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It seems that oftentimes Australia and the Oceanic region gets the shaft when it comes to MMO server allocation. Most of the time, Aussies find themselves choosing between an American or European server, with incompatible peak playing times.

Today, Warhammer Online fans in the Oceanic region will be pleased to hear that their own server has not gone ignored, as the WAR Oceanic Beta has officially begun. Players in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore should check their inboxes for a beta invite which will pave the way for the simultaneous launch of Warhammer Online across North America, Europe and the Oceanic region on September 18th.

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	Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out all of our previous Warhammer Online features, and don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!

Guild Wars players have been anxiously awaiting this large skill balance for a long time, but many weren't expecting this much of a change. Not only have many key skills been buffed, but the nerfing of Ursan Blessing has finally happened. Plus, Guild versus Guild battles have been drastically changed. As with any gameplay changes, there are those who love it, and those who hate it.

The key component to the GvG changes involves the complete removal of the Victory or Death finale effect. This means the Guild Battle NPCs no longer walk to the flag stand and the Guild Lord's health has been reduced to 1680, yet he gets a 300 max health boost for the rest of the game when a team obtains a morale boost. What does this all mean for GvG? Basically, previous strategies will need a complete revamp to be effective anymore. This should be interesting for those guilds who have dominated the ladder for so long.

You've heard about the fearsome Public Quest that kicks off the High Elves Tier 1 experience many times before, but it's never had a name. The evils of House Arkaneth are the subject of this first encounter, and that's the name of the game: "House Arkaneth". The very first High Elf public quest in Warhammer Online pits you against waves of Dark Elf soldiery, mini-bosses aplenty, and even a mighty hydra!


Read on below as we describe, step by step, the process of working deadly work against the devilish Elven invaders!

You know those "English posh people" and "English people on drugs" that Paul Barnett keeps talking about? The ones with the pointy ears and bad attitudes? We here at Massively hope you like the Warhammer Online Elven factions, because you're going to be hearing quite a lot about them in the next week. We've been given special dispensation to do some pre-NDA lift blogging! We've had people playing the Beta for the highly anticipated Warhammer Online for some time, and they're ready to talk. Starting this weekend and all the way through till the NDA lifts, we'll be bringing you a special slice of Games Workshop's unique world. We'll be exploring the Tier 1 and Teir 2 content for the High Elves and Dark Elves – and you're invited along for the ride! Just follow the elves-of-war tag here on the site to keep in the loop!

Join us as we explore the starting areas for both races, detail everything we can about the Elven classes, and dare to take on fearsome foes in the Tier 1 and Tier 2 RvR scenarios. And stay tuned, because Massively is going to be your place to turn once the NDA comes down! We'll have exhaustive guides on each of the racial starting zones. We'll have detailed walkthroughs of the mighty Inevitable City and stalwart Altdorf. We'll even have class guides, broken out by faction and class role! So, for example, if you're shopping for a Ranged DPS Destruction class, we'll have all the info you need in one compact feature. Stay tuned, Warhammer fans, as Massively goes to WAR!

While Linden Lab's virtual environment, Second Life already has built-in instant-messaging services, and a gateway system that allows instant-messages to be passed out by email and to be replied to -- it's certainly not convenient to exchange messages with Second Life users unless you're already logged in -- and running the viewer requires a whole lot more resources than you might have available on a mobile device or a work or school computer.

Linden Lab has said on numerous occasions that they've been working on this for the last couple of years -- though there seems to have been little progress so far. Now, however, It looks like that's going to change. It appears Linden Lab is actually getting close to either a new client or service to improve instant-messaging.

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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.

The construction of guild cities has been one of Age of Conan's main features since release. One such city on the Fury PvP server is Goonrushalem, home to the Thulsa Goons guild. Nestled in the foothills of Stygia's Purple Lotus Swamp, the city of Goonrushalem was once one of the largest player-built cities on the server. Originally intended to be built up into a functional battlekeep for siege warfare, other guilds have since taken the lead and beaten Thulsa Goons to that goal.

Join me as I take a visual tour of the great Goon complex, and discuss the uses of the various buildings it contains.

As some of you may remember, we recently sent out a call for different GMs to send along some of their favorite screenshots. The above screenshot was in response to that call, and comes to us from Ocean Master Eurydice. She helps players out in Three Rings' incredibly addictive, free-to-play game Puzzle Pirates! Here's what she had to say:

I'm a GM on Puzzle Pirates, although over here we call them Ocean Masters. I saw your call for GM pictures and got this OKd with a supervisor. (Always good to check first...) [This] is a screenshot of my first ship, called the Queen of Shadows. It was colorfully decorated a couple years ago for my birthday by wonderful co-workers -- on their off time! It is where I stand when on duty on the Midnight Ocean (a server). We stand on ships so that we can have quiet while we answer petitions, but we can pop off at a moment's notice and be with the players if we need to. As you may be able to make out from the faint messages in the lower left-hand corner, there are parts of the ship not pictured here that are so decorated that I can't walk around them.

That seems like it's definitely a fun place to work if your co-workers decide to pull silly pranks like crowding your ship full of flowers and blocking you from moving around too much! (You know, especially when you also have awesome GM-type powers and can just move the flowers around.) Are you a GM who would like to show off something fun from your game? Send those screens in to us here at oneshots AT massively.com, along with whatever you'd like to say about them. It's almost as much fun as a ship full of flowers.

In this, our weekly query of what you good readers are up to in the world of MMOs, we're probably going to see more and more people talking about playing games that aren't actually out yet, as those seem to be the hottest lately. Case in point: Wrath of the Lich King dropped its NDA a few weeks ago, and ever since, there's been nothing but great news coming out of that. And Warhammer Online, the next big kid on the block, is about to drop its beta NDA, which means brace yourself for a flood of news about that one as well. In this weird dry period of new videogames before the flood of great releases this fall, it seems the games that haven't even come out yet are the biggest draws around.

So what are you playing this weekend? Even if you're under NDA, you can tell us that you're playing "something," and if you're not, drop into the comments below and share with us what you're up to, whether its heading back into Star Wars Galaxies to get yourself psyched about the new movie, still playing around with Tabula Rasa, or spilling guts in Age of Conan. What aRe yoU Playing?

Previously on WRUP...

Last night a new patch went to Age of Conan's Testlive server. As well as making the usual slew of fixes and changes, including addressing memory leak and crash problems, and introducing a revamped version of the Catacombs in Old Tarantia, there were some tweaks to the PvP consequence system.

We're glad to see the following among the patch notes: 'Trading with a criminal will inform you of the consequences and prompt you to confirm to continue.' The consequences of trading with a criminal are being flagged as a criminal yourself, so before this minor but crucial adjustment, it would have been rather easy to end up an open PvP target just by accepting a trade invite. Other adjustments include: no PvP XP earned for snuffing targets below level 10; no progression beyond PvP level 5 until you're level 40; no earning PvP XP at all if you are under level 10; and no trading with NPCs at all if you are a criminal.

Many of the players are, quite understandably, very eager to see the new PvP system go live. Changes like the above make it clear that Funcom want it thoroughly tested before that happens.

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	Having fun in Conan's homeland? Make sure to check out all of our previous Age of Conan coverage, and stick with Massively for more news from the Hyborian Age!

So you can't make it to the Sunday, August 10th Las Vegas Star Trek convention to see Leonard Nimoy reveal Star Trek Online to a huge crowd of Trekkies? (Or Trekkers, we don't really know) We understand that you probably feel left out, especially considering that Cryptic is going to be showing live gameplay footage at the convention. Well worry not, for Cryptic has released the webcast information that allows all interested parties to watch as well. Commence rejoicing drive!

You can follow this usefully highlighted link at 1:30pm PDT this Sunday, August 10th to watch all the commotion. Who knows? You could possibly get so excited over seeing Star Trek Online actually being played that you knock over your soda/water/coffee (depending on your timezone) but still don't care, because of how excited you are! Even if beverage knock-age doesn't occur, we're pretty certain most of you will be excited regardless.

With BlizzCon a little more than two months away, Blizzard is gearing up for the event with the recent launch of the new BlizzCon 2008 website. From this site, fans will be able to find new information on this year's panels, contests and tournaments. Plus, there's the new feature from DIRECTV where those not attending the event will have the chance to watch it live for the first time ever. DIRECTV is offering a special promotion for new subscribers to get the event for free, by following a special link.

This site's launch comes only days before the tickets go on sale for this Anaheim, CA event, which should help in hotel and travel accommodation planning. Be sure to check the site often for more details to come.

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	One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!

The Reichsman is an enigma. There probably hasn't ever been another character in City of Heroes history whose popularity was so disproportionate to his presence in the game. Game developer Joe 'Hero 1' Morrissey has received frequent requests for Reichsman's inclusion, and yet this (literally) ubervillain has never been mentioned in more than a few lines of text.

Joe even boggled that the players seem to want him so much: 'I checked up and as far as I can tell he's just a line or two on the website and the fact that one guy could have that much momentum behind him. We always get asked, "When are you going to bring this guy out?" It's so funny, because we always like, "Wow, really? Him? Okay."'

So who is this guy, and what's his appeal?

World of Warcraft is probably the best known example of a game whose graphics don't strive for realism, but instead have a cartoony, colorful look. It is sometimes criticized for being unrealistic (or even 'childish'), but this arguably misses the point. A cartoonish style allows boundaries to be stretched, making for stylised, expressive landscapes, buildings and creatures, as well as armor and weapon designs that would otherwise be merely absurd. Fantasy doesn't have to be realistic. WAR also seems to be going down this path.

On the other side, we have games that strive for a realistic look, rather than a cartoonish one: the highly detailed drifts of garbage that litter the City of Villains, the gleaming interstellar behemoths of Eve, and in the fantasy genre, the gushing gore and rippling thews of Age of Conan. Attempting a realistic look can be more immersive, but it can also be harder to engage the player emotionally, not to mention being costly on graphics resources.

Which do you prefer? Do you want your MMOs to look like games, without trying to appear realistic? Or do you disdain the more cartoony styles in favor of realism and detail?

In this week's Lord of the Rings Online forum roundup over at Ten Ton Hammer, some interesting points are made on the state of game, Tolkien's view of magic and the player impressions of the Summer Festival. Don't let the high-brow lore excerpts fool you though, the expected forum negativity still shines through this week.

The Summer Festival horse's appearance has been a topic of debate since the photos from Roheryn first surfaced last month. The bright green and yellow saddle has been called everything from psychedelic to nauseating. So it should be no surprise that players are petitioning for a change. Plus, the most-heated debate in this week's roundup revolves around Tolkien's view on magic, its usage by Man and the new Rune-keeper. Does this mean the new magic-user class won't be accessible to the race of Man, or does it mean the lore will need to be stretched a bit? Either way, expect a few complaints here and there.