Yesterday in our Q&A with Richard Hough, Associate Technical Director at Riot Games, ZAM learned about League of Legends' new map, "Twisted Treeline." Hough explained Riot's motivation for introducing the new 3v3 map; it's a faster-paced, action-oriented map with less emphasis on distinct "laning" than the original 5v5 map. In today's second part of our Twisted Treeline feature, ZAM offers a first-hand preview of the new map, which just moved out of "Practice"-only mode to "Matchmaking" mode a few days ago.

We also take a quick look at some of the popular promotions that Riot Games has launched recently, like the "Riot Girl Tristana" Facebook promo, which attracted 20,000 fans in about 24 hours. Although League of Legends is free-to-play game that relies on micro-transactions to generate revenue, the Riot team is pretty liberal with its promos and other contests, which award in-game Champions, new Skins and other perks to its player base. Click past the jump to learn more about these promos, following our Twisted Treeline preview.

If there’s one thing people can say about Funcom, it’s that they know how to get people excited for their games. Starting with Anarchy Online and moving to Age of Conan, the developers at Funcom have blown people away with their innovative takes on standard MMO systems, from the invention of instancing in AO to the more agile combat system found in Age of Conan. Again, the team is setting its sights high, this time by taking on a genre that hasn’t really seen the light of day in the MMO industry.

Specifically, we’re talking about the modern horror genre, a venue that’s seen more than its fair share of popularity in the last few years. From TV to movies, you can’t seem to flip a channel or take in a movie without seeing a werewolf, zombie, vampire, Cthullu monster or modern magical beasty. Although MMO companies are probably scrambling to put a team together to get a product out the door, Funcom seems to have gotten the timing right and they’re perched at the doorstep to supernatural success with their upcoming MMO, The Secret World.

The Game Developers Conference always has companies vying for your attention so they can get their product out to the masses. In the case of Mytheon, it wasn't hard to get me to sit down to find out more about this new MMO.

There’s nothing like the feeling of a warm blaster rifle nestled in your hands. The hot metal is a reassuring reminder that you’re still alive after a harrowing exchange of fire between you and your enemy, and no other class in Star Wars: The Old Republic treats the hot blaster with as much respect as the Trooper. At this year’s GDC, the staff at ZAM had the opportunity to go hands-on with this DPS demolitionist, and we came away still smelling the gritty smoke of this class’ explosive tendencies.

After sitting down at a computer in LucasArts’ San Francisco complex, a cadre of BioWare developers gave us the run down of what we would be trying to achieve during our time with the game. Much like the demos that ran at the latter half of 2009, our character would be in the level 6-7 range, bedecked with upper echelon armor (to ensure that the less skilled press could see the majority of the prepared content), and would progress through a pair of missions doled out by nearby quest givers. Everyone could progress through the content at their own pace, but – being the foremost purveyors of MMO knowledge on the net – the ZAM crew sat down with the Trooper and really took the class for a thorough drive.

In the gaming world, there are a few MMORPGs that have grown to become synonymous with the countries in which they were developed. World of Warcraft, for example, has become the poster child of North American MMO gamers because Blizzard developed WoW in North America first (and some have jokingly noted that WoW suits the North American lifestyle with its low work, high reward system). Other MMOs, like NCsoft's Aion, which was developed and released in Korea first and Square Enix's Final Fantasy XI, developed in Japan, are both considered to be iconic representations of their home countries as well. Even Iceland, Greece, Norway and Russia have their "home town" MMOs in the form of EVE Online, Darkfall, Age of Conan and Allods Online.

Of all of the countries that can boast of having marquee MMORPGs, however, perhaps one of the least known and, surprisingly, one of the most popular MMORPGs of all time has to be France's Dofus, developed by Ankama Games. Boasting an amazing 10 million+ players worldwide, Dofus has had a rather unique history as an MMORPG. In an age when players are demanding better graphics and sharp controls, Dofus is a flash-based MMORPG that relies on turn-based combat, click-to-move mobility, sprite graphics and a lot of heart to compete in this crowded industry. Just recently, Dofus went through a major graphical overhaul as well (to Dofus 2.0), allowing them to really show off their artistic abilities, so we decided that now would be a perfect time to check out the game and put the spotlight on one of the largest, most underrated MMOs in North America.

Over the past few weeks, we've heard some of the horror stories that can come with a lack of updates for some of our favorite MMORPGs, but one MMO team that you won't hear that from has to be Turbine, developers of the very successful Lord of the Rings Online and one of the most consistent teams you could ask for. Well, true to their reputation, Turbine has yet another update coming hot on the heels of their Siege of Mirkwood expansion, and they invited us at ZAM.com to check out Volume III: Book 1: Oath of the Rangers.

We began our journey at The Last Homely House, also known as the House of Elrond, and Aaron Campbell, LotRO's Live Producer, noted that not only was Volume III Turbine's third epic story arc, but it coincides well with LotRO's upcoming third anniversary - so happy anniversary in advance, LotRO!

When it comes to the super-cute 2D MMO market (you'd be surprised at how big it is!), there's really no denying that the current belle of the ball is Nexon's mega-hit MMO, MapleStory. In fact, MapleStory is so deeply entrenched in its own success that it seems almost foolhardy to take them on in the MMO market. But taking on MapleStory is just what NDOORS Interactive is doing with their super-cute 2D MMORPG, WonderKing Online. Will it be enough?

Now, NDOORS Interactive may sound familiar to some players, and that's because this is the development team behind the critically acclaimed, and highly successful, turn-based MMORPG, Atlantica Online. Perhaps one of the biggest reasons for Atlantica Online's success, outside of its unique gameplay, is the fact that NDOORS is constantly developing and releasing content for their marquee MMORPG. In a market where new content is delivered almost arbitrarily and with the occasional half-a-year gap thrown in, NDOORS' consistency truly does set it apart from its peers. In this way, if there could be any team capable of challenging the behemoth that is MapleStory, it seems NDOORS and their addictively fun WonderKing Online has the best chance of any.

When an MMO undergoes some sort of rebranding or re-release, it typically goes through a "honeymoon phase," where the development team, all afire with gaming passion and motivation, just keeps churning away to get new content out and prove to their loyal fan base that their game deserves a second chance. The problem with this ultra-motivated development phase, however, is that most MMO companies that go through it tend to fall to the wayside after a month or two of hard development and, soon after, they're back to their one-update-every-six-months schedule, except now they have to keep up a monthly newsletter that was created at the apex of their enthusiasm.

Well, in the first month or two of DDO's re-launch as a free to play game, there were a number of skeptics who thought that this business model transition marked the beginning of the end. Turbine, however, has done something very odd in the past half year. You see, they've gone and taken their hyper-motivated "honeymoon phase," and they've cleverly decided to keep it up for the next year. Already having released two content updates over the past five months, with an additional three mini-updates every other month, DDO has grown an immense amount with its new life, and we here at ZAM were invited to check out their third major content update in five months.

Of all the MMO genre blends out there that still have a lot of untapped potential, the MMORPG / FPS twist would definitely rank as one of the toughest gaming genres to do. Perhaps the most influential and, arguably, most popular MMOFPS has been SOE's epic game, Planetside. Now, almost seven years after the release of Planetside (and around five years since SOE has done any legitimate development on the game), there are hundreds of thousands of players eager to find something new, and running at the forefront of these next-gen MMOFPS games is Hi-Rez Studios' Global Agenda.

Well, with the closed beta of Global Agenda wrapping up today and the official launch coming in less than a week, the ZAM staff got to check out the game to see just what kind of MMOFPS Global Agenda wants to be.

In many MMO gaming households, the word “peripheral” has become synonymous with the name “Razer.” Since the mid 1990s, Razer has been pushing the envelope in gaming peripheral technology, introducing the first 2000 dpi mouse (the Boomslang) in 1999 and continually innovating and revolutionizing the industry since then. On top of all hardware notoriety, Razer has retained an immense amount of support from their users; a simple look at Razer’s Facebook page and their 73,336 fans can attest to a dedication to their fan base.

So when ZAM was invited to take a behind-the-scenes glimpse at their hardware during the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show, we weren’t going to take that opportunity lightly. In previous years, Razer has garnered some of the most prestigious awards doled out by the show and its corresponding press, so a chance to see what’s on the docket for Razer in the coming year couldn’t be missed.