Massively week in Review

by Joystiq Staff on Nov 4th 2008 6:00AM

Joystiq's sister site Massively.com has all the news you'll need about MMOs. Here's the best, brightest, and most interesting stuff from the last week, all in one convenient place for your MMO minute.

	World of Warcraft cranks it up to 11 (million) Just two weeks before Wrath of the Lich King descends upon the denizens of Azeroth the world over, Blizzard has announced that World of Warcraft has reached the 11 million subscriber mark. That's yet another milestone for the oft-celebrated MMO from the house that built Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo.
	The Digital Continuum: Let's talk about the Fallout MMO What's always been in the back-burner of my mind is whether or not the Fallout license would be necessary for a post-apocalyptic to flourish. While endlessly exploring our own personal post-apocalypticia is incredible fun, do we want a massive one?
	Please make George Lucas stop Dear Massively, What exactly are "they" smoking over at the Skywalker Ranch, or wherever it is that LucasArts has set up shop these days? "Star Wars: The Old Republic will be bigger than World of Warcraft" ?!?!?! Is Jar Jar Binks working in their PR department?
	The Best of Massively: Our five all-time greatest hits Three of these are top five articles, so we're three-fifths of the way to making a top five top fives list, it would seem. The numbers don't lie, though, so enjoy!
	Tabula Rasa finally gets an FPS camera view Have you ever wondered why a game like Tabula Rasa never utilized that classic first-person view, considering the fact that it's billed as an FPS-style MMO? The over-the-shoulder view never really did it for most players who were looking for more of a shooter aspect in their game. Rest easy in knowing that the FPS view is finally coming to this NCsoft sci-fi MMO, according to the latest Feedback Friday.

	Anti-Aliased: Killing the auctioneers is a perfect reason to go to Northrend "What could Arthas possibly do to make everyone simultaneously angry and want to journey to Northrend?"
	Massively.com's Giveaway week Master List We warned you. We told you we had a lot of stuff to give away. Even we, though, are marveling at the sheer amount of swag we have on offer this week. This right here is the Massively.com give away Master List.
	Five futures of Warhammer Online What does the future hold for Warhammer Online? Not only that, but what should the future hold for Mythic's newest MMO and its players? Everyone wonders these things at one point or another, so we've gone ahead and explored our thoughts on the topic. Then, after much deliberation, we distilled them down into five possible futures for Warhammer Online. Take a look and judge for yourself what feature is or isn't a matter of time.
	BlizzCon and Fan Faire: A comparison of corporate conventions Blizzard has stated they'll only do BlizzCon when they have something to show. Meanwhile SOE has been hosting Fan Faire since 2000. For the first three years there were multiple Fan Faires each year.
	The music of LotRO: Community perspective n the first part of this feature article, we're going to briefly cover the basics of the music system, just enough to help you understand how it works and get you started. In the second part, we'll show you an email interview we did with one of the leading original composers on LotRO's EU servers.
	Massively's grand tour of EverQuest 2: The Shadow Odyssey Join us for a tour of Befallen, Lower Guk, the dangerous catacombs of Mistmoore and (most impressively) the Anchor of Bazzul, a part of the treacherous Void! Vampire dragons, floating Void priests, undead frogs and slave-owning trolls all await you below, in our exhaustive exploration of this brand-new expansion.
	What's with all the capes? Why so many superhero MMOs? So what's with all the cape games? Although the superhero genre has been a steady burner outside of the MMO context, it's not the most obvious kind of world to set an MMO in, and designers trying to adapt comic-book themes and events to MMO gameplay face some pretty stiff challenges. We're going to walk through all three games, explain the differences, and try to answer that question.
	Warhammer Online patch 1.0.4 hits the live servers As this post goes live the servers are still down, updating merrily for the latest meaty patch to Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Mythic Entertainment has been johnny-on-the-spot with Warhammer updates since the game went live lo these few weeks ago, and it's great to see them continually tweaking the concept of the core RvR game.
	Murderers and criminals arrive as Patch 3 comes to Age of Conan Being an unscrupulous PvPer will result in a whole new way to play the game, rather than just an arbitrary penalty. It looks a whole lot better than the original mooted plans for AoC, which involved jails and repetitive tasks that other players could watch you being forced to do.
	City of Heroes to get Mac Special Edition NCsoft just announced that City of Heroes will soon have a Mac client, joining the likes of World of Warcraft and EVE Online as MMOs that can played on OS X. It'll be made possible through partnership with Transgaming, the creators of the Cider portability engine, which acts as a 'wrapper' for the standard PC client, allowing it to run within OS X on an Intel Mac.
	Free character transfers announced for Warhammer Online Free character transfers were just announced for Warhammer Online, for characters on low population servers who'd like to move to high population servers. The service will be put into place in the coming days.
	HanbitSoft plans Hellgate: London relaunch and new expansion The Hellgate: London IP saga continues. While we had some dire news that the servers will go dark at the end of January, we also know that development for the title is still being done in Redbana's California office... just not for which region.