favor at level 55, which provides a passive benefit to all party members and reduces the MP cost of keeping an avatar active. With a two-hour duration, the ability is clearly aimed at the longstanding irritation many players have had about the "preferred" approach to summoner pets. Traditionally, the class has been forced to summon their pet, use one of its party-buffing abilities, and then immediately dismiss it due to its low utility in normal combat and the high MP cost of keeping it active. Avatar's Favor obviously rewards keeping a single avatar active on the battlefield to reap the most benefit, and its promise of a cost reduction makes that more fesable.

Beastmasters, meanwhile, are gaining the ability to directly control the special abilities used by their called beasts (as opposed to beasts tamed on the field). The system is explained in brief, but it should help provide some utility and control to a class that has slowly been making the shift over to called pets instead of tamed ones. Both updates should be welcome by the classes, and lend more support to the idea that if the November update is one of the last ones to grace Final Fantasy XI, it will be going out on a high note.

Last week we told you about Fallen Earth's upcoming patch planned for this week. The patch went live yesterday, and didn't disappoint. While the main feature discussed in advance was the optional expanded tutorial, Icarus Studios wasn't even close to finished. The patch notes were given in the forums on the official site just before, in a post that was the definition of "wall of text". The full list can be seen on the site, but here is a (very) brief overview of what was done.

• The largest part of this update by far was made up of the many, many bug fixes and polishing throughout the game. Things like battle music, drops from foes that don't quite make sense, NPCs standing in the background swinging a hammer at...nothing, and sounds made when someone sits or stands aren't necessarily game breaking, but those small touches add up to make the game.

• You'll find new LifeNet facilities, garages, and merchants in every sector, as well as updates and small changes to quests and events.

• Changes were made to chat -- most significantly that only players below level five are automatically added to the help channel. Higher level players may still access it, but will have to manually add themselves.

• Days of the Dead camps and content added - the Halloween event has begun!

Check out the full notes for all the details, and our congratulations and thanks to the Fallen Earth team for the huge amount of work that went into this update.

It's possible you didn't notice -- probable, even, unless you were on a late-night grinding session -- but the servers for Wizard 101 went down from 3 to 6 AM CST this morning. Even if you were on a late-night session in the game, though, you'd probably be willing to overlook the downtime due to the huge list of changes that came with the downtime. The October update for the game has dropped, and the patch list is truly enormous, adding mounts, new shops, crafting options, and too many additional things to list in a single sentence.

Mounts, of course, are one of the most significant and notable features being added. They can be rented with in-game currency or purchased permanently via the game's microtransaction currency, Crowns, keeping with the game's split between regular subscription and free-to-play. This update has also added in the option to move the stats of a new piece of equipment to one you find more attractive via the Seamstress NPC, an optional new dungeon that promises especially difficult encounters, and the option to pay a small fee of Crowns to get a second chance at a boss drops after defeating the boss. And even that's barely scratching the surface of everything Wizard 101 has added in this patch -- take a look at the full notes, and take a closer look at the game as a whole. It's not for everyone, but you might find more to like under close study.

Love it or hate it, opinions have been divided, but the changes made to Warhammer Online in the 1.3.2 patch -- most notably the changes to the starting experience -- have certainly gotten people talking. But it's one thing to discuss it in the abstract and another to see how things play out. The opportunity is now in the hands of the game's players, as the patch has gone live and all of its changes are there for everyone to try.

Rather than locking things down and leaving them there, however, producer Jeff Skalski has released an open letter to the community explaining why some of the changes were made and what changes are coming in the game's next patch, 1.3.3. Cosmetic changes include the options to walk and sit (instead of constantly running and standing) and additions to the game's graphical engine. More far-reaching is the implementation of the Underdog System: a series of running handicaps designed to help bring the side that's consistently losing into better parity with their opponents. Skalski explains in brief how such a system will work and how it will avoid unbalancing matches in the other direction, as well as discussing some of the larger issues Warhammer Online plans to address. If you haven't been playing or you took a break, see what has changed and what's coming, since now is the time to give the game a look.

Playing a game like Fallen Earth teaches you the value of hitting the ground running, as it makes it much less likely that something or someone is going to jump you, take your things, and possibly eat you. It's a lesson the developers have clearly taken to heart, as they've been running and working hard at developing their game. Patch 1.2 is scheduled to go live for the game on October 22nd, and the developers have given more information about what players can expect.

Chief among the changes is the expansion of the game's tutorial -- with a game that has a very strict philosophy against letting you roll back any changes you make, understanding the importance of each choice becomes vital. Currently, the tutorial covers a number of elements of the game and is supposed to tease the player regarding high-end gameplay. In patch 1.2, there will be an optional expansion that runs an additional 35-40 minutes, covering crafting, scavenging, mounts, and harvesting. It's also slated to help reinforce the game's basic combat system.

In addition to these changes, the game is streamlining and improving several of the game's town events. Areas such as Clinton Farm, Boneclaw, and the Embry Crossroads Monster Hunt were a bit more obtuse than the developers liked, and with the feedback from players they're going to be making the missions more understandable and straightforward. There are good things coming soon to Fallen Earth, certainly, although it's still probably not a bad idea to hit the ground running -- tutorials don't last forever, after all.

Warhammer Online has been making some big changes with their upcoming patch 1.3.2, which naturally leads to a number of player questions about the finer points of interaction between the changes and the present game state. The developers have sat down for another question grab bag, this one focusing heavily on the changes and how they'll impact both items and abilities, as well as the ongoing issues of class balance.

Unfortunately, a number of answers to rather pressing questions (such as whether or not RvR weapons that match the PvE equivalent-tier weapon will be introduced) is the age-old developer mantra of "we're talking about it, but we have no firm details." Still, there's some useful information for those curious about how the removal of Forts will affect the game and obtaining high-end equipment, some information regarding stacking and tuning abilities, and a few interesting tips regarding communication and transport between players. If you're hungry for more information regarding the latest and greatest changes coming to Warhammer Online, you can take a look at the full grab bag on the official site.

The Imprudence project has released the next beta in this release cycle for their Second Life viewer. Imprudence is one of our favorite after-market Second Life viewers (and just about the only one whose licensing status we've been able to verify with confidence).

The new beta has some changes to the pie menu (which often makes people just a little tense), updates Kitty Barnett's RLVa support, fixes 24 bugs including some search and appearance problems, two crashes and some assorted UI weirdness that crept into the last build.

The first round of Windows binaries in this beta release had a minor installation issue, but fresh installers were issued quickly and have sorted that out.

There's definitely a developer communication theme running through MMOs these days. After one month of players being able to stomp around in Fallen Earth, the game has received its first State of the Game address from developer Colin Dwan, better known as "Ilkor" on the official forums. The address goes through some of the concerns players have had, some of the minor bugfixes and improvements, and what the developers are planning on introducing for patch 1.1 and 1.2. The former is slated to have a content improvement for levels 32-35, and the latter is intended to boost social content and group-oriented activities.

The address also takes time to respond to some issues that have come up on a repeated basis. Faster travel is on the list to be implemented down the road, especially once later updates arrive, but it will be expensive and between very strictly delineated points for thematic reasons. Respecs are also on the table, but again will be expensive and limited. As Dwan himself puts it, "[We] would like to help the people who spend a few points wrong and want to fix those mistakes, not folks who want to rebuild their whole character. The specifics are still up in the air, but it will be expensive, slow, and limited." If you're interested in the near future of the game and are curious about the overall developer plan, take a look at the whole address at the official Fallen Earth forums.

[ via WarCry ]

Just like the tile says, there's a way you can help low-level players in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes -- become a mentor. With the most recent patch, Vanguard has added a mentoring system to help players of differing levels adventure and interact in a meaningful fashion.

Similar to most mentoring systems, the high-level player's abilities and stats are capped at an appropriate level for the mentored player, restricting them to abilities they would have been able to use at the lower level. In all other ways, however, they'll function as a perfectly normal player, including gaining experience at the rate of a lower-level character. As a result, the tool is both an excellent way for dedicated players to introduce their friend to the game and a method for them to earn a little extra experience in the process. The mentoring system is fully usable if your friends are in the free trial area as well, which is one of the best ways to encourage a player to stick with the game over a longer period.

The patch also included the usual plethora of bugfixes and minor balance tweaks that have come to be standard fare for the MMO industry. Take a look at the full patch notes for the details.

[ via WarCry ]

One of the features that's been mentioned repeatedly in conjunction with Warhammer Online's upcoming patch 1.3.2 is the New User Journey, an attempt to streamline and consolidate the path of new players. The most recent developer diary outlines in detail the reasons for the revamp as well as the new path of the game's experience, which the article mentions is designed to help the entire playerbase in the long run.

Highlighting the need for accessibility, the entry discusses the change to all players starting in the same location, explaining how it can help ensure other players in the area for the game's public quests. It also allows for the early questing experience to be more thoroughly revamped and improved, with all of the players starting out funneled through a single area. The original starting areas will still be available for players who want to explore them, but will no longer be mandatory.

The diary also points out some of the other new features added, including detailed tutorial windows to help introduce concepts in-play as well as an improvement to pop-up tooltips. Combined with global chat channels to help bolster the community, the focus is clearly on getting players unified and up to speed in the most efficient way possible, helping to diminish the barrier to entry. Take a look at the full article for more in-depth features including a closer look at the tutorial window.

In addition to a new mini-expansion in the form of A Shantotto Ascension, the November update to Final Fantasy XI will also be continuing the missions of the Wings of the Goddess expansion, allowing players to live out the events of the Crystal War and help ensure the stability of present-day Vana'diel. While the overall scope of the conflict begins to shift to the world's northern hemisphere, setting the stage for events that led into the game's original missions, the individual nations each have their own issues to deal with and their own battles to fight. Square-Enix has released some of the details regarding these upcoming missions for the next update.

San d'Oria's missions will focus around the proud kingdom's operations in Beaucedine Glacier and the unconvential strategies of the boy tactician Excenmille. Bastok will continue to deal with the aftershocks of the head of the Mythril Musketeers having made an attempt on the president's life, while Windurst has won a costly victory even as the beastman forces continue their march toward the nation's capital.

One of Final Fantasy XI's greatest strengths has always been the emphasis and motivation placed upon its ongoing storyline, and these new missions promise to continue that tradition. The game may be entering its twilight years as it comes to its six-year US anniversary near the end of the month, but it still has quite a bit of life left in it.

Capping off the first month for Champions Online, a fresh update this-morning has brought in quite a number of changes, fixes and enhancements, but more than a few teething problems.

The patch ran a half-hour overtime, and seemed initially fine. Unfortunately within a half-hour of going live, the character selection service stopped responding, and players were abruptly disconnected from the game servers. At 6:40AM Pacific, a notice went up indicating that Cryptic hoped to have the servers back up in approximately one hour.

That didn't happen, and things blew out another hour, and while servers were reported to have been restored by 8:30AM Pacific, the live servers crashed again almost immediately.

The Imprudence project has started a new release cycle for their Second Life viewer. Imprudence is one of our favorite after-market Second Life viewers, and the new 1.2 beta contains a number of delicious treats.

The new beta features a grid manager, new minimap radar with some useful features, optional support for Restrained Life (using RLVa), a selection of Emerald viewer features, object backups (for your own creations only), and a heap more. Our personal favorite is the option to have a draw-distance slider on-screen, as it is perhaps our single most-commonly used UI feature.

Champions Online got an update today due to a couple of nagging issues from the previous patch. Particularly, maintain-powers on critters weren't operating properly – that is, "not operating properly" in the "grinding your hero's face into the dirt" kind of way.

Additionally, yesterday's patch kind of messed up item-changes as well. As a result all items level 11 or lower have been reverted to their previous state, because apparently the defense values of these items was unaccountably lower than they should have been.

Cryptic are handing around free retcons for every character created before 3AM Pacific, 22 September.