GameBreaker.tv The Republic focuses on the answering some of the fan questions.

TERA is rather unique compared to other MMOs in that it has a political system where players can run for office to become a Vanarch. Vanarchs manage their province for 3 weeks. To become a Vanarch a player must:

• Be at least level 50
• Be leader of a level three guild with at least 20 members
• Pay a candidacy fee of 3,000 gold and 100 Catharnach awards

Once elected and appointed, vanarchs have a number of responsibilities to their provinces including

• Raise or lower individual tax rates on several categories of transactions. Any gold you earn as a result is yours to keep!
• Open specialty shops, with items not available anywhere else.
• Add skill trainers in remote locations, allowing characters to stay in your province and spend more gold more often.
• Upgrade the abilities of stamina restoring clerics—something which may come in handy if somebody dies on your watch due to "friendly fire."
• Enable access to trade brokers on certain continents.
• Adjust the PvP settings for your province on certain continents (and only on PvP servers, of course).

To learn more about TERAs political system visit: http://tera.enmasse.com/game-guide/endgame/political-system

Late last year, CCP Games made a promise to its players:

"CCP will be launching each and every one of our subscribers who have a paying EVE account as of 23:59 GMT on December 31, 2011… into space itself."

That promise was kept last week when CPP staff and students from the University of Reykjavik launched an EVE capsule replica containing the names of Eve Online subscribers into the stratosphere. Check out this great video showing the capsule rising from the ground to a low orbit over Iceland

Does Blizzard do that for you?

Source: http://www.ccpgames.com/skywardsphere

RIFT three faction PvP will be available on the Public Test Shard on Thursday, 17-May @ 4:00PM PDT (11:00PM GMT).

Conquest PvP will allow players to engage in massive, cross-shard battles. Players will align with one of three new factions (Dominion, Oathsworn & Nightfall), earn rewards and bonuses for your team and earn bonuses that can be used outside of Conquest. Crafters will also play a vital role in every Conquest battle.

This looks to be very similar to the Guild Wars 2 World vs. World PvP, however that does not make it any less exciting for existing RIFT players wanting to do some cross-server PvP. Excellent job Trion, this actually makes me want to log into RIFT tonight.

Official Announcement

Public Test Shard Getting Started

Curse is a mods/addons management tool that is extremly popular amongst World of Warcraft players. Curse also supports addons for many popular MMOs including Rift, Age of Conan and Warhammer Online. Today we learned that Curse has now integrated more than 25 World of Tanks mods into their database.

To see a list of available WoT mods visit: http://www.curse.com/wot-mods/worldoftanks

The 12-year wait for Diablo III is finally over. Diablo 3 has launched across the world with major launch parties occurring in cities around the world. You may expect some of your co-workers to show up to work a bit tired this morning.

Lord of the Rings Online's Update 7 is being rolled out today. The official patch notes are up. Some of the highlights include:

• Moria Revision : Part I
• New Skirmish: Storm on Methedras
• Fornost will be split into four separate instances
• Star-lit Crystals for Legendary Items

There are also a ton of bug fixes and class changes. You can read the full patch notes here

If you know someone who purchased the box version of Diablo III they can provide you with a free Guest Pass that will allow you to play the first 13 levels and first chapter of the game (up to the Skeleton King) for free. Guest Pass keys are included in all box copies of Diablo III.

Some of the Starter Edition limitations include:

• Act I up to the Skeleton King is available
• Level 13 cap
• Matchmaking available only with other Starter Edition players
• No Real Money Auction House access

Diablo III Starter Edition will be available without a Guest Pass 30 days after the game launches.

Source: battle.net

Recent announcements from Blizzard and ArenaNet have me thinking about the future of separate servers in MMOs. This week we found out that Guild Wars 2 will support something called “guesting”. Friends on different servers will be able to becoming a temporary guest on their friend’s realm, allowing people on different servers to play together. We also know that GW2 will offer a single cross server auction house as well as cross server guilds.

Also this week we heard that World of Warcraft’s Mists of Pandaria expansion will feature cross-realm zones, allow players from different realms (servers) to quest together in lower level zones that are currently mostly empty. On top of this WoW already allows cross-server dungeons and raiding. S how long before the artificial server divide is a thing of the past, and we are all playing our favorite MMO in a same server? Now don’t get me wrong MMOs will probably always require multiple hardware servers. A single server is not powerful enough to host 10 million World of Warcraft players. However these servers do not have to represent a different world/realm in your MMO. Server load can be managed behind the scenes as you are entering a zone or instance. Technically speaking separate in-game servers/realms/shards do not need to exist.

Not everyone is happy about these changes, some players are adamant that separate servers create server communities. Many WoW players complain that the cross server Looking for Group (LFG) tool has ruined the game for them because there are no consequences to your actions when in a cross server group. I remember seeing the LFG tool discussion in SWTOR where the majority of posts spoke against a cross server LFG tool. It’s hard to tell if this is just a vocal minority.

I personally applaud and like the new server-less reality of MMO gaming. I want to play with my friends regardless of what server they are in and that creates community to me.

GameBreaker.tv Legendary hosts discuss announcement of cross-realm zones with the Mists of Pandaria expansion for World of Warcraft!