It began as a rumor but was confirmed at SOE Fan Faire 2009 -- EverQuest's 16th expansion will be called Underfoot and is coming in November of this year. We've mentioned some of the features that Underfoot will bring to the game, like the expansion progress window and new zones, and Sony Online Entertainment is also updating the game's lore.

The lore update explains the subterranean Plane of Underfoot and some of its notable inhabitants, namely Brell Serilis, the Duke of Below. But mostly it provides EverQuest lore fans with a history of Underfoot, from the time it was shaped by the gods to the creation of Norrath's races. It's all part of the official EverQuest Underfoot announcement over at EverQuest Players.

Earlier in the week, EverQuest's new 51/50 server "Mayong" went live. Pretty much anyone that played EQ around launch will recognize the name as that of the infamous vampire Mayong Mistmoore, a character that was sometimes played by GMs and devs for live events way back in the day. For those not familiar with the special rules of this server type, it's fairly simple: 51 is your starting level, and 50 is the number of AAs you automatically receive upon making a character.

To get people in the mood to begin the inevitable leveling races, and also to celebrate Independence Day, there is a 51% experience boost for players on all servers until Monday morning -- that's right, fifty-one percent. See what they did there?

My American sources tell me this is a long weekend for you folks across the pond. Something about independence from Blighty a few hundred years ago. Essentially an excuse to let off fireworks, have BBQs, enjoy the fine weather and skive off work. Good on you. It seems like lots of MMOs are using it as an excuse to take the real celebrations in-game. For example, World of Warcraft has the Midsummer Fire Festival which concludes tomorrow with a bunch of snoozing goblin guards and a whopping fireworks display. Likewise, Lord of the Rings Online has one festival with four different names.

Given the fact the games are created by humans, it's no surprise the in-game festivals of all our favourite MMOs share a little in common with actual celebrations in real life. However they can also be handy for people too far away to meet up this 4th of July, most often troops on active duty or family members and friends separated by thousands of miles or even continents. So are any of you out there planning to eschew real celebrations in favour of meeting up with your guildies in-game? Are you going to travel around to see the fireworks or, if you play, WoW raid an enemy city. Do you prefer celebrating such events in-game? Do you mark them on your calendar and anticipate them as much as their real world counterparts? Do you wish the developers would expand world festivals to take account of more important holidays?

Ether Saga Online is now officially live, and as we found out last month at E3 from the game's developers Perfect World, this event has gone hand in hand with a large update. We already knew about the introduction of an "Easy" setting for instances, a new world boss, and the reduction of "kill X number of monsters" quests, but there was also an increase to the level cap. In this patch the maximum level has gone from 90 to 105, and getting through these levels will grant the player lots of brand new class skills.

The launched ESO is a free-to-play title, and the client can be found here. Check after the break for the full launch patch information.

The kid-centric MMO Wizard101 from KingsIsle Entertainment seems to be doing quite well for itself, having already gained millions of unique users since its launch last September. Wizard101 has gotten a steady stream of updates as well. In fact, today marks the game's largest expansion release to date, adding a new land called Grizzleheim with a Norse theme, and a Bazaar in Olde Town where players can buy and sell their wares.

Perhaps the biggest addition to Wizard101 with today's expansion is a crafting system which will bring new gear into the game that spans the various schools of magic. Wizard101 players will be able to craft hundreds of items ranging from clothing to Treasure Cards. In addition to using crafting tables in their houses and dorm rooms, players can progress through five tiers of crafting advancement.

Believe it or not, not every Warhammer Online image we get has a glitch in it. It just seems like more people snap screenshots of funny glitches than normal life. We figure they're too busy trying to kill each other for that. That's why even if this guy's face is scary-looking, we're glad to see it today on One Shots - and glitch-free! Without further ado, here's today's contributor: This is my Warrior Priest, Serathor, from the Phoenix Throne server of Warhammer Online. As I [was] waiting for me and my warband to finish defending a battlefield objective in the Shadowlands, I turned around to capture an amazing lightning strike hitting one of the spires.

When you're out and about in your favorite MMO, why not snap some screenshots and send them our way? It's always appreciated as we love to have lots of different worlds to show off. Just email them to us at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name and the game the image is from. Be sure to add in your name, the name the game is from and a brief description so we can credit you properly.

As we look back at the past several years of the MMO scene, we see a genre that has gone through significant evolutionary leaps. With those pioneering days of text MUDs and blocky graphics behind us, today we enjoy professionally developed games with impressive development teams and massive budgets behind them. The genre's depths have been thoroughly explored and we've even categorised the features we've come to love and expect from our favourite online retreats. Every part of the genre, from the types of gameplay available to the terminology we use, has been routinely evolving and redefining itself over time.

With professional MMO development soaring and a whole new generation of promising titles on the way, we stand on the cusp of what could be the next big evolutionary leap for online gaming. In the coming weeks and months, Massively will be examining how the MMO genre has been redefined during the current generation of games and where it's headed in the next. If you have something important to say on the topic, feel free to post a comment on page 2 or even write your own "Redefining MMOs" blog post and leave a comment with the URL.

In this introductory article, I ask why we use the terminology we do when talking about MMOs and if perhaps it's starting to change.

This is an original opinion piece written by someone who has been following Warhammer Online since November 2007. Comments are open on page three.

Many people claim WAR is a total fail-whale of an MMO. I can see sides of their argument, but I don't believe it's completely true. The "fail" perception mostly comes down to the expectations that were set by Mythic and EA and then never fully delivered upon. It's no secret they were aiming for 500k+ subs and then missed the mark (by about 200k), but it got me wondering... Who is/was WAR's target audience? Was their potential audience actually big enough to support their aspirations?

Let's go back. Waaaaaaaaaaay back. Let's pretend we were a fly on the wall in a Mythic/EA/Games Workshop boardroom as they were discussing the original vision and design direction for WAR. One of the first steps you take before developing any product is to define your target audience or demographic. Knowing your audience gives you better direction and allows you to focus your efforts and design decisions more clearly.

Like I said before, Mythic screwed up royally in implementation. By broadening their appeal to too many people they diluted the quality of their feature set and in the process made some really odd design decisions (e.g., Let's ramp up this huge RvR campaign and then put a bunch of city PvE at the end of it - an attempt at balancing RvR and PvE content that failed abysmally).

What are the two biggest complaints leveled at WAR by ex-WAR players? One: The RvR endgame is meaningless, boring, and repetitive. Two: The exact same thing can be said about PvE - except all the way through.

How can you make RvR the main focus of your game without pissing off PvE folks and vice versa? You can definitely try and balance them 50/50, but let's be real here. Mythic can barely balance their classes, let alone entire aspects of an MMO. Let's also be fair -- it's a pretty damned hard task to achieve.

Make PvE gear 5% easier to get than RvR gear and you're going to start a civil war within your community. There's already latent animosity between both camps to begin with.

So, who is left playing WAR these days? Oddly enough, a friend and I were discussing this a few nights ago over the phone (which inspired this post by the way). We think the people playing WAR these days are made up of hardcore RvR folks who have had their fill of DAOC, other PvPers, Warhammer tabletop fans happy to experience the IP in a new medium, and a number of disgruntled ex-WoW folks (and other MMOs).

Those aren't actually bad audiences to work with and they can definitely be built upon. Target content to these players while fixing performance issues and WAR may start growing rather than holding steady or potentially even shrinking.

On the other hand, we feel these audiences are also prime candidates for a couple upcoming MMOs.

First, we have Aion. This is the next big RvR-focused WoW-clone (Yes, I said it!) coming to market. We think the Abyss concept will appeal to many WAR players interested in PvP because the combat is just as refined (maybe even more so) and the PvP is slightly more meaningful and hardcore. We also think it will appeal to many WoW players who choose to play on PvP servers.

Next, we have Warhammer 40K. Sure, it's a ways off yet, but we have a feeling this game will grab many WAR players who call themselves hardcore tabletop fans. It's worth mentioning that WH40K will also feature PvP and that it may even be more advanced, including vehicles and destructible terrain. That said, a lot can happen between now and release. It's risky business to bet on an MMO based on pre-beta feature lists.

WAR's biggest audience right now is made up of people interested in RvR/PvP, but we think many of these players could easily jump to one or several upcoming RvR/PvP MMOs in search of their next thrill. The titles include: Aion, Global Agenda, Mortal Online, Earthrise, and maybe even Darkfall once it releases its NA-1 server. Options for PvPers are growing in the MMO genre.

In conclusion, I don't actually think Mythic made a mistake in trying to take the widest appeal approach. At its core, WAR was and is an RvR game, but to only appeal to PvP players would have severely limited Mythic's potential for massive subscriber numbers. To compete with WoW, they truly needed to have a strong PvE component to their game. Where they failed to meet expectations of course, was in the execution of both areas.

Shortly after release, Mark Jacobs released a State of the Game announcement. In it, he said that Mythic would spend more time and resources on improving RvR. This was when he announced RvR influence and a number of other RvR-centric features. He drew a line in the sand that day and said WAR was an RvR game first and foremost. By doing so, I believe he turned off many PvE players interested in WAR. The pendulum began to swing.

Apparently Land of the Dead is really appealing to the PvE crowd since its release, which is great, but there are many accounts that it is hurting RvR. This effect may only be temporary due to LotD's newness, but it just further highlights my point about the difficulty involved in balancing for different audiences in your MMO.

Where does Mythic go from here? I think they need to focus more energy trying to steady that pendulum. If they ever can achieve that perfect balance of RvR and PvE, WAR may be one of the best MMOs with the widest appeal in history.

Does that mean they'll ever achieve WoW's numbers? Hell no. Accessibility alone gives WoW a huge advantage, not to mention it has now become a pop culture phenomenon.

That said, a more balanced WAR with strong PvE and RvR design could easily hold north of one million subscribers. How far north? *Ahem* I'm sure Mythic wouldn't mind feeling a bit chilly, especially after all the heat they've drawn since release.

Runas de Magica y el pollo es muy delicioso para la cena! Ok, so our Spanish is a little rusty, we're missing some accent marks, and we probably just said that Runes of Magic tastes good with chicken, but what we mean to say is that the closed beta for Runes of Magic in Spain and France has begun.

Now anyone from those two countries, or anyone who wants to have their client in French or Spanish, can enjoy Runes of Magic in those languages. With the closed beta comes the launch of the French and Spanish Runes of Magic websites as well, so feel free to scurry on over and register.

The final date for launch for these two countries hasn't been confirmed yet, but the game will be shipping out with The Elven Prophecy, giving their launches a timeframe of either launching with the new expansion or shortly thereafter.

Gaikai is a new game streaming service that's currently in development, which was first announced at GDC 2009 (and later was apparently previewed by game publishers at E3 2009.) We've since mentioned Gaikai a few times at Massively, and how the service could bring MMOs (and other games) to devices like netbooks that don't have adequate graphics capabilities to run these titles. Gaikai will use "Streaming Worlds" technology to do all the graphics crunching on remote servers and then stream games to your computer via a web browser. In effect, you're playing the game as a video stream. No client install required, no patching needed.

Given the reactions we've seen from gamers in our own comments and elsewhere on the web, skepticism abounds. Perhaps seeing is believing though, as Gaikai's David Perry has put out a video demo of the service today, explaining Gaikai to viewers as he plays several games, namely World of Warcraft and EVE Online. No doubt there will still be skepticism, but it's good to get a first look at the service. Perry makes a few details about the demo and the service itself clear on his blog: the data travel distance in the demo is 800 miles; this is a (non-fiber) home cable connection; it works over wi-fi and with netbooks lacking 3D graphics cards; any clicking sounds heard are only from Perry's wireless headset mic.

We've got a video embed of the Gaikai technology demo for you below, where you can see World of Warcraft and EVE Online played via a browser:

Join me as I brave my way through lands unknown in an adventure dictated entirely by you, the Massively readers! Vote for everything from game played to character creation to ultimate goal and watch it unfold in a series of journals and galleries here on the site. Then, as the ultimate goal is reached, we'll do it all over again in a new game!

When last we saw our Guild Wars heroine, she had just finished exploring every city in Kryta and was off to do the same in the Maguuma Jungle. According to your votes, Moira Zonk the Necromancer headed off to unlock each of the eight cities in the Jungle and ultimately reach the Amnoon Oasis in the Crystal Desert.

Now that she sits at the Oasis, recovering from her travels, she's ready to head off in whatever direction you'd like. Keep reading below for more on her travels and the newest poll where you can vote on where she ventures next.