Warhammer is almost upon us! If you are a part of the Open Beta it looks like you’ll be playing this weekend! The headstart program begins the following week. The rest of us will have a bit longer to wait with general access beginning on September 18th.

If you are looking for the nitty gritty from beta, you won’t do better than the Classy Gamer Warhammer Online Beta Review.

But what about the classes? There’s plenty of detail about them, too. We’ve made a collection of some of the most useful raves and reviews to help you make an informed decision.

Class Overviews

The Warhammer classes (known as careers) are based around four archetypes: tank, melee, support and ranged. The following guides talk about the classes in general with an overview of the class mechanics from beta.

• Complete Class Overview From Beta Elder - Warhammer Forums
• A wall of text: Warhammer Online: beta videos
• All Class/Career Descriptions & Reviews - Warhammer Forums

Individual Class Reviews

The following is Cart’s collection of detailed class reviews - thank you Carts - which might be a little bit biased towards destruction.

• Tanking 101 (Chosen) - Warhammer Forums
• My thoughts and advice on shaman - Warhammer Forums
• Ayestes’ Guide to the Sorceress - Warhammer Forums
• Comprehensive Marauder Class Guide - Warhammer Forums
• Healing in the name of Khaine: Disciple of Khaine guide - Warhammer Forums
• Black Orc Guide — Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning — The Hordes of Chaos Vault
• Squig Herder Guide — Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning — The Hordes of Chaos Vault
• Witch Elf - HammerWiki : The definitive Warhammer Online wiki.

And if that is all too serious for you, then head over to Killed in a Smiling Accident to read about The Lost Classes. It had me in stitches but now that I’ve thought about it a bit more, I’m pretty sure Dwarf Beer Master would suit me to a tee.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Game Update 48 went live on Wednesday with new quests to do with the upcoming Odyssey expansion and the long awaited guild halls as well as a new tier 8 group instance in the Fens of Nathsar.

There are a lot more changes, including a revamped Everfrost, that you can read about on the official patch notes. Meanwhile, here’s our quick start guide to some of the new content.

Guild Halls

To help build the guild halls, travel to the docks of Antonica or Commonlands, depending on your alignment. The builders are in need of more raw materials and you’ll be ask to provide them. You can choose what tier and what type of forage. Travel to the correct zone, harvest twenty items of the specified type and return to the docks.

These quests reward in status (as well as AA the first time you complete a quest). There are additional fluff rewards for having completed 10, 20 and 30 quests. I received just over 15,000 guild status points per tier 8 harvesting quest.

Chips Ahoy

The Seeress has been murdered! There are two versions of this quest, good-aligned in North Qeynos and evil-aligned in Gorowyn. Although Gorowyn is safe for good-aligned characters, it is not possible for them to get the evil version of the quest.

In North Qeynos, speak to Shepherd Bainyn Fairwind about his Celestial Watch bone chip collection for the quest Brittle Chips Ahoy.

Travel to Antonica and around the Qeynos gates you will see lumps of bones glowing with a cyan flame. Unsettle the bones to spawn a brittle Antonican resident of your level. Kill it and loot the corpse to receive a brittle bone chip. Collect 10 and return to Fairwind.

In Gorowyn, speak Evdokia who is in the pools near the prophet of Bertox. She will give you the quest Diseased Chips Ahoy.

Exit Gorowyn and take the griffon to Mok Rent. Head south across the bridge and you’ll see scattered bones, glowing fuchsia. Unsettle the bones to spawn a brittle sathirian guard of your level. Kill it and loot the corpse to receive a brittle bone chip. Collect 10 and return to Evdokia.

In either case, you can hail the orb to see how your server is doing. A further live event will be made available once the orb is full.

Veksar

This ancient Iksar city lies hidden in the depths of the Lake of Ill Omen in the Fens of Nathsar.

From Omen’s Call Docks, swim south west towards the shipwreck. At 632,-183,290 you will find bubbles rising from sunken ruins and a door leading to Veksar. This leads to the group instance Veksar: The Invasion. Every member of the group will need to swim to the door and enter.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

There are grandmasters in every main tradeskill area with quests to offer tradeskillers of the appropriate level. These quests follow a set pattern: go into a specified zone to harvest material and craft items appropriate to your subclass using these materials. The quests offer tradeskill experience, faction and an advanced recipe book for the appropriate tier (provisioners are offered additional recipe books for all but the final quest) as their reward.

In this MMORPG-Info exclusive, we have traveled around Norrath to meet these paragons of trade and introduce them to our readers. In the process, we think we made have found out what it takes to reach this pinnacle of success! [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Finally the last stage of the puzzle has come clear.

Unlock the Mines of Moria has updated and now you can complete the puzzle with one last easy step:

Apply for the Mines of Moria beta and you will receive the fifth and final star.

You should notice a pulsating star in the gateway. Click on that and a new window will come up with a form so that you can apply to take part in the beta.

As a reward for applying, you will gain a high resolution image (click on the star after you’ve finished submitting the form). If you have completed the other four stars already, you will receive your final reward in your email after you have registered.

You do not need to have completed the other stars in order to apply for the beta but with our step-by-step guide, it’s easy! [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

The initial void tempest storm quest was perfect for Paxmar because she could keep repeating the quest without having to fight anything. She quickly gained level 17 and I decided to keep doing the quests for one more level.

I was about 82% into the level when I had a dream about a gnome with crazy hair and reflective glasses informing me that she was going to delete her character off of my account if I didn’t find her something else to do soon.

[More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Tradeskilling is becoming an increasingly broad part of playing Everquest, with quests and Epic rewards.

How do you get started? The first step is to become an artisan. Hailing people around the tradeskill areas will generally do the trick but if you want to be sure, find someone with a title of Crafting Trainer. They will start you off as a level two artisan with a copy of Artisan Essentials Volume 2.

Then you should speak to a tradeskill delegate and get started on the tutorial. It’s not only a useful primer in crafting, it also awards large amounts of experience for very little effort! The delegates have a title of “Tradeskill Tutorial” to make sure that you can’t miss them.

Take a look at the Ultimate Tradeskill Tutorial Tutorial for everything you need to know to get to level 10 in record time.

At level 9 and level 19, you will have to speak to a Crafting Trainer to progress your craft by choosing a specialization.

If you change your mind about a specialization, you should speak to a Tradeskill Career Counsellor who will reset you to Artisan level 9. This means you lose all levels and the recipes you gained after level 9 in order to allow you to choose new specializations. You can then go directly to a Crafting Trainer who will give you level 10 in the profession of your choice.

Details for these NPCs in the tradeskill areas is listed per starting city:

• Freeport
• Gorowyn in Timorous Deep
• Kelethin
• Neriak
• Qeynos

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Bored with your favorite mainstream game? Here are a few free multiplayer games that are off the beaten track and offer enjoyable gameplay with no financial commitment.

Some games will claim they are free but restrict you immensely unless you pay, these are more of a “demo”. There are various charging structures but to be truly free-to-play I think the games must adhere to the following criteria:

1. Does NOT require you to purchase the software/box.
2. Does NOT require a subscription fee
3. Does NOT require you to pay money to advance in the game (e.g. in-game restrictions upon non-paying users)

The following games are all free-to-play.

Gunz

A game which shows you what it would be like if you were an action movie star. It allows for a person to use katanas, pistols, sub-machineguns, shotguns and all variety of weapons as well as armor. The selling point is that to get the jump on the enemy, well, you can jump, wall-walk, climb, and rabbit jump. Basically you can do millions of acrobatics in an attempt to outwit your enemy and win in suitably stylish ways. The game is free, although the North American version has a pay-for currency (“G Coins”) which can be used on the other games hosted there.

Note: The North American servers can be quite sparsely populated, but there tends to always be a small group playing.

Apocalypse Online

A sci-fi third person game set in the dystopian future which has been ravaged by war. You fight for survival with guns, vehicles and other methods. The graphics are just so-so but the pure freedom to play with others to survive more than makes up for it. With a variety of areas ranging from desert town to lush forest, if you get bored of one place you can just up and move somewhere else. There are also “mechs” in the game (robots which you strap into and use). What really makes this game unique is that they have balanced it so that a gun user will not be overly more effective then a sword or other melee weapon user.

Dreamlords: The Reawakening

This is an RTS MMO set in a semi-destroyed world. You are the ruler of a city and must decide which heroes are to be sent off to war with the despised enemy city! The graphics are good and will keep you entertained although they are not top of the market stuff. There are 3 races that you can play as in this game, the Covenant (who are basically crusaders), the Nihilim (Magic Users) and the Thul (Barbaric Orc like society). You have the same abilities as you would in a normal Real Time Strategy, except you are up against other people, who may well beat you back down. With city managing as well as troop management, this is a game that will keep you hooked for a long time.

In summary, all the games listed here are a bit different and I hope you enjoy them. I am playing these myself and have found them to be highly enjoyable. Do you know of other fun free-to-play multiplayer games that are worth a longer look? Let me know in the comments!

Posted by Conot on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Tradeskilling has vitality for bonus experience, just like adventuring does. A new character is created with zero vitality. As a result, you should wait a day or two before starting your tradeskill to build up vitality. This will give you double experience for every combine.

First: claim your free bag by typing /claim and choosing the Veteran Reward Pack - 1 day. This will give you a Bag of Endless Adventure with 12 slots. You get one reward for every new character. I would recommend against using the potions that give a bonus to experience at low levels: you will find these much more useful at the high end when things get slow.

Second: speak to a tradeskill delegate. They tend to hang around in tradeskill areas and you can always ask a guard to show you to “Tutorial” and he should point you straight to one. [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

So the Las Vegas Fan Faire 2008 was a big success and news is making it onto the community sites. Discussions are quickly getting heated and misinformation is already starting to spread.

In order to keep things on an even keel, here’s a quick collection of eye-witness reports and opinions to get you up to speed quickly on the released information. Feel free to add other links and additional details in the comments.

Fan Faire blog offers quick notes about the new expansion:
The Shadow Odyssey News Rollup

Niami writes about guild halls:
Fan Faire 2008 Guild Hall Preview

Massively interview Bruce Ferguson about the new expansion:
Exploring the Shadow Odyssey

Allakhazam and SOE join up to create EQ2 database on ZAM.com:
Allakhazam announces Zam.com, SOE Partnership

Ogrebear wonders if this will kill community sites:
Disappointed by the Zam.Com Announcement

I have to admit that I’m wondering about the community aspects of this. It doesn’t seem to bode well for sites like mine.

Photographs from the Fan Faire:
Flickr Fan Faire Group

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Tradeskilling in Neriak takes place in the underbelly of the city, in the dark, dank caves of Neriak Down Below. You’ll find cave entrances in the area near the Dockside Markets, either side of Adamant Armor. It may not sound the most appealing location but here the Dark Bargainers offer everything a tradeskiller could desire.

Although the location is a bit odd, the process is the same as in other starter zones. When you begin tradeskilling, you are unskilled and referred to as an artisan. As you progress, you will be asked to choose your subclass (scholar, outfitter, craftsman) and eventually your class which will allow you to progress to level 20 and begin doing tradeskill writs.

• Speak to the trainer or the tradeskill delegate to start as a level two artisan.
• Speak to the delegate to start the tutorial for detailed explanations of the tradeskilling process and fast experience.
• Speak to the trainer to choose your specializations at level 9 and 19

Szinjss X’Vemtor is the delegate offering the Tradeskill Tutorial in Neriak. Speak to him to jump to level 2 and get started with your tradeskill career. He’ll then offer you a set of quests to progress you as an artisan at double-speed.

He is located at -174,-0,302

Dilxena D’Xeep is a Crafting Trainer who can get you started as an artisan by increasing your level to 2 and giving you a copy of Artisan Essentials Volume 2. Speak to Dilxena at level 9 and level 19 to choose your tradeskill specializations.

She is located at -186,0,310

Vier N’vul is a Tradeskill Career Counsellor who will allow you to change your tradeskill class choice. This will reset you to level 9 artisan and you will lose all your sub-class and class recipes. Vier is slightly out of the way, in the cave near the north entrance rather than in the room with the other NPCs.

You can find him at -152,-5,256

There are bankers and brokers above ground in Neriak but you’ll find additional representatives in caves. There are many other NPCs in the area, including fuel merchants and writ givers.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.