Last month I went down to San Francisco to meet with Carbine Studios and check out its current build of WildStar. In-between presentations and actually playing the game, I had the chance to sit down with Lead Narrative Designer Chad "Pappy" Moore and ask him about some of the game's lore.  Most of the questions were about the Dominion and its newly revealed races, but we also touched on the Exiles, the new Stalker class, as well as the player's arrival on Nexus.

Last month I went down to San Francisco to meet with Carbine Studios and check out its current build of WildStar. In-between presentations and actually playing the game, I had the chance to sit down with Executive Producer Jeremy Gaffney and ask him about some of the more nuts-and-bolts aspects of WildStar’s design. The first half of the interview covered player specializations, Milestones, gear scaling, and Path abilities. For this second half, Jeremy discussed PvP design, crowd control, targeted abilities versus freeform casting and more.

Last month I went down to San Francisco to meet with Carbine Studios and check out its current build of WildStar. In-between presentations and actually playing the game, I had the chance to sit down with Executive Producer Jeremy Gaffney and ask him about some of the more nuts-and-bolts aspects of WildStar’s design. Player specializations, Milestones, gear scaling, Path abilities, and more.

Piranha Games has been busy so far in 2013. We're only a few weeks into this year and MechWarrior Online has seen the launch of the new Spider light mech as well as the first Double XP event of the year. With the Death's Knell Hero Mech coming up right behind the Spider, it looks like they're not planning on letting up the pace any time soon. This week Piranha Games' president Russ Bullock took some time to answer a few of our questions about MWO, from the roles of the new mechs to what the future brings and even a few tips for inexperienced mech pilots.

EVE Online is certainly unusual among MMOs. In the staggering ten years it’s been running, the spacefaring sandbox has consistently grown in popularity. Yet Icelandic developer CCP shows no signs of slowing down, releasing Retribution – the game’s 18th expansion, planning a 10th anniversary FanFest and launching shooter Dust 514 on PlayStation 3 later this year.

For executive producer Jon Lander, part of that long-lasting success comes down to the basic concept of the game he leads. “I really struggle calling EVE a game. Certainly I, and a lot of the original developers, and the developers we have now, we all think of this as a massively multiplayer virtual world.” He continued “When you approach it from that angle, you realize that the important things in the real world aren’t necessarily games. The things which make a world meaningful are generally social interactions, and the evolution of history which can then affect the actions of the present.”

As we spoke just after Christmas, Lander went on to explain why his team don’t want to be the focal point for EVE’s stories. “If you play a game, and you play the imagination of somebody else, you’re playing through a single player game. I used to play a lot of the Splinter Cell games, and then I was playing a story which had actually come out of a developer’s head. I wasn’t playing my story – I sort of had to imprint myself on that.”

Defiance is about more than a game. For Trion Worlds, it’s about building a universe where a deep cross-platform MMO and big-budget TV series can co-exist and interact. Senior producer Rob Hill has been there from the start, helping to shape the idea of the game, and working with SyFy to grow it into something more.

I recently got the chance to try Defiance for myself (more on that later), getting stuck in with the post-apocalyptic third-person shooter, set in a sprawling MMO-ready landscape. Taking a break from mowing down Hellbug skitterings on my quad buggy, I asked Hill about what it’s taken to get this far, some of the nuances of the Defiance universe, and meeting that April 2013 launch date.

Other people reckon it’ll be zombies, but I’ve always thought that the Earth would be swallowed in a fiery nova, leaving nothing behind but a lifeless husk. I’m not sure why, it just seemed neater than hordes of brain-hunting undead shambling through the decaying hallmarks of our civilization. Besides, a global inferno that tears the land asunder has a kind of glorious finality to it.

Either way, for Funcom game director Joel Bylos, the argument has been won. Starting today, The Secret World no longer requires a subscription. Just pick up a copy and you can experience the entire game until the Mayan Calendar runs out, or even longer if the predictions of doomsday turn out to be inaccurate.

We asked Bylos if he’d take a break from building his apocalypse-proof bunker to tell us more about his decision to drop the subscription. During the interview, he explained why having no restrictions is the best for gamers, and what the future holds should we survive beyond the 21st.

Wowhead is at it again. This time, they're bringing the awesome with an exclusive interview with Blizzard's Dave Kosak, Lead Quest Designer on World of Warcraft.

Were you busy this weekend? Perhaps partaking in some festivities of the season with family or friends? Well, if you were there's a good chance you missed this little Guild Wars 2 tidbit. But not to worry, as usual ZAM has you covered!

Are you ready for a good story? I hope so, because Massively's Larry Everett took some time to chat with BioWare's Hall Hood, lead story-wrangler on Star Wars: The Old Republic.

For those unfamiliar, Hall is a member of the old guard and has been with the SW:TOR team since early in the development process. I personally had a chance to meet and interview him at Star Wars Celebration in Orlando several years ago, and he's a great guy. So, he's been around to see it all, which gives his input on game issues - especially when it comes to story - tons of value.