The week in Massively features

Catching up with WAR: An update on Warhammer Online's closed beta
The men and women behind Warhammer Online love their job. It's not hard to see, or hear, and yesterday we had the opportunity to listen in as Warhammer's leading lights chatted about their favorite subject. EA Mythic participated in a conference call aiming to update fans and press alike with the latest news of their much-anticipated title. The team went through a slew of general questions, fleshing out our understanding of the features coming with the game's fall release.

Guild Wars third year anniversary retrospective: Prophecies and Factions
You've come a long way, baby. This weekend marks the third anniversary of the retail launch of ArenaNet's Guild Wars, and as we reported earlier, they're celebrating it in style. So we thought we'd take a visual look back at the game, how far it's progressed since April 28th, 2005 and where it stands today.

Age of Conan beta guide: Your first steps in Hyborea
When you create your character in Age of Conan, you'll end up the tutorial area of Tortage. In typical MMO fashion, you start off with almost nothing in the world, washed up on the beach without a shirt on your back. However, it isn't long before you've stabbed and sliced your way to bigger and better things, as you progress through the jungle towards the city. Join us as we make that journey, and even glimpse the inside of the city itself, in our look at the opening levels of AoC.

Player vs. Everything: Gaming with a disability
Stephanie Walker was a gamer who had never expected to have to deal with a disability. She was 23 at the onset of her condition, a college student who also worked a full-time job. She liked to spend the little free time she had unwinding online. Initially resistant to the idea of playing EverQuest, Stephanie quickly discovered that slaying virtual orcs and bandits while joking around in party chat was surprisingly fun.

MMOGology: Grand Theft MMO
While sixteen players doesn't exactly qualify as "massively multiplayer", it's a step in the right direction for those of us eagerly anticipating a GTA-style MMO. It seems like a natural progression for Rockstar to bring their venerable series to the massively multiplayer arena. After all, you've got a built in, recognizable franchise name based around the most classic multiplayer concept known to man – cops and robbers.

Massively's state of the game: Age of Conan beta
How do you convey the beginning of a journey in words? Journeys are important in so many ways.

Player vs. Everything: Choking on graphics
I managed to get my hands on an Age of Conan beta key this morning, so off I went to excitedly download the client. I'm a big fan of Robert E. Howard's original pulps, and I've been looking forward to the grim and gritty world of Hyboria for a while now.

Age of Conan beta guide: An early game audio/video tour
You've seen our views on Age of Conan as a whole, and gained a few insights on your first steps into Hyborea via our tutorial.

The Digital Continuum: Single-player MMO
Injecting the single-player special sauce into MMOs is hardly a new idea. In fact Phantasy Star Online has done it more than once in the past.

Massively Speaking Podcast Episode 3
Massively Speaking Episode 3 runs down news and features from Massively.com for the week of April 21st-27th.

Guild Wars: A guide to Pre-Searing
The name "Pre-Searing" comes from the fact that everything in this tutorial area of GW:Prophecies occurs before the Searing, when the evil Charr burned the lands of Ascalon to the ground.

Massively exclusive: Inside the mind of Mind Candy's Michael Smith
I recently had the opportunity to sit down and spend some quality time with the CEO of Mind Candy, Michael Smith. I picked his brain about Mind Candy's newest game, Moshi Monsters, how they're going to attract and protect the kids that play it.

A PvEer's guide to PvP in Guild Wars
So you think you want to get into Guild Wars PvP. Maybe you've taken a look at Observer Mode and thought, "Hey, I can do that!".

An introduction to Mythos crafting
The old adage -- if you want something done right, do it yourself -- has never been more true than in Flagship Studios' Mythos.

Games that could be MMOs: Pokémon
The Pokémon brand is one of the largest and most successful franchises the gaming world has ever spawned.

Guild Wars third year anniversary retrospective: Nightfall and Eye of the North
Today, in honor of Guild Wars' third birthday, we've got a retrospective on the two most recent explorations of the original game concept. We'll offer up some imagery from the past, reflect on how the game is today, and look ahead to the future of the series.

Have a picnic in a living world
Where can you go to see a sea dragon, read art books, have your fortune told, and play music, all in the one spot? Well, Svarga in Second Life certainly has all of this. And that's not all you can do in this wonderful simulation.

Age of Conan beta guide: The mages
We've given you some hands-on impressions from our time with Age of Conan's mages from the Gamespot PvP weekend, but over the past few days we've had a chance to play these classes in the beta proper.

CoX: The right to farm?
City of Heroes Issue 9, Breakthrough, might also have been titled the Agricultural Revolution. Sure, we'd had power leveling before, and plenty of it. But until the Invention System came along we didn't really have full-on farming as such.

Behind the Curtain: More Epic Gameplay?
Should MMOs give us a more 'epic' feel to our experiences?