For the past several weeks, we've been delving into Darkfall: Unholy Wars, and after along week spent experiencing the clan warfare, and more "hardcore" aspects of DFUW, we're ready to put a final stamp on our critique.  Read on to see what conclusion we've come to in our official review.

Read the rest of our official Darkfall: Unholy Wars Review.

MapleStory is a colorful 2-D role-playing experience that gives players access to wild adventures in a growing world filled with distinctive lands, dangerous monsters and a setting where players easily socialize and grow their circle of in-game friends.

During the life of the game, Nexon has added large chunks of content, including this year’s addition of Japanese-themed characters, Kanna and Hayato. The feature-packed content updates and nearly limitless character customization options have contributed to the creation of a faithful fan base where nearly ten percent of the North American gamers playing the game for six years or more.

“We have a dedicated and engaged group of players, and we appreciate the loyalty and passion they have for MapleStory,” said Teddy Kim, Nexon America’s producer of MapleStory. “We are committed to continuing to deliver the best content to our players to keep the adventures rolling.”

To celebrate its eighth anniversary, MapleStory will host events giving players the opportunity to earn special eighth anniversary celebration boxes dropping from defeated monsters, which include valuable in-game items. Players level 10 and above can collect eighth anniversary coin giveaways every day, while all players can count on hot-days and EXP bonus events throughout the month.

Check out Maplestory here.

We're bringing back The List, with a video twist.  And to start things off, we're counting down the best MMOs of 2013 so far.  The honored games can be both new and old titles, so read on to see our picks, and be sure to add your own!

We’re going to countdown the top seven MMOs of the year, through the first several months. At the end of 2013, we’ll look back at this list and see just how well our picks fared and whether we need to change our minds and pick different games for our annual Best of the Year Awards.  The list will include titles new to the industry this year, and past titles that have been doing “all the right stuff” so far... essentially it’ll be a recount of the games we think are hitting all the right notes in 2013.

Read on and watch The List: The Best MMOs of 2013... So Far.

Trailers are an integral and important part of game development any more and often times help 'sell' the game to millions of players. In her latest column, Genese Davis takes a look at the importance of the trailer. Read on!

This year marks the 100 year anniversary since the first trailer debuted in a U.S. film theater in November 1913. In the past century movie trailers have become what we expect to see before deciding yea or nay on a seeing a film. But they have also become what we can look forward to seeing from other media platforms as well like video games and books. 

Read more of Genese Davis's The Trailer.

RuneScape is one of the oldest and most revered of MMOs in the genre today with a still-active and vibrant community. We took a few minutes to chat with Mark Ogilvie about RuneScape and about MMO design in general. See what he's got to say before continuing the discussion in the comments.

Massively multiplayer online games are hugely popular, but what happened to that last part? The final piece of acronym puzzle that invoked wizard hats, billowing silk robes, and dice beyond count? We caught up with RuneScape lead designer, Mark Ogilvie, to discuss his influences and why the RPG factor is hugely important to Jagex's game.

Read more of Adam Tingle's RuneScape: Mark Ogilvie Talks MMORPG Design.

Hot on the heals of the Closed Beta 2 announcement, WildStar's Jeremy Gaffney is stopping by MMORPG.com again TONIGHT (5/16) to chat with our own Garrett Fuller about the game, its progress, and its ultimate design goals.  Be sure to head to our stream page at 7:30pm ET, 4:30pm PT, and 12:30am (5/17) GMT.

Don't miss a moment of the conversation, watch it LIVE on our Stream Page.

The folks behind free-to-play MMORPG Remnant Knights introduced revamped Owl and Dragon School starting zones as well as an improved UI in the latest update to hit the game. Remnant Knights is now also available in a cloud-baser browser version on MiniClip.

Learn more about Remnant Knights.

Wargaming is celebrating their 15 year anniversary with the announcement of an international tournament for World of Tanks. The winning team will be rewarded with an all-expenses paid trip to the World of Tanks studio in Minsk, Belarus. Second and third place winners will instead win a 'massive' bounty of in-game gold.

Players will be competing from the following regions:

• Europe
• North America
• Russia
• South Korea
• Southeast Asia
• China
• Vietnam

Egyptian-goddess of Magic, Isis, has entered the battleground of SMITE in a new update deployed to servers yesterday. The update also adds a special Vulcan sentry skin for Global Agenda players, new voice packs, and the ability to earn "Worshipers" through the leveling process.

Learn more at the official SMITE website.

Now that Camelot Unchained is funded, we're catching up with Mark Jacobs on what comes next for the ambitious RvR MMO. Tune in to our Stream Page today (5/16) at 2pm ET, 11am PT, and yes... 7pm GMT.

Feel free to put any questions you want Rob Lashley to ask Mark, right here in the comments!

One of the more common occurences as more games go free to play is to see "soft launches", so-called open betas, where the team can hide behind the beta moniker but simultaneously profit by taking players' money for cash shop items. In his latest column, Bill Murphy takes on this troubling trend. Read on and then tell us what you think in the comments.

I could probably make this a video rant, but in the interest of just getting it all out there, I thought I’d keep it to the old print format that we serfs have dominated since the movable type was invented (thanks, Mr. Gutenberg!). It’s a topic that’s been bothering me quite a bit lately: the idea of “open beta” meaning “we’ll take your money, there will be no wipes, but please don’t call it launch”.  The most recent case of this is of course Neverwinter, but Firefall seems to be doing the same thing (someone can correct me if there will be character wipes there). And it’s been the standard practice of the F2P MMO industry for years now. 

Read more of Bill Murphy's The Beta Is a Lie.

As we continue our journey through Neverwinter, we come to the third installment of our Beta Diary. This week, we take a closer look at the Neverwinter cash shop and game currencies as well as PvP. Check it out before leaving your thoughts in the comments.

Being open beta, this is our, the players’, chance to influence the final release of the game. Constructive criticism is always a good thing in any game and Cryptic has shown willingness to listen to its community. I love Neverwinter. I really, honestly do. But there are things that need to be changed to give it a chance at a long and healthy life and I only bring all these up, because aside from these issues, Neverwinter is a fantastically fun experience.

Read more of Suzie Ford's Neverwinter Open Beta Diary #3.

The Jagex team just released a new behind the scenes video focusing how the audio-scape of Runescape (seewhudIdidthar?) is changing with the launch of version 3.0. Check the video out below, and leave us your thoughts in the comments!

If you've got any questions on WildStar for executive producer Jeremy Gaffney, start posting 'em in the comments below. DaGaffer himself will be answering questions live, beginning right now!

Please remember to abide by our Rules of Conduct when posting. This is not a WildStar discussion thread, so please only post questions for Jeremy and/or follow-up questions to his answers. Thanks and have fun!

Carbine Studios is ramping up coverage of WildStar, a game that is beginning to look like a genre changer. We spent a long while speaking with Jeremy Gaffney and have a tome of new information to share. Read on and then tell us what you think in the comments.

Carbine Studios’ WildStar is gaining more and more steam in the hearts and minds of expectant MMO gamers as it drives through Closed Beta on its way to launching later this year.  Mixing the traditions of theme-park MMOs with the sensibilities of play-how-you want sandbox MMOs, WildStar seems like it’s poised to please a lot of gamers when it finally does launch. That is, if they can make good on all of the design principles and promises they hold so dearly... because lordy, if they do pull it all off? Carbine’s flagship title is going to be a world rife with fun for just about every MMO player out there.  We caught up with Executive Producer Jeremy Gaffney to find out how Closed Beta 1 has gone, and what’s coming up in Closed Beta 2 and beyond.

Read more of Bill Murphy's WildStar: The Summer of WildStar is Upon Us.

Crimson Isle is filled with plenty of places to explore and climb to.

Conquer Online will be celebrating its 10th anniversary in May and to celebrate the occasion, Conquer Online will be hosting a series of events and here is one of them! MMORPG.com is now teaming up with Conquer Online to give away glorious packs to make your journey easier. The gift codes are limited. Don't miss out the chance!

Gift Packs Include:

1. Glorious EXP Pack:
   You can open this pack 7 times in 7 days to get 7 Exp Balls, 7 Double Exp Potions and a Small Praying Stone.
2. Glorious Gear Pack:
   You can open this pack to get a whole set of Level 70 super +1 gear (1 socket for weapon).
3. Glorious Support Pack:
   You can open this pack 7 times in 7 days to get a Meteor Scrolls and a +2 Stone each time.

Event Rules:

1. Event Duration: 15th May, 2013 – 31st May, 2013 (PDT)
2. One gift code per account per IP.
3. Only for the new players who have successfully registered during the event

As Funcom's The Secret World nears its first birthday, we decided to take a look back at where the game was at launch and where it is today. See what we have to say before leaving your thoughts in the comments.

I threw myself into The Secret World heavily for the first month the game was out. I spent many hours streaming it on our MMORPG.com stream channel. While the PvP was lacking and turned into a Merry-go-round for control points, and everywhere you looked people seemed to complain about the combat animations (they never really bothered me), I thought the game was innovative enough to overlook these flaws. I still think the 5-man dungeons in the game are some of the best I have ever played. They contain very little trash, and the packs they do have prepare you for a mini-boss or boss fight. Also the boss encounters themselves feel like they are not constant rehashes of fights we have seen one hundred times before in other MMOs. Toss that in with a unique setting that offers an alternative to anything else that was out there and you have an instant winner. I was not alone in my praise for TSW, it even received a good review from this site. But as most of us know a good review doesn’t guarantee a huge commercial success. 

Read more of Rob Lashley's The Secret World A Year Later.

When it comes to making psychotic NPCs Funcom is in a league of their own.

There's been a good deal of controversy surrounding the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic's Game Update 2.1: Customization. We break down some of what we're hearing and offer our own take in this week's SWTOR column.

Let’s start with the existing pre-patch controversy (yup!) though. Players have been concerned about the basic idea that the update would be focused almost exclusively on Cartel Market content. With updates coming to the game every six to eight weeks, I honestly wouldn’t fault anyone for being upset that an entire game update was dedicated to features that mostly required players to open up their wallets. Fortunately, BioWare has explained that another Game Update is scheduled for release shortly after the launch of 2.1, and this update will be focused more on content or other systems unrelated to the Cartel Market.

Read more of Michael Bitton's Star Wars: The Old Republic: 2.1: Color & Collection Chaos.

On the patch release page on the Guild Wars 2 site, a new graphic has cropped up that indicates a new patch will be released on May 28th and will be called "Last Stand at Southsun". No further information is available but we'll keep you posted!