Can’t wait to get a slice of Runewaker and Sony Online Entertainment’s dragon-taming MMO? You’re in luck, as earlier this week we reported that Dragon’s Prophet will be entering open beta on May 30. In order to dig into that announcement a little more, and to answer some questions about the game, I’ll be interviewing SOE senior producer Todd Carson on Thursday May 23.

Rather than keeping it all to myself, I’ve decided to throw it open to all of you! Either submit your questions here, leave a comment on our Facebook page, or even join us live and throw it into the chatroom. We’ll be on ZAM’s Twitch.TV channel from 4PM Pacific on Thursday, May 23 and will try to respond to as many of you as possible. I’ll also have the game up and running, so let us know if there’s anything you want to see!

Don’t worry if you can’t make it in person, as we’ll be recording the event for you to watch later. And don’t forget to follow our Twitch.TV channel for more live MMO goodness!

Gareth “Gazimoff” Harmer, Senior Contributing Editor

The death of an MMO, while uncommon, is not unheard of. The death and rebirth of an MMO is another matter entirely.

Certainly, some MMOs have seen drastic overhauls over the course of their lifespan: perhaps most notably, World of Warcraft with its Cataclysm expansion, which sundered and reshaped the old world, but kept the core gameplay systems intact. The now-defunct Star Wars Galaxies is probably the closest an MMO has come to being completely remade, but the update that did so, dubbed the New Game Experience, was much-maligned and arguably sent the game into a death spiral.

Today, CCP pulls the shrink-wrap off its latest game. After running in open beta since January 22, DUST 514 is ready for prime time. Developed in Shanghai exclusively for the PlayStation 3, the MMOFPS represents a new window on EVE Online’s universe of New Eden.

More importantly, the Icelandic developer sees DUST 514 as the start of a new deal for console-bound FPS gamers. As Chief Marketing Officer David Reid put it, there are tens of millions of Battlefield and Call of Duty players waiting to be liberated from a prison that they don’t know they’re in.

Movement is the oxygen of a video game. When the controls are perfect the keyboard and mouse become subconscious extensions of our self, translating commands to our avatars at the speed of thought. When they go wrong, playing becomes a frustrating battle that can leave you feeling locked out of the game. 

In an MMO, moving around is the single thing you’ll spend most of your time doing, as our own Bill "Lethality" Leonard discussed following his visit to WildStar's US Arkship event. Whether it’s dodging lasers from a crazed killer robot, chasing after a mining node that’s grown legs and is sprinting away, or just strolling around and enjoying the scenery, you’ll be constantly racking up the miles. Which is why, for a game like WildStar, movement is particularly important. So important, in fact, that they’ve devoted an entire DevSpeak video to the subject.

For some, MMOs are all about exploring the world and everything in it. They’re on an adventure, questing through every corner of the land, or battling through the toughest dungeons. If it involves saving the city for an epic reward, they’re in.

Others choose to take a different path; one littered with the corpses of those who challenged them. They’re out to prove themselves on the killing fields, either in tight arena combat or open battlegrounds. With the bloodlust in the air, the opponents they seek aren’t dungeon dwelling monsters, but other players.

After battling through the first ever WildStar Arena PvP tournament at Arkship EU (you can read her Dev Diary on arenas or responses to PvP concerns), I asked Carbine’s Lead PvP Designer Jen Gordy about her plans for the upcoming MMO. During the interview we touched on her general approach, skill balance between PvE and PvP, itemization and much more. 

The game engine is often an unsung hero of modern MMOs. When it works brilliantly we hardly even notice it, focusing instead on the dramatic art style, sublime musical score or excellent narrative. It’s only when problems emerge that we sit up and take notice how our favorite games are presented to us.

But what about the technology that brings it all together? After seeing the upcoming MMO for myself, I wanted to recognize this unsung hero of gaming greatness, and so I asked the folks behind WildStar if they’d shed some light on how their engine works. Whether it’s processing game rules or delivering pixels to our screens, WildStar’s MMO engine is a complex machine that acts as a window into the world of Nexus.

With Carbine’s upcoming MMO entering closed beta, we were eager to take a closer look at this mystical device. Luckily, Lead Software Engineer Steve Moret agreed to give us a rare peek inside the box and explain some of how WildStar’s engine works. From those first lines of code to more recent features, Moret explained what goes into the software that will be sitting on our desktops.

Today marks the North America release of Snail Games' new martial arts MMO, Age of Wushu. Some of you may have been following this game for a while, but for many reading this site you may have some questions about the game. How does combat work? Is there endgame content? What on earth is this Offline content I see mentioned in some of these articles? In an effort to clear up some of these missing details, some of the Age of Wushu development team took the time to answer a few of our questions about their new game.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is just a couple of weeks away from head start for Rise of the Hutt Cartel, its first expansion and most important update since going free-to-play in November. With those who qualify able to play the expansion from April 9 (April 14 is the release date for non-qualifying players), I sat down with Bruce Maclean, Producer of SWTOR, to talk about the new content as its launch approaches.

If you're into video game art, then it's likely the subject of our Q&A is already well-know to you. Indeed, Kekai Kotaki has spent most of his professional career making sure the games we love to play look as amazing as they possibly can.

Kotaki began at ArenaNet, seeing to it that amazing visuals became a part of the Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 legacy. He departed ArenaNet just before the release of Guild Wars 2, which raised an eyebrow or two. But as he explains, it was all just a part of following his dream. After leaving the only game studio he had ever known, he spent some time with a little company called Bungie working on a game called, let's see...  Destiny, I think it was. Even though he's no longer with Bungie, with any luck, we just may see some of his artwork represented in the game.

His style is unmistakeable, and his talent is immense. Yet he's a great, down to earth guy who just loves what he does and was happy to share some of that enthusiasm with us!

Over the last few years, cloud computing has become a marvel of the business world. By being able to order computing power on demand, IT departments have been able to eliminate the costs associated with commissioning servers and kitting out data centers. It also provides flexibility, supporting firms like Netflix, Spotify and Pinterest as their user base grows.

Can cloud computing support a full-fledged MMO while still providing a stable, low latency experience to gamers? The developer behind sci-fi shooter MMO FireFall believed that it could, going on to convincingly prove it during an evolving, long-term beta that started earlier in 2012. You can even judge the fruits of their endeavour yourself this weekend, as Red 5 Studios are holding an open beta from February 22nd to 25th.