Yesterday on Massively: December 11, 2007

Yesterday was an absolutely enormous news day for Second Life. In with the headlines came the bombshell scoop our very own Moo Money received -- our internal Linden source told Moo that Linden Lab's Chief Technology Officer, Cory Linden (aka Cory Ondredjka aka the man behind the Flying Spaghetti Monster SL avatar) was released from the Second Life fold. As even Google is expanding into Virtual Worlds with their own Snow Crash project, Cory may well yet land back in the virtual world arena somewhere. Considering this is the man who wrote the entire Linden Scripting Language framework in a night, Google would be wise to snap him up. (So long as he's not under an enforceable non-compete, anyway.) Wherever Cory may land in the future, we here at Massively wish him the very best of luck with it!

Features

• The Daily Grind: It's better to burnout than to fade away

• Cinemassively: 9 Crimes

• One Shots: Tracking Old Nick

General news

• Cryptic Studios says adios

• Richard Garriott talks MMOs at GWU lecture

• Fury not dead, just on life-support

• Age of Conan's Assassin class is stealthy, badass

• Action MMO powered by Crysis engine? That'll be The Day

• Star Wars Galaxies Chapter 8 'one of [the] most difficult'

• Herndandez vs IGE - IGE withdraws motion to stay/dismiss

• Weather comes to Vanguard

• Scott Jennings on how to make PvP not suck

Gift Guides

• Gifts for the City dwellers

Tabula Rasa

• MyTabulaRasa fires up the BBQ Awards

• Tabula Rasa patch this week, attributes not part of respec

• Tabula Rasa 1.3 patch delights despite repair hiccup

City of Heroes / City of Villains

• Winter is coming to the City of... Universe

• CoX developers open their virtual wallets

• Latest patch for CoX now live

• CoX PvP ladder results announced

EverQuest

• LoN championship qualifiers begin this weekend -- $5000 prize pool and more

• Save Santug this Frostfell with Legends of Norrath

EverQuest II

• Preview the Frostfell crafted goodness from EQ2's Test Server

• EQ2 community zone reviews: Runnyeye

Second Life

• [UPDATED] Was Cory Linden fired, or did he quit?

• Philip Rosedale responds to Cory Ondrejka's departure

• Cory Ondrejka's departure in his own words

• Age-verification restriction on parcels - what does it actually do?

• 48 Hour Film Project in Second Life

• Second Life shutting down for capacity upgrades

• Hope for keeping attachments out of where the sun don't shine, even in Second Life

• Incandescent portraiture in Second Life

• Nicholaz editions for Second Life in "U" versions on all platforms

• Send Christmas cards in Second Life from outside (even without an account!)

Lord of the Rings Online

• LotRO devs reveal Angmar revamp plans for Book 12

• Last scheduled downtime this year for LotRO

Round-ups

• Yesterday's Money: 10th December

• Yesterday in Second Life, Monday 10 December, 2007

• Yesterday in Warcraft: December 10, 2007

• Yesterday on Massively: December 10, 2007