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There has been plenty of speculation on PlayStation Home and how it compares and contrasts with Second Life as a virtual world. Heck, the creative director spoke about it months ago stating that Second Life players would probably not find much of interest in PS Home. Well, Kotaku has stepped in to explore just that subject.

For those not wanting to get too down and dirty with the full tale, Second Life has much more personal customization. Everything from outfits to dance moves to land masses can be user-generated and added to the world. On the other hand, PlayStation Home allows for minimal add-ons, focusing on creating rich, stable environments - even if that means sacrificing little things like avatar diversity. But with much more content promised, PS Home may well become a better contender for virtual world time.

The trusty Herald for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning has once again delved back into the game's non-PvP content. Though WAR is built around the massive Realm vs. Realm systems developed by Mythic Entertainment, there are numerous Player vs. Environment options available to gamers who want something a little more traditional. This is actually the third of these guides to roll out to the Warhammer site. The first dealt with low-level treks like the Altdorf sewers and The Sacellum, while the second delved into mid-level dungeons probably very familiar to WAR veterans (Gunbad, Bastion Stair, etc.).

This newest entry, then, tackles some of the highest-level instances in the game. Most of these in turn are actually connected to the aforementioned Realm vs. Realm systems, and are only accessible from within captured Capital cities. The exception is the Elven Lost Vale, a six-man level 40 encounter off the coast of Avelorn's coast. Otherwise dungeon rundown number three tackles locales in the Capitals like The Elysium, the Screaming Cat Tavern, and the two massive palaces the dominate the player cities. Read on into the piece for full details on these encounters.

Massively writers trying to play Lord of the Rings Online this Saturday morning stumbled into a mess that's apparently been going on most of the day; upon trying to log into the game, the following error appears: "The SSL certificate appears to be expired. Please ensure your system clock is set to the correct time and try again. [ERROR 80001]" Investigating the LotRO forums has uncovered an official thread from CM Tarrant resassuring players that Turbine's NetOps team is looking into it.

Meanwhile, players have already solved the issue. If you want to get into the game, just set your computer's clock back to January 1st. The complication there is that daily quests might then be tweaked out, and so further recommendations state you should set your computer's date and time to the correct values at the character select screen. Essentially, set the clock back to log in, and then reset once you're past the loader. Turbine assures this issue will be resolved soon, and we can't imagine this seemingly minor error will continue much longer.

Brace yourself for the obligatory 'New Year' post. I'd resolve to lose weight, tone up and be kinder to my fellow man, but I'd be lying. Not because I'm weak and won't follow through on them, but because I don't need to. I'm practically perfect in every way.

Except not really. I'm lying. I also hate Mary Poppins with a cold, implacable hatred. But that's neither here nor there.

It's been a year of ups and downs in the MMO world. We've seen World of Warcraft go from strength to strength with an expansion pack which knocked the socks off of Burning Crusade. Say what you will about Blizzard, but it's always good to see a company that's willing and able to learn not only from its past mistakes, but its past successes. We've seen the long-awaitied launch of Warhammer Online, but we've also seen some downers, with Tabula Rasa going down the tubes, and Fury falling over. Although, not as many people were upset about Fury, given that it was terrible from start to finish.

Sure, the news of Star Wars: The Old Republic was kept a secret (kinda) for a few years, and during that time we really heard nothing of the game itself. Yet here we are now getting a steady stream of useful information on a game that is not even predicted to launch this year. This week we have two examples of this from the team at BioWare: a look at the art style of the game, and an entertaining blog entry from Principal Lead Animator Mark How.

In the blog entry, How explains a bit about how enthusiastic the animation team is for getting every lightsaber battle exactly right. He reflects on how powerful the toys were to him as a child and how the work they will do with TOR can be 10,000 times better than anything we could imagine back then.

Spring is right around the corner and with it comes warmer weather, rain showers, blossoming fauna and Jumpgate Evolution. As much as I'd love to think there are thousands of you out there that know all about the game, I get the feeling that in actuality the number is significantly lower. Granted, real-time action space shooter MMOs aren't exactly a mass market genre, so it's probably a fair shake overall.

But what's really worrying me is that even those who should be excited for Jumpgate Evolution are seemingly unaware of it's forthcoming release. This won't do, and so I present to you the essentials of why a sci-fi fan should give this game some serious consideration for their 2009 MMO budget.

With all the holiday hootnannying, we never really had the chance to ask you how your holiday in Warhammer went. All the other games were rolling out pretty familiar offerings for us this year, from World of Warcraft's tried-and-true Winter Veil to the Hobbity fun of Lord of the Rings Online's Yule Festival. Warhammer's brand-new live event, "Keg End" was a unique offering this year, and from the sound of things offered a lot of fun times. Festive fireworks were fired, unique holiday experience bonuses were all around, and the fest itself offered a lot of holiday-themed tasks for players to sink their teeth into.

Our question to you this morning is simple: How was it? Did you have a chance to participate in the keggy goodness? Was Ogre-killing and seeking the Golden Stein as much fun as the merry Mythic rhyme made it sound? Did you manage to obtain the Elite reputation reward for completing all of the event's tasks? Let us know in the comments below while some of us are still getting over our own keg-related events ...

As we anxiously await any morsel of news regarding ArenaNet's Guild Wars 2, it's still nice to hear the occasional interview along the way. Recently, Allakhazam sat down with ArenaNet's Art Director, Daniel Dociu, to talk about his experience in the gaming industry, his evolution at ArenaNet and his visions for Guild Wars. While we get no news of GW2, the interview is interesting nonetheless.

"We built this art team from a handful of people to somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty people now." Dociu said in the interview. "They have been more or less hand picked from the best talent pool that the industry had to offer. It's a team that I'm personally proud of and very protective of and that's what I would consider that my main contribution to the game."

While implementing "future Christmas in space" wasn't the most feasible option in EVE Online, CCP Games did revive their holiday tradition of giving players snowball launchers, with harmless snowball ammo. The snowball launchers sound and function like standard missile launchers, and upon impact the snowballs burst into a cloud of snowflakes. However it seems the cat's out of the bag in terms of baiting surprised targets into returning (live) fire in high security space, and having them put down by CONCORD -- EVE's NPC police.

Perhaps it's just as well though. Soon those unused snowballs will melt, thus ending EVE Online's holiday celebration on January 6th. Needless to say, players who quickly tore through their snowball supply and are trying to replenish their cache will have to hurry. CCP Fallout, EVE's Associate Community Manager, writes that "capsuleers who bid on snowball contracts before this date, yet receive them after, will find themselves owners of a pile of melted snowballs upon delivery." So use 'em or lose 'em. They'll be reduced to puddles in just a few days, and since CCP Games doesn't do this every year, it might be your last chance for quite some time to try these out.

When gamers passionate about their MMO of choice form a close-knit community of bloggers, it provides a collective window into the game that readers wouldn't be able to get from the major sites alone. A prime example of this is the very active EVE Online blogging community brought together by our friend CrazyKinux, where EVE's players contribute opinions, tips, even tutorials on a daily basis. Given how successful this has been with EVE Online, why can't MMO gamers rally around another title?

It's possible that the next blogging community focused on a single MMO title will be based around Warhammer Online. The WAR-centric blog "Wizards & Wenches" has put out a call to the game's player base in WAR: Age of Blogging. They're declaring January '09 to be the WAR: Age of Blogging month, and encourage any Warhammer Online players with something to say to jump in and start writing, even first-time bloggers. (For those who are relatively new to blogging, there's some support to be found at Blog Warhammer where they can help you get set up with a blogging platform like WordPress or Blogger.)

Massively wishes the new Warhammer Online bloggers the best of luck, and we'd love to see the player community build something that turns out as well as The EVE Blog Pack. If the prospect of joining the ranks of the WAR bloggers has caught your interest, be sure to see the announcement post over at Wizards & Wenches for more info on how you can get involved.

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	WAR has gone 1.1! Check out our full coverage of the 1.1a patch, along with our interviews exploring upcoming content and the open RvR changes. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!

Sure, almost all MMOGs have emotes. They've been there forever. But much like the incredibly involved character creator, City of Heroes boasts a wide range of very silly and fun choices, perfect for those who love to add in that little oomph when role-playing or just messing around with friends. Also, unlike the fire-and-forget-it emote development of many other MMOs, the City of Heroes developers continue to slowly add new emotes in to the game, both through patches and microtransaction packs. Some are easy to find through the chat menus, while others are a bit off the beaten path, and short of hunting down a listing, you may not have seen them all.

For those who haven't ever experienced the wide range of City of Heroes emotes, I've compiled a gallery of some of my personal favorites. That said, this gallery is nowhere nearly the entirety of the emotes in the game. In researching this, I realized there were quite a few I hadn't even seen yet - despite playing CoH for a couple of years now! There are also a few emotes that have multiple /em commands to activate.

That being said, there is really no substitute for seeing them in action. So, if you've been considering trying on some tights, there's no time like the present!

Google's Lively presents us with an interesting scenario. It was literally a checklist of what critics have been saying that virtual environments such as Linden Lab's Second Life absolutely must have in order to make it.

A simplified user-interface, embedded in the Web-browser, content designed by professionals rather than (mostly) amateurs, a 'room' (or contained space) model rather than a widespread world. While it was touted as having no requirement for a separate downloadable client, that wasn't actually true -- it did actually have one, though it was relatively painless to download and install.

In short, it was the perceived holy grail of virtual environment 'must-haves' for success, as so frequently touted in media articles which lauded its simplicity and accessibility. Also, in short, Lively was a failure -- a spectacular one. Spectacular, but not without educational value.

Nielsen Research has published its January through October numbers about the top 10 PC games and top 10 consoles by amount of time played. Once again World of Warcraft tops the charts. In fact, WoW has more time played than the other nine titles listed - combined.

Coming in at position 6 is Runescape, the browser-based game that could. It had just slightly less share than The Sims 2. Numbers for only October are available on the Nielsen website and show a different makeup for numbers 2-10, with WoW still in first. We can only imagine what this data will look like for November 2008 with the added game time of those who bought Wrath of the Lich King.