Perfect World Entertainment has kicked off July with with the official launch of Ether Saga Online. Even though the free-to-play game has been available to play since the open beta began in March, the launch of the MMO brings with it a ton of new content. The level cap has been raised to 105, two new cities have been opened, and more quests have been added.

In addition, most instances now have easy and hard modes, and the new Obscurity raid has been added for players who like a real challenge. There's even a new White Dragon world boss that spawns every Wednesday evening that offers all sorts of rewards to players who can defeat it.

If combat and instances don't excite you, you may be interested to know that more fashion outfits and mounts have been added to the cash shop. You can read more about the changes included in the game's launch in the patch notes or below. If you'd like to try out Ether Saga Online, you can download the client from the game's official Web site.

For the past month, the Ether Saga Online team has been hosting a dance video contest so players could show off their dancing and video editing skills. Well, the winners have been selected, and there's a ton of videos to watch on the official Web site.

The top three winners earned various amounts of Etherbucks and a Tiano pet, while the five honorable mentions also won a pet.

The top video was made to Usher's "Yeah!" Personally, I suggest checking out the second place video, which is set to The Lonely Island's "I'm on a Boat."

As always, we'd like to share with you our ZAM features and noteworthy news stories of the week in case you missed any of them. All of the links can be found below and after the jump, including a story on PETA's decision to protest the slaughter of seals through a World of Warcraft event that generated a lot of discussion in our forums.

ZAM Features

A History of Competitive WoW: Part I: Editor Christopher "Pwyff" Tom begins to delve into the history of World of Warcraft as an eSport. Find out when and how PvP became a sponsored event that made players take notice.

League of Legends Interview: Editor-in-Chief Andrew "Tamat" Beegle sits down with Tom Cadwell, the director of systems design for League of Legends, to discuss the game, which is modeled around a Warcraft III mod.

Killer N.I.C. - Worth the Price?: We spoke with Harlan Beverly, co-founder of Bigfoot Networks, about the next generation of Killer cards. You can even watch a World of Warcraft jump delay demonstration video to see exactly how Killer can affect your machine.

Exploring Ether Saga Online: We interview Product Manager Craig Beers to find out what's going on with the upcoming Ether Saga Online MMO. The game is currently in open beta.

Recently we had the opportunity to talk with our friends from Perfect World International about their upcoming MMO, "Ether Saga Online". In our interview with Product Manager, Craig Beers, we get the inside scoop and discover what ESO is all about.

ZAM: It's our pleasure to be talking with Craig Beers today about Ether Saga Online. How is beta going?

Craig Beers: Our closed beta went great. The game has been stable for quite some time with very few gameplay bugs, so we were able to focus on localization and polish. We're happy we were able to spend so much time with this since there's a very large amount of quests and dialogue in the game.

We've launched into our open beta, which is going very well. The response has been overwhelmingly positive.

ZAM: Could you kick things off by telling us about the game? I'd definitely like to know some back story and hear about some of the key features.

Ether Saga Online has now entered the "open beta" stage of testing, allowing anyone to try the game for free. Coming from the creators of Perfect World, ESO features anime-inspired characters and is based around the classic Chinese novel "Journey to the West". New movies of the game in action can be found on the game's official website.

Anyone wanting to try the beta should click here for details on how to register.