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Jon Wood at MMORPG recently put up a hands-on video of gameplay in Stargate Worlds. This latest footage gives us an early look at combat in Stargate Worlds. Primarily, it shows the importance of using cover to survive.

Wood seems to like what he's experienced of the game so far, particularly in terms of the AI in Stargate Worlds."Getting taken off-guard by AI opponents does not happen very often. But when it does, it's just fantastic. It gets your heart going, causes you to panic," he says. The comments related to the video are drawing comparisons with Tabula Rasa but keep in mind this footage is from an alpha stage of testing. That being said, what do you think about how Stargate Worlds is shaping up?

The other day we mentioned that Curt Schilling - baseball-player-turned-MMO-backer - would be making an appearance on the Jace Hall show. The episode is now live, and if you're so inclined the episode does indeed contain some brief moments of footage captured in the 38 Studios offices. That said, it's pretty short, and doesn't 'show' anything per se. The few money shots have been snipped out of the episodes footage by the folks over at 38Watch, a Copernicus / 38 Studios fansite.

They have some still images clipped from the show which give us a little taste of some of the concept artists in action. One image appears to be that of a rolling wheat field, while others show a night-time cityscape of blues and purples. You can check out the full episode of the show with Schilling's appearance below the cut.

We saw gameplay in two contexts. First, we saw canned footage of a firefight on the planet Lucia. Second, we visited the Quality Assurance department and watched testers play the game. The scenario they were playing appeared to be a prison break. From this we acquired a relatively good understanding of the basics of Stargate Worlds' combat. We didn't see any of the other modes of gameplay, but we talked about them a bit in our interview with the directors.

We found a lot to like in Stargate Worlds. Its cover-based, ranged combat should prove tactically interesting for groups of friends playing together. We were impressed by the attention to detail in the recreation of Stargate lore and places. We were especially excited by the mini-game concept and its integration with more traditional hardcore-friendly modes of play. CME is trying to reach and please a very broad audience, and we believe this product could potentially accomplish that goal. CME's promise to support the game with regular episodic content updates makes the package that much more attractive.

The folks at Destination Games sent over another one of those Tabula Rasa developer diaries, giving us some insight into the content coming in the game's next big content drop: Deployment 9. We already knew generally what was coming thanks to the official site preview: a squad merge feature, a PTS-only tag, and a new questline leading to the subject of today's diary.

Designer Brian Hudson is onhand today to walk us through the process of putting together the Velon Hollow instance for TR players around level 30. Hudson walks us through the different elements that lead to the area's development, and even goes so far as to recognize something we've seen as a standard in Tabula Rasa play now: post-level soloability. While the area is designed for 2+ players of a given level range, they're now tuning with the knowledge in mind that players will likely come back several levels later to take on the content in a solo fashion.

Interesting stuff. All that and more are after the break.

We've seen bits and pieces of Blizzard's upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, but the people over at Computer and Video Games.com were lucky enough to get a complete run through of the major locations of Northrend, and some of the many, many quests we'll all be doing when the expansion goes live.

Northrend is a cold, harsh land, and its inhabitants are likewise not people with whom you trifle. When you step off the ship or zeppelin, you will be immediately enlisted in the ongoing war against the enemy faction as well as the numberless legions of Arthas' followers. Check it out, and prepare to be astonished.

"With the enemy at their heels, the High Elf armies pour into Dragonwake and race to the old temples and holy sites to rouse the slumbering titans of the skies. The Dragons are among the High Elves' mightiest weapons, and their wrath will surely be terrible when they behold the treacherous armies of the Witch King burning and pillaging the lands of Ulthuan. But the Dragons' slumber is deep indeed, and there is no knowing whether they will ever take to the wing again."

In the world of Warhammer Online. in the east of Caledor, where the mountains give way to hills and grass, dragons slumber the ages away. Above their deep caves, the High Elves battle the Dark Elves for their very survival. Will the High Elves manage to rouse the Dragons to their aid before the forces of the Witch King turn them to the side of chaos? What will Malekith find on the Isle of the Dead -- his own destruction, or power beyond the imagination?

Read all about it in EA Mythic's overview of the eldritch, war-torn land known as Dragonwake.

Genres are a sticky thing when it comes to gaming. On the one hand, they help us categorize and succinctly describe a hitherto unknown game. Simply referring to a game as an MMO, for instance, instantly conjures up a number of elements like a persistent world, large sharded player base, and character progression. While that sort of pigeon-holing is effective for most games out there, occasionally a game comes along that really defies our best efforts at categorization. In this blogger's mind, The Agency is a perfect example of that.

In a recent preview of the game, we're treated to details of the ways in which The Agency is both more than and less than a traditional MMO. A lot of the usual elements like persistence and character progression are there, but they're twisted in interesting new ways. None of this is especially new information per say (we spoke with the lead designer ourselves not long ago), but it's another new perspective on the game, and we can't help but gobble it up. Also out of the Eurogamer camp is a reiteration of the point made last month at ION that The Agency will not be using an RMT system for weapons, operatives, or anything else that would give one player an edge on another, which we're happy to see as well.

Take a favorite EverQuest II low level dungeon, clear it of every living thing, add some doors and remove others. Fill the entire zone with heroic mobs level 80 and up. Put in ten boss fights culminating with an epic fight against High Chief Vohan, a x2 epic fight that compares to Nizara's final fight (hint: Vohan has friends). Add in a double handful of humor, mix it all together in a pot filled with bathing Halflings, and you come up with the latest dungeon redesign from the fiendish minds of the devs at SOE, Runnyeye: The Gathering.

This alternate version of Runnyeye (the original is still selectable before zoning in) is made for decently equipped level 80 groups. Like the recently released Shard of Hate raid zone, the fights get progressively harder, so some groups may choose to stay near the top, while only the very best will dare the depths, where the High Chief waits. Who is gathering and why? Perhaps the answer lies with the Halfling warrior crouching at the entrance, the lone active member of the Old Bog Mountain Unit. He talks of three former members who are off doing other things. It might be well worth tracking them down and ask what happened in Bog Mountain, in which Runnyeye is dug, to cause them to quit the Unit.

DDO's Module 7 goes live today, and boy, if you're looking for information about it, you're in the right place. Massively has been covering Module 7 since before Module 6 dropped, and just in case you missed out on any of our great coverage, it's right here for your perusing pleasure.

• Live at Connect '08, we provided coverage of the DDO panel, including a first look at the Monk class Turbine released in this patch.
• Shortly after that, we chatted with the woman herself, DDO Senior Producer Kate Paiz, on what worked well with Module 6, and everything else they were planning in Module 7 and beyond.
• We covered "Monk Week" and the official Turbine events leading up to the game.
• Not only did we provide great original coverage, but we aggregated coverage from around the 'net, including other interviews with Ms. Paiz, as well as official info drops (and did you take advantage of your chance to grab the soundtrack?)
• And finally, Massively's got the dungeonmaster of all Module 7 previews, including the number one reason you'll want to roll a Monk, a look at the Gary Gygax shrine and the new midlevel content, the new high level instances and bosses, and even an exclusive video preview of what you'll see in Module 7 (which you'll find right after the break).

We critted on the coverage of this new patch (going live today), and you get to be the one to claim all the loot. Before you sign in and check out Module 7 today, be sure to check all the links above and read about it here.

What do you call it when the developers of a hotly anticipated free-to-play Diablo-esque MMO decide at virtually the last minute to entirely redesign their game? You could call it crazy, or unwise, but developers of the upcoming title Mythos went ahead and did just that. Many of Flagship Studios' beta players said the game was more than ready to ship as it was, but it wasn't good enough for the developers. They combined all the instanced, single player overland zones into one massive continent, shared among all players. Instead of being reached by maps that led players through narrow paths to dungeons which looked identical from the outside, the devs placed the dungeons, Oblivion-like, through the world.

For the past week, the folks at Flagship promised the Overworld Real Soon Now. A deathwatch was kept on the forums. It was going to be the next day, or the day after, or in a few hours. Players gathered on Mythos' IRC channel where devs tossed out tantalizing hints of what was to come. Then around 9pm EST dev Taylor Balbi advised everyone to re-patch and log in to the Test Center to see the Overworld. He gave some advice as people hurried to be the first into the new world.

1. Test Center will be a separate server.
2. Test Center and Beta Server will be online at the same time and require the same client.
3. To tell which version you currently have, the login screen screen will make it obvious (two different ones).
4. Test Center will start lagging after like 800 people, Mythos Beta won't.
5. Taylor Balbi is Awesome.
   

We think the other Flagship devs are pretty awesome as well. Though there were more than a few glitches with patching, we were able to eventually get in and take a quick run around some of the Overworld, its dungeons, the villages outside Stonehill, and the city of Stonehill itself. All we have left to wait for now is the open beta, expected in the next several weeks.

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.

Wow. Or more accurately, World of Warcraft. It's all over the internet today in a big way. Blizzard released a ridiculous amount of information about their next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, and some of the changes they've announced are pretty major. I thought I would use today's article to go over some of the most exciting announcements, discuss what makes them so interesting, and talk about what it means for the game (and for you). I'll be pointing out the links as I go along, but if you just want to go check out the articles, this post will send you everywhere you want to go and this post has a nice synopsis of all the available info in one easy place.

Before I start digging in, I just wanted to mention that I would never, ever, want to compete with Blizzard as a game company. Those poor guys at Funcom... The Age of Conan release date was set for a month after Blizzard's big Sunwell patch -- it looked like they were in the clear, and they could ride people's boredom all the way to September and maybe even hold them. And then, Blizzard drops a bomb like this (ten days before AoC's release, which I'd bet my shirt was no coincidence). People will be talking about this stuff for months, it's going to be hard to get a word in edge-wise over the buzz, and the promise of a mystery patch that will let us spend our gold on "cool new items" will keep people happily grinding dailies for a while. That's got to sting. Anyway, without further ado, lets take a look at these announced features.

Adding a few dozen new mounts to the game and improving the performance would be enough to fill up any ordinary patch, but the Vanguard: Saga of Heroes devs decided to buckle down and improve the spell and combat ability graphics. With a good group casting and using special moves, all with their own flashy graphics, it could get a little hard to see what was going on. Game Update 5 brings new spell animations for druids, sorcerers, disciples and others, which are both faster and better-looking than the old ones.

Click on through to watch the video, and get your fill of the new spell graphics. Then, stop by later today for an interview with Vanguard game designer Lenny Gullo. He'll talk about quests, mounts, hitching, factions, and ten easy recipes for cooking battle lobster.