First, you choose a side, sapiens or alternatives, and then you choose a character class. So far, that appears to be either a light, a medium, or a heavy kind of soldier.  You customise his appearance and, as he levels up, his skills.  The game consists of a series of battlegrounds, against either NPCs, or against the other side.  As your side gains territory, you gain additional advantages.  As you level up, you unlock new skills.  The game is twitch-based, which means that there are no hidden, number crunching mechanics at play.  If you aim well, you'll hit your target.  If you don't, having the Uberblaster of the Vorpal Void won't do you a bit of good. 

Judge for yourselves. A lengthy walkthrough of the game can be found here, and it gives you a very solid feel for what's in store when Huxley finally releases.

In complete contrast to Huxley, it seems that a game that was both highly anticipated and thought to be very much alive may, in fact, be dead.  Of course we're talking about Stargate Worlds.  We wrote about this in a prior issue of MMO Weekly: the symptoms of the game's impending demise are all there.  The developer  hasn't paid their employees since before Christmas, they're being sued for unpaid bills, they haven't released any significant information about the game for months, and they can't get something as simple as PR right, even when it would benefit them to do so. 

Now it seems that someone very close to the Stargate IP is wondering what's going on as well.  A producer for the television series, Brad Wright, was recently asked about the game, and his response was telling.  “We don't know,” he said bluntly.  “It’s a shame. If it doesn’t happen — and, let’s be honest, it should be happening now if it was happening. It’s a shame. It’s a terrible shame."

The bottom line is that no one knows what's going on over at Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, the developer behind Stargate Worlds.  Is the game dead?  Is Cheyenne going out of business?  Will the IP to Stargate Worlds be sold?  We'd love to know, and Cheyenne is, for the time being, being very tight-lipped about this highly anticipated MMO.

Finally, we have information about the MMO that no one is actually talking about, Copernicus.  38 Studios has some big-name talent working on Copernicus, that much is clear.  Of course, that big name talent is famous for doing a wide variety of things unrelated to gaming.  Playing baseball, for example.  Or doing comic book art.  Or writing fantasy books.  There are also some folks involved that may have worked, in one capacity or other, on other MMOs.  Trust me when I tell you that you've never once heard of those folks in your whole life, no matter how hardcore an MMO fanboy you are, but we hear that at least some of those folks are working on the game, too. 

Can a baseball player, a comic book artist, and an author make a great MMO?  We sure don't know, because 38 Studios has a looooong track record of refusing to discuss their game.  Don't get me wrong, they love to give interviews and presentations, during which the panelists or interviewees talk primarily about themselves.  That's a subject they find endlessly fascinating, and they think you should, too.  Well, this week we got another fine example of that kind of thing, when Curt Schilling, the founder of 38 Studios, announced his retirement from baseball during the Games Developers Conference.  Why Curt announced his retirement from sports, then granted interviews on the subject at a video games conference is simply one of the ongoing narcissistic mysteries that 38 Studios provides us every month or two. 

Will we ever learn about Copernicus?  Who knows.  Unfortunately, like so many others, as 38 Studios continues to waste everyones' time with this kind of endlessly self-absorbed drivel, I find that I'm beginning to not care.    

And on that happy note, fellow game geeks, we bring this week's edition of MMO Weekly to a close.  For now, ciao!

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