MMORPG.com contributor Shannon Drake writes this week's list, providing some examples of non-traditional versions of everyone's favorite Fantasy humanoid race, the elves that could be used in future MMOs.

Making a fantasy MMO without elves is absurdism at its highest.

Okay, maybe those are some strong words, exaggerating for the sake of it, but people do love their elves. They are the perfect fantasy race for roleplaying games, because Elves are just different enough to be interesting, pointy-eared and maybe immortal, while still being recognizably or almost human. And, most importantly, they are an exotic race without being too odd or weird for players to identify with. While EverQuest II's Frogloks are hilarious; giant, playable frogs don't seem to have quite the cultural impact of the other traditional fantasy races, possibly because it's easier to figure out how to inherit a quasi-humanoid's skin than to figure out what motivates a frog. Besides flies and sitting around on lily pads and avoiding lusty pigs, of course.

Read it all here.

MMORPG.com Champions Online Correspondent C.A. Thomas writes this look at a number of different directions that the developers at Cryptic might go in the continuing development of the superhero MMO.

Now that the Blood Moon has set on Millennium City, players of Champions Online are eagerly looking toward the coming weeks to see what Cryptic team has in store for the holidays. It's been described as "huge", "shocking", "massive"...you get the idea. It's supposed to be a big deal. But other than hinting at it being a game-changer, Mr. Roper's been pretty quiet about what's coming next for Champions. This has led to dozens of speculation threads on the official forums. Here are some of the more popular ideas as far as what the community has expressed interest in seeing with the Winter Update for Champions Online.

New zone(s)

This is far and away one of the most-wanted things on the Champions Online Winter wish list. It's been said that Cryptic has been planning new zones for some time now, and everyone's excited to see what's next. There's been talk of a moon or space-themed zone, the addition of Hudson City, another major aspect of the Champions Universe, and a number of other designs possibly coming in the future. With the somewhat subtle hype coming from the development team about the upcoming content, it's a bit hard to think there won't be a new zone coming. Of course, as with everything, only time will tell.

Read Speculating on What's Next.

The folks from Jade Dynasty have introduced a new faction into their game and take the time in this developer journal to introduce us to The Arden Faction.

Hello all, Dvorak here--community manager for martial arts MMORPG, Jade Dynasty. Today we're going to look at one of two brand new factions in our just released expansion, Ascension. If you haven't heard of this yet, crawl out from under that rock! Check out our Facebook or follow me on Twitter @pwe_dvorak, for all the latest updates and details.

One major addition in the Ascension expansion is the new race--the Athans. There are two Factions, the rock-hardened tanks, the Balo and the lithe Arden. These nimble fighters come at a time when many in the mortal realm are looking to seize power and the secret to immortality. To combat this problem, the Immortals have called upon the Arden: quick and dexterous fighters who can call upon nature to help them in battle.

Read Introducing The Arden.

It's tempting to play with someone else's intellectual property. This week, Victor Wachter examines this trend in MMOs.

Although this week's column talks about some of the challenges inherent to developing an MMORPG from a an existing license, I don't mean to seem cynical about them. I think that the ability to step into a world you've grown to know and love as a fan is awesome. I've worked on a several licenses and been near a few more. Each time, my inner geek was all a twitter in spite of the obstacles.

And, oh they've had their challenges. Middle Earth Online went into development at Sierra in 1998. It took nine years and a change of developer for Tolkien's world to finally emerge as Lord of the Rings Online. The Marvel Comics license has been through at least three developers and two publishers officially, and several more unofficially. Contention exists even among the creators as to whether or not StarGate Worlds will ever ship. And it seems like years since the Firefly MMORPG was announced, but since then FOX has said they'd rather see a Buffy game.

Read it all here.

With Siege of Mirkwood launching tomorrow, what's an excited LOTRO fan to do? How about that ol' pastime of reading patch notes?

If patch notes are what you're after, Turbine is happy to oblige as the full patch notes for Siege of Mirkwood are now available!

The Lord of the Rings Online: Siege of Mirkwood will be available following tomorrow's 6 AM EST maintenance. See you there!

MMORPG.com traveled down to Los Gatos to talk to the team and play Star Trek Online. We got a lot of time to just run/fly around and check out the ins and outs of the game. We then spoke to Executive Producer Craig Zinkievich about it. This is the first of two articles and is a broader preview. On Wednesday, we'll bring you a specific article that really delves into great detail on ship interiors and bridge crews.

“The vision is that as you play through the content you feel like you’re in the movies, the TV shows,” explained Zinkievich.

They broke the missions up into mini-arcs that obviously owe a lot to a TV episode. They always begin in space with the player sent off on some kind of mission. Upon arrival, there is some kind of space-based challenge – in my hands-on time that meant combat – and then the story draws the player down onto land or some other kind of away mission.

Read it all here.

Blade & Soul, NCSoft's next hotly anticipated title was finally, and fully revealed at this year's G-Star exhibition in Korea.

Not satisfied with the epic nine minute length of their "Vision" trailer for Aion, Blade & Soul's reveal trailer clocks in at a full 11 minutes in length and shows off the game in all its glory.

The trailer reveals four new classes, the Destroyer, the Force Master, the Blade Master, and the Kung Fu Master, as well as four new races, the Gon, the Jin, the Kun, and the Lyn.

Blade & Soul features the art style and direction of legendary Korean artist Hyung-tae Kim, who is known to most gamers for his work on the beautiful Magna Carta RPG series. Kim's style is described as a "stylized exaggeration of a character's body" in a recent interview with the artist at IGN, and this is clearly visible in the Blade & Soul trailer revealed today.

Blade & Soul will feature fast action gameplay, more akin to a fighting game than your typical sandwich combat found in many traditional MMOG's, and will even include elements of platforming.

The game is being designed on Unreal Engine 3, and currently has no set release date, though 2011 is a possibility. An NA/EU localization has not yet been announced.

View the trailer here, and let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Dominion, the 12th free expansion to EVE Online is scheduled to begin deployment tonight at 6PM PST.

There is a catch, however, to today's announcement. There will be some considerable downtime during the expansion's deployment, as the game is not scheduled to return until Tuesday, December 1st at 1PM.

As a result of the lengthy downtime, CCP Games is recommending that players set a long training skill for the duration of the deployment period. Once the game returns players will be required to download a small update, and then be cleared to jump right back into EVE!

For more information on Dominion, check out the expansion's official site here.

Following the culmination of Nick Ebenhoch's Art Direction Dev Diary series, we now have Black Prophecy's Technical Director Cyrus Preuss to kick off the next Dev Diary series, which, of course, is focused on the technical aspects of the game.

The series' debut entry shines some light on the game physics of Black Prophecy:

Hi, my name is Cyrus Preuss and I am the Technical Director at Reakktor Media. Before taking that position, I was responsible for the integration of game physics into the game engine. Basically I am still responsible for this area as physics programmer although the main part of the work is already done.

In my developer diary I would like to outline the „mechanical side” of our game and give you a rough overview about how the single areas work hand in hand in order to create a whole picture. Some of the used terms will sound very technical but I will try to explain them as best as possible.

But one thing at a time. Where does everything begin?
 

Game Physics

A well known game producer once said “Hey, what’s so difficult at integrating physics into a game? It’s completely easy. For example: I clap my hands – collision – and it works…”. As far as I know he raised some uncomprehending and puzzled glances from the present programmers. If it would be that easy then some programmers would be redundant. Actually physics do work very simple at the first glance, but to deduce how easy or difficult it is to integrate physics into a game from that is of course simply wrong.

Read the full Dev Diary here.

Underfoot, the 16th expansion to EverQuest, has been in closed beta testing for a little while now, and today we are glad to report that the NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) is no longer in effect!

Underfoot is set to launch on December 15th, 2009.  However, players who pre-order the game before December 1st, and complete all three Road to Underfoot events will be granted early access on December 8th, 2009. So hop to it!

Now that the NDA has dropped, what are your thoughts on Underfoot? Let us know in the comments below!

The latest update to the Star Wars: The Old Republic website has revealed the newest planet to be added to the official roster of planets to be featured in TOR: Alderaan!

Of course, given the fact Star Wars: The Old Republic takes place thousands of years before the Death Star took out Alderaan, the planet is sitting fine and pretty for your exploration! Not everything is peachy, however, as the civil war between the Galactic Republic and Sith Empire threaten the beauty and peace that the planet is known for.

Read more about Alderaan here.

Also, be sure to check out new screenshots and concept art of Alderaan in our Star Wars: The Old Republic gallery!

An interview with Fallen Earth Project Manager Colin Dwan brings us up to date on the progress of the Icarus MMO since launch.

MMORPG.com: Are there plans to add new skills to the game, will players be able to specialize in new areas?

Colin Dwan: Players will find the addition of a new tradeskill in the upcoming social patch, set for release in mid-December. As we add in new content, we will expand the current tradeskills to unlock new sets of items, weapons, and armor as players rediscover lost technology and societies.

Read it all here.

A simple yet important question is explored in the latest edition of Richard Aihoshi's weekly MMORPG.com column.

Quite a while ago now- perhaps as far back as eight to 10 years - I conducted a completely informal little survey in which I asked developers with experience working on at least one MMOG whether they felt the titles of that time were as much fun as they could or should be. The answers were preponderantly negative. This was as expected. I'd have been gravely disappointed if people had thought there wasn't significant room for improvement.

Flashing forward to the present, the industry has definitely progressed in this regard. However, as you can gather from today's column heading, I'm not entirely happy with the extent that has actually been achieved. Of course, this begs the question "Why not?" I'm not presumptuous enough to suggest or even think I can provide a definitive answer, but I do have a few thoughts I'm willing to offer up for consideration.

Read it all here.

Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online's latest expansion is Siege of Mirkwood. Today, they have provided us with these three exclusive screenshots from the Chambers instance.

You can visit LotRO's webspage, here.

See all three here.

MMORPG.com Age of Conan Correspondent John Humphrey writes this look at the fan base of the Conan IP that Funcom has to draw from and the new steps that the MMO company is taking to bring them and others into their game.

There are fans that have read the original Robert E. Howard short-stories and poetry, much of which was written between 1932 and 1936 and re-published extensively. Many of the original Howard stories are available to read for FREE online. There are those of us who have followed the "pastiche" writings and books about Conan (non-Howard material), from the likes of Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter, Robert Jordan, Leonard Carpenter, Steve Perry, John Maddox Roberts, and many others.

Read it all here.