We’re back with a second interview with Dungeons & Dragons Online Executive Producer, Fernando Paiz, from Pax East 2012, this time talking to him about the new Druid class.

DDO’s first expansion, Menance of the Underdark, is launching on June 25th and with it comes the new Druid class, which we got to see in action during our interview and learned a little more about it.

The Druid class has the Wild-Shape ability which allows for the character to take three basic forms, wolf (melee/DPS), bear (tank) and elemental form (fire or water), with each form having different versions of itself. For example as you level, you can open up “Winter Wolf” or “Dire Bear”, which  provide different abilities or spells to the player.  Each alternate version also has its own skill tree-line, with 6 lines all together to start, but possibly more versions down the road.

We also find out a little more about the new Epic Levels and Epic Destinies which allows players to level from 20 – 25, as well as complete multiple Epic Destinies, not just their class Destiny. Check out the full DDO  Druid class interview below.

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Starting today, Guild Wars 2 is available to pre-order. You can order your digital copy straight from ArenaNet, or if you prefer to have a physical copy of the game and live in North America, you can purchase it from Gamestop or Bestbuy, who are the only retailers that carry the Collectors Edition,  or from Amazon if you’re just looking for the normal edition.

For those of you in Europe or elsewhere, you can check the full list of retailers to buy a copy for yourself.

The normal edition costs $59.99, the digital deluxe edition costs $79.99 and the collectors edition costs $149.99.

It seems many people are already reporting that the Collectors Editions are being sold out. ArenaNet said they will post an update to Twitter in a few hours to respond to the demand.

I pre-ordered my copy as soon as I got up this morning, so I’ll see you guys in Tyria and on the battlefield.

This weekend was the fifth closed beta test for En Masse’s TERA, and the first time we got to see an invasion event, in the form of the capital city Velika being attacked.

To begin, I’m not entirely sure if this invasion event was meant strictly for stress test purposes, or if this is how some of these events will play out, but I have to say I was disappointed with it all around.

From what I heard and read, the first invasion event on Friday night was almost unplayable due to lag, luckly for me I missed that one and instead videoed last night’s invasion event, which seemed to run much smoother, although my framerate never got over 15.

I got to the event about 15 mins after it started and was pretty surprised how many people were there; easily over a hundred, although most people were invisible, which is one of the things that really bothered me. I get that servers can’t have hundreds of players and NPCs on screen at the same time, but making most of the people invisible really kills the fantasy of it all.

A few times I had to sit there and wait for mobs to show up on screen, which wasn’t so bad, but it also caused me to die a bunch of times, since I was running into invisible mobs that could kill me in one hit.

The invasion itself was pretty chaotic, but it didn’t feel like an invasion. Groups of mobs would just randomly appear one after another and once dead, the next wave of mobs would appear. Again, I’m not sure if this was just a stress test or if this is how invasions will work after launch, but in the current form, it needs work.

My archer was level 16 and I found myself to be pretty useless. The current beta level cap is 38, but in the video you can see for bosses, I was only hitting for 1-2 damage with my normal attack and 9-10 with power attacks. I fared a bit better against regular mobs, hitting them for 8-9 with normal attacks and low 20′s for power attacks, but it’s clear these events are going to be tailored for higher level players.

I also didn’t notice any drops, rewards or even XP for kills during the invasion, but I’m going to assume there will be after launch. Another question I have is what happens if there are not enough defenders to repel the attack? Is it possible to actually lose an invasion event and if so, are there any consequences? I sure hope so, otherwise I’m not sure what the point of invasions are, other then to add another form of PvE grinding.

Check out the video below of the TERA Velika Invasion Event from Saturday.

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En Masse announced on their forums a few days ago that their PvP Battleground system would not be making it in-time for TERA’s launch, but instead would be added sometime during the summer.

On a brighter note, they did confirm that the political system would be ready and they’ll “showcase the political system at launch with popular voting as the initial election method for all provinces“. I can only assume by “showcase” they mean it’ll just be a mock election or demo of sorts, as no one would really have enough time to buildup a reputation in one to day start running for office.

Having completely lost interested in instanced PvP years ago, I could care less that the Battlegrounds are delayed, I’ll just do my killing in the open fields as it’s meant to be.