If you're not in the ArcheAge beta (or if you are but can't figure anything out due to the language barrier), you'll want to check out a series of new gameplay videos at Steparu.com. The fan site has uploaded six clips that show off the high seas adventuring to be had in XLGAMES' forthcoming sandpark title, and there's an hour's worth of footage sure to be of interest to those of you chomping at the bit to do a little nautical exploring.

ArcheAge's oceans are apparently vast, as the party makes use of the fastest ship in the game and still spends quite a lot of time looking for an island to call home. There's also a bit of island exploration footage, and you can find the first video after the break.

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At the end of every week, we round up the best and most popular news stories, exclusive features, and insightful columns published on Massively and then present them all in one convenient place. Miss a big MMO or WoW Insider story last week? You've come to the right post.

MMO closures don't happen all that often, and those that die tend to do so in a fireball of bankruptcy and layoffs not long after launch rather than through peaceful contact negotiations after almost a decade of successful operation, but Star Wars Galaxies joined the latter group this week, sunsetting its servers on Thursday night. If you missed the finale, you can catch up with our recorded livestream of the last hour of the game and our sandbox column's touching eulogy. And there's always that other Star Wars game...

Join us past the break for a glimpse of this week's other top MMO stories.

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While EVE Online's recent Crucible expansion brought us over a hundred small features, balance tweaks, and graphical updates, its headline feature was undoubtedly the four new tier 3 battlecruisers. It's been several years since a new combat ship was added to EVE, and combat had begun to get a little stale. Most of EVE's ships follow a logical design progression, with larger ships having more tank and higher damage output. CCP turned that concept on its head with the new tier 3 battlecruisers, which deal battleship-class damage but have both the agility and paper-thin tank of a tech 1 cruiser.

The Caldari Naga is the very definition of a glass cannon, able to output more damage than a Megathron or Rokh but at the cost of having practically no tank. It can be sniper-fit to deal around 650 DPS at ranges of 100-130km, blaster-fit to output a raw 1,500 DPS at ranges below 10km, or even set up to fight effectively with blasters outside web range. Its high top speed and cruiser-like agility add new gameplay options to existing sniper and heavy damage-dealer fleet roles, providing battleship-class damage for roaming cruiser gangs. It's a potential game-changer for nullsec alliances engaging in hit-and-run style warfare, but as with all new ships it can be difficult to figure out an effective ship fitting.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I explore three solid fittings for the Naga designed to fill common PvP roles.

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Back in September, Riot Games was so excited about an upcoming League of Legends champion it had barely begun working on that it released the concept to fans far ahead of schedule. The champion later became known as Ahri, the Nine-Tailed Fox, and last week we got a sneak peek at her abilities and the balance changes that would be accompanying her arrival. That patch went live this weekend, and Ahri has now been officially released.

In a new champion spotlight video, LoL's resident strategic expert Phreak discusses each of Ahri's abilities in detail and gives tips on playing the champion effectively. Ahri is a mage assassin, able to dish out considerable damage in a short space of time. After landing a number of spell attacks, Ahri's next spell will hit with a huge bonus to spell vamp. By sending an Orb of Deception through a whole wave of enemy creeps once the spell vamp buff is active, Ahri can heal herself for a significant amount. Her ultimate allows her to quickly dash around the field of play, either to chase down a fleeing champion or evade pursuit.

Skip past the cut to watch the full champion spotlight video in HD, and stay tuned to our weekly Not So Massively column every Monday for more LoL news and updates.

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Are you ready for another free-to-play martial arts MMO from China? Ready or not, Perfect World Entertainment is producing a title called Fantasy Condor Heroes, according to a news blurb at Gamasutra.

If you're a student of Chinese popular culture, that name may ring a bell since it's taken from a wuxia novel called Return of the Condor Heroes. The book was written by author Louis Cha (under the pen name Jin Yong) and originally serialized in the late 1950s. Thus far Perfect World has not made any feature- or gameplay-related details available, nor do we know when Fantasy Condor Heroes will be released.

On the sixth day of giveaways, GamersFirst gave to me... six retail packs!
On the fifth day of giveaways, Trion gave to me... five subscription codes!
On the fourth day of giveaways, Nexon gave to me... four pet items!
On the third day of giveaways, Wargaming.net gave to me... three premium years!
On the second day of giveaways, BioWare gave to me... two warring factions!
On the first day of giveaways, Turbine gave to me... a lifetime VIP!

We're at the halfway point of our 12 Days of Giveaways thanks to GamersFirst and APB: Reloaded. Remember earlier this month when we told you about the new retail boxed edition of the game? Well, if you liked it, you're in luck. GamersFirst has put together six digital copies of that edition, wrapped them up in a big bow, and put them under our virtual tree.

Six lucky Massively readers will win a bundle containing 30 days of premium access, 500 G1 credits, a faction-specific sports car, and a special secondary weapon. If you win, look very carefully because Santa Paro (/rimshot) has slipped one more extra special item into each pack. We'll save that one for a surprise!

Want to get your hands on one of these codes? To enter, simply leave a comment answering the burning question: enforcer or criminal? The entry deadline is tomorrow, December 19th, at 2:00 p.m. EST. Once the deadline hits, we'll choose six winners and award the gifts. Check out the contest rules below, and best of luck!

This week my job was a bit harder than it usually is. This week I had to revisit Pocket Legends and Star Legends, the entirety of the Spacetime Studios lineup, in order to catch the updates and differences since both games were recently adapted to play within the Chrome browser.

See, the device that you play an MMO on does make a difference. While I haven't found many players who have an issue with moving up to a finer machine with a larger screen, I almost always receive a few comments in any of my mobile MMO columns about the lack of fun involved with playing anything on a screen that will fit in your hand. While I understand the difficulty in downgrading your monitor size, the mobile market's reception of Pocket Legends surprised even the developer. People are playing it, for many hours, on screens that are very small.

But now we have the ability to play it in our browser. Does it make a difference in the experience? Click past the cut and I'll let you know.

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Welcome to this week's Global Chat! We love hearing what you have to say at Massively, and we love it even more when we can share the best comments with all of our readers. Massively staffers will be contributing some of their favorite comments every week, so keep an eye out every Sunday for more Global Chat!

It was a crazy busy week with so much to talk about, and while we could go all over the map with reader comments, we're going to focus on one last goodbye today. Follow along after the break for our readers' fondest farewells to Star Wars Galaxies.

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Early access for Star Wars: The Old Republic started earlier this week, and that meant that Tuesday evening saw me taking part in a time-honored tradition, namely speeding through the character creator several times in hopes of getting the names that I wanted. I got pretty lucky; out of the eight names I was hoping for, six were available and two were available with just a slight tweak, which was pretty good all around.

Of course, these are all characters that I plan on playing in the very near future, but it was still a big batch of character names right out of the starting gate. Do you do the same? When a new game comes out, do you rush to nab the names of characters you already know you want to play? Do you wait and see if you can get certain names or try to grab the same ones? Or are character names just not that important to you in the long run?

Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!

The timing is probably purely coincidental, but EverQuest II's transition to free-to-play is coming at the best time of the year in Norrath: Frostfell! EverQuest II has always done a lovely job tying together seasonal events with the larger lore of Norrath, but Frostfell is the biggest event of the year. Now, everyone can check it out for free, and it's a great way to get acclimated to the game and get some really nice (and valuable) items in the process.

In this week's Tattered Notebook, we'll cover the must-sees for Frostfell. From snowball fights to snow cloud mounts to heavy-breathing Gigglegibbers dressed as Santa, this is a list you'll definitely want to check twice.

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As I write this, patch 1.20 is not actually live just yet. All I have to go on is a monster list of patch notes and the various previews we've been given thus far. Of course, by the time you're reading this, the patch will have released, and I have no doubt that some people will have played through everything it has to offer a couple of times over. So I'm working at a bit of a disadvantage.

In some ways I'm actually not in that terrible a spot. The last two patches have done great things for Final Fantasy XIV, and the patch notes are long enough that I can at least make some reasonable guesses about how things will play out. So I'm going to do precisely that, with the obvious caveat that I might be punching at the wind. Long story short: I'm confident about this patch; only a few bits irritate me.

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Who says MMOs don't have live events anymore? Triple-A titles, listen up: Your F2P brethren are doing what you won't. On Thursday, the citizens of Illyriad awoke to find that a massive rift had opened in the Northern section of the in-game map. A forum post later detailed the events and told of a mage from the Circle of Five who had recently been tampering with magical uses for the body parts of animals. Soon after, a blast was "felt by all for hundreds of miles in every direction." Scouts, armies and caravans were dispatched from curious cities. The next night, skeleton armies poured from the rift and attacked the investigators.

Illyriad is a free-to-play MMORTS that features city-building, resource management, deep strategy, free-for-all PvP, and a player-driven market. Thanks to HTML5, it works on any device. If dynamic live world events sound interesting to you, check the game out at the official site.

It's not been an insignificant week for Lord of the Rings Online, as Turbine rolled out its big holiday patch: Update 5. With it came all manner of goodies, from an instance finder to another book in our epic quest across Middle-earth. Cooks got coffee (have you had a cup of joe yet?), and I reveled in the ability to expand my sorely taxed wardrobe beyond 100 slots.

But amidst all of the excitement and analysis of the new features slid in something surprising. The night of the update, Turbine opened up its long-promised treasure hunting mini-event for a sneak peek. I joined the throngs of curious lookie-loos who made a beeline for Ered Luin and some mysterious patches of glowing soil that promised riches galore.

Treasure hunting was originally supposed to hit the game much earlier this year, but for reasons unknown, Turbine pushed it back until a later date. Personally, I was psyched that another non-combat event was on its way, so when I saw that there was an actual sneak peek of the event, I cast aside all of the shiny new content of the update to see what this was all about. While I came away with favorable impressions, it was with a slight bitter aftertaste of something not quite palatable. What could it be? Well, you're just going to have to keep reading these here fancy words to find out!

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It was the best of times in The Old Republic, it was the worst of times. Even though BioWare's freshman MMO has yet to officially launch, so-called "credit farmers" are already hard at work setting up operations to sell in-game currency via third party sources. Shacknews identified one company, IGXE, as spearheading the assault on SWTOR's economy, although that company certainly is not alone in attempting to bypass the EULA.

On a brighter note, the Collector's Edition of the game has already shipped to many (but not all) customers, and Darth Hater has a massive 20-minute unboxing video to show off all of the physical goodies that come inside. If you're curious or are still waiting for your own CE to arrive, you can view the action-packed video after the jump.

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On the fifth day of giveaways, Trion gave to me... five subscription codes!
On the fourth day of giveaways, Nexon gave to me... four pet items!
On the third day of giveaways, Wargaming.net gave to me... three premium years!
On the second day of giveaways, BioWare gave to me... two warring factions!
On the first day of giveaways, Turbine gave to me... a lifetime VIP!

We're flying through our 12 Days of Giveaways, and today brings another newcomer to the crowd: RIFT. Trion is enjoying RIFT's first holiday event with Fae Yule, a celebration giving players the chance to participate in special quests and earn "epic gear, a festive corgi pet, a fancy vaiyuu mount, and more!"

The team at Trion has expanded the festivities by giving us gifts for five Massively readers: a digital collector's edition along with six months of free gameplay. If you've been watching all of the RIFT updates this year and dying to get in on the action, win one of these codes and you're covered!

As always, check our contest rules for eligibility, then enter by telling us why you should be one of the five winners. The entry deadline is tomorrow, December 18th, at 1:00 p.m. EST, so hit that comment button, and best of luck!

Are you hanging onto a Sony Online Entertainment game card? Then today's the day you want to register that baby! SOE announced that for today and today only it is running one of its rare Triple Station Cash days -- but the offer ends at 3:00 a.m. EST tomorrow morning.

Triple Station Cash works much like you'd imagine: Any game card redeemed or Station Cash purchased will register as three times that amount. So that 1000 Station Cash code you've got lying around is now worth 3000 points.

Station Cash is SOE's multi-game currency that's used to purchase premium benefits, in-game items, and game time.

This promotion is part of SOE's "12 Days of Holidays," in which the company is offering a different promotion or activity every day through Christmas Eve.

Kids, it's important to learn to just say no. Even if you don't know what's going on. Even if no one has asked you a question, much less one that could be answered with a simple "no." Even if you are completely out of your element and the offer is completely reasonable. It's an important lesson, and sometimes you have to take a stand and say "no" even if you don't know what you're taking a stand against or what you're denying.

If someone tells you no, of course, scream and curse.

Now that we've gotten that lesson out of the way, it's time for this week's installment of WRUP, in which the Massively staff members let everyone know what they'll be up to for the weekend. We also talk about how many MMOs we have installed on our computers and how many we've played over the last month, in case you're keeping track. See what our plans are after the break, then leave your plans in the comment section, and don't you dare refuse.

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Every time I boot up Lord of the Rings Online or Dungeons and Dragons Online, I'm reminded that somewhere on my computer lurks Pando Media Booster. Ostensibly, Pando helps Turbine's games and MMOs like them to download, install, and update game clients, but it also optimizes bandwidth loads and tracks other information presumably of use to the game companies themselves. I've deleted it and similar bundles from my PC multiple times, but some games just don't function well without it. Players have been known to suggest the whole system of third-party installers and downloaders and launchers is nothing more than bloatware, or worse, malware and spyware.

Am I alone in loathing MMO patchers that are really torrents I can't disable, launchers that lump the entirety of a company's games together, and third-party download whatever-ware that won't go away?

Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!

If you or your children are fond of Nickelodeon's Monkey Quest, you may have run into the unavoidable problem that the game requires you to be home. Like many other games, however, Monkey Quest is hopping on the mobile bandwagon with Monkey Quest: Thunderbow. Available now for the iPhone and iPad, the game stars a specific monkey from the world of Ook, the eponymous Thunderbow, as he seeks to dethrone the evil cat king Zotan.

Gameplay is managed in a similar style as the popular Angry Birds games, with the caveat being that Angry Birds doesn't allow you to earn special items and equipment for use in the main Monkey Quest game. Regular updates are planned for the game to help keep players engaged and interested as Thunderbow continues his quest. So if you've got one of the portable devices and your child can't get enough monkey business, it's worth a look.

[Source: Nickelodeon press release]