WarCry had the chance to sit down with Masthead Studios CEO Atanas Atanasov to discuss Masthead's upcoming MMOG Earthrise. Read on for his thoughts on MMOG development, skill-based development and the struggle between Continoma and Noir.

JUNE 2008

It just doesn't get any more specific than that.

Now that that's out of the way, we can move on to the meat of WarCry's recent visit to California to meet Ossian Studios developers. Ossian, in case you've been away from Neverwinter Nights 2 for awhile, is developing the first premium module, now called an 'adventure pack', for Neverwinter Nights 2. The module, entitled "Mysteries of Westgate" is a city adventure and takes place in the well-known D&D; location of Westgate. Up to this point in time, most of the available media and information about MoW has come via the official forums and Ossian developers. This was a first chance to get a hands on look at Mysteries of Westgate.

The day began with a 'tour' of Mysteries of Westgate. Our small group spent 45 minutes or so being shown the highlights of Westgate and were given an opportunity to ask developers Alan Miranda and Russ Davis questions covering a wide variety of topics. After this we were turned loose on the game for 2+ hours of hands on "work".

Click below to read the rest including sections about assets, maps & movement and much more!

In a special treat, we spoke to seven industry leaders about the State of MMOs as they exist today and where they're headed in the future. We take on the biggest topics, such as the cost of development, subscription vs. micropayments, innovation vs. evolution and many more.

In this article, we hear from SOE President John Smedley, ZeniMax Online Studios General Manager Matt Firor, Themis Group CEO Alexander Macris, GamerDNA.com Director of Community Sanya Weathers, EVE Online Game Designer Chantel Zuurmond, IGN PC Executive Editor Steve Butts and the former Executive Producer of Star Trek Online Daron Stinnett.

It was a sentiment shared by most of those we spoke to. It's obvious that World of Warcraft has the market by the throat and have become perhaps the only truly global game in the MMO-space. That means some tough realities for the games in the next tier.

"[MMOs are in a] state of unrest, right now," said Matt Firor, General Manager of ZeniMax Online Studios, a sister company of Bethesda. "World of Warcraft is ruling the subscription game market, and no one wants to complete with them directly, so they go off for niche markets."

As a special note, this will be my final article here with WarCry and it's been a pleasure.

It's been a big couple weeks for Realtime Worlds. First they secured $50 million in financing, then they used it to reclaim all rights to All Points Bulletin. Now, we they get to talk to WarCry! We interviewed Realtime Worlds Senior VP of Business Development Walter Kong about the business moves, the company and, of course, All Points Bulletin.

APB is an upcoming cops vs. robbers MMO from the brain of Grand Theft Auto creator David Jones.

"I think another area where the team is really pushing the envelope is the concept of using players as content." He explained that most games are either player vs. environment (PvE) or some kind of eternal player vs. player (PvP) battle. In APB, they bring these two concepts together.

"What we're trying to achieve is really to take the PvP experience and craft missions around it," he said. In this way, players have missions and goals - which is to say a directed experience - but their enemies are real human players, not just AI enemies. In effect, players can create content for each other, and it all naturally fits within the context of the criminal vs. law enforcement premise of the game.

Read more after the leap.

Issue 12 is about to hit the live servers and we took the chance to catch up with City of Heroes/Villains Lead Designer Matt Miller and Senior Designer Floyd Grubb to catch up on the Issue, their transition from Cryptic to NCsoft, in-game advertising and much more.

"We thought it was going to be a tougher transition than it was," said Miller of the switch from Cryptic's leadership to NCsoft's. "We kind of hit the ground running once we got into the new studio"

As NCsoft NorCal is exclusively focused on all things City of, they had promised to dedicate more resources to it. For example, when they release new elements of micro-content, such as a recent wedding pack, the money they make off it is put right back into the game's expansion and development.

Read more after the leap.

Shannon "Pharamond" Drake over at Funcom and Mitra's Method's Stephen "Weezer" Spiteri got together for a little chat about the status of Age of Conan. Drake gives us some answers in a special edition of Mitra's Method!

Mitra's Method: One of the key features of 'Age of Conan' is its revolutionary real-time combat system, and it's amazing, but I was wondering how important it was for Funcom to pull this off. Gaute Godager spoke about how at the start "it couldn't be done" but how does it feel to have it nailed-down? How do you think this will change MMORPG gaming?

Shannon Drake: The thing I've noticed playing other MMOs since I started working on Conan is that I'm a lot less tolerant of classic autoattack+special attack combat systems than I used to be. Even in a game I enjoy, I find myself jabbing forlornly at the movement keys and muttering, "So I can't do anything but stand here flailing away?" It's hard to go back to it once you've gotten used to swinging your weapon yourself, working through combos, and otherwise actively managing your combat.

Read it all after the leap.

Earlier this week, Pirates of the Burning Sea announced they were merging their 11 servers down to 4. Obviously, this rung some alarm bells in the community, so we tracked down Flying Lab Software CEO Russell Williams to find out the real deal in this exclusive interview.

"Companies are so afraid of any negative publicity that they basically wait until the game is on life support," said Williams. "People are always nervous about change, but the fact is the game has so many interrelated systems that the game really does function better when there is a higher density of people."

Read it all on the next page!

It's about to hit its fifth birthday, so we took the chance to talk to Valerie Massey of CCP Games about the history of EVE Online and in the process, got a little scoop of this summer's expansion pack!

We also have a nice little video interview that CCP put together with CEO Hilmar Petursson on the company's history. You can grab that here.

The title of the next expansion - revealed here for the first time - will be "The Empyrean Age," the same as the EVE novel by Tony Gonzalez also slated for the summer. The reason is simple, this is the first EVE Online expansion where the story of the game and its universe will play a key role, a lot of it based off the novel.

"The universe of Eve has always had this fragile peace between the races and now that's going to end," Massey said. This means war and that is the core new feature: factional warfare. "People can actually take an active role and choose sides for who they want to fight for and who they want to fight against."

Read it all after the leap.

Tim Tan is the Producer of Lineage II: Hellbound, the upcoming free expansion to the popular NCsoft MMORPG. He spoke with our Jordan Deam last week by telephone about the update in this exclusive interview.

WarCry: Hellbound is the final installment of the First Throne Saga. Talking about that overall storyline, how important is it to a typical Lineage II player?

Tim Tan: From a storyline standpoint, I feel that we started with the Kamael, and we introduced the Hellbound zone, and unlocking the different areas. I feel that Hellbound, basically the signature part of the last segment of the First Throne, is the completion of that. Your goal is to actually explore the rest of Hellbound, enter areas like the Steel Citadel, and your ultimate goal is to meet and fight Beleth, the biggest baddie in the game right now. So I think it will be significant. It definitely is, in terms of story, the higher-end content. And we do have a good group of roleplayers that always know the storyline and progression in that way.

Read more after the leap.

Tim Tan is the Producer of Lineage II: Hellbound, the upcoming free expansion to the popular NCsoft MMORPG. He spoke with our Jordan Deam last week by telephone about the update in this exclusive interview.

WarCry: Hellbound is the final installment of the First Throne Saga. Talking about that overall storyline, how important is it to a typical Lineage II player?

Tim Tan: From a storyline standpoint, I feel that we started with the Kamael, and we introduced the Hellbound zone, and unlocking the different areas. I feel that Hellbound, basically the signature part of the last segment of the First Throne, is the completion of that. Your goal is to actually explore the rest of Hellbound, enter areas like the Steel Citadel, and your ultimate goal is to meet and fight Beleth, the biggest baddie in the game right now. So I think it will be significant. It definitely is, in terms of story, the higher-end content. And we do have a good group of roleplayers that always know the storyline and progression in that way.

Read more after the leap.