Eager to get into Rift: Storm Legion? After feasting our own eyes on Trion’s upcoming expansion, we don’t blame you. With features like the new Tactician Soul and Dimensions to build a home in, there’s certainly a lot to look forward to.

Beta Event 2 throws its doors open on Friday 19th October at 10AM Pacific, and stretches through all the way to Wednesday October 24th, giving plenty of time to explore the new continents of Dusken and Brevane. If you caught the Questing livestream last week, you’ll recognise City Core as one of the new locations in Storm Legion, with the additional zones of Eastern Holdings and Seratos opened for exploration.

This weekend is also the chance to start building a place of your own, with Dimensions being unlocked. Continuing the torrent of new features, Hunt Rifts, Grandmaster Crafting and zone puzzles all make it into this beta weekend.

Getting into the Rift: Storm Legion beta is guaranteed when you pre-order the expansion. But that’s not all – ZAM will also be launching a beta key give-away! Stay tuned, as we’ll be announcing the details very soon. 

Questing. It’s the been the bedrock of almost every MMORPG, from the earliest tales to modern-day epic sagas. With Rift: Storm Legion rapidly hurdling towards launch, Trion used their latest livestream to detail the changes to questing in the upcoming expansion. We also heard teases of information about the new open-world puzzles, and other ways we’ll be encouraged to explore the vast continets of Brevane and Dusken

In a spoiler-laden reveal, we were taken on a tour of one of the central questlines in the City Core zone. We’ll spare you the details on the quests themselves, but they highlighted a change in approach for the quest design team. While core story quests will still be found in quest hubs, much of the additional quests have been moved out into the open world for us to discover. The biggest change was to Carnage quests, where killing one creature might spawn a quest to kill ten more, with completion and reward being performed away from hubs.

A unique aspect of Rift is something the quest team call “scuba diving”; starting out on a quest, only to be sidetracked by an invasion, rift, or some other event, and coming up for air later to discover that you’ve wandered off-path. This isn’t lost in Storm Legion, although we did see a quest that uses an on-screen overlay to direct players down a particular path. The team did mention that this effect is used sparingly, to help steer players through particular areas.

Alongside a heap of new questing content, we’re also told that each zone will have Instant Adventures for those who prefer objective-driven content. New open-world puzzles have been made even more fiendish, each requiring a completed collection of artifacts to unlock. While the artifacts themselves might give clues on how to complete the puzzle, failure will occasionally result in death. And yes, there are more hard-to-find artifacts, more jumping and climbing puzzles, and even more hidden cairns loaded with treasure.

The livestream hasn’t run dry yet, with even more episodes planned for next week. On Tuesday 16^th at 2:30PM Pacific, the dungeon team will take us through the new Exodus of the Storm Queen instance. And if the recent Dimensions trailer has whetted your appetite, a further livestream reveal has been planned for Friday 19^th at 2:30PM Pacific.

The second beta weekend for Storm Legion also opens on Friday 19^th, with preorders guaranteeing access to the beta. Those of us who prefer ordering via Steam are also in luck, as we’re told that Valve’s store will start offering preorders from Monday 15^th.

Gareth “Gazimoff” Harmer, Staff Writer

Denizens of Sacred Grove are entertained by Halloween Harry this month as Super Spooktacular returns once again. He seeks the help of candy-loving adventurers to help play some tricks, flush out some ghosts and assist others with many more fun tasks!

This year a new TCG bundle is available in the Marketplace, which includes two Baron Von Darkcheat and Heroes booster packs, as well as a Pumpkin Prince promo card. Keep an eye out for additional updates that may add more spookiness to the Marketplace.

Hop onto Free Realms today and enjoy the limited time Super Spooktacular event!

Scheduled to start on Thursday October 11, ghouls and goblins can be seen creeping around the city streets in Norrath as Nights of the Dead returns once again. Put on your favorite costume or illusion and join in the festivities!

Familiar faces from years past have returned with their seasonal quests and treats. There are six new quest rewards, new goodies on the Nights of the Dead Merchants as well as an updated version of last year's Devotee challenge. Crafters will be pleased to hear that the new Celebrations of the Dead V scroll offers 22 new recipes! Players wanting to consolidate their candy into one type can use the candy exchange Gigglegibber, who can be found in all player cities.

The old Trick-or-Treat game has been retired this year, replaced by a Ghost Hunter Competition with Commonland and Antonica versions. Players can chase ghosts to win masks, appearance weapons and titles. Check out our video below!

Nights of the Dead will run until November 5th. For those of your with far too many alts, check out our Nights of the Dead Quest Tracker!

When I first heard about Warface, I was surprised. Crytek , the developer behind such legendary shooters as Crysis and Far Cry, was entering the free-to-play arena. To my uneducated eyes the process was simple: produce some incredible games, sell a staggering number of copies, rinse and repeat. But as producer Peter Holzapfel described at the recent Eurogamer Expo, the gaming landscape is changing.

On the surface, Warface is a superbly executed first-person shooter, as you’d expect from a developer with a pedigree like Crytek’s. For the 100-strong team at the developer’s Kiev studio, the game represents something more; an opportunity to find out how free-to-play actually works in the myriad of markets throughout the globe. In creating a lightweight, accessible, team based shooter, the team has built a laboratory of carnage with which to experiment.

It’s an experiment that already seems to be paying off, with Warface launched in some territories. When I asked Holzapfel about how it had performed in Russia, he grinned at me before replying. “What would be the correct adjective… mind-blowingly successful so far?” By partnering with Trion in Western markets, Crytek hopes to repeat that success when beta starts later this year.

In front of a frenzied livestream audience, Trion pulled back the curtain on the eagerly anticipated new Storm Legion soul for the Rogue calling. And wow, does this one get all the toys. The Tactician is a master of area effect combat, using a flamethrower-like magical weapon to dispense Torrents of damage and, interestingly, healing. Alongside this arcane burninator is a mix of Cores that can be placed on the ground to give a mix of damage, healing, or buff effects.

Going on the rampage with your favorite new weapon isn’t just a case of squeezing the trigger and watching enemies melt in front of you. In order to get maximum damage, you’ll need to spend some effort pointing the cannon of fiery delights in the right direction, and making sure that whatever it is you don’t like is within range of that roasting jet. In better news, you can channel Torrents while moving, allowing you to spin and chase down any potential escapees while you have energy left.

All new souls in the Storm Legion expansion are based around the use of magical technology, and the Tactician is no exception. Cores are the collective term for the arsenal of gadgets the Tactician carries around, just waiting for the best situation to use them. A barrier remote might form a protective shield, while a curative remote placed near an enemy might heal allies that deal damage to it. By contrast, an engine placed on the ground might heal the Tactician when they take damage, or add a splash damage effect to their attacks. Either way, they’re sure to be carrying one bulging utility belt.

We’re told that the Tactician should synergize well with the Bard, Saboteur and Nightblade souls, with a collection of new Purposes, or premade builds, ready to get you started. The Flametrooper is a potent mix, combining the AoE damage from Tactician with the single target attacks of the Nightblade. The Medical Technician takes all the raid buffs from the Bard, and combines them with the healing from Tactician, to create a strong AoE group healer. Finally, the as-yet-unnamed Tactical Saboteur build caters to those who want all the destruction, all the time. With the Saboteur’s new 61-point Molotov Cocktail crowning the build, it’s sure to bring a warm glow to everyone’s hearts.

If you simply can’t wait and want to try this out for yourself, don’t fret! Put in a pre-purchase for any version of Storm Legion, and get swift access to this weekend’s Storm Legion Beta Event!

Gareth “Gazimoff” Harmer, Staff Writer

Not many MMOs have been as successful as EVE Online, with the number of registered capsuleers growing every year since launch. Nine years and seventeen free content updates later, CCP’s spacefaring universe is as popular as ever. With Retribution -- the game’s 18th update -- and free to play shooter Dust 514 due out later this year, the Icelandic developer shows no signs of slowing down.

For Jon Lander, executive producer for EVE Online, part of that success is because his team view themselves as caretakers, and that the game CCP has built over the years actually belongs to the players that inhabit it. It’s a unique viewpoint that emerged as we spoke at the Eurogamer Expo last month, a focus on being respectful of the legacy inside the sandbox MMO, while being bold in improving and expanding it.

In a wide-ranging interview, Lander shared his opinions on kick starting player created content, and why rebuilding core game mechanics doesn’t make EVE a safer place. He also revealed how CCP is extending their sandbox out of the game through the introduction of CREST, the new read/write API available to third-party developers. But, with the development studio based in the unlikeliest of places, Lander shared some insight into the culture that gave birth to this incredible world, and what lessons other MMOs can learn from it. 

From September 20-23, select players with beta keys were able to test out the newest F2P “cops-and-robbers” FPS online game, District 187: Sin Streets, published by CJ Games Global. Technically, the game is already out (in Korea), but now American servers are opening up with some limited testing. The American team has said there are three goals for this test: that it is A. Fun, B. Stable and C. Balanced. Has the game kept these goals in its sights, or has it missed the target? Read on for our review!

Changing your home city can be confusing in EverQuest II. It's not just a matter of waving goodbye and moving on. Are you just moving to a new town of the same alignment, or betraying your home for the other team? Will you have to change your class? What do you have to do to gain acceptance in your chosen new home?

We answer all those questions and more in our updated Betrayal and Citizenship Guide!

Next month sees the return of GDC Online, the Games Developers Conference focused on online, social and cloud gaming. One of the most popular parts of this annual gathering is the Game Narrative Summit — a series of lectures and workshops about how to share storytelling in all its forms, from flagship MMOs to small smartphone games.

Helping shape this year’s Summit are Tom Abernathy, Narrative Designer and Writer at Microsoft Studios, and Richard Dansky, Central Clancy Writer for Red Storm Entertainment. Abernathy has previously worked on Halo: Reach, Destroy All Humans and Crimson Alliance, while Dansky’s credits include Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon and Far Cry. Both were listed in Gamasutra’s Top 20 Game Writers, and together they form half of the Game Narrative Summit Advisory Committee. 

With the conference itself just a few weeks away, I was fortunate enough to get the chance to talk about game narrative with these legends of storytelling.  In an enlightening dialogue, we discussed the diverse nature of this year’s Summit, before moving on to the evolving nature of narrative in a changing industry. I also discovered the techniques used in building narrative for online games, and how new technology is being used to perform storytelling.