SciFi MMOs

“Space the Final Frontier,” was the beginning to many Star Trek episodes, it started a new adventure in the chapter of the Star Trek Universe. Many games have tried to recreate this but none have quite come close to capturing the magic of Star Trek. Now, though, an MMO that will “boldly go where no man has gone before” is coming soon; along with other SciFi MMOs.
No other SciFi MMO has quite been a huge success. Tabula Rasa recently and sadly had its plug pulled. It was not a bad game at all, it was quite creative and new in lots of areas but there just wasn’t enough room on the market for it. EVE online is probably the biggest SciFi MMO out there right now. It does nothing different than other MMOs out there other than its player driven universe where players can get involved with politics and make decisions that will affect every single player. Three new MMO hope to become the SciFi MMO that will take off and challenge the setbacks other MMOs of its kind have faced.

Champions Online

Champions Online is much like the game City of Heroes, in fact made by many of the same people, only better. Every single character you could ever hope to create or think of you can with its unique and very detailed character creator. It has a skill tree that gives you direction but does not prohibit you from taking any power you want. The beautiful art direction looks like a wonderful comic book. This game has great expectations and is expected to release Q3 2009.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

The Old Republic made a huge appearance at E3 as it was announced as being the first MMO ever to be fully voiced. Set in the Knights of the Old Republic Universe, 100 years before Darth Vader is born. This MMO has a lot of room to move with its lore. Sith, Jedi, Bounty Hunter, Republic Trooper, Sith Scout, and a lot more are just some of the classes available. The way that I like to describe this MMO is full BioWare RPG only and MMO. They have set the standard high with this one, lets hope they can keep it. It is set to release sometime in 2010.

Star Trek Online
Star Trek Online, a game that many fans like myself have been waiting for. Now what would make a Star Trek game good? Well Cryptic Studios has felt that big is what would. This game is promised to be huge with plenty of space to explore, hundreds of planets to colonize and tons of ships to battle. You can play as part of the Federation or the Klingon Empire. You can be any of the races and even create your own race if you choose. Ships are fully customizable and a wide selection is available. Away missions where you beam down to planets will be there also and friends can join in on those too. The Design for this game looks good, lets hope that the mechanics and game play will work well also. This game is set to release in 2010.

Lets hope that these three MMOs can give a jump start to the SciFi brand that is lacking. They all have great promise and look good, we’ll see if they hold up to their potential.

World of Warcrack

There is no doubt that video games can become addicting and control a person, and one of the most well known for being able to control people is the extremely popular MMO, World of Warcraft. There have been many a tale about people’s lives being over run by this addictive substance. Many people require assistance and help for this addictive behavior, and sometimes the reactions are not always the best. In this particular scenario, a young boy has just had his World of Warcraft account taken away from him, and his loving brother was able to record his initial reaction for our own enjoyment. This boy has serious issues, and all I want to know is; what the heck is he trying to do with that remote, and where the heck did his clothes go? World of Warcraft is a drug, it truly is the World of Warcrack.

Darkfall Online

A good MMO is hard to come by, and a great one is even harder. Unfortunately, I would say Datfall Online is neither of these. So many companies have such great ideas, but they just don’t have the resources to achieve them. This seems to be what has plagued the team behind Darkfall. The principles of the game are amazing and if it had been done right I would say that it could have competed with World of Warcraft. However as of now it feels like it is still in early development and actually far from completion. Free hand fighting, rather than point click and wait was actually really fun and made combat enjoyable and less repetitive. However, the whole UI felt very cluttered and hard to use. It did not feel user friendly, and having to switch from combat and non-combat became a real burden, and looting was always a pain. This game is not for the casual gamer either, with full loot, full PVP, ganks are frequent so there is no reason to get attached to any of your items. It is a great element in a game, but of course it does have it’s downsides and became really frustrating depending on the frequency of ganks. Also, the servers are in Europe so ping is terrible for any US gamers but it is still playable, while I played I had roughly a ping of just over 200 ms. I really wish this game was better, it looks epic but I just don’t think it is ready yet. The initial release of the game really showed how prepared they were, which I would say is one of the worst roll outs of a game that I have ever seen, as accounts sales were extremely limited. Hopefully it will be better after a little more development, so we will have to see what it is like in a year or two, until then I can only dream.

If you would like to check this game out you can get it here. The game costs 42 Euros with a little over 11 Euros a month.