• Next Generation, Friday, October 27, 2006 11:47 AM

A new gaming company called Trion is aiming to develop the next "World of Warcraft" on steroids. For those who aren't familiar with Blizzard Entertainment's massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), some 7 million gamers around the world pay around $15 per month to play an online game in a virtual world.

Players create their own fantastical character, and can choose to do anything--competing with others in quests across the virtual world or just maintaining a shop and selling items and upgrades. It's a serious money-maker for Blizzard, because the use of a single game engine turns out to be a gift that keeps on giving.

Trion thinks it can trump Blizzard Entertainment's success. Founded by Dr. Lars Buttler--a former vice president of Electronic Arts, the world's largest game publisher--and Jon Van Caneghem, creator of the fantasy series "Might and Magic," Trion aims to make large-scale productions that do the same things as MMOGs, but with added capabilities like "user-generated dynamic content...content that you can literally change on the fly," according to Buttler.

That means harnessing the power of broadband: Virtual worlds should be able to be affected by each user and change dynamically in a way that is similar to the real world, only faster. Buttler uses the example of Microsoft's Halo, where there could be an alien spaceship landing at a certain time, the battle would take place, and you could talk about it with your friends the next day.

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