The game servers for Dark Age of Camelot must be getting motion sickness, having been taken down, brought back up, taken down again, returned to function, brought down a THIRD time, then finally put back up. This morning, all DAOC servers were taken down for a large patch (the full patch message can be found here), the most notable change being that Mythic seems to be following SOE's lead and enabled a windowed, alt+tabable function. However, less then two hours after being brought up post patch, the came down again to fix a major exploit involving item duplication. An hour and a half later, they were up and running. Then the announcement at the Camelot Heraldstated that the servers of Igraine, Tristan and Kay were having technical difficulties and were brought down, finally brought back up (for a third time) earlier this afternoon. Said Sanya Harris, Internet Relations Manager for Mythic Entertainment, "mercy me, this has been... an interesting day".

I'd like to extend my apologies to the DAoC & AO communities here at Allakhazam's and to Allakhazam & Darkflame for not staying current in these two news departments. I have been extremely busy getting ready for a personal move (change of residence) as well as running my EQ Legends Guild and numerous other endeavors, and these two news areas have suffered because of this, but that will be changing. I have just purchased and installed Dark Age of Camelot and Anarchy Online as well as Asheron's Call Dark Majesty and Ultima Online. I figured the only way to report on these games properly is to be an actual part of each community. It may take awhile for me to get deeply into each of these games but after my move is complete, I should have plenty of time - and I'll need it for 5 MMORPG accounts running simultaneously (not to mention Star Wars Galaxies, AC2, & EQII when they hit the market and my puter)! So if you all will tolerate my sporadic postings just a little while longer, they will improve dramatically in the very near future. Adder

Magic: The Gathering Online ( www.mtgonline.com ) has been online for a few weeks now. There is a free download to try the game and there are no subscription or online fees. What you do purchase are virtual card packs through your initial account, the first of which is a starter pack that you need after you have used the free trial server to tryout the game. Packs may be purchased which include starter packs, advanced packs, expert packs, collector cards, tournament packs and others. These packs may even be traded in for the real 'hardcopy' cards that made the game popular!! The game is played much like the online card games at Microsoft's The Gaming Zone, where you join other players at a 'table.' Although not really an MMORPG, it is listed as such on sites like GameSpy OnDemand - http://www.gamespy.com/ondemand/mm/games/mtgonline/ - presumably because of the fantasy flavor of the game. The download is rather large at 309mb and can be found at CNet's Downloads, Gamespot Download, and File Planet Download all of which have links at the main download site - http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=magic/magiconline/downloadlinks. The MTGO site is quite complete and well worth the visit.