Defiance – The Ultimate MMORPG Experience?

There’s been a demand for something truly unique in the MMORPG scene for quite some time now. It’s not that the games designers and publishers aren’t constantly being innovative or creating entire new worlds that are stunning to see. It’s just that it’s all been done before to one extent or another.

So Trion Worlds have managed to change all of that in one fell swoop but this swoop didn’t come quickly. As a matter of fact this particular “swoop” took over 3 years of development time but in the end you have something that is really unique in the MMORPG universes – a game that is tied to a TV show. Now most people are instantly thinking “Running Man” (which was actually written by Stephen King) but we’re not quite at that level.

Instead what Defiance does is take an MMORPG game with an open world and they’ve tied it to a TV show of the same name where the TV series influences the game and vice versa. This is a pretty ground breaking move in games development because this isn’t just a tie in or crappy game-to-movie (like the awful, awful, awful Doom) or movie-to-game (take your pick of great movies that have been turned into terrible games) – it’s something totally different.

So what is the game all about? Well in a future Earth mankind and alienkind have been locked in battle for decades and the world has been torn to shreds as a result of all this fighting. The entire game takes place in the San Francisco bay area which you may have guessed from seeing any of the early trailers or previews of the game although the TV show is actually filmed in a different location.

You can play as either a human or alien and enjoy all the usual progressive weapon, armour and ability upgrades as you gain experience in the Defiance world. And the Defiance world is something to behold in itself because of its true open-play nature – you’ll never have to pause at the edge of one zone while the next zone loads which is something that always takes away from real game enjoyment.

And the environment also supports several thousand live players at any one time which gives the game huge scope and what is looking like a very long life span. But what does it all look like? Well this game is very polished looking and is on par with, if not exceeds, the level of graphical complexity you’ve come to expect from the very best MMOs.

And Trion Worlds aren’t going to deny anyone the ability to enjoy the Defiance MMORPG world because it supports gamers on PC, Xbox 360 and the PS3 also so you can expect a lot of gamers to test the waters of the Defiance universe to see what it’s all about.