“Combat, combat, combat and that’s basically what the game is all about,” said Gaute Godager of Funcom. This is how the demo for Age of Conan opened. Gaute focused on the different types of combat in the game. Hands-on combat focuses on action, depth, and control. Horseback combat gives the players a chance to boost strikes based on the speed of the horse, yes, you can decapitate people from horseback. Formation combat allows players to command NPCs, use tactics and create buffs. The formation style works well in dungeon crawls and party encounters. The last form of combat is Massive combat which covers sieges, raids and huge battles.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of talking to Scott Brown, President of NetDevil, about the newly released Auto Assault. Auto Assault, produced by NCSoft, enjoyed a fairly uneventful and bug-free launch, and I had plenty of questions for Brown.

First of all, Brown gave MMORPG.com some exclusive information about plans for the game engine. The Auto Assault team is currently working with Aegia on making even more over the top explosions and physics available to users with physics cards. More explosions, who could turn that down?

“Seed has no combat,” announced Runestone Games CEO Lars Kroll Kristensen firmly. “It is a role-playing game.”

In a world of MMOGs that gamers expect to be a blend of various aspects of game-play including combat, crafting, buying and selling… but mostly combat, Seed has no combat. I asked about the decisions around the concept and making of Seed and Lars was happy to expound on his recently launched game.

Runestone sought to create a game which provided creative and cooperative play. A game which targeted the role-play community specifically.

Exciting things are in store for players of EVE online. The updated graphics are… in one word… sweet! Starting with ships, the new textures will be launched very shortly. Players with older systems and video cards do not need to fret. If their game machines are unable to support the high resolution graphics, the old textures are still supported.

Plans are to tackle first the ships, then the stations, then ultimately, space. Also in the works is Trinity 2, a graphics engine based on Windows Vista. This update is the first part of their new expansion – code named Kali – which will be released in 3 stages.

I visited the Sony Online Entertainment booth to sit down and take a look at what Star Wars Galaxies had to offer.

I was met by Jason Ryan, the Events Manager for SWG, and was told that I would be taking a look at the second part of a two-part event called “Battle for Restuss”. The first part of the event, I was told, had players stockpiling weapons and equipment for the upcoming second half.

This world event is taking place on Rori, in a city called Restuss. It seems though, that Restuss as players have known it since the launch of the game, may not be much longer for that world.