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Following the release of patch 1.0.5, a further update to Warhammer Online has addressed a large number of bugs in various quests and PQs, the full list of which can be found in the hot fix patch notes. A handful of RVR-related problems were also quashed, most notably the lack of Healer NPCs in Kadrin Valley warcamp, and some missing set items in Tier 3 Gold Keep bags.

Further tinkering with client performance and stability made it into this hot fix as well, with a focus on "periods of intense combat" -- we'll have to see how that one pans out. However, arguably the best part of the patch is one of the simplest changes -- WAR's EULA will now only need to be agreed to when changes are made to it. Joy! It's the little things in life that make us happy.

The Second Life viewer dev team has been working furiously away for some time now, and you may be forgiven for wondering where the fruits of that labor are. It has, after all, been some time since we've seen a new viewer other than emergency security fixes.

There are lots of little things in this viewer, mostly bug-fixes. What is particularly peculiar is that whispering seems to be back. Whisper was a short-range chat option that was discarded from the Second Life viewer back in 2005 due to it being confusing both conceptually and in the user-interface. Whispering has a 10 metre range and while it has been a deprecated script function for years is still available to scripted objects.

December is getting closer and with it comes the Final Fantasy XI December version update. Square Enix has posted a preview of some of the changes coming, most of which are aimed at improving player quality of life. Chariot, Empress and Emperor Bands will now have new recharge NPCs in locations that have recently become more traveled by players. Also, teleportation to Aht Urhgan Whitegate will be available via the Salaheem's Sentinels representative NPC in Upper Jeuno, which is something that's previously only been made available in the three nations' capitols. Finally, the December version update will cut down the respawn time for coffers and chests for those searching for artifacts and maps.

Essentially all of these changes are aimed at making players' lives easier and generally less frustrating. This seems to have been the recent trend for Final Fantasy XI, which has long-since been known as one of the most unforgiving MMOs around in terms of difficulty. So, we're happy to see these sorts of changes coming from the dev team.

Just a bit ago we noted the launch of the Hoth heroic encounter in Star Wars Galaxies. Chapter 11, as it is also known, has been a long time coming. It's a project the developers have put a lot of work into, and they were eager to share with us some of the background on the mega-patch's development process. The folks at SOE Austin were kind enough to send over a document detailing just that, written up by the game's former Lead Designer Thomas "Blixtev" Blair and its current Lead Designer, Jesse Benjamin.

Join the two developers as they walk through the challenges of fully exploring the Empire Strikes Back movie, the thorny issue of one side being guaranteed to lose, and the critical need for detail and finesse in this difficult development challenge.

The SOE Austin team may not be working on an expansion for Star Wars Galaxies, but today it sure feels like the players have gotten one. The enormous content drop, Chapter 11 in the SWG saga, hit the live servers early today like the main blaster on an AT-AT walker. The Hoth heroic encounter is now live on the servers for all players to enjoy. The complete patch notes for The Battle of Echo Base are available in the official forums, and there's an informational press release included below the cut.

Highlights from the patch include:

• The expansive battle itself, which pits Rebel and Imperial heroes against NPC opponents in a timed experience. The Imperials seek to destroy as much of the ragtag fighting force as they can, while the Rebels aim to flee the battle with as many resources as they can. This is easily the most ambitious offering in SWG history, and we explored it thoroughly in a feature from Fan Faire 2008.
  
• A new holo-pet system, which will allow players to add fun holographic creatures to their homes.
• New collections and other side-elements were added to the game to suppor the addition of Hoth.
• Several classes recieved slight gameplay tweaks and balancing fixes.
• The character transfer service recieved a big upgrade in advance of next year's free transfer initiative.
• The Aurilia Guildhall, which serves as the hub for heroic encounter play, has a new memorial to former SWG developer Jeff Freeman.

It's great to see a much-anticipated chunk of content go live in a game like this. Check out the developer insight SOE passed on to us as a developer diary, and read on below for the official release for the patch.

The Quantum Rise expansion for EVE Online, while only recently deployed, has drawn a substantial amount of forum rage for sweeping changes to how the game is played, namely for the nerfs of speed and missiles. This follows in the wake of unrest created by the CCP Games decision to phase out ghost training. The latest change, announced Tuesday, targets the in-game email system ("EVE Mail" to be precise).

CCP Wrangler says: "To address performance issues in EVE we are making some changes to the EVE Mail system in Quantum Rise 1.0.1. You will now be able to fetch up to 1000 undeleted EVE Mails, however EVE Mail number 1001 and beyond will not be fetched, whether it has been read or not. To gain access to those EVE Mails, you must delete newer EVE mails. In addition to this all EVE Mails sent by NPCs that are older than 3 months will be deleted."

The 1.0.5 patch for Warhammer Online hits live servers today and with it comes various small fixes and changes, mainly focused on RvR improvements. But that's probably not what everyone's the most excited about. No, that would be the fact that 1.0.5 is the start of the Heavy Metal event for players interested in trying out the new Reikland Factory Scenario and getting a chance at playing the Black Guard and Knight of the Blazing Sun a week earlier than everyone else.

We're sure that everyone is going to be quite busy playing around in the new Scenario for the next week or two, hopefully it won't be much longer now before some of those career and open RvR improvements come down the line. You can find the full patch notes after the break.

Mythic dev Mark Jacobs writes that the combat and careers patches for Warhammer Online will not be appearing in patch 1.0.5 as previously planned and are instead being rescheduled for patch 1.0.6. "Our plan was that no patch would make it through the [Public Test Servers] until we were sure that it was tested thoroughly and properly." writes Jacobs, "It was evident throughout the testing process that some of the changes needed to be reconsidered and some changed outright."

Patch 1.0.5 is going to deploy to live servers tomorrow (Tuesday, 18 November), with fixes/improvements to the Realm War system, and the "Heavy Metal" Live Event that sets the stage for the Knight of the Blazing Sun and Blackguard.

Age of Conan's game director, Craig Morrison, has written a letter to the community about the next slew of upgrades and updates coming to the game now that Ymir's Pass -- and its new PvP system -- is on the live servers. First on the list of patches will be DirectX 10, which Morrison says is something the team wanted to be really special. We're just hoping it doesn't bring any serious new bugs with it, but from the sound of things Funcom is trying to make sure the new graphics are highly scalable for various computers.

The second big project in the works are two new dungeons. Thunder River will hold both of them and they'll be aimed at max-level players. The Slaughter House Cellar is for single players, while Xibaluku is a large team dungeon. We can expect to see these released with the next update, apparently.

The folks at NCsoft were kind enough to give us a heads up: there's some great new content coming to Lineage II! An all new, all free expansion to the game called Gracia Part 2 is coming soon to the game and we have a chance to look inside two of the new areas being added to the gameworld! Or should I say, being added near the gameworld? Pailaka and Kamaloka are the two new areas in question, and they're unique instanced content for players of a wide level range.

Pailaka in particular sounds very interesting - it's a series of solo instances intended to challenge and reward players who take on big tasks on their own. We have extensive details from the developers below the cut, and lots of images of the new content in our gallery below. Go check out the pretty pictures, or read all about it!

The Imprudence project now has its first release candidate viewer for Second Life available, and far sooner than we expected. It's impressive work for a first release candidate as well. We've not had such a fast and smooth viewer experience since Nicholaz "The Mad Patcher" Beresford's series of Second Life viewers. Indeed, many of Beresford's patches are also a part of the Imprudence project.

Imprudence necessarily replaces proprietary fonts with Liberation Sans and Bitstream Vera Mono, which look a little peculiar the first couple of times out, but score high on improved readability. There's no audio either, yet, as the proprietary FMOD audio system has yet to be replaced with OpenAL, but that is coming soon, we understand. As for the change from Kakadu/KDU to OpenJPEG -- this is supposed to be fractionally slower, but honestly, the whole experience was so smooth we never noticed.

It seems like your choice to move to this meta-currency system is an increasingly common design choice in MMOs. Do you see this as a trend in the industry, or did you have ulterior motives for going in this direction aside from satisfying your players?

Phil: Really our goal was to more accurately reward players for their time. Give players what they want, give them more choices. Do they want the random roll? Do they want to save up for something specific? This turned out as our best option, a universal currency system, and that's how that came about.

Matt: Which is not to say we dislike the side effect this has on gold farmers. You can buy as much influence as you want, but it's not going to get you any more merits. Your time in playing the game is what we're trying to reward.

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.

Before there was the Lorebook in Lord of the Rings Online, there were titles in Guild Wars. Before there was the Tome of Knowledge in Warhammer Online, there were titles in Guild Wars. Before there were Achievements in World of Warcraft, there were titles in Guild Wars. This title system has been in place for a few years now, and has been steadily growing to incorporate achievement recognition for many of the game's favorite activities. In yesterday's game update though, the entire title system got a revamp.

One of the biggest problems many players saw with some of the more difficult titles is it felt like pure grind. To remedy that, ArenaNet has adjusted the difficulty of a few higher-end titles, and changed the way titles affected things like Favor of the Gods, Vanquishing bonuses, etc. Check out the complete patch notes at the developer wiki page for more information.

It's the 14th of November, and you all know what that means, right? It means that for those of you battling in Funcom's Age of Conan: Hyborean Adventures and sick of hearing about Blizzard's Wrath of the Lich King expansion, you've got something of your own to crow about: Ymir's Pass has hit the AoC live servers, and brings you the largest Hyborean content update to-date! Well, largest for adventuring space anyway. Ymir's Pass won't crowd your hard-drive too badly.

Heroes and scoundrels between levels 55 and 63 will find a lot waiting for them in Ymir's Pass, and the update contains a little something for everyone in the way of bug fixes and tweaks.

"This is an important update that opens up a lot of new gameplay content for players who have already passed the level fifty mark," says Game Director Craig Morrison. "In the months ahead we will introduce even more new content, and coming up soon are two exciting new high-level dungeons intended for players who have reached the maximum level. At this stage adding more content and keeping people entertained is very important to us!"