City State Entertainment teases the MMO crowd something fierce

With pride comes power. With power comes control. With control comes pride. Or so goes the introduction to a new teaser trailer posted by City State Entertainment.

City what who, now? Let's back up a bit.

If you've been in the MMO trenches for any length of time, you're probably familiar with Marc Jacobs, or at the very least the games of Mythic Entertainment -- the company he founded way back in the 1990s.

Dark Age of Camelot, a first-gen MMORPG released in 2001 earned a well-deserved reputation as a superior PvP game due to the presence of three opposing factions -- known as Realm vs. Realm -- instead of just the two we seem to have settled in on these days. As a matter of fact, this is quite specifically something that ArenaNet developers said influenced their decision to do the same in Guild Wars 2's WvWvW game mode. And of course, with former Mythic and DAoC producer Matt Firor heading up The Elder Scrolls Online, you have to bet the design played a role there as well.

In 2009, fans eagerly awaited a second-coming of sorts in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. While this game had some redeeming qualities, it also had some glaring flaws and bugs when it launched, and some consider it the first true MMO "blockbuster failure" that we have come to know all too often today. These events led Jacobs to unceremoniously leave the company he founded.

He disappeared from the gaming scene for a while, but eventually re-emerged with the founding of a new studio, City State Entertainment. Their first project was an iOS game entitled March On Oz, a road-defense style game reminiscent of Plants vs. Zombies, but set in the Oz universe.  

So as far as we knew, that's all that CSE was working on. Casual/mobile/social games, albeit with high production values.

Fast forward to yesterday when this video appeared on my RSS feed. What does it mean? No idea. But the fact that they intentionally called it a teaser means that something is coming. And based on the content of the video, and the lack of any further description, to me implies we're *supposed* to assume a DAoC-like state of mind. That's sound reasoning, no? I'm right, right? 

So, will we see a spiritual return to realm pride in 2013? Could be. This just might be the most interesting gift MMO'ers get this holiday season.