Ground Control 2 : Operation Exodus takes place during the year 2741 AD, roughly 300 years after the events in the original game. The democratic and freedom caring Northern Star Alliance (NSA) is being hard pressed by the warmongering Terran Empire. The war has recently entered a new stage; a brutal and deadly ground war, as the Empire has managed to land their first troopships on the last NSA controlled planet – Morningstar Prime.

If you’re a follower of Mythic’s popular MMOG Dark Age of Camelot, this was certainly anything but a slow news week. Mark Jacobs, Mythic’s President, made a rare appearance on the official site July 29th with a State of the Game address that gave an honest appraisal of some issues in the game and an overview of what Mythic was going to do to solve them, Matt Firor, Producer, then posted more details about these changes the next day. Here’s our reaction to the postings.

"Dungeon Lords" blends the depth of an epic Fantasy RPG with the flexibility of an FPS-style control system. Gamers journey through a land of ancient castles and dungeon lairs to engage in real-time tactical combat with a variety of deadly foes. It's not just about the battles though, as magic spells and hundreds of powerful weapons and artifacts play a huge role in the game.

Imagine a vast, detailed world of swords and sorcery, of dragons and knights, of fiery swords and chests overflowing with treasure… a world in which a myriad of sentient races and creatures, many of whom players will be able to base a character on, live and affect change. A place where players can follow very different paths of advancement, including assuming the roles of adventurers, crafters and merchants.

Dark and Light is a real-time 3D massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) set in the heroic fantasy and medieval fantastic worlds on a 15,000 square mile area, which has been divided into 10 Kingdoms of discovery and adventures and two protected learning Kingdoms. Two alignments are opposed to impose their magic, the Dark one and the Light one ...

The Blood Magic is an original 3rd person perspective RPG where the weapon of choice is magic. In this game, the player controls an Unlikely Hero in an ambitious search through many hostile environments looking for Modo, the ethereal being bent on destroying the world. The game is one of rich story-telling in a mostly medieval world, allowing the player a wide variety of choices both in individual quests and character development.

Larger in scope than its predecessor, EverQuest II will be able to host hundreds of thousands of simultaneous users from all over the world. And, due to increased localization features including real-time translation in English, French, German, Japanese and Korean, as well as localized servers in select countries, players from every corner of the earth will be able to explore familiar areas and new, undiscovered territories of Norrath.

Set in Indonesia in the near future, Joint Operations takes the player to a country on the verge of disintegration. Regional independence movements have acquired advanced weaponry as the nation's military splits into competing factions. Escalating violence threatens innocent civilians and Western economic interests.

I’m going to take a break from directing my rants towards one development team and instead examine the commitments persistent-world games require, and some steps current and future games are taking to resolve them.

Horizons, an online epic adventure, is based in the massively multiplayer fantasy world, Istaria. A world of legend and lore filled with humans, fiends, dragons and many other traditional fantasy roles, Horizons allows thousands of players to adventure together in the civilized and untamed regions of the world.