MMO Roundup: Betas, patches, trailers and vampires

SWTOR testing portal discovered, confirmed by BioWare
Few communities are as enthusiastic about their upcoming MMO as the one surrounding Star Wars: The Old Republic. Recently, they found what appeared to be a testing portal for the game and the discovery created a fervor of speculation and discussion on the official forums -- mostly surrounding whether or not beta was near.

Funcom teases new Secret World trailer
We here at Massively aren't ashamed to admit that we're looking forward to The Secret World. Between our sit-down with Ragnar Tornquist at GDC10 and the juicy bits of into slowly making their way out of the game's unofficial web sites, we're, to put it mildly, stoked. The new trailer features a healthy dose of story-based voiceover, glimpses of combat gameplay, and oh yeah, player characters shooting fire from their hands and hacking away with samurai swords.

ArenaNet releases fourth Guild Wars 2 concept art video
Guild Wars concept art has always been known for being the best in the business, and this latest video chock full of Guild Wars 2 art is no exception. It's worth a view, even if you're not much of a Guild Wars fan yourself.

TERA unleashes trailer on the masses
The upcoming action RPG fantasy MMO TERA from Bluehole Studio and En Masse Entertainment definitely caught our eyes at GDC 2010. While our fearless leader Shawn got a chance for (several) hands-on sessions with this intriguing new title, the trailer from GDC has come out today for the rest of us who weren't so fortunate as to make it to the conference. What is most impressive about this trailer to us (beyond the fact that nobody seems to fall out of those skimpy metal bikinis) is that the footage was created using all in-game resources.

IGG introduces vampire MMO Moonlight Online
It's no Twilight, but that's probably a good thing. IGG has recently announced Moonlight Online, an MMO based around supernatural stories and environments. Become a vampire, topple empires with your supernatural abilities, and declare war on werewolves. Sounds like a good time!

Star Trek Online launches massive Season One patch
The list of updates is impressively long and several of them address player griefs with areas like Klingon ship customization and mission variety. This is also the first patch bringing some PvE missions for Klingon players, which was a sticking point with many at launch. But Season One also brings captain respecs as well for players unhappy with their skill load-out -- an essential feature that's been sorely missed by many.

PAX East 2010: City of Heroes panel reveals many things
Unpacking the City of Heroes panel at PAX East is a big deal: there were huge amounts of information being thrown around, and a lot of new pieces of information to process. For that matter, there was far more than anyone expected, with information about the full spread of new issues up to Issue 19 and the reveal of Matt "Positron" Miller's heretofore unrevealed new endgame system. The panel as a whole featured a huge breadth of information about the game from concept into the future, and was filled with people long before the official start time.