Last weekend saw the first beta weekend for The Secret World. While we've previously had small glimpses of the alternate reality that Funcom has created, this was the first time we could fully immerse ourselves in the mixture of new lore and old legends. 

But would all the stories and legends turn out to be true? Would Funcom be able to create an MMO that felt different to everything we had played before? Would we have an alternative to the high fantasy heroics that have dominated MMOs for so many years? Would we be able to dive into a deep, dark mirror world, or would we be left splashing in a shallow, superficial experience?

Answering these questions will take time, which is why we will report in each week with our continuing adventures. So far, our experience in The Secret World has been limited to the Templar starter area in London and Kingsmouth, the first of three zones in New England. Later we'll update you on our adventure, as we progress through to The Savage Coast and onward to the Blue Mountain.

Traversing Telara is an exclusive series of articles from Trion Worlds that explores Rift's lore and gameplay mechanics through the eyes of one intrepid adventurer. It's a great read and a fantastic introduction to the world of Telara. Even if you're a veteran of Rift, you might enjoy hearing about the game from another perspective! Read on for Traversing Telara #9: Quicksilver and Meridian!

Catch up on all the past issues of Traversing Telara here!

While most of you are probably too busy immersing yourselves in celebratory Diablo III launch day marathons, remember to have a moment of silence for those who just couldn't take the day off. But fear not! For those stuck at work or school, D3DB has a plethora of Diablo III data just waiting for you to discover! You might not be able to play, but at least you can theorycraft the perfect build in D3DB's fantastic character planner!

For everyone else who has spent the past six hours adventuring in Sanctuary, remember that D3DB is having a week-long contest to give away six Turtle Beach Z11 headsets and one Turtle Beach Z6A headset to a few lucky contributors! All you need to do is any one of the following three: upload a useful video to Youtube to add to a database page; upload a high-resolution, high-quality screenshot where needed; or just post a useful comment on any of the database pages. The sweepstakes starts now and will continue until 11:59 PM on Monday, May 21st, 2012.

Happy monster mashing, adventurers!

While there are hundreds of thousands of players champing at the bit to get into The Secret World's beta testing weekend (that's today!), I'll begin this article by dampening the mood: the press beta began a few days earlier! Everything new you discover will be tarnished by the knowledge that I may have seen it first! Jokes aside, media beta access did begin just a little bit earlier this week, so I've spent the past few days re-introducing myself to The Secret World (TSW) and the wonderfully atmospheric town of Kingsmouth.

Diablo III fans, your time is almost here! With Diablo III launching in less than a week (May 15th!), ZAM Network is proud to announce our newly upgraded D3DB.com! With so many changes being added in, we figured you might get a little confused, so the the friendly folks at D3DB have created a handy tutorial video highlighting some of their biggest upgrades.

Be sure to also check out their fantastic character planner for all your theorycrafting needs! Also remember to swing by their new D3DB forums to get in on the discussions!

Enter our TERA Launch Giveaway Here!

To celebrate the official launch of TERA, ZAM is teaming up with En Masse Entertainment with an awesome prize giveaway! From now until May 15th, 2012, we're giving away two Turtle Beach Z6A headsets in addition to six Collector's Edition copies of TERA! All you need to do to enter is sign up for a free ZAM account before making your way to our official giveaway page to enter! It's that easy!

And while you're waiting to see if you're a lucky winner, why not head over to ZAM's newest addition to our database family: Tera Tome! We're aiming to be your number one resource for TERA, so be sure to head over to Tera Tome for all your database needs!

A new age of video gaming is upon us. One that promises to deliver us games that we truly want to play. One that protects us from the generic mass-market approach favored by big publishers. One that encourages unique ideas and genre innovations instead of unmemorable dross. One that increases the power of the cash in our pocket, by allowing us to directly support the games we want to see created.

But is crowdfunding really the gaming panacea it's been labeled as? Are MMO gamers honestly being let down by large publishing houses? Is it actually possible to deliver an engaging massively multiplayer online experience on a shoestring budget?

More importantly, there's also an increased demand placed on the cash-strapped, time-poor MMO gamer. After paying for boxes, subscriptions, virtual currencies and more, can we really afford to splash out on every MMO idea? Will we ever get the time to play all these fledgling titles? As an increasing army of ideas plead for crowdfunding, are we going from Kick Started to Kick Saturated?

Traversing Telara is an exclusive series of articles from Trion Worlds that explores Rift's lore and gameplay mechanics through the eyes of one intrepid adventurer. It's a great read and a fantastic introduction to the world of Telara. Even if you're a veteran of Rift, you might enjoy hearing about the game from another perspective! Read on for Issue #8: Akylios!

Catch up on all the past issues of Traversing Telara here!

Last weekend, ArenaNet threw the doors to Guild Wars 2 wide open, inviting everyone who had pre-purchased the upcoming MMO to join in a Beta Weekend Event. With over a hundred thousand players ready to explore Tyria for themselves, the event would be GW2's first test by the gaming public at large.

During our previous adventures in the Guild Wars 2 beta, we've shared our first impressions of the MMO and how it seeks to reinvent the genre. We've also considered its eSports aspirations and the arguments against the game. This time, we wanted to see if it could truly scale to the massively multiplayer, as hordes of fresh faces logged in.

That said, this is a snapshot of a continually evolving beta. Over the coming months, bugs will be fixed and features will be improved. Although the beta weekend has been an undeniable triumph for the team, there are likely to be a few bumps on the road between now and launch later this year.

Check out Tera Tome Now!

From the people who bring you Wowhead and Torhead, ZAM Network is proud to announce the official beta launch of Tera Tome, a new addition to ZAM's premiere database network. Our goal with Tera Tome is to work closely with the developers at En Masse Entertainment to bring you the most accurate and up-to-date database for the North American version of TERA that we possibly can.

For now, feel free to peruse our extensive in-game recipe list or get into character planning with our handy Glyph Calculator!

Finally, because we're constantly working on the site (and there is always more to do!), be sure to also swing by our feedback forums if you have any suggestions as to how we can make Tera Tome the best TERA database in the world! Happy database browsing, folks!