It's one thing to type out your commands to your allies in the middle of a heated battle; it's another thing to actually bark out orders they can hear. Get ready for a slew of new communication devices designed to revolutionize the system of voice chatting, courtesy of Sony Online Entertainment and Vivox. More auditory stimuli ensues after the jump.

A new Grab bag has been posted up on The Camelot Herald and it's still chock full of answers to questions from the Dark Age of Camelot player base. For today's Grab Bag, we're just going to take a couple of questions and answers and post them here. To check out the full post at The Camelot Herald, click on the read link below. Here we go:

Q) In a past Grab Bag you said that the person who got the highest crafting skill last became number one on the top crafters list. I thought the list was ranked by the crafting skill then ties were broken by /played time?
A) Correct you are. After double checking, the top crafter lists are indeed ranked by skill and then by /played time.

Q) Are you aware that dark SMs only have a red body debuff when speccing 50 dark? What happened to the spirit and energy debuffs?
A) All internal testing shows the spells to be present. If you’re still having problems, you should appeal in game and have a CSR investigate your character.

Q) Under the rogue champion line, why are suppress wounds and faded quickness on the same timer?
A) That combination of abilities was not possible until we increased the champion level cap from 5 to 10 with Labyrinth. Because of that, players can get combinations that we never wanted or intended. Therefore, we put shared timers in place to prevent them from achieving certain combinations with champion abilities to preserve the nature of the CL system. The combo may not seem like a very powerful one, but it goes against the design of CLs. That design was to be as low impact as possible on the RVR game, while still adding a bit of flavor.

Well, there you have it folks. For the full Grab Bag, click on the "read" link below.

Wireless multimedia networking company Comverse attended the 3GSM Conference the other day in Barcelona, Spain, to demonstrate a new software that will provide connectivity between Second Life residents and those who are in the real world.

In a nutshell, the technology allows Java-based and Internet-capable phones to log in to SL's virtual world remotely and see who else is playing. The phone can then communicate with SL residents by sending SMS, MMS, and event instant messages.

Here's the interesting part: SL users can walk into virtual Comverse booths and pick up virtual phones to reply. "We're unleashing the virtual world from the PC and allowing it to be available on any terminal. That's the benefit for the end user," said Comverse Chief Technology Officer Daphna Steinmetz.

The attendees of the 3GSM Conference were able to witness first hand how the new technology actually works on mobile phones, especially Comverse phones. The company added that the software will be available in Europe within a few months with one anonymous major carrier about to close a deal.

There is no word about the software's availability to subscribers in North America.

While we are all gamers here and our own little virtual universe is enough to contain our wants and needs, we certainly don't want to be secluded from the rest of the real world. And so from time to time, we share with you scientific studies that reveal how the rest of the world view us.

Oftentimes, we find these studies as negative factoids for our growing culture. But there are rare occasions when these findings put our life in a good light.

Today, we'd like to share with you another study that is utterly misconducted and we believe that it has no bearing, not by a long shot.

Dr. Chow Yuan-hua, a psychiatrist at the Veterans General Hospital in Taipei, maintains that playing violent videogames result to lower language proficiency. He arrived at his conclusion by studying another emerging culture, the text-speakers.

Before we proceed, let us define textspeak. It is the process of shortening words and adding numbers to an SMS message. There are various reasons why this is being done but for most part, it is about economics and being cool. An example of this is "Mit me at my haus 2nyt", which (as we're sure you already know) "Meet me at my house tonight."

In his study, Yuan-hua used just 12 young adults as the sample population and asked them to play PS2 title Real Three Kingdoms: Nonpareil 4 Generations for 30 minutes and then no more. With that hurried experiment, if we may call it that, the psychiatrist shamelessly announced:

Reduction in blood circulation in the frontal lobe indicates that it may affect language proficiency. How far will it harm their language capability, if they play for a longer time and almost every day My findings just prove there is a statistically significant association between violence in video games and low language proficiency. Further study is urgently needed.

Our take on this? Actually he said it himself already. Further study is needed. We honestly can't comprehend how he got from point A to point B. If any of you get the rationale and the sense behind this study, please, tell us kindly.

A couple of days after we came to know of the online romance that ended happily ever after, life partners Rhovan and Delora are still in our heads. Good for them, they might be playing World of Warcraft in bed, in the kitchen or wherever they wish. However we can't help but wonder how the two managed before they got married. Maybe an SMS message saying:

"I'll be on Runetotem. I'll see you when you get there."
"Okay. I love you... Oh wait! I forgot to pay for character transfer..."

At any rate, it might have caused some problems one way or another. Then the idea of sharding comes to mind, which leaves WoW scattered across multiple servers. It has been argued before that this actually is a sign of financial constraint and poor game architectural design. On top of that, many are complaining that the current set-up hinders socialization.

Blizzard Entertainment recently patched the European servers that make them incompatible with the U.S. servers. A small, persistent voice inside suddenly gets bigger and wants to explode: "What ever happened to MASSIVELY in MMORPG?!" Don't look at us because we don't know either.

Actually, there have been several proposals across the WoW community to solve the impending problem. Free transfers, for one, will make a lot people happy. But at the same time, that risks in-game economies, game queues and Blizzard needing more time to maintain and keep servers. There was a suggestion even to create a super server, much like a super continent, where in everybody can see everybody. We hate to burst your bubble, but that last one definitely sounds Utopian at this point in time.

We guess we'll just have to wait for the day when all will be well once more in Azeroth. Who knows, The Burning Crusade could be the answer to all of these. Anyway, we guess we'll just go back to Second Life for now and create millions there.

Hark, thy Runescaperers! When doth thou last registereth thy account...eth? You guys would be happy to hear that Jagex Ltd. just announced the implementation of their Runescape registry payment via SMS/Text Message in the United States. Their clause states:

Payment by SMS/Text Message in the United States costs $9.99 for one month of membership. The higher cost of this payment method covers the additional costs we incur running the convenience of this service. Please note: Our other existing payment methods are still the same price as before. e.g. subscription via credit-card in the US is still only USD$5.00 a month.

This service is built on top of their Pay by Phone option and hopes to grab other players without credit cards. Unfortunately, both T-mobile and Verizon Mobile Phone Companies do not currently support the PayBySMS option in the U.S.

To start off (or continue) on your lofty quest in Gielinor as a paid member, just click on the "Start a new subscription" link under the Membership box in the front page of their website.

Now, click the "Read" link below to whisk your feet away to their website!

Just how obsessed are South Koreans about their MMOs? Well, ga-ga enough for a company to launch the first wireless MMORPG for mobile phones. South Korea which is, arguably, home to the most rabid and enthusiastic online-gamers in the planet, now has the opportunity to engage in some MMO gaming through their handhelds. Com2uS has announced the start of paid subscription for its MMORPG for mobile phones from July 18.

So just what MMORPG could they play with their cell phones? The game is IMO: The World of Magic launched in Korea on June 8 and has been available for free during its open beta test. The game represents the first commercial release of an MMO game in Korea for mobile and is priced at around $5, which includes all network charges. Now that's a bargain in any country!

IMO: The World of Magic puts its players into the real-time online world of Inotia. The game is for mobile, but it offers gamers much of what they’ve come to expect from MMORPG on the PC. In an MMORPG, users enter a persistent, real-time online world, where they go on quests, team up with other players to fight monsters, collect items, fight against other players, and try to level up their characters. Com2uS added additional quests, dungeons, and party play options to mark the start of the paid subscription service. Future content for IMO will be added in episodes, the current instalment being “Episode 1: The Wingfriel Island”.

Com2uS is planning to add functionality that will take advantage of the mobile platform itself: for example, utilizing SMS in the game. More features, could only mean more fun and more money for Com2uS. Now I wonder if this kind of MMORPG would find a place in U.S. and European shores?