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The new Day Jobs feature coming with City of Heroes Issue 13: Power and Responsibility has caught the imagination of many of the roleplaying crew, but some other players are unsure what to make of it. Designer Phil Zeleski has provided some insight into how the feature works and what sorts of rewards players can get from using it.

Put simply, the CoX Day Job system allows players to log out from a specific location (like a hospital or vault) and when they return to play, after an extended log out period, they will gain a temporary power or some other benefit. With the exception of badges and accolades, the benefits either last for a limited time or have a limited number of uses before they are used up. However, you can replenish the benefit by logging out in the same area. Most rewards need 10 days of logged out time to hit the maximum benefit.

City of Heroes Issue 13: Power and Responsibility has now been patched to the Test Server, where a small but dedicated group of people will be testing the hell out of it for a while before the gate is unlocked and Open Beta begins.

Leaking stuff from a Closed Beta is of course a major no-no, and we would not condone this from anyone. There is, however, a limited amount of access that anyone can get, simply by going through character creation. Although it's not possible to enter the game fully unless you're in the Closed Beta, costume pieces and new powersets can be examined in their current state. These are in testing, so it would be unwise to fixate on anything for now.

So far we've had a look at the Shields powerset, which is extremely cool and contains many surprises, and Pain Domination, which picks up the buffity-healy hero set Empathy, runs with it, and smashes its face into the wall repeatedly while laughing like some ice-girdled steel-toothed agony maiden from Hell's own surgical wing.

It was just last week that Warhammer Game Update 1.01 was released on an unsuspecting waagh. Already the team at Mythic Entertainment has patched in the next major fix to their newly released title. The Warhammer Herald has full patch notes for Game Update 1.0.2, and it looks like they're adding in some fun new bells and whistles just a few weeks out of the starting gate. Here are the highlights:

• More anti-spammer measures! They're going to make it yet harder for all those spam-monkeys to do their jobs. When can we have a right-click-to-report feature?
• They are working to promote realm balance with (welcome) bribery. Some realms on some servers will now award their players with a +20% bonus to renown and experience! You'll be able to track this on the Herald's server list, and those bonuses will only last until balance is achieved.
• They've added in a debilitating debuff and auto-kick for folks that choose to go afk in Scenario starting areas. Thank goodness! Dang freeloaders.

You can check out the full patch notes at the Warhammer Herald. Make sure to head back here for more talk about the ongoing WAR.

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	Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out our Warhammer guides: Massively's Character Creation Guide and our WoW Player's Guide to Warhammer. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!

EVE Online has a much smaller playerbase than some of the other top-tier MMOs on the market. Despite this fact, CCP Games was willing to provide an even smaller subset of players -- Linux and Mac users -- with an EVE client, via Transgaming's Cedega (Linux) and Cider (Mac). While the 'premium' Trinity graphics are only supported on the Windows client, this writer can attest that the Mac client has improved a great deal since its release.

That said, there have certainly been some issues with providing a stable client for multiple operating systems. The Empyrean Age 1.1.2 patch for Mac and Linux, which was scheduled to deploy during downtime today, should bring with it numerous small fixes to these clients. On the Mac side, Empyrean Age 1.1.2 changes how autopatching works, improves issues with international keyboard layouts, and especially resolves the issue with how station interiors display. If the changes go through smoothly, this funky anomaly will be no more. This gallery may be a last look at the black, translucent interiors of stations that some Mac users have been reporting:

It's been a bit of a wait for this one, but finally the fan-anticipated Game Update 49 has gone live on the EverQuest 2 servers. We had a chance to preview all of the great new content that SOE has put into the game late last month. Go check out our post to get a look at the fantastic new guild halls, an extension of the current quest line for the Void Storms world event, and (among other things) the ability to resize housing items. The other big pull for GU49 is, of course, the newly-revamped leveling curve that players will be able to surf. Expect to make it to make level a lot faster after today.

Allakhazam has a number of guides that will help you out with this content as well. Head on over there to check out their guide to the new Guild Halls and their amenities, as well as a walkthrough for the Void Storms world event. For fully formatted patch notes, click on through below the cut!

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	Well met, fellow Norrathian! Make sure to check out all of our coverage of the next EverQuest II expansion, The Shadow Odyssey as well as Seeds of Destruction, the next expansion to EverQuest!

Well, at last we know what all the fuss was about with all the sudden software updates over the last week for the Second Life servers that caused so much disruption during the last few days. It appears we were on the money with security fixes, and exploitable vulnerabilities have received urgent attention.

As a result a new Second Life viewer is available for download now -- that's 1.20.17(98669) -- and you can expect a new Release Candidate viewer (RC5) very very soon. Both are likely to be mandatory updates.

So, what's all the fuss about?

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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.

During the week, SLS-1.24.7 was applied to the Second Life servers, containing one bug-fix and three unspecified security fixes. This ran over the usual three-stage deployment process.

On Friday, SLS-1.24.8 was applied as an emergency deployment with no advance notice, over a five hour period. Apparently there is still more work to finalize the operation of 1.24.8, but there are no published release notes or hints as to what modifications it contains, why the rushed deployment or what additional work remains to complete it.

Already, we're seeing signs of 1.24.9 being run through testing -- and it wouldn't surprise us to see it start to roll out by Tuesday. Something's definitely wrong, but it is hard to say what. Judging by the predominance of security fixes in 1.24.7, the rushed deployment of 1.24.8 and the preparation of 1.24.9, we'd have to guess that it is either an exploitable (or already exploited) security problem, or a considerably embarrassing bug.

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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.

In the wake of Warhammer Online's launch, Mythic have kept up a stream of information. Today we have Destin Bales, the Live Producer, giving us a rundown of that quintessential WAR ejaculation, Waaagh! 'It's an enthusiastic battle cry, challenging both our enemies on the battlefield and ourselves in the office. It's a howl of frustration when at the last moment some piece of code unexpectedly breaks. It's the sound of a rampaging horde of developers rushing to get to the pizza on a night we have to burn the midnight oil to make sure an update to the game is fully tested and ready to go. It's a sort of unofficial slogan we proudly wear on green t-shirts. Oh, and yeah, apparently some Orcs said it once.'

Destin also drops some intriguing hints about easter eggs, and stuff in game that may as yet remain undiscovered. WAR is notable for being especially rewarding to the 'explorer' kind of player, those who like to roam around for themselves and uncover little oddments of lore. We were drawn to the comment about altars in the Lair of Xaphan, which itself is apparently elusive. 'It might seem odd at first that they don't do anything when you interact with them. Well, that's probably because you haven't found them all yet.' If any of our readers have found them all and can tell us what Destin's hinting at, then please do let us know!

Along with the Dev blog, there have been the anticipated hotfix notes, summarized under the cut.

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	Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out our Warhammer guides: Massively's Character Creation Guide and our WoW Player's Guide to Warhammer. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!

As the wait intensifies for City of Heroes Issue 13: Power and Responsibility to go into closed Beta, powers guy Floyd 'Castle' Grubb has provided a breakdown of some of the main PvE powers changes. None of the Villain Patron Powers or Hero Ancillary Powers are mentioned yet: the powers changed are meat-and-potatoes stuff, which will affect low-level characters as they work their way up.

The most striking change is half way down. Non-hostile player toggles, such as the Kheldians' shapeshifting powers, will no longer drop when a player is held, slept or stunned. This is such a big deal that it demands a visual analogy. Imagine being a floating, tentacled weapons platform capable of delivering a payload of purple death to whole crowds of bad guys. Now, imagine suddenly plummeting out of the sky, transformed to a little slumbering human, complete with 'zzz' emerging from your head. That is what being mezzed does to a Warshade in squid form.

We're not sure yet whether this change is PvE only or also applies to PvP: frankly, the PvP consequences of toggles no longer dropping when a player is mezzed are too radical to contemplate in just one article.

Okay, Funcom, we get it. You're deadly serious about fixing Age of Conan. First the beginnings of the PvP patch went live, 'Patch 2', giving players PvP XP and gear. Then we got to see the reworked notoriety system on Testlive, along with shady camps and six pages of patchnotes. And now we get a lengthy document about coming changes to the crafting system on the Testlive server. Good heavens, anyone would think that Craig Morrison bloke actually knew what he was doing.

Age of Conan crafting had been lacklustre. The new changes, which are scheduled to go live as part of Update 3 - the very same update that will polish off the PvP changes - add much more depth and complexity to the tradeskills. Weapons and armor will now have recipes that drop for city, base and culture versions, depending on whether they require a guild city or not. The 'base' pieces can be worn, and also used up in crafting to produce new pieces.

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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!

There have already been several different hot fixes to Warhammer Online, including a fairly substantial patch addressing some important RvR issues. Despite that, we haven't had any of the usual announcements and arcane numbering that accompanies proper MMO patches. Thus, it's heartening to see that the first 'official' patch to WAR is now on the live servers. Game Update (yes, that's apparently what they went with) 1.01 pulls together a number of different fixes and adds quite a few new features to the game. Here are the highlights.

• They've added in an auto-loot mechanic; as per the norm it can be supressed by holding down the shift key.
• Tab-targetting should be more reliable now, as will the /ignore command and the friends list.
• More improvements have been made to pathing for both pets and mobs; pets should act more reliably, while mobs should respect their 'rooted' status.
• The chat interface has been improved in several respects.

That's just a taste of the whole show; you can check out the full patch notes on the official Warhammer Herald site.

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	Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out our Warhammer guides: Massively's Character Creation Guide and our WoW Player's Guide to Warhammer. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!

Massively's sister site WoW Insider is reporting that the upcoming mega-patch to World of Warcraft will include nerfs. But not to your precious Hunter or Warlock ... no, the nerfs are hitting the bosses of the Burning Crusade and Outlands. Major changes to the way fundamental game mechanics work have resulted in bosses that are significantly more challenging than they were intended to be when the BC expansion was released. To combat this, every boss in Outlands has had their health reduced by (in some circumstances) up to 30%.

Blogger Alex Ziebart runs down the numerous 'old style' raid tactics that, now deprecated, the Blizzard developers had to tune for. "Shaman stacking", and "Shadow Priest mana batteries" were just two of the tactics that neccessitated these changes. Alex views these changes as "an absolutely required retuning", and we're inclined to agree. Check out the discussion of the latest PTR patch to World of Warcraft, and plenty of analysis, at WoW Insider.

Long petition queues, particularly related to expansions, has long been a problem in EVE Online. These long waits may very well be a thing of the past, according to GM Nova, Senior Game Master for EVE Online. GM Nova's latest dev blog, "Such stuff as dreams are made on," deals with the deployment of the Empyrean Age 1.1 patch in early September, as seen from a Customer Support perspective. "We at Customer Support, being at the front lines so to speak, are in a unique position to judge or evaluate whether a patch was successfully deployed and if ther is any fallout or unexpected problems involved, as the potential torrent of problems are directed at us to pass on," he said.

GM Nova points out how that 'torrent of problems' has slowed down to a trickle, using graph data of the Trinity expansion deployment (predictably an insane amount of petitions), the subsequent Empyrean Age 1.0 patch (so smooth they thought their petition system had crashed), and finally Empyrean Age 1.1. The trend evidenced by the graphs is that their patch deployments are becoming less fraught with complications, meaning happier players in the long run. GM Nova goes on to discuss some of the structural changes made to CCP's Customer Support department that improve petition response time, saying,"We are happy to announce that our average petition age is currently two days with most normal requests handled in hours. We hope our efforts shine through in the level of support we are able to offer." Would you agree with GM Nova's assessment, and have your own petitions of late in EVE Online been resolved in a reasonable amount of time?

There's been big news in the Star Wars Galaxies community in the last week. Last week's Friday Feature hints at the progress the development team is making in bringing to you a huge addition to the Galaxies experience: the Battle of Hoth. The "choose a side" feature highlights the different experiences the Rebels and Imperials will be having on opposing sides of the instance. While the Rebels try desperately to protect their transports and get away, the Imperials will be advancing on Echo Base laying waste to all they see. While full details on the experience aren't yet out, the feature gives a nice taste of what's to come in the next chapter of Star Wars Galaxies.

Meanwhile, word from the official forums is that long-time lead designer for the game Thomas Blair will be moving on to another position at SOE-Austin. Blair has accepted the position of Design Systems lead on the DC Universe Online project. In his place will be stepping Jesse "Loche" Benjamin, the assistant lead designer for Galaxies. Player reaction seems to be generally positive, and Blair's 'goodbye' to the community is well worth reading. With a new lead designer and a new senior producer on the game within the space of a few months, it will be interesting to see where the future of the game goes from this point on.

Just as players' patience was starting to fray again, 'Patch 3' has arrived on the Age of Conan testlive server, and it is a chunky one - we counted at least 594 meg. Feel like browsing the patch notes? Make a nice cup of something, put your feet up, take your time... there are six pages to wade through.

Obviously we can't detail all of them here, but they range from the silly-but-desired 'Party people rejoice - proper drunkenness has been implemented!' to the necessary 'Fixed several causes of crashes and assert errors' to the trivial 'For decency's sake, Old Finn now has pants!'

But the most interesting new feature is the addition of Shady Camps as a complement to the new Age of Conan PvP notoriety system, as promised by Craig Morrison recently. There are several other new tweaks to the system that had us eager to see it go live. We've put them behind the cut.