This Week's WildStar Wednesday is live and has brought us round 2 of the WildStar Beta Housing competition. Similar to the previous housing competition, beta testers have gone out on a limb--Mordesh pun unintended--to bring us some of their most unique and creative housing designs. Here's a look at a few of the top houses from the WildStar closed beta 3.

The much anticipated conclusion to Wildstar's Issue #1 of Tales From Beyond The Fringe is upon us with the release of Mystery And Mayhem Part 3.

Part two of Mystery And Mayhem, WildStar's weekly web-comic, is upon us. This week it looks like Victor Lazarin is taking the stage away from his crazy--and by crazy I mean absolutely psychotic--Chua counter-part and is giving us a bit of insight about his own race, the Mordesh.

MMORPG players are a dedicated lot. They will work tirelessly, through whatever means necessary, to progress their character, often spending hours over weeks doing quests or crafting items to gain the necessary experience to be the best they can be.

This dedication does not stop in game. The most committed of these players also spend countless hours on web sites and wikis to plan what they're going to do once they're back in the game. In fact, many official game sites now point to these third-party resources for reference, because the crowd-sourced information is more accurate and more meticulously maintained than it could ever be in an official capacity.

Well, the group you're about to meet raises this dedication to a new level. Enter, Project WAM.

Turbine took the competition by storm when they released Lord of the Rings Online and it shows – Not only did it get “Best Overall Game,” but it also received “Best Expansion” and they were voted “Favorite MMO Studio” on MMORPG.com's Reader's Choice Awards, securing their place in MMO history.

"We are honored that our studio has received this special recognition and we want to thank the readers of MMORPG.com," said Jim Crowley, president and CEO of Turbine, Inc. "Given the competitive launches that took place this year, we are especially grateful for the awards they extended to The Lord of the Rings Online which has firmly established itself as one of the world’s premium MMOs. While we accomplished a lot in 2008 we have a lot more in store for 2009 that we look forward to sharing with players."

Lord of the Rings, one of everyone's favorite fantasy series, was originally released in paperback in 1954. Ever since Peter Jackson's theatrical release of Lord of the Rings, we have seen nothing but good things come out of that universe, from the textures to the story. Many have played and loved this game, and hopefully, they will keep up the good work and continue to blow our minds with quality and quantiy of releases.

Source: Lord of the Rings Online

Now that 2008 has come to an end we thought it might be fun to do a recap on some of the major news and features that you may have missed. Overall, 2008 was a great year for the gaming industry as a whole, with some amazing advancements in the MMO space. So sit back, nurse that coffee and take one final look at Allakhazam in 2008.

January

• Allakhazam visited the Consumer Electronics Show. The fun began on Jan. 7 as Tovin reported on the first day of activities, which included Sony’s announcement that the PSP would support Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) provider Skype and new rigs from Voodoo PC and Alienware.

• At CES, EverQuest and World of Warcraft were honored with Emmy Awards and AutumnKiss talked to Curt Schilling of 38 Studios about their upcoming MMO code-named Copernicus, which includes names like R.A. Salvatore and Todd McFarlane.

• Day two of the event was just as crazy, and AutumnKiss got a ton of information on a pirate's life in both Pirates of the Caribbean Online and Pirates of the Burning Sea. Of course, the team also focused on the then-upcoming Age of Conan and delved into Legends of Norrath. Tovin also got a glimpse of all the tech gadgets, such as a wallet-sized USB flash drive.