Now that Defiance is live and has gone through the usual slew of launch-day messes, it's time for the developers to start thinking about the future. That means DLC. The latest development blog explains both what the team is doing to address the game's issues and how DLC will be released in a tiered system, with every major DLC update containing upgrades to the cash shop, a paid DLC component, and a free update for everyone.

The first DLC is already en route, and its $10 paid component allows players to make a Castithan character, access a unique storyline, and gain some special vehicles and outfits. Even if you don't pay for the DLC, you'll have access to new Castithan Blades, and a new open world game mode called Siege, and can earn new Charge Weapons. The game's store, meanwhile, will allow you to tint your Castithan Blades, buy new lockboxes or vehicles, and re-customize your character. There's a little something for everyone playing the game, and that's the ultimate goal.

In case you didn't notice, the title of this week's column is a question. It's not because I know the answer; it's because I've been thinking a lot about it lately and don't have a really good answer.

Assassins are in a strange state when it comes to teamfights. In League of Legends, there's a period when teams tend to group up to fight over objectives. This marks the midgame in Summoner's Rift, it happens after altars unlock in Twisted Treeline, and it occurs anytime both teams know where the other team is on the Crystal Scar. We've discussed teamfights a lot already, but what is troubling is the presence of assassins in these fights. Assassins are best when they're able to jump in and kill an unprepared target, ideally before a teamfight starts. Once that's done, their team can jump in with a numbers advantage and take the objective or wipe out the enemy.

When both teams are grouped up ahead of time, assassins lose a lot of their might. Assassins can't kill without exposing themselves to heavy risk, which makes them a liability to their team until they jump in. After they jump in, they're still likely to be the first ones to get focused down.

What do we do about this? What's the solution? I don't have a clear answer -- but I can still share my observations.

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Atlantica Online is in the middle of a three-patches-in-three-months cycle right now, starting with Awakening, moving on to Ascension, and finishing up with Judgment. The Ascension patch has gone live with a host of additional content for the game including the journey to West Atlantis.

The new zone of West Atlantis is a former technological haven turned centaur refuge and offers plenty of mysteries and adventures for the daring player. It's there that teams can tackle the Centaur Hero raid dungeon and hire a new merc named Chironia.

Other changes that have come with the Ascension patch include an increased level cap to 160, the Transcendent Temple dungeon, and an array of new talents. You can watch the update trailer after the jump!

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Cryptic's got a tiny surprise for Neverwinter players today: a teaser page for its module 1 update. The studio posted a splash page featuring a mystical forest with the phrase "They would seize from the moon the way to ruin and riches" floating above it.

In an interview with Massively a few weeks ago, Lead Producer Andy Velasquez acknowledged that the team was hard at work on this update even before Neverwinter went into open beta: "For the rest of the team, they've spent the last couple of weeks working on the first update which will come out a couple of months after the launch."

Cryptic says that more details on module 1 are coming soon, but in the meanwhile, why don't we engage in a fun round of speculation as to what this update could be?

[Thanks to Mark for the tip!]

It's time for a grab bag edition of Ask Massively! A reader named Nicholas is up first:

I was wondering if you could help me remember a game studio that was developing a new Korean action- MMORPG game engine (and it wasn't Bless, Blade and Soul, or ArcheAge). In the tech demo, no environment was being shown; it focused on the combat aspect of the engine. All the combat took place against a white background, and it was combo-based and reactive to hits. I remember a slow motion scene with an NPC being punched in the face and the face distorting. At the time, there were no announced games using the engine; the video was just showing what tech the game studio had developed. If it helps any, I remember the comments saying that the engine was just going to be vaporware.

I think we might! Massively's Lis pegged it as NetEase's Dragon Sword trailer. +1 to Lis.

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RuneScape 3 is an ambitious project, especially for an MMO series as old as RuneScape's, but Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard told IGN in a recent interview that they're ready to take the wildly popular MMO to the next level. This not only means the previously announced change from a Java-based platform to HTML5, but it also means that the game will be coming to tablets by Q4 of this year.

Gerhard also added that the possibility of a smartphone connection is there as well, but only as an addition to the overall game experience. Where else can Jagex go from here? Smart TVs? Consoles? Both are possibilities, according to Gerhard.

It's no secret that many folks like to see what they are getting into... or in the case of MMOs not yet available in all markets, what they'd like to get into. So those looking forward to playing NCsoft's martial arts fantasy Blade & Soul should appreciate this newly released visual tour of the White Blue Mountain Range area.

Although lacking any English subtitles, the video contains over six minutes of footage from various locales. From verdant vistas to wintery caverns, quaint villages to majestic cities, get a taste of the ambiance and architecture of the White Blue Mountain Range region in the trailer after the break.

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If you know me, you probably know that I have a weird fascination with alternate history. You know, the daydreams of historians when they're not rewriting the past to suit the latest trends. "What if?" my mind wonders, especially when it comes to MMOs.

You see, for every game that actually makes it to launch, there are several that die gasping and alone in the bowels of development hell. Sure, many of these are pathetic creatures that didn't really stand a chance anyway, but there are some that could have made an impact on the industry if they had reached release and been halfway decent. We'll never know what a world would look like with these games in them, but we can always muse, "What if?"

Continuing Perfect Ten's recent dark streak, here are 10 MMOs that died in development hell; it's to our eternal loss that we'll never get to play them.

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It's hard enough for any guild leader to enforce rules and take on problem players. But it's even harder for guild leaders who have stepped up to take over for one who has retired. Comparisons are made between how the old leader did things and how the new one is handling it, and some members might challenge a new leader's authority in order to "test" him.

This week's column is a reply to one Massively reader, who wrote,

My main commander has retired from the game, and I am struggling filling his role. Our biggest issue is dealing with discipline, either in Teamspeak or in following commands. I read your column on managing mistakes, but I am still finding it hard without being the bad guy. I know it's part of who I am; I am not an aggressive or "Bad Cop" guy. Is there a way I can develop discipline without having to totally change my personality and relationship with the guild?

This is a great topic because it's a situation that many new leaders find themselves in almost immediately after taking on the role. In this week's Guild Counsel, let's look at some ways to deal with the challenge.

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Movement is always important in MMOs; you can't get into arguments about who's standing in the fire if everyone is rooted in place, after all. Since WildStar is promising active combat, it needs to have even more movement than normal so that you can find new and exciting ways not to stand in new and exciting sorts of fire. And the newest DevSpeak video is all about that.

"That" being movement. Not new and exciting sorts of fire. It's still pretty much normal fire.

Some elements will be immediately familiar to anyone who has played a video game on a computer within the past decade. Some elements are a bit more uncommon, like double-jumping or giving every class access to a quick dashing roll. And some elements, like switching positions with a target by tearing a hole in space itself, are pretty well unique. Take a look at all of them just past the break.

[Source: NCsoft press release]

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MMO quests are old hat by now, and the vast majority of them are some slight variation on the standard kill-10-rats or FedEx mission. Some are unique, though, in terms of both their rewards and their mechanical presentation.

I'm thinking of EverQuest II's betrayal quests here, which allow you to switch factions, home cities, and in some cases, even classes. What MMO quests or questline do you find the most memorable and why?

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 MMO formerly known as Prince, er, Prius Online has gone into beta in preparation for its relaunch. The newly titled Arcane Saga represents a reworking of Prius' old content to include new features and content.

Netmarble Head Project Manager Joe Kim invites you to check out the changes: "With the start of the beta phase today, players will finally get to experience for themselves all of the improvements we've made to the world of Prius over the past year."

Assuming all goes well in the beta, Arcane Saga is scheduled to launch in the next couple of months. In the meantime, check out our interview about the re-launching of this title.

[Source: Netmarble press release]

Age of Wushu is not the most accessible game. It is full of confusing systems that are hard to decipher, and a large part of the "skill" in the game is being able to wade through the mess of gameplay elements and produce an optimized character.

Meridians are one more extremely confusing system to handle. There are nine meridian lines, advanced characters can activate four of them, and even training them at all is pretty confusing. Training the correct ones adds another layer of complexity to an already confusing game.

I'm not a huge fan of the system -- it causes a number of metagame problems, particularly due to the increased HP inherent to everyone who trains a meridian line. However, it's there and we have to make the best use of it. How do we do that? Read on!

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When Star Trek Online rolls out its Legacy of Romulus expansion on May 21st, you'll be playing a Romulan (or Reman) captain on a Romulan ship. But you will be allying with either the Klingons or the Federation, and so you might worry that you'll be surrounded by distinctly non-Romulan officers. Never fear, as the latest development blog makes it very clear that Romulan characters will be able to access a unique pool of Duty Officers and Bridge Officers unavailable to the other factions.

While Klingon or Federation characters may occasionally earn a Reman or Romulan Duty Officer, these are rare recruits that can only be obtained after exceptional effort. Actual Romulans will be able to recruit new officers of these races with unique traits simply by visiting New Romulus. They will also have access to recruitment from their allied factions, ensuring that the ship may have a mix of races while still remaining Romulan at its core.

The secret is out and can't be shoved back in the box: RuneScape 3 is coming. Of course, we already knew that, but there was a time not so long ago that the world was ignorant of this fact. If you wondered how the global reveal of this title went for those who were there, then Jagex has a neat behind-the-scenes video showing how and what the press saw when the studio went live with the info.

In addition to the pomp and circumstance of the event, the team also used the video to reveal the first new skill of the game: Divination. What does it do? Well, the devs were not as keen to share that. Speculate away!

Check out the reveal video after the jump.

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This is not timed perfectly to coincide with what would have been the ninth anniversary of City of Heroes. It couldn't be, honestly; trying to do so would have resulted in a worse column. There's also the simple fact that the ninth anniversary did not actually happen, the game was gone before then. Sanctifying the date will not bring the game back, nor will it assuage the fact that it's not there any longer.

Despite all of that, I liked the thematic structure put forth on the Titan boards, nine reasons for nine years. But since I'm incapable of doing things any way but the wrong way, I'm approaching this in my own style with my own nine reasons that I wish we'd had a ninth year. Even if the game comes back tomorrow in some form, it's never going to have the life that it should have had, and here's my nine reasons why I wish that weren't the case.

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Cryptic is cracking down on player-created missions that utilize certain exploits to gain XP faster than normal in Neverwinter's Foundry. While the studio temporarily banned authors for making these missions in the Foundry, it looks as though a recent patch has addressed the situation by "tweaking" the amount of XP that a player can gain within a set period of time.

Apparently some Foundry authors had been creating missions designed to pay out the maximum amount of XP by allowing near-nonstop combat. The patch has slowed that rate down by allowing players to earn only so much XP in five minutes before turning off the XP spigot altogether until the time limit is up.

Players have been reacting to the Foundry nerf with dismay, particularly non-exploit-using authors who feel as though they are being punished with the rest of the class by the XP nerfs (though "legit" farming maps appear to have escaped deletion so far). One player noted called this situation an "endless cat and mouse game" that has happened in other similar systems.

[Thanks to Zaph for the tip!]