Last Friday we had the opportunity to talk with Dragonica Online's Community Lead for THQ*ICE, Evan Berman at Comic Con. We asked him some hard questions and got great information in return about a number of design decisions that were made, future content and some new merchandise coming to the ICE Store.

Make sure to give the entire interview a read and if you're into unique games with ultra cute graphics, give Dragonica Online a try.

ZAM: Thank you for chatting with us about Dragonica Online.

Evan Berman: It's my pleasure.

ZAM: First of all, we're just a little curious about why THQ*ICE is somewhat behind the other English ports of Dragonica Online - both the European and the SEA-ANZ versions of the game have been out in open beta for at least a month or two.

Sword of the New World is an extremely unique MMO that's had its share of unique problems. We spoke with GamersFirst Producer, Jon-Enée Merriex about some of the mistakes that were made in the past. "We've made mistakes, no doubt. The biggest being a lack of clear communication to the players letting them know where we are and what we are doing." Merriex mentioned during the interview before informing us that ZAM has the "hardest interview questions on the net".

In addition to a very thoroughly sincere explanation we managed to prod some information about future updates and even the possibility of an exclusive GamersFirst UPC. Make sure to check out the full interview after the jump.

ZAM: Thanks G1Neume for sitting down to chat with us about Sword of the New World: Granado Espada!

Jon-Enée Merriex: It's my pleasure. I always love a chance to talk about Sword of the New World.

ZAM: First of all, as a quick introduction to those who have not played Sword of the New World, what do you think are the three most unique and important aspects of Sword of the New World?

Jon-Enée: Well the most striking aspect would be the Multi-Character Control. In Sword of the New World players can control up to 3 characters at once while fighting their way through the wilds of Granado Espada. They can also create up to 54 characters giving them a plethora of options and configurations to choose from.

During the Champions Online press event, we had the opportunity to pull Design Director and Executive Producer, Bill Roper aside for an interview about the games newly announced Player vs. Player mode. We got some great information about what players can expect at launch and in the future. Additionally we finally received confirmation that Champions Online will not be available on the Xbox 360 at launch but that the team is still actively looking into porting the game in the near future.

ZAM: First off, I'd like a bit more explanation of the three different kinds of PvP. Let's start with hero games. Can you give us a little background on what hero games are?

Bill Roper: Basically, Hero Games is the umbrella organization for both sanctioned and some unsanctioned fighting between heroes. It had a different name in the IP, originally, but the company that created Champions is called Hero Games and we wanted that to be a really cool tribute. In fact, when you see it in the game, where the Hero Game promoters are, where you go to trade in your claim points that you get for fighting, you'll see this big logo behind them. It's on the mat of one of the arenas. It's actually the Hero Games logo. We talked to them and we said "Hey we'd love to put this in as a tribute to you guys." I thought it was really cool that they were like "Oh that's awesome, that would be great!" It's a really cool nod to the creators.

Over the weekend you may have noticed our reports about the Champions Online PvP announcement. As mentioned, we were at the PvP press event held last Thursday in San Francisco. During the event, I had the opportunity to play around with the "Hero Games" PvP feature for myself and what I saw was cooler than Bill Roper on a concert stage wearing a Luchador mask. More on that later...

So what are Hero Games? Well, in Champions Online there are three different ways to battle it out.  You can visit Stronghold Prison where you'll face an Apocalypse scenario as either a Hero or a Villain. Or perhaps you'd rather go at it in an intimate arena of the UTC (Ultimate Tournament of Champions). Lastly you can rumble in The BASH, which is essentially an outdoor zone that's not officially sanctioned by the Hero Games, where large numbers of players are matched against one another in a Free-for-all setting. In any case, you're in for a hard hitting, action packed treat that has taken Champions Online to a higher plane of awesome.

If you're a comic book junkie, chances are you've heard of a new comic that is making waves called "CHEW". The comic is about a cannibalistic man who gets psychic impressions of what he eats, and uses that power to solve murders. Funny enough, this creative comic comes straight from John Layman who has also been hard at work writing for Champions Online. I'll just say it now -- I want the ability to eat villains for clues in Champions Online!

We had the opportunity to catch up with John in between working on his two projects. "It's like having two full time jobs, and I don't really recommend it" said John during the interview. While can certainly understand his position, we're hoping his big vacation isn't planned until after the game launches later this year.

ZAM: Hey John. Thanks for taking a break from all your writing to talk to us about Champions Online, among other things!

John Layman: Happy to do so!

ZAM: Throughout your comic career, you've covered a ton of genres – from heroes, to horror, to everything in-between. Will we see a wide range of genres in the Champions Online storyline? Can we expect a zombie outbreak or two?

One of the bigger surprises that we had at E3 was the playable demo that Sony Online Entertainment had for The Agency. While the demonstration restored our faith in the project, we still had a few questions that we had answered at the 2009 Fan Faire. We spoke with Senior World Designer Kevin O'Hara to gain a deeper understanding of what this game is all about.

ZAM: Can you just give us a little bit of information about the three different classes, or archetypes, that exist in the game?

Kevin O'Hara: Sure; we've got three major roles and they are combat, stealth and support. They are about the different things you want to do as a super-spy in the game. Combat is all about taking more damage and being able to deal out a good amount of damage - really getting the enemies looking at him. Next is stealth. Stealth is, of course, about sneaking around, taking on guys from a long range and getting the lay of the land for the rest of the team. And then support, of course, is about helping out as much as he can. In this case, we've got a shotgun for him so that he doesn't have to be the most accurate guy in the world, but if anyone comes up close to him, he can definitely take them down. He can help revive other characters if they go down in combat, and he's got a number of things, tactically, that he can do to keep these guys alive and keep them informed of the situation. In this case we gave him a special item called a 'Martini Bomb" that he would have gotten out in the field somewhere, or he had an operative build for him. The "Martini Bomb" is a device that, when he shakes it up (shaken, not stirred!), he can throw it and it emits this icy concoction that covers the enemy and freezes them in place. In this way, he's supporting the team by holding the enemies in place. If you've got a lot of enemies, he might be the one saying "focus on these guys first, I'll keep these guys busy."

It's always a personal pleasure to drill the DC Universe Online team with questions about the game and where it's at. Unfortunately the team wasn't showing anything new at Fan Faire, so we caught up with the Senior Producer, Wes Yanagi to ask all the questions that we haven't received clear answers on yet. Check out our findings...

ZAM: You've gone into some detail about PvP. Can you give us some more information about how PvP will work in DC Universe Online?

Wes Yanagi: First of all, PvP is always going to be consensual. The main thing with Heroes and Villains is that it lends itself naturally to PvP encounters, so a choice you can make for PvP is say, picking a PvP server, where all bets are off. If you're on a PvE server, we'll have 'flagging' for folks to toggle onto PvP mode. The different choices that you make there are like going into a PvP zone. You'll know that it's a zone and it's contested or something like that and that will be a choice you can make. Nothing will be required for people who don't like PvP to go into this. The other thing would be something like battlegrounds where players go into contested missions and instances - so that's PvP right there. The most interesting one is going to be contested encounters. In that case you'll have, say, an armoured car that's going down the street and you'll look at that encounter and go "OK that's fully marked as a contested encounter," so as a villain you might go knock it off and take the object inside of it. Now you have to transport that to a safe house or extraction point. If someone was on the hero side, he might be flying by and see the encounter and see you flagged for PvP. That hero can say "yeah I want to engage in that," so then he has to go in and get that same objective and transport it to the vault to secure it.

If you've been getting your Free Realms news at ZAM for a while, you may remember a Free Realms lore preview that we published the week before launch. The information we published has kept us interested in the inter workings of the Free Realms universe; so we made it a point to find the most knowledgeable lore developer at Fan Faire to ask some questions.

Terrence Yee: Hi, my name is Terrence Yee and I'm the World Lead Designer on Free Realms.

ZAM: Let's start off with Briarwood. Can you give us some history on the area and then the Fairy Princess Lavender?

Terrence: OK, this assumes you know the main plotline. The fairy princess Lavender, when she was exiled by her sister, she was hurt and distraught. So, being a little bit more melodramatic, she holed herself off to this dark, creepy and mysterious area known as Briarwood, which has always been known to be the scary place where people don't go. So, her being the more emotional - she kind of blended in well in there. So she holed up in there, she was an excellent druid so she was able to wield her magics and form protective barriers around the area. It's kind of indicative of the thorns you may see creeping around her, they're actually her symbol. So, as you get in, you'll see the thorns growing in. So as you get closer to her, that represents her - protecting the area. The interesting thing about Lavender is that, at first glance you may think she's a maniacal and crazy person, but really, she's just hurt. The thorns you think of as a dangerous mechanism, but they're meant to be defensive for her.

This year we decided to try something different, so we asked our community what you wanted us to ask the EverQuest Development team. You responded with a variety of questions, and we caught up with Senior Game Designer Ryan "Rytan" Barker to get some answers.

ZAM: Limited bag space is a huge player issue for both personal and guild banks. Are you currently happy with the amount of space, and would you consider adding more space as part of an update in the future?

Ryan Barker: So this one we talked about a couple times yesterday. People brought up various versions of that, essentially. There are a couple different things. There's a significant technical hurdle of adding more bank space. We're not opposed to it, it's just that there's some serious, serious work that has to go into it to make the character file big enough to hold more bank space. The other thing that got brought up was that some of the things should be stackable in larger numbers. We're open to that, as long as it makes sense. There are some items that we're not comfortable stacking in hundreds because of balance reasons, like potions and click effect things like that. For the most part we're OK with trade skill items and things like that stacking in the higher numbers, so if there are any specific examples, we'd love to take a look at which items aren't stacking as high as they should.

BioWare has frequently mentioned that, with Star Wars: The Old Republic, they're not just making Knights of the Old Republic 3, they're making 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. During our gameplay demo at E3 last week we got a taste of that metaphorical content pie and boy did it taste good! Obviously there is a major difference between a great demo at a convention and a solid game; however, if BioWare can continue with the progress they've already made, there is no doubt in my mind that the game will be a success. Maybe even a success comparable to World of Warcraft.

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Our demo started with a viewing of the now famous geekgasm of a trailer which was so significant, it undoubtedly interrupted Mr. Lucas' money counting. After the demo, our host, Dallas Dickinson, gave us a look at the Bounty Hunter and the recently announced Smuggler class. It's important to note that the Smuggler is going to be amazingly fun to play. I'm sure there is some naiveté in that statement, but hear me out. BioWare has created a "cover system" in which the Smuggler can see around walls, behind trees and other objects. To clarify, I'm talking about a cover system like within Gears of War. I can't speak to whether or not it has that much depth, but it will definitely be a key part of playing a Smuggler.