Rumors of Google's plans to create a virtual world that rivals that of Second Life have popped up once again over the weekend. The company could now be collaborating with Arizona State University to test the 3D social network, which may be tied into Google's current applications of Google Earth and Google Maps.

ASU students received a questionnaire yesterday, screenshots of which were originally posted by a MacRumors forum member, that hinted strongly at Google's plans. Specifically, the questionnaire intro says that students will be able to test a product that will be publicly launched later this year by a "major Internet company," and the graphic makes reference to 3D modeling, video gaming, and avatars. It proceeds to ask questions about students' involvement with social networks like MySpace and whether they have Gmail accounts. The social network referenced by the questionnaire is currently being dubbed "My World."

As the Google Operating System blog points out, ASU has had a heavy affiliation with Google in the past: ASU was among the first to test Google Apps, the university depends heavily on Google Maps, and all ASU campuses have full 3D models in Google Earth. Google even

Although the discussion was supposed to focus on where the genre is headed, questions ranged far and wide when the audience got going.

The panel was made up of Kevin Maginn – Lead Designer for Pirates of the Burning Sea, Matt Miller – Lead Designer for City of Heroes and City of Villains, Ed Stark – the former Lead Designer for Dungeons & Dragons and now the World Designer for an unannounced MMO, Chris McKibbin – Executive Producer on Gods and Heroes, and Noah Ward – Lead Designer for EVE Online. The discussion was technically moderated by Jason Justice from Ntreev USA, although since the crowd was quite respectful and things moved along quickly, he served more as an additional (if quiet) panel member and a timekeeper than anything else. Each question will be listed individually, followed by an overview of the responses by the panel members.

Q: Why don’t we see more balanced classes instead of hyper-specialists?

Stark started off by referring

* EXPERIMENTAL STORY DRIVEN GAMING - Players join together to defeat the threat posed to the kingdom by Uzziel the Evoker. Uzziel is played in the game by a real person, who can summon monsters at will anywhere in the world. Solo players may think they are in a safe area, groups may be sure that they can handle the quest - but Uzziel may have a different opinion! The goal of having a real person to play the protagonist is to keep the gameplay unexpected and challenging, but he can be beaten! The defeat of Uzziel creates an unfolding story that is different on each server.

* MOUNTS - You acquire your mount early in the game. All mounts have their own character development and need feeding and caring for. If you acquire high level riding skills you can train your mount to

But how can you begin to ennumerate the changes? As Jensen, who works at Spacetime Studios for her dayjob, explains, a particularly data-hungry World Of Warcraft forum-goers has "...listed every class change made since the beginning of recorded history (i.e. early beta), and he’s categorized it by buffs, nerfs, bug fixes, changes, new features, and overhauls." Jensen has crunched that all into a very interesting set of graphs, showing that, for example, the Warlock has the most changes, but the Druid has been buffed the most in Blizzard's gameplay tweaking.

In comments, 'Scott' provides some useful color: "So, the biggest problem is that there’s no relative weight to the buffs/nerfs, so the nerf to Dire Bear armor in 2.0 is assigned the same weight as no longer being able to teleport to Moonglade while in tree form. Of course then you start having to assign subjective weight", adding: "The real interesting data points you’re missing are of course