I wonder what the people who called WoW ''too cartoony'' would say about those screenshots?

Not too interested after seeing those screens. But, doesn''t FFXI have one of the largest subscription bases? Or am I wrong.

I think it''s safe to say the MMORPG realm is solidly in the PC platform.

However, I do think that an MMORPG with proximity voice on the next iteration of X-Box Live would be enough for me to get involved. But I find that the games that draw me in (MMOs, anyway) are modern/post-apocalyptic.

Oh gawd no! Voice chatting in MMORPG with people you don''t know, is going to suck. Trust me, you don''t want hear my voice coming out of my dwarf/gnome avatar. The way MMOG will do well on a console is with the action genre than RPG, outside of Action/RPG. A straight up PC-style MMORPG will bomb huge on consoles.

Voice chatting should only be allowed with humans playing the races.

I would only like that if I had the ability to say specifically who I did and didn''t want to hear voice from.

Honestly, I don''t see how an actual MMORPG would work on a console. Admittedly, I haven''t played FFXI, so maybe it works smashingly, but I look at all the text chat that goes on in any MMORPG, and either a) can''t imagine not having it there and b) can''t imagine HEARING it instead of reading it. I don''t want to hear every jackass yelling ""I''m so HIGH right now..."" But I don''t want to NOT hear that a guy''s selling the Outrunner''s Assless Chaps of Fortitude for 2s (Just what I need to finish the Outrunner''s Gimp Suit!!!) if I want. I would feel like I needed not only my controller, but a keyboard.

Yeah, I remember selling those at Circuit City. So THAT''s what the 2 guys who ever bought one were doing.

The problem is that you either have to build the UI for the keyboard or for the controller. Look at FFXI for the perfect example. They didn''t build their UI for keyboards at all, that is why I hated playing the game on my PC. With PSO, I have to put down my controller to type and vise versa. PSO would rock with voice chat, small number of players. But when you have 5,000 people on a server voice chat just won''t work.

For todays MMORPG, I use command line interface to play the game and I hotkey my abilities so I never have to click the icons.

I have tried one of the logitech keyboards for the GC and I didn''t like it. It just doesn''t feel right, like the standard controllers do.

The future of online gaming for consoles are not the huge virtual worlds, I don''t think they''ll ever do well. I think a better future is persistent state characters. Players make a character and grow that character in different games (same franchise) and on different servers.

Id like to see a voice to text translator integrated into a console mmo.

Hell, itd be great to see one in a pc MMO

How would they do volume control? Can you imagine someone screaming all the time to grief others? I mean the anonimity will kill voice chat. How will you know who says what to ignore them or get the banned? Can you imagine someone losing it because they died whining for heals and they didnt realize the healer was out of mana? No thank you, I dont want to be chewed out by an asshat when playing video games.

On the other side, I wouldnt want someone to hear some of the things I vent in frustration when they make a mistake either. Do you really want a group mate to hear you call them a stupid motherf*cker when lag can cause perceptions of events to vary drastically?

Apparently this game could also be hitting the PC, PS2 or Cube by late 2005.. cross platform MMO? (Like FF I''d imagine)

Would make more sense to go PC and Xbox 2 (similar to Citizen Zero) and then possibly PS3 and Revolution.

Again with the nothing nice to say. Citizen Zero is far from vaporware and was one of my favorite games from the last E3. Myself and 8 compadres played through the entire mission that was on demo. Superb teamwork oreinted gameplay in with Halo controls but from a 3rd person perspective.

GI.biz reported yesterday their plan to release it multi-platform on current gen consoles by the end of 2005. Seeing how it was created with current-gen in mind, it makes the most sense. I would like to see it on Xbox 2 however (a''la Halo 2.5 - HDef and more).

I''ve been thinking that lately, and I have no problems at all with a 2006 launch date. Of course I''d love to have H2.5 HD, but there''s so many quality titles and the Xbox is finally picking up stride, if they released a new one it would cut the userbase a bit.

Then again, that''s another 2 whole years.. I might be changing my tune at the end of 2005.

Yeah and I agree with it. MS would be silly to wait until E3 to annouce Xbox 2. So if we don''t see it in Vegas or at teh devs convention then its not coming this year. I really think Xbox has just hit its stride as far as games and mindshare so it would be a waste to have to upgrade so soon. Besides this past Quarter should be the first time MS has made money off the Xbox.

Though MS has seemingly positioned itself to launch a new console.

As for being realistic in respect to CZ''s chances for release....most hyped titles (see BC and many others) that don''t see the light of day also don''t give the masses extended play time or any play time. I know its a publishing issue but my guess is from the conversations I had with the devs is that MS is still in the loop and Xbox 2 makes good sense.

Note all games that even resemble massive multi-player have seemingly moved off of XB.