It seems to me that most of the MMOs in development in past years have been mostly clones of their competition. This is extremely frustrating when one of the requirements of your job is to play as many of these games as possible. One of the reasons I'm excited about Jumpgate Evolution is because it seems to break that stale mold that has flooded the genre with redundantly repetitive products. Fortunately, during our first demonstration and live gameplay session at New York Comic Con, I learned this to be true. What's more, it’s more enjoyable than I previously thought it would be.

Our meeting with the Jumpgate Evolution team started with a bang when we realized Scott Brown, the President of NetDevil, would be giving us our tour. One of the first things he said to draw us in was about the kind of game JGE is striving to be. "What we're working on is both a full PvP and PvE MMO. You can play whichever way you want. One of the things we're trying to do is to not make you decide that you only want to do PvP or PvE. There are different parts of the game that have different rulesets, but both of which are complete games," said Brown.

He continued by explaining the game mechanics aren't based around a behind the scenes dice roll like we’re all used to. "There's no dice roll here. It's really meant to be much more of a true action game." To recap so far, they're building a deep space MMO, with action-like game mechanics that are mostly dependant on the individual skill of the player. In my opinion, this is the kind of original thinking more companies need to be taking. Obviously, with originality there’s the risk the end result may not be enjoyable to the masses. That said, I believe that’s a risk any truly successful game needs to take.

You may be happy to know character creation will be a breeze as there are no classes that you're forced to choose. Instead, your skillsets are completely dependant on your ship and the ship's hardware (read: equipment). There is quite a bit of ship variety but you'll have to earn the right to pilot some ships through the acquisition of licenses. Scott mentioned obtaining licenses in the game is similar to the Gran Turismo style.

Moreover, hardcore players will be happy to know that in addition to rare equipment, there will be the opportunity to obtain advanced licenses. Now it's easy to assume this means that skill will play little factor if a player has a plethora of advanced licenses and gear; however, the skill involved is evident from your first battle. For instance, you actually have to aim and stay on your target to do damage. From what I can tell, they've really taken strides to branch away from the "auto-attack" approach that most MMOs incorporate, in one way or another.

Now you might be wondering how JGE matches up with Eve Online. For starters, the team has focused on making the economy less important than combat. Personally, I like the economy focus that exists within Eve, but at the end of the day it's only beneficial and more importantly enjoyable, to those would be elitists who have the time to spend years working towards their Titan.

Moving on to the PvP within the game, which is one of the games more notable features, we were curious to know how the game would run in environments that had epic, large scale battles. The concern I raised was there would be no way skill could play a part if these PvP battles were completely dependant on the player's computer and internet connection. This thinking was quickly corrected. "We built this game to run on everything. It doesn't even require a shader. ... One of the advantages you get from that is that you can deal with lots of players on the screen at the same time because the game is naturally running on such a high frame rate." said Brown. He went on to mention how they expect some of these epic battles, ideally suited for 50v50v50, to run efficiently on an average PC.

With that in mind, it's important to note there will be two different types of PvP: open and instanced.  We didn't get all the specifics but we know the essentials of how these will work. Open will be an area that anyone can join in the fight. Players will be fighting for control of an object, planet, or otherwise. There will be perks for the factions that control these areas and will likely be extremely popular. Instanced PvP will be more like your traditional closed arena or battleground. Either should be enjoyable and promises to provide variety to keep PvP action fresh throughout the player's career.

Now it wouldn't be an MMO without a cool user interface. Luckily for eager modders, this "scale form" flash UI will be fully customizable. We wanted to know if they would be reaching out to the mod community and they sounded excited about that possibility. Let's hope they don’t strike out there.

In closing, Jumpgate Evolution was everything I had hoped for and was beyond what I expected. Visually speaking the universe was exceedingly cosmetically pleasing and breathtakingly vibrant to boot. They are shooting for a summer release and told us beta is poised to be a "sort of an any day now kind of opportunity." Now that I've seen the game, I'm sold. If you're ready for a fresh new look at what an MMO can be, sign up for beta and if you’re lucky, you might just get to join in on the fun.

Andrew "Tamat" Beegle
Editor-in-Chief
Allakhazam.com