As the July version update approaches, one of the many things players have to look forward to are the new Wings of the Goddess missions, which will surely send Future Fabulous into the cold Northlands. With that in mind, we're happy to present our first colored Happy Friday strip. Many thanks to Beastmen Lord for working so hard on this one! Click the strip for the bigger version!

Discuss this strip on the ZAM forums!

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.

Longtime World of Warcraft players might have noticed a new and somewhat "un-Blizzard-like" trend that has been developing during the past six months. Newer players probably haven't picked up on it, because they don't have much past experience to draw on. But whether you've noticed the change on your own or read about it in forums or fansite blogs, you'd be hard-pressed to try and deny it: Blizzard has been releasing new content and patches at break-neck speeds, faster than ever has before.

Perhaps as proof that you'll never be able to please everyone, two distinct camps have popped up; those who love it and think the new pace is what it should have been all along, and those who feel that all this content is just too much, coming too fast. At risk of starting a flame war, I think it's a really interesting topic to consider. World of Warcraft is the world's most popular MMORPG, and Blizzard earned part of its rock-solid reputation by giving fans consistency throughout the past four years. Drastic changes to such core paradigms aren't something we'd expect from Blizzard (whether it's for better or worse). What's the bigger picture? What can we predict by examining some of these new trends? More importantly, how will it affect you as a customer?

In the Breaking the Mold: Unique Design Challenges on Free Realms panel, we learned the various mindsets and techniques that the development team went through to provide such a quality game that appeals not only to their target audience of tweens, but also one that reaches out to an older crowd of casual gamers.

The aim, to create content enjoyable for both males and females, as well as retaining a method of communicating with the younger audience, opened up the idea of bringing in a wide variety of both gamers and non-gamers, to test their product. These tests opened the eyes of the team to the challenges that lay before them and lead them down the path to the world we now know as Free Realms.

Our friends at Frogster America must think we're getting cold feet about Runes of Magic because they just sent us 10,000 pairs of Jade Warrior's Boots. We only need a couple so we're giving away the rest!

Instead of making you jump through hoops, we've decided to give the boots to the first 10,000 people who visit this page. The only thing we're asking is that you check out our Runes of Magic wiki and give us a hand. We've been working hard to build a wiki template for the Runes of Magic community, now all we need is you to help us fill it with in-game information.

Click here to receive the unique code for your new boots. To redeem the code, visit the redemption section of Runes of Magic website and follow the instructions. Remember, you don't have to be level 20 to utilize the item. With the Arcane Transmutor, the stats can be stripped off with a power stone, creating a mana stone with the stats of the gear. The boots will be destroyed in the process but you can then combine the mana stone with 2 others of the same level and an item, to put stats on any piece of gear.

Enjoy your boots and make sure to give our Runes of Magic wiki some love.

Signups for the Seventh Alliance Tournament have started today and will be open until Friday, July 17. According to the announcement, "unlike previous Tournaments the process is no longer first come first serve, and everyone will have a chance to sign up over the next two weeks." You can sign up through this page on the official tournament Web site.

There will be 64 slots available for alliances to compete. The first 16 have been reserved for the top finishers of the sixth tournament if they choose to sign up, while 48 have been made available for open entry. Ten slots will also be drawn for reserve teams. The full rules regarding the signup process can be found here or below.