I was looking around the web and remembered that IRE was building a 3D MMO (I believe it had animals as its playable characters). This had huge hype earlier this year, but I haven't heard anything about it for a while. Does anyone know what's going on with it or if it was dropped?

Well I know two of them.

One being http://www.midkemiaonline.com/ which a lot of people were talking of last year and http://www.eartheternal.com/ which is a sister company to IRE if I am not mistaken

Earth Eternal is the one she's thinking of.

Midkemia Online is not going to be 3D either.

Earth Eternal has had closed beta events for some time now, so I'm guessing it will be the first of IRE's works-in-progress to be released publicly.

Earth Eternal betas on Thursdays and Weekends I belive.

Furries Forever!!!!

wheeee, beta. It's still really glitchy, but that's to be expected

I thought it was open beta, since you can buy credits now.

edit:

Also, maybe it's just me, but I don't see how it's really any different from the 10,000 free South Korean games.
And I think I'm enjoying DnD online more now that it's free* also.

http://www.eartheternal.com/

Not played it, but I think it's a bit different than the free Korean MMO's since the dialogue and story are coherent. XD

You guys do that. I'll be over here playing WoW and Aion. Most likely causing people to shed virtual tears.

I love mages.

DnD online is free now?

Been free for a few months now.

DnD online uses the same sort of model as IRE now. Free to play, but perks if you pay. All MMOs should adopt this business model IMHO.

DnD doesn't have the Annual Income of a small country. I personally think that WoW has the better business model.

I think WoW's business model only works as well as it does due to timing, personally. They got in as people were getting tired of EQ and looking for something new, and did better advertising / got a broader appeal ("this is why we're a 'whole new game'!") This hooked a lot of people. I'm not convinced that if WoW was to be released right now that it would do anywhere near as well.

the market is ripe for something big, and something new.

lets just hope it will be something good.

Most players of WoW stayed because 'there wasn't something else to go play'. There is now and WoW subscribers are slowly falling off as people find new games - Aion, LoTR, DDO, Guild Wars. WoW putting out expansions hasn't really saved it much, either. It is the same dry grind and find game and once you get to the new level cap and finish the new raids the game becomes stale once more.

@Kialkarkea: Wizards of the Coast does have the Annual Income of a small country, by the way. DDO Is just really getting its foot in the MMO door, it never really did well on its first run, but its playerbase has shot up since switching to 'free to play, but perks for pay' model.

DnD gets more money per-player than WoW and is growing pretty fast.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/10...ree-to-play.ars

It's loads better than the free Korean alternatives out there, like gPotato. If it weren't for the annoying click-to-attack interface, my grades would be in trouble.

You forgot the blizzard fanboy factor.

The only reason I started with WoW was because my friends at TAFE, who were all blizzard fans and played anything the company produced obsessively, were playing.

Well that and the fact that they did the unthinkable and released game time cards in the countries that they sold the game in.

Blizzard fanboys were pretty small at launch relative to the game's fanbase. There's a huge chunk of people that don't even know there was an RTS series.