Gamasutra has up responses from its frequent feature, the question of the Week. This week's question was a call for the best of the best. "For any genre of your choice, what is the game that defines that genre for you?" From the article: "For the RPG, simply Final Fantasy 6. It has the best story, greatest variety of characters, tons of different music, and added many secret areas. It was the first game to truly to define a real experience of an RPG to the player. -Anonymous" What games would you refer to as Genre Defining?

Grymalkin writes "A man is in custody for allegedly stabbing 3 people to death in King of Prussia, PA last week. Now it appears that the district attorney believes there may be a link between the murders and the Dungeons and Dragons RPG. From the article: 'I mean, you have many, many stab wounds and those 'Dungeons and Dragons' fantasy games involve swords and knives and daggers and things of that nature. There may be a connection but I can't say for sure.'" Wow. There are a lot more D&D players than I thought there were, what with all the stabbings and all.

GameBanshee has an interview up with Leonard Boyarksy, one of the founders of the late Troika games, describing the last days of the much missed RPG developer. From the article: "It became apparent in January when the last of our possible deals that we'd been pursuing fell through. When we started looking six or so months ago, there was a lot of initial interest but our projects could never seem to get past the marketing department."

Among the many announcements made at the GAMA Trade show this week, one of the most exciting is the revelation that Shadowrun 4.0 is on the horizon, to be released at this year's Gen Con game fair. Other news includes a World of Warcraft board game, an "Ultimate" version of Rifts, the Production Schedule for Dungeons and Dragons for 2005, a City of Heroes Table-Top RPG, and a 10th Anniversary Settlers of Catan edition. From the Shadowrun Website: "The core mechanics are completely revised to be simpler and more streamlined for quicker, easier and more consistent play. Matrix 2.0! An all-new level of wireless "augmented reality" overlays the real world, unleashing hackers to be mobile digital wizards."

Nyrath the nearly wise writes "RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons are traditionally played on a tabletop using miniatures. The problem is that the players are only supposed to see those parts of the map that they have explored. Gamemasters are reduced to drawing explored sections of the map on the playing surface with dry-erase markers or using cardboard tiles representing stretches of corridor. Some fellows have an expensive but elegant solution. They map out the playing area in a laptop using software such as Tabletop Mapper, which allows to game master to dynamically hide and reveal sections of the map. The laptop is attached to a 1600 lumen DLP projector mounted on the ceiling and projecting an image of the visible map onto the tabletop. The miniatures can then be moved on a dynamic map. The eye candy factor is vastly increased, gamemaster labor is reduced, and the players have more fun. The elegance is that this is an intuitive enhancement of the traditional gaming experience, instead of an unfamiliar new user interface to be mastered."

Alice's Wonderland blog has more coverage of the Game Developer's Conference this week. "Storytelling Across Genres: Bioware's Perspective" covers the way in which Bioware concocts the RPG magic they're so well known for. Next Generation Game Design details a talk by Peter Molyneux about where Lionhead and he are going to be taking games in the future. From the post: "Possibly a right proper experiment this, and kudos to Peter and Ron for having the guts to try it: at this stage it looks like it could go either way, and creating a whole new genre (Real Time Strategic Gods and Morals Sim?) is always going to be risky. I very much look forward to the result. "

The folks at RPGDot and MMORPGDot always run "game of the year" polls among their readers and staff members to determine the best interactive RPG experiences of the year. They've now run their course, and all the awards have been given out. For RPGs, they have the categories of Best Graphics, Best Sound, Biggest Surprise, Biggest Disappointment, Most Anticipated, Dream Game (mm...Torment 2), Best Console RPG, and Overall Best RPG of the Year. Vampire: Bloodlines, the dark RPG from the late, lamented Troika appears to have garnered many of the top honors. As for Massive Games, the categories included Best Graphics, Best Sound, Biggest Surprise, Biggest Disappointment, Most Anticipated, Dream Game, Best Expansion, and Best MMORPG Overall. World of Warcraft pretty much swept the categories for the genre.

Last Saturday night I had the pleasure of enjoying the "Dear Friends" concert of Final Fantasy music in Rosemont, Illinois. Composer Nobuo Uematsu is well known among game players for the intricate melodies that create the backdrop for most of the Final Fantasy titles. Even the older titles, 8-bit compositions though they were, made for evocative soundscapes. When taken into the hands of a skilled orchestra Uematsu's works are incredibly stirring pieces of music. Read on for my impressions from the start of the first U.S. concert series composed entirely of video game music. Update: 02/25 21:08 GMT by Z : Coincidentally, GamesIndustry.biz has an interview with Nobuo Uematsu available for perusal today.

Anonymous Coward writes " Microsoft today announced that Hironobu Sakaguchi, video game legend and president of Mistwalker game studio, has joined with Microsoft(R) Game Studios to develop role-playing game (RPG) video games exclusively for the next- generation Xbox(R) video game platform. Sakaguchi is best known as the creator of the "Final Fantasy" franchise, which has sold more than 60 million units worldwide, and was executive vice president in charge of game development at Square Enix Co. Ltd. until February 2001."

Voodoo Extreme has the story that talented development house Troika Games has closed its doors as a result of lack of funding for future projects. Rumours of their closure have circled for the last week or so, but today's announcement makes the closure official. Troika is best known for its table-top RPG adaptations, such as The Temple of Elemental Evil and games based on Vampire: The Masquerade. From the announcement: "We want to thank all of our fans for their support these past seven years, it has really meant a lot to us that there were people out there who enjoyed our games enough to create fan-sites and follow our progress as a company. But we especially want to thank all of our employees - we had the pleasure of working with the some of the most dedicated, hard working, creative people in the industry, and we really appreciate all that they did for Troika."

Mark Leaman writes "About six years ago I founded an internet broadcasting company called GT2K (Gametalk 2000) which featured Real Audio based radio shows on gaming in all its incarnations (table top, strategy, computer...). During the dot.com "plague years" we saw hordes of internet broadcasting companies belly up. But now internet broadcasting is making a comeback thanks to Podcasting. Although Podcasting isn't new news Yahoo has some nice coverage on the re-emergence of the medium."

GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that much anticipated Oriental influenced action title Jade Empire will be delayed another month. From the article: "The Bioware-developed title is one of the most eagerly anticipated games on the Xbox, and marks a departure from the company's normal style of gameplay by veering into action RPG territory with multiple martial arts styles to learn."

The current design team for the Shadowrun table-top RPG, FanPro, has intended to make out of print resources available via the web for quite a while. In what is hopefully the first in a series of such offerings, they've made the Gamemaster's Screen and Critters Sourcebook available for download in PDF format.

Leafel writes "UGO has posted a feature on the history of Star Wars video games, dividing the timeline into 4 categories: The Golden Age (up to 1990), The Silver Age (1991-1996), The Gaming Renaissance (1996-2000), Modern Age (2001 on). From the article 'December 2004 saw the latest release in a long line of Star Wars related video games. As a sequel to one of 2003's top role playing games, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords has made a lot of Xbox owners and RPG fans very happy. In honor of KOTOR II's release and in anticipation of May's Revenge of the Sith movie event, we take a look at the long history of interactive Star Wars entertainment, complete with all of its highs and lows.'"

ClintonRNixon writes "A new open-source tabletop RPG has been released, The Shadow of Yesterday. People have been putting RPGs online for free for years, and Wizards of the Coast has their Open Game License, but this is the first time a game has been written and published using only open-source tools, and is published under a Creative Commons license. To make the online version, vi and Python Docutils were used; the published game was laid out using Scribus, The Gimp, and OpenOffice."

The sequel to the hit console/PC game Knights of the Old Republic shipped to retailers on Tuesday. KOTOR II: The Sith Lords has been surrounded by trepidation as original developer Bioware was replaced by relative newcomer, Obsidian Entertainment. Gamespot has a review available. From the review: "you might have a much tougher time settling into The Sith Lords, since chances are you'll feel like you've played this game before, only you'll swear it looked better the first time. But, on the other hand, so what? It's just as important to note that no other game since Knights of the Old Republic has managed to deliver this excellent style of role-playing. If you're a Knights of the Old Republic fan, then you should find a certain satisfaction in knowing almost exactly what you're in for going into The Sith Lords."

Aeonite (Michael Fiegel) writes "When I was in fourth grade, my teacher once made the class grade each other's papers. As she read off answers, I stared in horror at the paper I had been given from the girl next to me. Every answer was wrong. Every one. By the time I had ticked off the 30th incorrect answer, I was practically in tears. I felt responsible, somehow, for the problems on the page. It would not be her fault that she failed, but rather my own fault for calling attention to her flaws. I felt ashamed. I felt awful. That was twenty years ago. I've gotten over it. That said, I have purposely not read any other reviews of the new 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons coffee table book, so I have no idea if other 'students' will judge this book in the same way I am about to. Which is to say, with a critical eye and a sad, sad shake of my head." Read on for Fiegel's review.

The last major MMOG launch of the year hits retail stores today. World of Warcraft finally goes live after years of debate, development, and a more than six month Beta test. The usual suspects have details on the game, with Gamespot already having details on upcoming content and Gamespy laying out personal experiences from the test and interviews with the developers.

A while back we passed on some your questions to City of Heroes Lead Designer Jack Emmert. He has responded with details on the upcoming CoH expansion, the future of MMOGs, and commentary on some of the decisions that led to City of Heroes in the first place. Read on for his responses.

Though it's being drowned out by the Halo 2 news, Everquest 2 officially launches today. RPG Vault has a review available for perusal, GamerFeed has a hands on look, and if you're looking for crunchy, low fat coverage Gamespy has an interview with Heather Graham about her role in the game. If you're already tripping the light fantastic in Qeynos check out GamerGod's Qeynos Quest feature, or just cut out the middle man and look forward to the first content on Allakhazam. Finally, F13 provides usefully cynical commentary about the beta and launch of the game.