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Today, SOE announced that EverQuest II is going all the way free-to-play. What does EQ2's freemium future mean for the players? That, plus new insights into next month's Age of Discovery expansion in our latest roundtable writeup.

Exec Producer David Georgeson discusses the upcoming EQ expansion, Age of Discovery, but also some of the content players can look forward to in Game Updates coming very soon.

Excluding Duke Nukem Forever (which counts only in concept), we only found one five+ year-old game on the show floor at PAX East 2011. That game was Dungeons and Dragons Online, and Producer Erik Boyer and Design Director Iain Currie were on-hand to show us how Turbine continues to keep this hybrid free-to-play success story fresh.

One feature that DDO historically lacked is a full-fledged crafting system - but no more! Iain describes how crafting works, why you'll need to play the game to be a successful crafter, and how Turbine plans to phase in the changes to minimize player economy upheaval. Next, Erik takes us deep into the fourth and final part of Update 9. It's a mad journey through the sensibilities of a fleshcrafting mindflayer "artist", complete with a catwalk and "Spring Fashions" plus what might be DDO's most intense boss fight yet, so have a look at this DDO Update 9 / Crafting Improvements video from PAX East 2011!