It's time for This Week in MMO once more, and this time around, the show kicks off with the rather daring statement that CCP Games has completely gone off the deep end. Well, maybe not that far, but the show does start off focusing on recent comments from the company about how DUST 514 could be one of the biggest shooters of the year... a statement that strikes the hosts as being just a wee bit pompous.

Aside from that, there's talk about Star Wars: The Old Republic's subscriber numbers and what those numbers mean in the long run as well as the latest trailer for TERA. If you'd like to get some roundtable discussion about the past week's biggest MMO stories, you don't need to go far. Just skip on past the break to watch the newest installment of This Week in MMO, which is quite possibly the best roundtable discussion about MMO news with a six-letter nickname in existence.

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This week on The MMO Report, Casey insists that he's a "wise-cracking superhero with a heart of gold," not a noob who doesn't know his MMO history. "For the record," he says, "I do realize that EverQuest wasn't the first MMO. I was just saying it was the game that brought MMOs mainstream attention... like how Elvis invented rock 'n' roll."

Casey reports on Warhammer 40K: Dark Millennium Online's financial woes, RIFT's new infinite trial, Star Wars: The Old Republic's impressive sales numbers, and TERA's beta plans. Then he dips into Uncle Casey's Mailbag to discuss -- what else -- hot dorf-on-dorf action.

All this and more in the HD MMO Report tucked behind the cut!

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When was the last time you said congratulations to someone in game? And no, I don't mean the spammy "congrats" when someone in guild gains a level, an AA, a skill up, a crafting combine, or any of the dozen other milestones that pop up every day in chat. Those are the easy congratulations because the accomplishment has no direct effect on you. I'm talking about the congratulations when someone beats you in game. You might be in a duel or battleground, and the other guy ends up taking you out. You might be racing for a named mob, and the other guy gets there first. Or you might be in that guild that always seems to fall just a bit short and winds up the bridesmaid when it comes to guild progression.

There is plenty of competition in MMOs, but you rarely see much sportsmanship from players. In this week's Guild Counsel, we'll look at why it's so hard to say "congrats" and why that has an effect on guilds as well as on the communities overall.

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One of the most persistent misconceptions about what we do here at Massively is this idea that we play games for a living. Allow me to be perfectly clear in this: What you're seeing right now? This article? The one I wrote? Writing this is what I do for a living. I write about games, and I enjoy games, but if I decided to not write any of my columns for a month and just play Star Wars: The Old Republic, I would be fired. That is not my job.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, it's time for another installment of Ask Massively, this time featuring questions about gambling and the latest City of Heroes cash shop offering. If you've got a question you'd like to see in a future installment of the column, mail it to ask@massively.com or leave it in the comments below. Questions may be edited for brevity and/or clarity.

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TERA has hit a few snags of late, including some woes with the whole system of getting pre-order beta access for appropriately pre-ordered customers. Luckily for some fans of the game, it looks like things are moving forward for players hoping to get into beta testing this weekend. An official announcement on the forums earlier today confirmed that GameStop has received valid beta codes and should be distributing said codes to customers via receipt or via phone.

Any players who preordered from Amazon or Best Buy and still haven't received a code are asked to send in a letter to the customer service staff before 9:00 a.m. PST on February 10th. Players are all warned that the game's download is currently clocking in at 17 GB, which means that you'll need plenty of time to get the client installed on your computer. A lengthy download is preferable to ambiguity as to whether or not you'll even get your beta access, though.

Are you more into looking good in Lord of the Rings Online than defeating the very heart of evil? Then Turbine's got a special week planned just for you. Starting today and going through the 16th, Fashion Week will be blazing through LotRO.

LotRO's cosmetic system allows players to assemble their own outfit looks independent of slotted gear and has become a popular feature in the game ever since its inception. Through Fashion Week, Turbine will call on the best-dressed to strut their stuff in the hopes that in-game CMs will see them and award special titles.

Also included in the week will be fashion-themed lotteries and a screenshot contest in which the best entries will be voted upon by the community. To give players inspiration, Turbine links to three game outfit blogs -- Lotro Fashion, Lotro Stylist, and Cosmetic Lotro -- and has given each of the blogs special codes to hand out for free in-game dyes.

Thanks to our sister blog WoW Insider, we've got the scoop on today's Activision-Blizzard investor call. The results? Turns out World of Warcraft isn't dying, but it's certainly seen better days in its record-breaking run. Blizzard's flagship MMO now boasts "only" 10.2 million subscribers worldwide (10.3 million were reported during the call in November). The company believes the success of the 4.3 patch contributed to subscriber retention, as did the success of the annual pass; in fact, a million players took Blizzard up on a deal to purchase a year's worth of WoW in return for a free copy of Diablo III.

Blizzard also confirmed plans to launch at least two titles this year, including Diablo III in Q2. Mists of Pandaria, WoW's much-maligned upcoming expansion, might be the other, though Titan, Blizzard DOTA, and a new StarCraft II campaign are also in the works. The company's expected revenue for 2012 is $4.5 billion US.

Leave it to one of the most popular MMO studios to figure out how to control time -- and do so successfully. Through technical wizardry, CCP did just that when it released a time dilation feature into EVE Online last month to reduce lag during massive space battles.

So far, it's working great, according to CCP Veritas. In a new blog post, he shows off graphs and recounts recent events that show how "TiDi" (as he calls it) is successfully slowing down in-game time to keep player commands and on-screen action in sync.

"In all cases, it has kicked in appropriately when the server node has become overloaded, keeping things running responsively and sanely," he writes. "In both huge fights [shown on the graphs], the module response time was kept under one second for the vast majority of the action, which is a tremendously large improvement over the 20, 40, 600 seconds we'd sometimes see in fights of this scale."

EVE Online has also made a few quality of life improvements to EVE Gate, including a better login system, a navigation menu tied in with the rest of the site, and a way to quickly zip to dev posts on the forums.

Chillin' in the clink. Spending time in stoney lonesome. Thrown into the slammer. Checking in to the big house. Doing (perfect) 10 to life in the hole. Learning the ropes in juvie.

Prison: The only fun thing about it is the slang that people have come up to describe it. And while you may never actually want to spend any time in the crowbar hotel in real life, chances are you've already done so in MMOs. Jails are an ever-popular locale in online gaming, and they almost always deal with an epidemic of escaped -- yet still milling around casually -- prisoners.

So in today's Perfect Ten, we talked to the warden and got you a special glimpse into pixelated pokeys, if only to scare you straight. No more exploits and bots for you, young man or woman!

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Red 5 Studios is making a little marketing push for Firefall, and the first salvo takes the form of a new dev diary video starring CEO Mark Kern.

If you're not familiar with the game, this clip is a great place to start. Kern explains how Firefall is really two titles in one, with the first game being a ginormous open world featuring loads of PvE content. The second game is centered around Firefall's e-sport components, which include ranked leaderboard matches ranging from 5-on-5 to 15-on-15.

Kern also mentions the game's unique take on beta and launch. In basic terms, Red 5 implements feature sets, collects beta feedback, and iterates on down the line (as opposed to presenting a finished product for mass beta testing). This staged approach will also apply to the game's launch, and Kern says the game will be rolled out "organically" much like Google's Gmail service.

Finally, content expansion in Firefall will be player-driven. Cross-server cooperation will be necessary to craft MRU units that will expand the playable area from 10 square miles to an entire globe. Kern also touches on the trendy games-as-a-service mandate, and he says that as long as players are around to support Firefall, Red 5 will be around to generate new content. Watch the full video after the break.

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Funcom has penned a new dev diary at MMORPG.com, and the piece reveals three new skill decks from the firm's The Secret World title.

What's a skill deck?

It's The Secret World's answer to the how-do-you-make-a-level-free-MMORPG question, and it allows players to select from 500 abilities to create "exactly the type of character they want." Funcom thinks the system will seem daunting to players used to simpler class-based mechanics in competing MMOs, and as such the firm is adding a few deck templates to offer players a helping hand.

Three of these are profiled in the new diary, including one from each of the game's factions. The Witch Hunter focuses on big damage spikes and represents the Templars, the Warlord is your basic swordfighter from the Dragon faction, and the Thaumaturgist is the Illuminati's answer to the gunmage archetype.

[Thanks to fallwind for the tip!]

Greetings, summoners, and welcome to the first installment of the Summoner's Guidebook! For a new player, the Guidebook is a one-stop-shop to gaining familiarity with the various elements of League of Legends. For the more advanced players, we'll also be covering ways to improve on weak areas of your play and how to deal with the toughest of matchups.

I was a new player once, and I remember being extremely daunted by the number of things I needed to learn to be competitive in LoL. Although the journey from newbie to expert was long and difficult, I learned a lot about common mistakes and how to reduce them. If you're looking to step up your game or if you're just getting into the League, the Summoner's Guidebook is the place for you to learn without being treated like you're a noob.

This week, we're going to cover the community resources available to you. There are a lot of websites dedicated to League of Legends, and it would be foolish to assume that this column is the only place to get advice on the game. If there's something I haven't covered yet or there's a topic I'm unfamiliar with, you can be sure that one of these places will have the info you're looking for. This article can't possibly cover all the League fansites on the internet (there are probably hundreds), but I can focus on the ones with the best information.

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Ready for another TERA Europe beta test? You're in luck because Frogster is hosting one later today (at 2:00 p.m. EST, to be exact). The Velika server is being stress-tested, and Frogster is raising the player cap in order to see what happens when large numbers of people attempt to log in at once.

TERA Europe community manager Raven says that "you might experience lag or other issues" and that "this test is not intended to offer you a normal gameplay experience." If you're OK with that -- and you feel like volunteering your time -- head to the official forums to learn more (and set your alarms accordingly).

If you're wondering about TERA's American client, En Masse Entertainment sent word that last night's pre-test dress rehearsal "went swimmingly."

How big is RIFT? Big enough to attract one of China's heavyweight MMO houses, apparently. Trion has announced a partnership with publishing giant Shanda that will bring RIFT to the Chinese gaming market, and CEO Lars Buttler tells Gamasutra that expanding the game's global reach is only the beginning.

"We do a lot right, but we think there's so much to learn from Asia, and a company like Shanda that has been in the market so long, and has innovated in so many ways, is a great partner to work with and learn from," Buttler says.

Trion is flexing its muscles -- and broadening its horizons -- on the strength of a banner year that included a hefty influx of investment capital as well as RIFT's $100 million revenue windfall. Trion is also developing an MMORTS called End of Nations and an MMO shooter called Defiance. Additionally, the firm is fleshing out its Red Door program, which will outsource its development platform and distribution channels to third-parties.

Square-Enix is slimming down its server roster for Final Fantasy XIV. After a year of free-play services due to its troubled launch, FFXIV began charging traditional subscription fees last month. Now, Square says that it will be merging servers beginning on March 27th, and the current lineup will be trimmed from 18 to 10.

Character transfers are mandatory for players on one of the affected shards, and the transfer period starts on March 1st and continues through the 19th. Kotaku reports that the new servers will have temporary names (New World 01, 02, etc.), but Square states that "name assignments will be announced after the transfer selection period has ended."

Minecraft players are well-known for their insane, over-the-top LEGO building projects, but one may have all the rest beat. A player named Rumsey is in the process of recreating the entire world of Azeroth from World of Warcraft inside the game, and while it's not completed quite yet, it's already incredibly impressive.

Rumsey says that he had to cheat a little: Instead of placing every single block by hand, he wrote a piece of software that helps to automate the process of making full-scale version of the world. He's recently completed one continent -- Kalimdor -- and has plans to do the others as well as all of WoW's dungeons. He says that the only problem he's run into is Minecraft's height limit of 128 blocks, so he's had to employ mods to get around that.

When the project is complete, Rumsey has hopes that it will be hosted online for tourists to visit this much blockier version of their favorite WoW stomping grounds.

MMO global chat is a funny thing. I've met friends in it, I've ignored half the server because of it, and I'm amused (and appalled) by it on a daily basis. One thing I normally don't do is turn it off completely, unless I'm gunning for an immersive solo or small-group session that's heavy on roleplay.

My EverQuest II Sage has 19 (19!) channels on his UI, and though I rarely see any activity in the ratonga or evil chat rooms, I keep tabs on them anyway in case a useful nugget happens by.

What about you, dear readers? Does your MMO of choice have multiple global chat channels, and if so, how many do you monitor at once?

Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!

Bulgarian developer Masthead Studios has announced that it's shutting down the servers for its post-apocalyptic sandbox MMO, Earthrise. Said Atanas Atanasov, Director of Masthead Studios:

"One year after the launch of the game, we have decided to stop the Earthrise servers. Earthrise was released too early and did not meet the expectations of its fans. We did our best to revive the game in 2011, but the time was not enough to keep up with the user requirements. There is a huge interest in high quality open world sandbox MMORPGs, unfortunately the big publishers do not show any interest in the genre. It is unfortunate that low budget companies like ours are trying to bring innovativeness in the already saturated MMO market. I hope that one day an independent studio will be able to release the long anticipated open world sandbox MMO, which everyone is talking about, but no one is making. We tried, but did not succeed. We would like to apologize to those who were disappointed from Earthrise and to thank everyone who supported us during the years."

The studio does mention that the planned free-to-play version for this year may still launch if any investor interest is shown, but there has been no word on this yet.

[Source: Masthead Studios press release]

Unless you were at PAX Prime last year, about all you've seen of WildStar in action has been the game's cinematic trailer. While it didn't give much of an idea of how the game played, said video certainly had a lot of style. According to the latest WildStar Wednesday community blog post, that style was a big part of the game's narrative design, which is seen as one of the main points of development -- making a game that feels large, engrossing, and epic.

As lead designer Chad Moore explains it, the narrative design team is responsible for outlining the world of Nexus, which was in part created to serve as a perfect locus for a variety of different adventures. While this design team isn't particularly concerned with mechanics, it is concerned with ensuring that every part of the game has the same degree of personality as the first cinematic trailer. If you're one of the many people anticipating the game heavily, take a look behind the scenes to see how it produces its feel.

I'm going to let all of you in on a secret. Actually, it might not be a secret; everyone might have figured this out by now independent of any admission on my part. But here it is, just the same.

I'm not actually a very good City of Heroes player.

I mean, I'm "good" in the sense that I play the game, enjoy it, think about it, try to improve my character appropriately... but I'm not actually very skilled at the game. My rotations look awkward, my slotting is usually sub-optimal, and my ability to recall important data is pretty paltry. I understand the mechanics just fine, but when it comes time to log into the game, somehow I wind up as the guy who just subtly makes the entire team worse. I'm not terribly skilled. And for all that I'm going to be playing the game for some time to come, I don't think that I'm ever going to reach the point that I say I'm really any good.

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