It's about that time again for another weekly recap. We have a ton of exclusives to share with you, so let's jump right in! Keep reading after the jump for even more links to some of our most noteworthy news stories of the week, as well as editorials on casual MMOs, professional gaming and machinima by members of the Allakhazam staff.

Allakhazam Features

Interview with Mia Rose : Editor-in-Chief Andrew "Tamat" Beegle got the chance to meet up with Mia Rose at the Consumer Electronics Show this month and she discussed all things WoW, including her thoughts on WotLK.

'Free Expansion' on the Horizon : Tamat talks with Vanguard's lead designer, Salim "Silius" Grant, about all of the new expansion-like content coming soon to the game.

Fasaria World Beta Giveaway : The Fasaria World team gave us 500 beta keys to give out to Allakhazam members. If you'd like to participate, we suggest you hurry before they're gone!

TwelveSky 2: Our First Look : Our friends at MAYN sent us 10 exclusive screenshots of this upcoming MMO set in ancient China. Check them out to see the style of the game.

Time for more grab bag fun!  This time is a random assortment of questions and answers, so be sure to check out the full story after the jump.

Q. I’ve noticed that sometimes root effects don’t seem to be breaking when the rooted target is damaged, and sometimes the root does indeed break, but it's inconsistent. Are roots supposed to break 100% of the time when damage is done to a rooted player, or is it just a chance to break when damaged?

A. Root effects have a 50% chance to break each time that the victim is damaged, so what you’re experiencing is perfectly normal!

Faction populations between Order and Destruction on any given server have always been in a state of flux. Some servers are severely imbalanced, while others are just about right. Fortunately, the developers are well aware of this and have some updates for us on this balance:

We wanted to take a little time to talk about one of the current community concerns: the subject of Faction population differences. Over the past few months, we’ve been closely evaluating the differences in the number of players who actively play Destruction on each server versus those who play Order. We have seen some shifting with free server transfers that has, in truth, improved the Faction population differences. In most cases, the number variances are actually very subtle, but we wanted to share some data with you.

Bunch of Hot Fixes for us this weekend! Lots of interesting quest updates in the mix:

General Changes & Bug Fixes

• Reaching renown rank 80 or otherwise increasing mastery paths beyond 40 will no longer cause pets to summon at rank 1.

Senior Designer Brian Wheeler gives us a rather fantastical look at his typical day.

On a Wednesday once upon a time in a far away land where fantasy worlds and legends combine, King Arthur says to Merlin, “I want to take over Europa, and I need to know how by Friday.” After a brief crazy-eyed look at Arthur, Merlin says “Of course, just give me a few days.” With that, he shuffled off to his library to think about all kinds of ways to take over Europa.

See the whole story after the jump, or click here for the original article.

Tomorrow morning all North American & Oceanic servers are coming down tomorrow for a server update. NA servers will be brought offline at 7am est. Oceanic servers to follow at 9am est.

Click "More..." below to view the improvements made being the expected performance tweaks. Knights of the Blazing Sun and RvR are included.

Calling all Black Guards! A Hot Fix for you today!:

Combat and Careers

Black Guard

• Wave of Scorn: This ability will no longer stack its movement reduction with other Wave of Scorns. In addition, snare-removal abilities will now work properly on Wave of Scorn.

Maintenance has recently been done on the Phoenix Throne server. A little bit of RvR updating for you:

Realm vs. Realm
The Fortress side portals that lead into Fell Landing and Shining Way will no longer teleport players to their warcamp instead of the respective Fortress.

Another round of Hot Fixes ! The WAR Herald had these seperate for today, so I did you a favor and combined them into one nice Hot Fix news post:

User Interface

• Fixed an issue that was causing information not to be displayed when mousing over elements of the main map or mini map.
• The Flightmaster maps of either contested capital city (Altdorf or The Inevitable City) will now function correctly to take players to their associated refugee camp.

Ah, the joys of roleplaying. How many of you wish that RP servers had players that actually roleplayed once in awhile? Here is a WAR Herald guide that helps you on your to becoming a true roleplayer!

If the title of this article has drawn you in, then you might be a perfect candidate to give roleplaying a try!  Perhaps you are a skilled roleplayer, with years of experience at your back and hordes of characters. Maybe you simply love the Warhammer world and story, and you thought that this game would be a good opportunity to develop one character that could be living, evolving and growing in this exciting setting ...