Ethan

While most of these MMOGs will be shown at E3, by no means will all of them be shown. In fact, a good portion of the games made by independent developers won't be at E3. Among others this inclides Bang! Howdy, Crusade, Exanimus, Darkfall Online, Roma Victor, and even Fallen Earth - none of whose studios show up on the exhibitor list.

While the thread title is indeed "pre-E3 roundup", Jennie goes on to say that she's trying to write a "comprehensive overview of every MMO we currently know to be in development." I believe this includes longshot niche products like the ones I linked to.

Two more "niche" MMOGs that I've been following:

Adellion:
http://www.adellion.com

Atriarch:
http://www.atriarch.com

Over and out- Ethan

There's a MMOG that I've been following for years that isn't on this list. I know the list is bound to be incomplete, but sometimes you have to be an advocate.

It's being made by first-time developers Shadowpool Studios. It shoots for a pretty early-90s, hardcore, RP-heavy idea of MMO gaming. It features permanent death after 100 lives, 12 races (including dragons), a skill-based classless character progression system, the ability to discover unique innovations to skills that only you have access to and can teach to other players, player settlements and politics, a strong religion system, a closed scarcity-based economy with each settlement minting its own currency, a complex crafting system, and full worldwide PvP. Characters can die from hunger, thirst, poison, disease, and exposure to the elements. Communication is heavily limited: each race has a separate language and you can only speak to people within shouting range (no OOC chat or /tells.) While you can travel via ships and wagons, there is no teleportation, and the world is supposed to be so huge that it might take RL hours to get between settlements. It's basically the Nethack MMOG.

It's an incredibly ambitious design, but it's built on principles I believe in: namely, that there should be true risk to your character in the gameworld. The developers have refused to give a release date, but things are looking like it might be out in 2009 - that is, if the devs actually have their act together. While it has a strong community, most of us are skeptical that the game will actually be released. If it doesn't come out, somebody else will take up the flag.

Anyway, enough rambling. The game is called Trials of Ascension and is located here:

http://www.shadowpool.com

There's a fansite that has archives of every single piece of lore and game information released over the last 4 years here: http://trialsofascension.net

And another good fansite here: http://www.luciaslibrary.com

Anyway, just had to chime in on behalf of my dream game.