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Video games have quickly grown into one of the most popular forms of entertainment in this day in age. Almost everyone under eighteen plays them and developers are getting better at making games that appeal to older generations. Still, there are other forms of media that enjoy more mainstream awareness. Movies in particular control a large portion of the entertainment industry and produce billions of dollars in revenue every year. Part of this profitability can be attributed to Hollywood's savvy at marketing products related to movies. A summer blockbuster probably makes almost as much from licensing and merchandising as from ticket sales. The funny thing is that within the last ten years a large part of that licensing revenue has started to come from video games.

Let's dig into how that applies to MMOs. There has been discussion of a World of Warcraft movie for some time ... what about the rest of them? Read on to explore the connection between Hollywood and Norrath.

Sony Online Entertainment is a unique company in the MMO industry. Not only do they have a stable of games, they try to make it easy for you to play all of them. Our giveaway today celebrates this with an SOE game sampler. We have a great box with 30 days of gameplay for Planetside, EverQuest, The Matrix Online, Star Wars Galaxies, and EverQuest II all included! Plus, we'll throw in two additional 30 day time cards. Extend your play of one of those games to 90 days, or try out two games for two months. We've got a ton more swag for you on top of that greatness; we'll throw in an SOE podcast t-shirt, SOE-branded binoculars, and a DC Universe Online pen/flashlight that shines the Bat Symbol! Estimated total retail value of the pack is $130.

All you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this post telling us what your favorite SOE game is and why. To get this unique prize pack you'll need to comment before 7:00 AM EST Friday, November 7th. You can only enter once per person, and after the contest closes we'll ship out this fantastic prize to one randomly-selected winner. Give us at least a week to ship out this massive pile of swag, though. To win you must be age 18 or up and a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec). For full eligibility details, we suggest you read our official rules. Good luck!

The pounding music, the dancing bodies - nightlife in The Matrix Online is a whole other world. Today's One Shots comes to us from Michael V, who recently attended a server-wide dev party in MxO; a gorgeous, sleek game we don't get to see nearly enough of. Michael writes in:

This screenshot is from Microgigs of the Syntax server from The Matrix Online. This was a dev-sponsored party in the club the Sanguine Room in the Moriah Projects district. Treats were handed out, a costume contest was held, and the Live Event character the Effectuator showed up and turned people into ninjas.

Do you have any screenshots from a GM or Dev event in your favorite game that you'd like to share with us? Perhaps you play a game we don't spotlight very often and you'd like to show off some of the cool things you've experienced. Whatever your reason, we'd love to see your screenshots! Just send them to use here at oneshots AT massively.com along with a brief description of what we're seeing in the image. We'll take care of the rest.

A bit over a month since we saw Update 60, The Matrix Online has been patched with Update 61, and there are two main reasons for fans to be excited. The first is a continuation of TMO's storyline, with Chapter 10.3 and new critical missions, and the second is the opening of a new construct called Sati's Playground. At the playground, you will be able to spawn sequences of enemies by using special items, and some new vendors and collectors relating to this construct have also been added.

There has already been one critical mission during the week relating to Chapter 10.3, and there will be another one each Thursday for four more weeks. You can get the full patch notes at TMO's community site.

Sony Online Entertainment is responsible for quite a number of MMOs, and they've got a useful system in place to allow communication with people across their game worlds. However, many people either don't know about this system, or simply don't know how to wrangle it into doing what they want. To help with this, SOE has written a guide illustrating how EverQuest players can chat to their friends in other games.

The games that EQ players can send both private messages and in-game mail to are EverQuest II, Planetside, Vanguard, The Matrix Online, and Star Wars: Galaxies. It's also possible to communicate with players on different EQ servers, but many of the servers have abbreviations that must be used in the commands -- these can be found in the guide. Now don't go acting all surprised when you're hiding from a guild raid on another server and your guild master sends you a tell!

SOE deployed Update 60 on The Matrix Online's servers this week. The update doesn't just fix bugs. It also marks the beginning of Episode 10.2 of the story, introduces some new enemies in Datamine, and adds a reward for players who complete live critical missions.

If you're looking to earn the new reward items (a consumable of some sort), said missions are scheduled every Thursday up through the 12th of June; the first of those occurred yesterday, but a recap has been published. The update also introduces a whopping 342 new level 50 weapon variants, some of which will drop during the high level critical missions.

We're glad to see that MxO is still ticking despite the announced departure of Paul Chadwick, the esteemed comic book writer who had worked on the story until recently.

In honor of the Matrix Online's third anniversary, the development team has let a genie out of a bottle: the insidious Agent Smith virus. As foretold by the Oracle, he's returned more powerful than ever -- and operatives on both sides of the Machine war are needed to stop him. The old lady has put together a team of virologists all around the gameworld of MxO, all near key city monuments. Seek them out to get access to quests and information about stopping Smith (again).

For a real treat, log into the game on the exact anniversary: this Friday, March 21st. Between 3pm and 5pm PST (6pm and 8pm EST) the familiar faces of the MxO team will be online to chat and have some fun. Seek them out on Syntax server, in the Camon Heights Park area. Anniversary wishes, cookies, and cool in-game t-shirts are in the offing for both questers and party-goers alike. Just make sure to take the red pill in time.

If you live and breathe gaming and are looking for some experience in the games industry, then you'll probably want to note that Sony Online Entertainment is currently looking to fill a number of intern positions. SOE is responsible for a whole swag of MMOs, including EverQuest, EverQuest II, Pirates of the Burning Sea, and Star Wars Galaxies, and some experience with them would likely be a valuable asset for further work in the industry, if not with SOE themselves.

They say that an internship with them would stretch 9 weeks, is a part time and paid position, and each intern will have a mentor to help them develop during the program. Taking a look at the drop-down menu on the SOE Career Opportunities page shows that quite a range of internships are available, from working with the community, to programming and developing, to art and even QA. Pretty much all of SOE's internships are based in San Diego, but it looks like there may be a couple for Seattle and Denver as well.

Sony Online Entertainment's Community Relations team have put out an open invite for anyone that would like to meet up with them at Las Vegas during the Consumer Electronics Show. The team have planned to be at Quark's Bar and Restaurant, in the Hilton, on the 8th of January. If you're going to be there for CES, or for whatever else it is people do at Vegas, then consider stopping by and meeting up with the folks from SOE.

The details are as follows:

What: Community Get Together

Where: Quark's Bar and Restaurant in the Hilton Hotel, 3000 Paradise Rd. Las Vegas, Nevada 89109

When: 7:00 p.m. PST, January 8th

I imagine that right now you're feeling a bit like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole. That's because today we're visiting the distorted world of the Matrix Online. Here we're witnessing a Live Event for the Machinist faction that took place during the game's hey-day. Jared, who shared this shot with us, explains the game's appeal:

The first two-three months where the Live Events team was online almost every other night, making personal connections to players, organizing the troops and generally stalking the roleplay community. The game may have been awful, but the combination of the live events team and roleplay community made it more than worth it.

We're excited to see lots of people sending screenshots to the One Shots mailbox for games other than Guild Wars. Not that we don't like Guild Wars -- but variety is the spice of life and we love to see shots from games we haven't highlighted lately. (Trust me, we'll come back to Guild Wars eventually!) We only post what you send us send your screenshots and stories from games long dead to oneshots@massively.com. You may see it posted here tomorrow!

Big Fish Games have tossed their line in to the gaming industry, and pulled up Thinglefin, a team composed of people that worked on The Matrix Online and Asheron's Call. Awful puns aside, it would seem that Thinglefin's proposed in-browser MMO, covered by Worlds in Motion earlier in the year, is a good acquisition for Big Fish Games as it fits with their more casual lineup of games.

The article from Worlds In Motion gave a few more details about Thinglefin's new game, including comments on the company's blog from founder Toby Ragaini (who was also the lead designer for The Matrix Online and Asheron's Call). He said that it will be free to play, will run in a browser without the need to download or install anything from them, and that there will be some premium features that people can choose to pay for.

[Via Gamasutra]

Recently, Daniel "Walrus" Myers popped his head out of The Matrix (or into, depending on which side you think this is) to give all the Redpills out there some great information on what's been planned for The Matrix Online in the upcoming month. Most of it, for those of us who play MxO, know that it involves evolving the storyline as we move from Chapter 8 (which just ended on November 15th -- hooray chapter and arc rewards!) to Chapter 9. Also included in the next batch of updates is the fix for Bullet Time animations and finishing moves.

Also returning to The Matrix Online is the third annual Winter Holiday Event. More hats and snowballs (and new clothing pieces) please! We've been extra-good Redpills this year, we promise.