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As we noted yesterday, The Agency isn't canceled. Despite that mixup from Gamefly's automated notification system, the FPS/spy title from the SOE Seattle studio is still going strong. Joystiq spoke with the SOE subsidiary briefly yesterday, and we had the chance to do so as well. Being the MMO nerds that we are, we just had to go a bit outside the scope of this latest mixup - mechanics are far more interesting than drama!

Join us as we talk over the current state of The Agency's development with the animated and always-interesting lead designer Hal Milton. Hal shares with us a bit of insight into what they're currently working on, give us a few fun facts to chew on, and makes us actually look forward to next year's summer con season. We didn't think anything could do that. Spy social engineering at work!

Read on below the cut for our full discussion.

Executive Producer for Lord of the Rings Online Jeffrey Steefel is one of the most convivial MMO-makers in the industry. Sitting down to talk to him always ends up with some useful information, a friendly conversation about a game and an industry that can be a little hard to approach. It was a pleasure, then, to chat with Mr. Steefel just last night, the night before the release of LotRO's first expansion. Mines of Moria is now live, and from the sounds of things the servers and players are having a great time of it.

Join us for our chat, then, as we talk about the Moria Beta test experience, new content coming into the game today that has nothing to do with the Moria expansion, and even a bit about the future of the game!

There are some players who aren't going to be getting the expansion for whatever reason, but they are still getting a lot of free content in the Book 15 patch. What can those players expect in that even without the paid expansion?

Jeffrey: The first thing they get is, essentially, an entire new area called Eregion where book 15 takes place. That's even before you get into Moria, and it is available to everyone in the game regardless of whether you have the expansion or not. I think there is only one area out of ten new ones that is inaccessible without the expansion. That, of course, is the part of Eregion that leads you into Moria. We added some functionality to the game, too, with things like tradesets and other things.

All of the polishing/tweaking/balancing we've done to the game, whether it is class balance or smoothing out animations, all of those are available to anyone playing the game period. Getting into Moria itself, the new classes, the new levels, and the legendary items are what people are really buying the expansion for.

City of Heroes Issue 13 is enormous. Even with the Mission Architect pushed out to early next year, the next big patch coming to City of Heroes has enough content to satisfy a small army of players. We've talked previously about the upcoming PvP changes, the Day Job system, and we had the chance for extensive conversations with the developers back when the Issue was first announced. That said, there's still a lot of ground to cover.

That's why we were thrilled when designer Phil Zeleski and the infamous Matt 'Positron' Miller reached out to us to clarify what's coming down the pipe with game rewards. We chatted with the gents extensively about the new and improved meta-currency coming to City of Heroes. It's going to make Task Forces and Story Arcs far more rewarding for the average player, and the background behind their design is fascinating. Join us below the cut for discussions about how they chose what rewards to give out, trends along these lines in the indstry, and much more.

How do you compare what you're doing here with other Flash game initiatives on the web?

Daniel: Well, they're sort of doing our thing and we're doing ours. We're not really interested in becoming the next Kongregate with thousands and thousands of flash games in Whirled. We're looking for a smaller number of – dare I say – good and interesting games. That's, I think, what we're going to see when people make original content for the platform. It's just a bit unique, you'll find it everywhere on the internet, but it's going to be built on Whirled. We're already pushing our Whirled games back out to sites like Kongregate, but it's essentially Whirled in a little box.

Earlier this week we had the chance to speak with Mr. Daniel James, the CEO and co-founder of Three Rings. Makers of successful online titles Puzzle Pirates and Bang! Howdy, the company is well known for the quality of its work and the quirkiness of its GDC parties. They've been working on a third project, Whirled, for the better part of 2008 and it just launched into full live service earlier this week. We spoke with Mr. James about the whys and logic behind Whirled, about the power of user-created content, and the power of offering actual compensation for hard work and talent.

Read on below the cut for our talk with Mr. James, and a thorough exploration of a brand-new Whirled.

There are many criminals in EVE Online, but some push their chosen profession to a whole different level, sometimes even at the expense of their fellow outlaws. Being an outlaw in EVE Online's setting of New Eden isn't just about prowess in combat. For some, the pull of New Eden's underworld is all about the social fabric of the game... and how to exploit it. Deception is their greatest weapon, and paired with the endless opportunities for social engineering in EVE, that weapon can be put to devastating use. Among all of the conmen and scam artists in New Eden, there's one name that conjures up more rage and misery than most others: Miz Cenuij.

From the earliest days of New Eden, Miz was on the path to becoming a major antagonist in EVE. While some players love him, most just love to hate him, and he wouldn't have it any other way. Over time, Miz has become one of New Eden's most notorious thieves and hell raisers, an evil celebrity of sorts. His manipulations have triggered alliance wars, brought him numerous threats from other pilots, thousands of confirmed kills, and raked in a fantastic amount of wealth in the process. His preferred modus operandi in EVE is the long con, but since he learned to convert his wealth into influence over others, he's found that corruption and practiced deception make a formidable combination. As if a counter to restlessness, his apparent goal of keeping New Eden set in motion, if not set ablaze, has ensured that Miz Cenuij lives on a steady diet of tears and rage.

Massively caught up with Miz Cenuij, who told us what motivates him to engage in activities that oppose the interests of so many other citizens of New Eden, and why he enjoys igniting controversy in EVE.

A short while ago we had the chance to speak with Craig Morrison, the new director for Funcom's pulp fantasy epic Age of Conan. Morrison assumed the helm after the previous (development) director Gaute Godager stepped down, and since then the AoC team has been making a concerted effort to reach out to players. Perhaps drawing on lessons from other companies that have experienced player perception problems, the Funcom director seems to be making a deliberate campaign out of player recruitment, feedback, and communication.

Join us as we reflect on this initiative, discuss issues that the Funcom staff see as most important to the Age of Conan playerbase, and walk through features associated with the most recent expansive patch. Read on for the full details and insight into this unique MMO.

Was there anything else in particular that jumped out at you as being noteworthy?

Craig: In terms of the other content most of what we focused on, as we discussed earlier, there were several issues the players have brought to our attention. There were a lot of changes to the combat system in today's update, making sure that the game systems and the combos are fun. We tried to make them slightly easier to use in hectic situations, without dumbing things down. We definitely didn't want to do that. We did realize that certain of the high level combos tended to be a bit volatile, some of them had five steps to them in addition to the starter. We found in PvP that meant they weren't as effective as they could have been; they actually counted against people who were relying on the damage from those combos.

One of the most significant works of machinima created in recent years is Clear Skies, an unconventional amalgam of the gritty, far future setting of EVE Online tempered with a more human touch, imbued with life through clever writing and exacting manipulation of Half-Life 2 character models. Fans and critics alike have praised Clear Skies since its release. Indeed, the film recently took top honors at Machinima Filmfest 2008, garnering a Mackie award for Best Long Format Film.

This success at the festival was met with astonishment from Clear Skies creator Ian Chisholm as well as from his collaborators, John Guthrie and Richie Powles. But it was decidedly less of a surprise to the many fans of the film, a seemingly ever-growing number judging by the number of times Clear Skies has been downloaded from EVE-Files.

Massively recently caught up with Clear Skies creator Ian Chisholm, who was gracious enough to provide us with a sequence of production stills from Clear Skies 2, explaining how he brings a scene to life in stages from voice recording, to choreography, to the culmination of this work in the final footage. While we had his attention, Ian also discussed what drives a man to dedicate years of his life to a project of this caliber, and what he has in store for us with Clear Skies 2.

Can you tell me a bit about how you make the Clear Skies films? My understanding is the overriding vision for Clear Skies is yours, that you write the scripts and do much of the work involved with turning them into proper films, but how do you collaborate with others in creating Clear Skies?

Pretty much I did everything bar the voice acting in the first film, and even then a lot of that. I didn't bring anyone else into it as I didn't want to use up a lot of someone else's time and then have the project fail for some reason. Also I'm a bit of a control freak, relying on other people is difficult for me! I've found this time around that there isn't much I can farm out anyway, it's a bunch of esoteric skills that I've now got refined to the point that it's faster for me to do things than it is to teach others -- I attempted to teach lipsyncing to someone else but I may have well tried teaching them Martian. What I have got is a good friend working on reskinning some models, and a chap I spoke to ingame that has been working on level designs for various games for years. He's doing me some new sets for Gallente and Amarr ships, ensuring they will have a different visual style to my Caldari and Minmatar ones. He's really good, enthusiastic, and importantly has got a good history in sticking with a project to the end.

EVE Online is a deep and complex game, and even those who've played EVE for years find there are still facets of gameplay they've never mastered. This is compounded by the game's unique nature as a massive galaxy primed for exploration and domination by its players, whose actions and machinations affect one another in a single setting that's never quite the same from one day to the next.

EVE is always evolving, both in terms of the dynamics between players and the game itself, seen as a whole. But unlike most MMOs, EVE Online has an official magazine, called E-ON, which has kept pace with how the game and its player efforts have changed over the years. To flip through the E-ON back issues is to see the documented evolution of EVE Online. In fact, E-ON manages to stay ahead of the curve due in part to its access to CCP Games, but mostly through the efforts of the players themselves whose writing talents make up the entirety of E-ON. The man behind E-ON is Richie Shoemaker, aka "Zapatero." He's the one who's been guiding the publication along since day one, and ensuring its content digs beneath the surface of the game. He's interviewed EVE's players and developers alike, but it occurred to us... Zapatero has an excellent perspective on the game yet is rarely interviewed, himself.

Massively recently caught up with Zapatero in between his continent hopping, and got him to tell us a bit about his approach to covering EVE and what the player community is capable of creating.

I read E-ON so I know you've really got your finger on the pulse of EVE, but given the magazine's quarterly publishing schedule, how do you meet the challenges of covering a game that's always evolving?

My finger isn't on the pulse at all. Never has been. I just know where to find the pulse when I need it.

It's difficult to be topical and obviously the magazine could be seen to date quite quickly, but I don't feel that aspect detracts from the the magazine at all. If anything it enhances it. I've always likened E-ON to a snapshot of EVE. Each issue captures EVE in a moment that will never exists again. For example, in the first issue we published a profile of a much-loved EVE fansite called EVE-I. Soon after publication EVE-I went down and never returned. (It actually went down before publication, but the admins assured me it would be back.) At the time it was slightly embarrassing that the we had a glowing profile of the site and some people on the forums found that amusing, but as time has gone by and memory has faded, EVE-I has been forgotten by all but the oldest veterans. The point is that the site is no longer active, it no longer even exists.... except in E-ON.

It's a similar story with the "Darwin's Contraption" movie, which we previewed in Issue #005, and maybe the EVE: Ascension mod (#009) will never see the light of day, but in E-ON all these great fan projects can be celebrated for their efforts, if not their achievements.

As for the ever-changing nature of EVE, it's precisely because EVE never stands still that there are always deep seams of material to mine for content. I actually feel that we could do an issue of E-ON every six weeks, perhaps monthly, but I'm not sure my superiors share that view because it's a fair bit of work that goes into design and production and MMM are a very small outfit, but there certainly is never a problem filling an issue with words -- quite the opposite.

Alliance warfare in EVE Online is a defining aspect of the game. EVE's setting of New Eden is a sprawling galaxy of over 5000 solar systems, where players are free to build empires, establish vast enterprises, and do whatever is necessary to maintain dominance over their competitors -- be it financial, political, or military. All of that freedom to do what you choose eventually leads players, collectively, into one another's sphere of influence, triggering bitter and protracted warfare. That's the nature of EVE -- the setting provides potential, but it's largely the players who drive the game. In what has been aptly described as "the largest virtual conflict ever waged", the Band of Brothers Alliance (BoB) has stood at the forefront of that struggle for dominance in EVE Online for years.

As an alliance, their strength is undeniable. But the power they've gained has sparked a fiery resentment from the much larger non-BoB playerbase in EVE, polarizing the community into those who either love or hate them. In many cases, it's been the latter. After all, for some time, Band of Brothers' goal was to control all space in New Eden, beginning in the lawless frontier of 0.0, where most alliance warfare rages, and eventually consolidating control over Empire space and its commerce. Band of Brothers set a goal for territorial control that's simply not possible in the game, however. The times have changed, and now the old paradigm of territorial grabs characteristic of the epic conflict with The RedSwarm Federation has been replaced with the MAX campaign, and a different nemesis -- the Northern Coalition. As vendetta-turned-alliance policy, MAX is intended to be a wave of destruction that cuts through the hulls and holdings of their opposition.

The man behind the MAX campaign, and the Band of Brothers alliance, is SirMolle. Massively recently spoke with SirMolle about the pressures of leadership, the impact Band of Brothers has had on the game, and the endgame of control over New Eden.

Band of Brothers fields the largest capital ship fleet in the game. Obviously this provides your alliance with an advantage, but how do you respond to what many players feel is a problem of capital ship proliferation? Do you miss the days before capital ships and POS warfare became the norm?

EVE is ever-changing. It has evolved since the early alpha and beta days to early release, to today's EVE. It will never stop changing, and the players have to evolve with it. You can always say "remember the good old days", but, that's just nostalgia. Evolve or die, adapt or be overcome.

I could say I miss ninja-mining, I could say I miss dura-Mallers, I could say I miss splash damage from torpedoes, I could say I miss the days before POS's were in the game. But all in all, EVE is a larger game, a larger world, a more complex world today than when it started. Changes are a part of your EVE-life. Embrace it.

The most important ship in EVE is not a capital ship; it's the battleship.