Have you ever experienced an MMO before and after a major computer upgrade? Reader Tyler has, and he's floored by it.

"Up until recently, I had a very low-end computer that struggled to run The Secret World at even the lowest settings," he wrote. "The game looked terrible, and I lagged so badly it was almost unplayable, so I finally got fed and up and begged, borrowed, and stole enough for a proper gaming computer. I can now run the game smoothly at max settings, and my God, it's beautiful. My first five minutes were spent repeating the phrase, 'Oh, wow' and spamming the screenshot key. This shot is my favourite. If you look closely, you can see a slight pattern of shadow on my Templar's chest. This is the moonlight shining through her hair. Amazing."

Will you be saying, "Oh, wow!" after seeing the rest of the pictures from this week's player submissions? I think you might!

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October is just about the best month ever for MMO gaming in my opinion, because that means that Halloween content is upon us. Developers seem to relish putting their utmost efforts into constructing the holiday and players certainly flock for some good ol' virtual trick-or-treating.

It's hard to say what my favorite is. I was always amused by Mad King Thorn's horrible jokes in Guild Wars, I absolutely loved the Haunted Burrow in LotRO, and I spent many hours tackling the Headless Horseman in World of Warcraft. Last year's Cat God content in The Secret World was no slouch, either.

So what's your favorite Halloween content and are you going to be playing it this year?

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 Elder Scrolls Online has just wrapped up its Emote Creation Contest, naming Trevor Baggett as the winner. Trevor's concept was a twin set of emotions for PvP, one to desecrate an annoying foe's corpse and one to honor a well-fought match. He'll be working with ZeniMax's animators to implement the emotes into the game.

Over a hundred fans submitted their own emote ideas, and along with Trevor, a few others will receive prize packages for their efforts. If you've got a chunk of time and like to see people going into great depth about emotes, check out the YouTube playlist for the contest after the break.

[Thanks to Jon for the tip!]

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Who needs the straight and narrow? Not I -- when referring to EverQuest II progression, that is. Those who catch my antics on Massively TV can certainly attest to the fact that I am more of a twist-and-turn-loving meanderer than a straight-line kinda gal. And that's even without the inevitable distraction of shinies! Luckily for me, EQII is made for just such a soul as mine with serious emphasis on the wander part of wanderlust.

Folks who watch EverQuest Two-sday have seen me lope along the Golden Path, EQII's version of an in-game guide to where to level. But in EQII, the path is not a rigid set-up directing player steps as in many other themeparks. No, the Golden Path here is more of an occasional checkpoint along your journey that offers you just a nudge in the next general direction. Even then, you don't have to follow those implied suggestions. Maybe you'd prefer to forge your own path. That's where today's guide comes in! But unlike the recent guide for the new level 85s, this guide is for any and every level range, so no matter where you are now, you can see all the possibilities for where to go next.

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This week's Camelot Unchained update kicks off Piercing the Veil, which is intended to be a regular question-and-answer session devoted to both silly questions and "serious game-oriented questions," according to CityState community manager Renee Machyousky.

The first round of questions covers everything from swapping out game music files to class specs to formal guild alliances. In a related post on CityState's Kickstarter page, CEO Mark Jacobs reaffirms that Camelot Unchained is slated for internal testing starting in January.

It's been a little while since we've heard from TUG, the crowdfunded sandbox that moved from Kickstarter campaign to alpha testing in record time. But that doesn't mean that work hasn't been moving forward on The Untitled Game; in fact, there has been plenty of progress on the tech side of things. Devs released an update outlining the current systems being worked on -- namely, networking and multiplayer, a scripting sub-system, character and AI systems, and terrain modification tools.

If everything goes smoothly, TUG alpha testers can look forward to playing together in creative mode in two patch cycles. Additionally, devs are "working on a host of fancy terrain modification tools, which will include things like chiseling, sculpting, odd shape blocks, etc." that will help TUG to lose that cube-only feeling. Hear all the details about these systems and more in the full progress notes.

This past week, EverQuest made history as the title published its 20th expansion, Call of the Forsaken. Seriously, I cannot get my head around that number: 20! It's even more astonishing when you consider that contemporaries that launched in that early generation have gone many, many years since their last expansion. SOE's commitment to EverQuest's continuing development, even as the fourth and fifth titles in the MMO series are coming in the next year, is pretty inspiring. What's even more inspiring is the community that continues to prefer EQ as its stomping ground of choice.

Today I want to pay tribute to the 20 expansions of EverQuest by going through them, one by one, and seeing how they grew and enriched the game over the past decade-and-a-half. I would also love to hear testimonies in the comments as to which EverQuest expansion you enjoyed the most!

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Reincarnation, Dungeons and Dragons Online's "do over" system, is slated for a revamp with Update 20. When the update lands, there will be four types of reincarnation available to players: heroic true reincarnation, iconic true reincarnation, epic reincarnation, and lesser reincarnation. At the same time, greater reincarnation will be phased out of the game.

These four types of reincarnation reset your levels (either back a few or all the way to level 1) while giving you bonuses like past life feats and more build points for your next run. Epic reincarnation merely resets your epic levels to 20, while iconic reincarnation applies only to the new iconic characters.

There's a great amount of information about this complex system available on the forums, including a look at how different forms of reincarnation will work depending on your class.

[Thanks to Scott for the tip!]

I don't know if I exactly agree with Naoki Yoshida's stance that Final Fantasy XIV is about group content first and foremost, but darn if the game's group content isn't pretty awesome. I can't remember the last game where I was this happy to queue up and head into a dungeon, even if I didn't have a full group backing me. Which means that I've gotten very familiar with the game's bosses.

The best bosses are pretty easy to pick out for me; they're the ones that hit all the right notes in terms of challenge and whatnot. But the expected counterpart is the worst bosses, and... really, there are a lot of factors that can play into the term worst. So, I'm not pointing out the worst as much as I'm pointing out the disappointments. The top five of each, in rough order. Enjoy.

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So it looks as if I'm actually going to be picking up the new Pokémon game on launch, which will have already happened by the time you read this. What can I say? I'm kind of interested in the new features that are being added to the game, like the fact that you can actually customize your character (insofar as you can be "pale" or "slightly not so pale").

Beyond that, it's the first game in the series with 3-D renderings of these creatures as long as you ignore all of the other spin-offs that did the same thing. And not only do you start with one of the three ubiquitous new starter types, you can also pick up a second starter type later on so that you have two special critters sitting in your bank unused!

What was I talking about? Oh right -- it's WRUP time again. You can check out our play plans past the break and let us know yours in the comments. (Seriously, I will be playing Pokémon.)

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The first MMO I ever played was Final Fantasy XI, but that wasn't what first got me into MMOs. If I hadn't played Final Fantasy VI years earlier and fallen in love with it, odds are I also wouldn't have cared much about Final Fantasy XI. As far as I'm concerned, that's what got me started down the road. For that matter, I probably wouldn't have kept playing MMOs after leaving FFXI rather disappointed if my next game hadn't been City of Heroes.

For some people, MMOs history is a one-link chain that starts and ends with seeing a specific game and thinking it looks cool. For others it can be traced back to a litany of games that led to both your present and future choice of virtual worlds. So what game got you into MMOs? Was it your first MMO, another game that led to your first MMO, or even something as silly as a card game that led to you making the right friends?

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 can't get enough games on your Xbox 360 that involve blowing up and/or driving tanks, you'll be happy to know that World of Tanks is running a beta on the platform this weekend. Take part and you will win more tanks. This is probably a good thing since the whole game centers around tanks. It's the entire world.

Heva Clonia Online is pushing to open testing starting on the 17th, meaning that you have less than a week to wait if you're enthusiastic for the game but somehow missed the previous (first) closed test. City of Titans, meanwhile, isn't in beta yet, but it is far beyond funded to ensure that there will (hopefully) be a beta down the line.

Oh, and there is a list of games past the break in various states of testing. If something has sneaked into a new beta phase without our noticing or has added a cash shop without warning, let us know so we can investigate.

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In a new set of questions and answers from the Age of Wushu community, Snail Games promised that North American players experiencing lag will soon see relief. "We are taking serious measures to solve the latency problems after escalation," the devs promised. "Server fixes are already on their way. Players in North America will see considerable improvement starting from this week!"

The devs said that a mobile matrix authenticator is coming later this month to provide better account security. "Think of it as a private Bingo card that works as a key to your account," Snail PR explained. A separate mobile authenticator is being worked on for iOS and Android, but no release date has been set.

The Q&A article covered other topics such as the cash shop skill, bug fixes, cross-server interactions, and unnecessary chat spam. For those interested in Age of Wushu's upcoming Steam release, the devs said that this is still in the works but currently there is no release date set. In a separate post, the studio announced that the Phantom Twin Dagger skill set will be coming to the game next week.

[We erroneously reported the matrix as a mobile authenticator and have corrected the article accordingly.]

My nephews are visiting this week; they are nine and seven years old. And if there is one truth about these two, it's that they love Minecraft. Oh, they're also creative and smart young kids, but Minecraft is always a ready topic of conversation. Jeff, the younger one, loves to drill me on my knowledge. "Did you know..." is how it starts off, followed by some cool fact about the game. John, the older one, is calmer about the situation, and he has gained the ability, thanks to his elder status, to pull his gaze away from the game (I have it running on three different PCs and three iPads) in order to maintain an air of politeness. When I ask him something, he can give me an answer that has nothing to do with Minecraft!

I thought this week would be a cool time to introduce Deepworld to both of them. Deepworld is a fantastic iOS-based Minecraftian MMO that is free-to-play with optional and fantastic cash-shop items. The last time I looked at it, I bought an entire private server for only 10 bucks! I logged in this week for the first time in ages and found my server still sitting, waiting for my creations.

Then I showed it to my nephews.

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If you've played Wargaming.net's World of Warplanes, chances are good you've spent a good bit of time listening to your aircraft's engine. As it turns out, those engine sounds you're hearing aren't downloaded from a sound effects library or made up in the studio; a great deal of them are recorded in real life from the very planes featured in the game.

Wargaming has put together a nice little video showing its sound team working to capture authentic sound effects from dozens of old-school aircraft. The process involves tarmacs, lots of equipment, and just a bit of shirtless dial-tweaking.

Check it out after the break.

[Source: Wargaming.net press release]

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The week before last, I talked about a hybrid penalty, and I've realized that I did so without actually talking about how progression is slated to work in Elder Scrolls Online. Because ESO wants to emulate the existing Elder Scrolls games in an MMO, we see many of the same ideas ported directly from the single-player game into the online game. This includes training up in a specific weapon and armor, weapon swapping, and skill-based progression. And if you have played other games' skill-based or non-linear progression systems, then you know about the difficulties of balance. ESO, like other games before it, tackles this imbalance by limiting the number of abilities available to a player at a given time.

Skill progression also takes an interesting turn in ESO as well, and I'm not exactly sure how to define it. Most MMOs follow a vertical progression tree in which you place the game's version of skill points in an upward-growing tree or pyramid, with skills following a guided path to the best skill of a given tree at the top. Usually the limitations placed on these trees are based on level, which gives you a finite number of earnable skill points. I call this vertical progression. Although any good class skill system will have some branches to the side, usually the ultimate goal is to reach the top of the tree to gain the best abilities in that given class.

Thankfully, Elder Scrolls Online takes a different approach.

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With the Aethertech class on its way for Aion 4.5, NCsoft has revealed the winner of the "Leave Your Legacy: Aethertech" contest in which players could design one of the mechanized suits for future inclusion in the game. The top pick was the 5H-0G0 by EMPIREinWAR, which is based on the Shugo race.

The devs were quite taken with the design choice. "We can sum this up in one word: 'witty.' From the naming all the way to the Shugo character itself, this piece was really fun to look at, which is why this is the winner," said Head of the Aion Global Development Art Team Jinhwan Kim.

The 5H-0G0, like all of the Aethertechs, will use its magical mechanical mount to crush, shoot, flail, and probably cuddle its way through Atreia.

[Source: NCsoft press release]

The first thing that hit me when I logged into Hearthstone after begging a beta invite off a friend was an overwhelming tsunami of nostalgia for World of Warcraft. It wasn't surprising, of course; this is the card battling spin-off of WoW by the folks who make WoW. But for a player who hasn't set foot in Azeroth for some time now, the audio and visual cues were like the hit of a powerful drug that opened the pathways to all sorts of memories.

The chunky, goofy exterior that Blizzard slathers across the Warcraft franchise often belays a serious depth that number-crunchers and elite strategists attempt to plumb. Both are perfectly at home in Hearthstone, which is affable on the surface but, like many CCGs, has no end to the possibilities in builds and play sessions.

So what's it like to sit down to an evening with Hearthstone? I'm glad you asked.

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