MMO fans hoping for salvation from Star Wars: The Old Republic have something new to chew on. A new class. EA/BioWare has confirmed the Imperial Agent class, after "soft launching" the news earlier this week at a European event:

The Imperial Agent is heavily inspired by several classic Star Wars characters such as Zam Wessel and Grand Moff Tarkin. Imperial Agents work behind the scenes to get the work of the Empire done. Specializing in high-tech gear, the Imperial Agent always has the right tools at the right time. They use abilities of subversion and subterfuge to infiltrate and assassinate enemies of the Sith Empire with deadly efficiency. Players who choose to be Imperial Agents in The Old Republic (TOR) will see the underbelly of the Empire in a whole new light.

Can never get enough ranged classes in MMOs, we reckon. Great for lighting up messageboards.

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The Miami Dade corrections system is pretty technologically savvy if case # F09036137 is any example.

Case # F09036137's inmate is Christian Del Amo.

The online entry for Del Amo lists him at 5'8" and 125 lbs - a shade under 57 kilograms. You don't need to know much about the US prison system to know what fate scrawny kids have in store for them behind bars.

Again thanks to the informative website, you can read Del Amo has been assigned to the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center. There's no shortage of information on this facility, which usually has over 1000 inmates at any one time - including maximum security, high risk types - rapists, drug kingpins, killers. And while white collar criminals and female prisoners also are held there, this is no summer camp. TGK has a reputation.

As one article puts it "It's the only facility in Miami-Dade with every kind of criminal under one roof: men and women, adults and juveniles, sex offenders and petty thieves."

Which is why we're hoping for his sake, Del Amo has been able to post the $USD7500 bail noted down on his online entry. For he's been busted selling pirate copies of Modern Warfare 2, or as the charge reads: "COUNTERFEIT LABELS/SALE/PURCHASE/POSSESS/$20K OR >", which we're assuming translates out to counterfeit labelling, sales, and/or possession of goods valued $20,000 or greater.

It's a long chain of events lead to his arrest, here's the point-by-point version:

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The words "developer diary" are often used to conceal an array of sins - from being a bare-faced marketing exercise to a too-specialised lecture which goes in one ear and out the other.

The people working on Lord of the Rings Online however seem to have struck a good balance. Jesse "Vastin" King is currently working on getting out the next LOTRO chapter, Siege of Mirkwood, but has put together an informative summary detailing the content in the expansion as well as the challenges in putting it together.

Here's a short snip:

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If you're not interested in World of Warcraft, feel free to give this one a pass.

Blizzard has advised on their official forums testing for parts of what is expected to be the last major raid content - Icecrown - will be taking place later today.

Aussies interested in getting the jump on their fellow raiders have a good shot here - the timing works out fine. The US server kick off times equates as follows (do the relevant math if you're SA/NT/WA):

4.00PM Friday 6th US PST = 11.00AM Saturday 7th Australian East coast

It's all going down on the test realm which means anyone with a valid WoW account can get in on it (I *think*) as long as they set themselves up for it now. If you don't have a PTR account set up it you will probably need to get moving.

Here's the official word:

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After making an appearance on the latest Benny & Richie Show Jeremy Ray (Junglist) joins us for a special episode of The GAP! With five people sitting around the table things might get a little hectic - we discuss the EA/Activision role reversal, talk about all the games we've been playing and naturally hit all the news of the week (well, all the news we can remember).

We also ask some hard-ish questions of J Ray regarding the circumstances in which he finished hosting Good Game, and Jeremy answers them in good humour. This one's a big one as we squeezed an interview with a genuine games fanatic in - it's two hours and 12 minutes long, and around 90mb! Download Episode 10 of The GAP and tell us what you think! And as always, there's a language warning on The GAP!

The GAP Episode 10

It's true, I make a short cameo in this episode of Street Talk. If that isn't enough hotness for you, Sally is back to ask the punters at eGames what they'd like to see under their Christmas Tree.

Some of the answers are a little bit out there (who the heck wants Zelda for Christmas when Darksiders is out in January), as are the answerers... It's a good episode though. Head on over to our videos page to watch it, or our downloads page to download it! What do you want under your Christmas Tree?

Yeah, it's been a rough road if you're a PC owner, but unless you've had every last speck of love for Modern Warfare burned off you and you've vowed to not even look at anything MW2, this trailer is worth checking out.

We're currently under NDA however this trailer should pretty much encapsulate the breadth of what the story covers. Keen eyed punters will note footage of the US National World War II Memorial being shot up - something we predict will cause as big if not bigger stir than any airport massacre with diehard US punters once the game drops.

Modern Warfare 2 Launch Trailer

Okay, it's an epidemic. The man arguably responsible for dedicated servers being a standard in the first place, John Carmack, has told Variety he doubts dedicated server tech will feature in Rage.

Carmack seems to have had the question thrown out at random during a media tour pimping Doom Classic on iPhone.

“It’s not cast in stone yet, but at this point no, we don’t think we will have dedicated servers,”

Carmack seems relieved Infinity Ward are taking heat for being the forerunners:

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This is pretty amusing. Fox-owned, IGN affiliated game retailer Direct2Drive has decided to not stock Modern Warfare 2.

Why? Not because of the dedicated server issue or the general PC level of outrage, but rather because of the integrated Steamworks tech Valve has put into the game.

Quoth D2D, as reported by GamaSutra:

"We don’t believe games should force the user to install a Trojan Horse"

Meanwhile on the company's Modern Warfare 2 page, you get:

"Thanks for your interest in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 from Direct2Drive. At Direct2Drive, we believe strongly that when you buy a game from us, you shouldn't be forced to install and run a 3rd party software client to be able to play the game you purchased. Because COD MW 2 requires you, the consumer, to do that, we aren't able to offer the game via Direct2Drive at this time."

The page goes on to offer punters off other Activision games and point people still wanting to buy MW2 to Amazon.

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Andy is back with another Weekly Update - this time he takes a look at the eGames Expo, on last week in Melbourne. He caught us taping Episode 9 of The GAP, checked out what everyone was lining up for at Ubisoft and had a look at the awesome Rock Band 2 setup on the main stage.

He later caught up with Phil Day, the champion Galaga player who had to resubmit his world record attempt after a technicality rendered his previous attempt unusable! Finally, Andy took on Sony's newest addition to your family - the EyePet - to see how it would fit in with his family.

You can watch the latest episode in our videos library or download it from our files library now!