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For most of us who weren't able to attend EVE Fanfest 2008 earlier this month in Reykjavik, at least there have been videos of the various presentations and panels. CCP Games released quite a number of these just over a week ago, but they recently went ahead and added more.

The new footage, which can be seen in higher resolution on the EVE Online Videos page or on the CCP Games YouTube page, gives viewers a look at:

• Designing the Walking in Stations expansion

• The Fanfest 2008 PvP Tournament

• Roxor

• QA! Are we ready to ship?

• TQ Servers: Making mountains out of molehills

All footage on the EVE Online Videos page is available in two resolutions, viewable as embedded video or downloadable.

Longtime players of EVE Online will be very familiar with the name 'Winterblink', or Michael Lastucka. He's the man behind years worth of contributions and commentaries linked to EVE, through the Warp Drive Active comic, the WDA podcast, and now he's a columnist at Massive Gamer Magazine as well.

His latest column, "Quantum of Polish" looks at the recent EVE expansion deployment and how it's changed the game. Lastucka points out some of the user interface changes that he finds beneficial. Visual representation of module cycles provide greater understanding of what's happening and weapon grouping allows players to switch between ammo types, and have a single 'fire' icon as well. But there's clearly more work to be done in terms of weapon/turret effects and some aspects of the UI, in order to reduce lag and improve performance.

Mythic Entertainment's Mark Jacobs posted a Warhammer Online dev blog today, titled "Open RvR Update" which maps out the future of open realm-vs-realm in the game. Jacobs writes that the coming months will bring some changes and additions to WAR:

• An RvR Influence system. "This system is designed to reward our oRvR players with lots of new stuff that you can only get through oRvR," he says.

• Increased visibility of open RvR, made possible through numerous improvements such as improved maps and travel systems, second bind points, a campaign HUD, and tier-wide messaging about the status of battlefield objectives and keeps.

• Greater incentives for oRvR participation, namely through keep quests, 'Daily Event Quests,' and chained RvR missions.

• Better rewards for guilds that take and control keeps, and a system of keep upgrades.

• Allowing characters to gain oRvR "Fame", linked to the Tome of Knowledge and thus rewards, titles, and experience that come with oRvR success.

Jacobs cautions though, "Please keep in mind that these changes/systems apply to oRvR only and not to scenarios. This is not all we are working on but these do reflect the majority of oRvR additions that we are currently working on/planning for the next few months." Jacobs hopes that open RvR enhancements will inject more risk and challenge into this aspect of the game, and ultimately more rewards. Check out his dev blog where he outlines the changes to open RvR and let us know, do you think Mythic is headed in the right direction with this system revamp?

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	Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out our Warhammer guides: Massively's Character Creation Guide and our WoW Player's Guide to Warhammer. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!

Ah, the glorious sweetness of victory - so wonderful when it is ours; so bitter when it is not. Today's Warhammer Online One Shots breaks our normal guideline for screenshots without UI, but we feel in this case it fits the frenetic battle framed in all that busy information well. That, and we're down to only a few reader-submitted screenshots, so if you've been thinking about sending some screens in, now is an excellent time! This screen comes to us from Doula Doom, who is from the Knights of Terror. Doula writes in and sets the scene for us: Here we are defending a keep from the sickly sweet goodness that are Order forces. There were at least 60 players in attendance (at least 40 on order and 20 on Destruction), and Order eventually overcame our defence and took the keep.

We know there are oodles of you out there reading, and we're betting that at least some of you are playing/have played MMOs - otherwise, why would you be here, eh? One Shots needs your screens, dear readers! So while you're out playing, or digging through your hard drive, grab some screenshots for us. Send them to us here at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name, server, and a brief description of what's in the screenshot. (Please, turn your UI off if possible.) In turn we'll give your screenshot and note to us a moment to shine, right here on Massively. How cool is that?

[Via MMORPG]

Some new directions for EVE Online were announced at Fanfest 2008 earlier this month. Torfi Frans Olafsson is the Senior Producer for EVE Online, who presented many of these new features. Eurogamer's Oli Welsh recently spoke with Torfi Frans about the Fanfest announcements and how they'll impact the game as it moves forward.

The interview focuses heavily on the Walking in Stations expansion, which -- despite no small amount of negative sentiment from some of the playerbase -- has the potential to expand the limits of gameplay in New Eden. "The expansion is about growing EVE Online as the general-purpose science fiction simulator out there... the whole idea is just to deepen the experience," Torfi Frans tells Welsh.

Any massively multiplayer online game built around the twin pillars of PvP and territorial control can't go wrong by providing realtime status updates of the struggle via the web. Warhammer Online has endeavored to do just that with the Realm War site, as addressed in a dev diary by the title's Web Development Lead, Scott Stricklin. The dev blog touches on what Mythic has accomplished thus far with bringing WAR to the web, and what they hope to accomplish in the future -- namely, podcasts, community news, and character and guild profiles. While they have no shortage of ideas about how to expand WAR outside of the client, their first objective has been to bring Realm vs. Realm data to the web. That goal has now been realized, and Stricklin walks the reader through the features of the newly revamped Realm War site.

Players now have access to updated information about the overall campaign and the status of each capital city, Stricklin writes. This information is also presented visually, with each capital city's look changing based on its status, ranging from peaceful to besieged. This can all be kept in a pop up box in your browser to provide continual updates for when the tide of battle turns. Further information is provided through selectors which represent a server's racial pairings, giving a snapshot of what's happening with each tier's zone control. An added bonus to this are influence maps for each zone, similar to the in-game maps, which show the status of the various RvR objectives and allow a player to mouse over keeps, seeing when it was last captured and by which guild. Have a look at Scott Stricklin's dev diary for more on the Realm War site, or better yet, just head over there and try it out for yourself.

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	Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out our Warhammer guides: Massively's Character Creation Guide and our WoW Player's Guide to Warhammer. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!

Age of Conan has reached the half-year mark, and a great deal has changed from release up to the current day. Many of the Player versus Player features that were planned for launch but ended up being pushed back, such as PvP levels and the consequence system, finally made it into the game over these six months. With these large additions to the game, people that left shortly after launch (and there are a lot of them) might be interested to know how things are going, now that some of the bigger promises have been fulfilled.

With this in mind, Eurogamer has reviewed the current state of AoC's PvP in detail, covering the major updates and how they have played out. Overall, the report finds that there is probably still a way to go before the new systems are where they should be, but the groundwork is there for a very satisfying experience. For the faithful subscribers, how would you rate the improvements to PvP? And for those that have left Hyboria, is Funcom on the right track to win you back?

In a recent interview with Allakhazam, BioWare's Sean Dahlberg discusses their newest MMO project, Star Wars: The Old Republic. As Community Manager for the project, Dahlberg was able to give some great insight into the game's storyline and direction, or at least as much as he could say for now.

One particularly interesting part of this interview is the discussion on PvP. As Allakhazam points out, the Republic and Sith Empire are not exactly friendly towards each other, so PvP would be an obvious game feature. Dahlberg explains that PvP is definitely part of the game, yet points out that TOR "is not looking to be the jack-of-all-trades game. Instead, we are going to focus on what we do best and make sure the game and all its elements are fun and entertaining." He goes on to explain away what may have sounded like a suggestion that the game will be PvP-heavy by saying, "TOR will offer fun and rewarding gameplay no matter what your play style is. If you're not a PvPer at heart, there are definitely other things within the game to do."

Sounds very promising, and we're excited to hear more about the game, and relay it all to you, when more news becomes available.

EVE Online's latest expansion Quantum Rise brought some new features for the industry crowd, and a few enhancements aimed at PvP pilots as well. But some of the broad changes they've made to the game mechanics have triggered lag, and lots of it, which CCP Games is hoping to combat with the help of the players themselves. CCP Tanis says, "We take this issue very seriously and as a result, our engineering team has been in high-gear working on fixing the problem and we think we are close, but we need your help."

The help CCP Games is looking for requires relatively little from players, aside from logging into the Singularity test server and entering the fray, blasting each other apart in battleships. The Wednesday tests were already underway when we got word of this, but they're looking to get a large group of pilots (200 or more) for the Thursday fleet engagements on Singularity. The test will take place on Thursday at 11:00 GMT, and another is tentatively slated for 15:00, dependent upon what CCP learns from the previous fights. CCP Tanis lays out how players can get involved:

Since the game's launch in April of 2005, ArenaNet's Guild Wars has set the bar a bit higher for future MMOs in relation to gameplay, their unique business model and skill balance. Their constant attention to detail when balancing literally hundreds of game skills between PvP and PvE has been an ongoing progression for everyone on the ArenaNet team.

Often seen by hardcore players as the name behind this constant balance is Isaiah "Izzy" Cartwright, Game Designer at ArenaNet. We were able to catch up with Cartwright for a brief interview regarding the past, present and future state of PvP in Guild Wars. Follow along after the cut for the full interview and some exclusive PvP screenshots supplied to us by ArenaNet.

Aventurine's Darkfall has been in development pretty much since the dawn of time (alright, since 2001, but that's not far from the dawn of time for the MMORPG genre), and we have on more than one occassion wondered whether or not those promises of an eventual beta test would be fulfilled. Turns out that for some, they have been.

The developers have posted a large collection of quotes from beta players' feedback. They claim it's representative, and it's mostly (but not all) positive. Sounds like players are impressed with the hugeness of the world and a solid crafting system, but a bit turned off by a complicated and unconventional control scheme. The devs say they're working on it.

If you fall into Darkfall's hardcore Ultima Online-esque PvP niche, feel free to scan through to see what you've apparently been missing out on for the past seven years.

The Quantum Rise expansion for EVE Online, while only recently deployed, has drawn a substantial amount of forum rage for sweeping changes to how the game is played, namely for the nerfs of speed and missiles. This follows in the wake of unrest created by the CCP Games decision to phase out ghost training. The latest change, announced Tuesday, targets the in-game email system ("EVE Mail" to be precise).

CCP Wrangler says: "To address performance issues in EVE we are making some changes to the EVE Mail system in Quantum Rise 1.0.1. You will now be able to fetch up to 1000 undeleted EVE Mails, however EVE Mail number 1001 and beyond will not be fetched, whether it has been read or not. To gain access to those EVE Mails, you must delete newer EVE mails. In addition to this all EVE Mails sent by NPCs that are older than 3 months will be deleted."

Age of Conan's game director, Craig Morrison, has written a letter to the community about the next slew of upgrades and updates coming to the game now that Ymir's Pass -- and its new PvP system -- is on the live servers. First on the list of patches will be DirectX 10, which Morrison says is something the team wanted to be really special. We're just hoping it doesn't bring any serious new bugs with it, but from the sound of things Funcom is trying to make sure the new graphics are highly scalable for various computers.

The second big project in the works are two new dungeons. Thunder River will hold both of them and they'll be aimed at max-level players. The Slaughter House Cellar is for single players, while Xibaluku is a large team dungeon. We can expect to see these released with the next update, apparently.