The latest Devspeak video explains exactly what a Path is at length, using the already-revealed Explorer to titillate the audience. Then viewers are launched into a discussion about the other options for advanced character customization. The second trailer is more of a lore-based reveal of the Paths feature. It showcases the offbeat and hilarious writing and trailer ninja that’s become a staple to the WildStar community.

Just remember not to feel too special when using a Settlers structure. They’re not doing it to help you, but gain Path XP. The selfish jerks.

Both video reveals of Paths are after the cut followed by a collection of the latest screenshots for the upcoming NCSoft-published title.

Over the weekend a nasty exploit plagued the economy of Neverwinter. The action-oriented Dungeons & Dragons MMORPG saw its economy torn to shreds after a large-enough amount of players began using a recently-discovered exploit. The investigation itself took hours, resulting in numerous restarts, prolonged downtime and the possibility of full rollbacks. This is all due to the bug touching so much of the economy, including the RMT-based Astral Diamonds.

After mulling over the data, Cryptic Studios was forced to do a minor rollback of seven hours. Any progress made on May 19 from 8:20 EST until 3:20 EST was negated. But there’s a bit of a silver lining for all the troubles. Aside from the bans against the exploiters that is. A cat’s paw’s purse, as it may be.

Any character made before Tuesday, May 21 at 6:00 AM can login to receive the Caterday Survivor’s Pack. The pack contains a variety of goodies to ease the downtime and regain trust. Armor, health and even scrolls of teleportation and XP boosts.

Check your mailboxes for the “You Survived” message.

Lore: A giant wolf and son of Loki, Fenrir was prophesied to be the murderer of Odin. Should he have carried out the act of killing the All Father, monstrous beast would have began Ragnarök, the expected apocalypse of Norse mythology. The ensuing war would have seen the death of Thor, Tyr, Freyr, Heimdallr and Loki. Fenrir would have gained little but his own death at the hands of Víðarr, a son of Odin’s. The calamity would not have left the mortal realms safe. Various natural disasters and an ultimate flood would have made sure only two lone humans would survive.

Fenrir wasn’t just the beginning of the end. Loki’s furrier child was renowned for his strength. The great wolf broke numerous bounds as he continued to grow from the daily meals at Tyr’s hand. After two failed bounds, Leyding and Dromi, Odin had the crafty dwarves complete a third fetter, Gleipnir. The Aesir promised that if a bind could hold the great wolf he’d be freed for posing no threat. To be sure Fenrir wasn’t sandbagging his effort Tyr chose to place his hand in the beast’s mouth as a pledge that he was trying his hardest. Tyr’s loss of that hand marked Fenrir’s freedom and one of the best known tales of Norse mythology.

In-Game: Fenrir the Unbound lives up to his mythology by being designed as an incredibly powerful physical melee. Capable of chasing down his opponent with numerous jumps and his ultimate, Fenrir is a difficult character to run away from. Stacking a new meter, Runes, the great wolf needs to land his standard attack to maximize his damage and crowd control capabilities. The Unbound has two built in cleaves and an incredibly powerful physical lifesteal buff. These attributes make Fenrir have brutal sustainability in lane, lacking only mana.

Fenrir players should focus on massacring opponents and making sure they can’t escape. Physical power, attack speed and movement speed will make the only quadrupedal character in SMITE a terror on the battlefield. Aggressive players can add in cooldown reduction once they get a handle on MP5. In a pinch, Fenrir can be built as a secondary tank thanks to rapid health regeneration, including his native lifesteal.

Further reading:

• Fenrir on Wikipedia
• Norse Mythology on Wikipedia
• Poetic Edda by Snorri Sturluson
• Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson

Head over to SMITE: Demigods, Deities and Gods Explained for details on all of the playable characters.

First shown in the recent PAX East interview, Gazillion Entertainment will not be using simple stills or quest dialog to inform the masses of the original story. Included in certain zone introductions and throughout the complex storylines will be ‘Motion Comics.’ The first of these episodes can be found after the cut.

Episode One of “Chronicles of Doom” features the beginning of Doctor Doom’s rise to power, the beginning lore of Marvel Heroes. Check out the 2+ minute trailer after the cut.

This review of the

Before diving into the review proper, it’s important to note that Blizzard is releasing this book in a new fashion. Knaak’s latest work in the World of Warcraft universe will trickle out over the next few months in five installments. Each ringing up at $1.99, effectively costing more for those that purchase the full set. The serialized eBook is currently scheduled to wrap up in mid June. As such, this review will be concise.

Review of Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

Dawn of the Aspect has been a struggle to read through. The delayed releases of the individual parts of the eBook has endangered the novel further in my eyes. Rather than continuing reading to reach the next interesting plot point or gloss over additional unnecessary and repetitive detail, one has been left waiting weeks to see anything move forward. It’s been slow going during the first two installments, comprising of 10 chapters.

It’s finally begun to move forward. Progress. In the third installment Knaak tosses his characters into colossal battles with uncertain outcomes. These fledgling sentient beings are met with unfathomable choices and ones of grey moral scope. Readers are left wondering whether these “visions” Kalecgos is having are true historic accounts incapable of change or if the former blue Aspect is somehow playing a role in the eventual outcome. It remains shocking to the audience that such defining events in Azerothian lore haven’t been spoken of by the living Aspects. That notion is the very hook Knaak is attempting to use to his creative advantage.

It started off slow indeed. Boring even. The foundation was laid, but it remained crooked for 10 chapters. Now it’s looking up. Supporting characters, including Jaina and a certain watcher, are keeping each timeline moving. The plot is hitting its crescendo. And Kalecgos is continuing to slip.

Dawn of the Aspects – Part IV comes out May 20.

Interested in exploring Warcraft’s recent lore further?

Blizzard has released a torrent of Warcraft novelizations as WoW has gained in popularity. Most directly related to Dawn of the Aspects are Jaina Proudmoore: Tide of War and The Shattering – Prelude to Cataclysm both by Christie Golden.

Knaak, as the master of WoW dragonkind, has dabbled with them since he began working with Blizzard. Pick up Day of the Dragon, Night of the Dragon or the unfinished Dragons of Outland. Knaak penned the War of the Ancients trilogy as his freshman entry into the Warcraft universe, years ahead of WoW’s release.

Check out all of the novelizations of Blizzard products in the our Extensive Extended Universe rundown.

In some people’s minds it’s still a bit of work, but the cross-promotional tool is become more and more common in the F2P genre. Developers open up easy avenues of revenue that are opt in for the player base. Players get in-game currency to pimp out their characters. Don’t mind giving up some details and a few moments of time, then by all means dive right in.

Personally, I’ve always been weary of these. Perhaps even cynical. I believe it dilutes the brand, as the developer does not control what’s being advertised, nor the Terms of Service that its players agree to. It also opens up additional support costs, as players that have issues (incorrectly) seek help from the developer. In fact, Hi-Rez is already seeing some issues.

Economically for the gamer, you’re putting all sorts of time and effort into very little return. Makes sense for those without cash flows (or credit cards). For the rest of us, farming Favor and money is far more time efficient.

Playing a bit like Zac of League of Legends fame, Batman’s arch nemesis isn’t a one-trick pony. Gaslight Joker features many support capabilities, including a healing debuff and fear. In addition, the trickster can be built to produce a substantial amount of damage in his own right.

The reveal trailer after the cut markets Gaslight Joker as a high sustain tank. Yet one can easily see that Gaslight Joker can seemingly be built in a variety of ways, depending on need. Now if only I could get in the closed beta to see if my suspicions are correct.

It was a long wait for full English support of Anno Online, but the game is now out in the wild. Developed by Ubisoft subsidiary Ubisoft Blue Byte, the hive mind behind The Settlers, Anno Online adopts the title’s original medieval timeframe and maintains the strategy elements Blue Byte fans have come to expect.

This is the first of three browser games Ubisoft announced at Gamescom 2012 to enter the “launch” phase of free-to-play games.

Those of you lucky enough to get into the closed beta testing in late April will have the chance to earn two rewards. That’s on top of a head start, as there was no data wipe. All players can pimp out their city with a unique statue. Players who log in during the first week of open beta will also unlock a premium ship capable of carrying more freight faster.

If perks and a new game aren’t enough Blue Byte has sweetened the deal by detailing the first patch. The advanced Guild System will unlock larger strategic options between 25 other players including the Guild Hall building. Guilds will be added in mid-May.

Hit the jump for the latest assets for Anno Online.

The Egyptian Goddess of Motherhood, Magic and Fertility fulfills the niche of a support mage. Isis is a dangerous foe in lane or with allies capable of AoE debuffs, sharing regen or negating damage to allies. Like numerous recent additions, Isis has a special meter for her scepter. Only enabled when she launches her ultimate, the scepter will explode dealing damage and healing allies when triggered.

Isis launches with a unique Queen of the Nile skin alongside a new cross-promotion skin for Global Agenda. Vulcan players, including myself, will want to reach level 30 in Hi-Rez Studios’ original game to unlock Sentry Vulcan. In addition to skins, the developer is retiring the rather pointless notion of levels in SMITE. In its place will be God Worshippers. As players win with each god they will earn points towards God Mastery. A total of 10 levels are in the current system. It is unknown what God Mastery offers at this time.

Hit the jump for the full god reveal of Isis, Goddess of Magic. We’ll have more on her and Fenrir next week as part of the on-going SMITE: Demigods, Deities and Gods Explained column.

Grabbing the latest skin for Artemis is as easy as pi. No, the other kind of pie. Actually, that’s pretty difficult too. It’s easy as cake, but that’s a lie. Uh, it’s easy as boiling water, assuming you’ve easy access to fire. Okay, it’s as easy as a Loki gank. Previously teased in the patch from earlier this week, the promotion is now live and features the complex task of hitting a button. The only catch is that you’re required to have a Twitter account. I mean, it was labeled as a Twitter promotion after all.

Head on over to WishPond, fill in your email address and click the ‘Claim offer’ button to have a Stalker code hand delivered by the robots of the Internet to your personal email account. From there, grab the code and manually type it into the SMITE game client. Yeah, Hi-Rez Studios can make a fantastic and unique MOBA, but has trouble with the copy and paste function!

Now that I’ve that secured, it’s time to go work on Cacodemon Ymir again, which you earn by hitting Level 30 before the game launches. Oh, and while you’re on Twitter, be sure to follow @LoreHound.