good. im tired of MMO's *Aways* being rpgs. level caps, skill trees, earth spell, fire spell, water spell, wind spell, buffs, debuffs, pets, "my sword's big""no, my sword's bigger, and it zigzags.", monsters with disposable income, and icons as far as the eye can see. is no one able to move away from these played out devices?

Wow this actually sounds pretty cool. Never played Dreamfall but TLJ was a great game.

If the teaser video is anything to go by, this is clearly going to be the best game ever. That was really well done. Her apartment building reminded me of Dark Water (the original) and don't you just hate coming home to a cenobite on the ceiling?

First off, wtf happened to Fidget? Can we get a blog post explaining this atrocity?

Secondly, how do they intend to support a massive number of people playing an action game at the same time? These games are already struggling to deal with latency issues just using tried and true button press combat.

Sounds like a pickle to me!

This is all well and good, but this is also Funcom we're talking about here. Their feature list for AO would have been great if they implemented it any time in the first three years of the game and if the engine actually supported more than 30 players in the same place for the first few months....

Considering they overpromised a huge amount for their Conan game as well, it's a bit hard to believe they've learned their lesson.

However, I must admit it's a lovely teaser. Something very Megaten-like about it, too.

Turbine made the attempt at a semi-action MMO with DDO. It wasn't a total failure in the mechanics -- their failures lay elsewhere, primarily. As long as the animation sequences blend together well, with neither glitching nor locked-out periods in which you cannot act, and with some clever client-side fudging, I think it's possible. It won't perhaps be quite as quick and responsive as a good fighter on a console, but it won't necessarily be awful.

Personally, I'm looking forward to this. I've been following TSW since they announced it in 2007. It looks really promising.

A lack of levels or classes or experience points really isn't anything new. There have been role-playing games around for nearly 20 years which have done this. This is just one of the more mainstream games to do it.

J, you are right that class- and experience-free role playing games aren't new, but they are unconventional as far as most MMORPGs go. I wouldn't quite call TSW mainsteam either, at least not yet. I think the press and promotion for it has been quite low-key when compared to other big-name titles, a la Starcraft or WoW expansions.

The idea sounds awsome. We have to see how it turns out in the end (and if the game ever makes it to that point).
But I'll definately keep an eye on it.

I strongly suspect that the progression system will be like Eve - there are no levels of classes, but there are skills to learn. And learning skills will take time - Eve has timer, other games require you to use skills to improve them. Or maybe there will be lengthy quests to acquire each skill.

MMO action games have been done - Rappelz, Space Cowboy (aka Air Rivals).

I am still pretty excited about the game. After playing AO, I confirm that FC is good at creating worlds that feel alive and have cryptic mysteries sprinkled all over them.

Man, Tom. I wish you'd have used a different picture for the page. It kind of ruined the dramatic effect of the movie because I expected it once she picked up the milk shake...