Global Agenda and my MMO virginity

I don’t play MMOs.

In my career as a games writer, I’ve barely written about them. I understand where aspects of the offline RPG and the ones online intersect. I know about the genre from friends and peers, and those same people have helped me become familiar with some of the culture and specifics of various MMO offerings.

Now, the reasons I’m not juggling avatars on servers are many: never been much of  a PC gamer, Tolkien-esque fantasy rarely grabs me, level grinding just isn’t my thing. Also, any kind of online gaming tends to bring out my inner misanthrope, with the exception of Left 4 Dead.

But, a few upcoming MMOs will be giving me reasons to finally explore the massively multiplayer landscape. I’ve written about one before and I got the chance to see another at GDC. 
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Developed by Hi-Rez Studios, Global Agenda’s an action-heavy MMO set in a near-future world where the Commonwealth, a Big-Brother style government, is abducting special operatives and converting them into mindless warriors. As a player, you start off as a recently freed agent who links up with a liberating Agency. Agencies are equivalent to guilds; larger collectives of Agencies are called alliances.

One of the reasons Global Agenda looks attractive to me is its sci-fi focus and emphasis on action. It’s making use of the Unreal 3 engine and as the Hi-Rez rep who gave me a demo said, “We’re not fighting the engine; we’re doing what it does best, which is small-team combat.” The idea of hundreds of squads skirmishing in large-scale battles that have nothing to do with mystical artifacts definitely piques my interest, making Global Agenda a good candidate to lead me across the MMO threshold.

We’ll have more on Global Agenda, Hi-Rez Studios and the status of my MMO virginity in the coming months.