This week, there’s one game licking at the edges of every player’s conversation, flying off the shelves and dominating entertainment news as a source of infinite controversy. Grand Theft Auto IV, the newest in the family of Rockstar’s questionable line-up arrived on shelves this past Tuesday much to the glee of fervently waiting gamers. GTA is well known to many, including non-gamers, for the flak GTA III drew for ultra-violence against the police and innocents, strong language, nudity, drug & alcohol use and adult situations (that often included prostitutes or strip clubs).

Despite the game already being rated M for “Mature”, conservative groups all over the country continue to demonize the franchise for capitalizing off of filth and allegedly encouraging deviant, delinquent behavior in children. While gamers expected to hear the predictable off-kilter spin from the ever-splenic Jack Thompson (who, naturally, has been demanding that lawmakers indict Take-Two for “providing pornographic material to minors” and planting “viruses” in this country’s youth), the generally well-respected group MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) has also come down hard on GTAIV. After formally requesting Rockstar halt distribution, it became clear that their issue stems from the fact that drunk driving is allowable in game. It is pertinent, however, to note that the player can choose to decide whether or not the character will drive home, hail a cab or walk it off. That right there is what makes the game interesting to me—choice.

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When you think of a MMORPG, you immediately think of knights. You think of goblins. You think of dark, dank dungeons. You think of a beautiful woman in need of some rescuing. Of course, there’s always been a few exceptions to the standard fantasy rule–some have even been pretty awesome. There’s been MMORPGs set in space like Anarchy Online and Eve Online. There’s even been complete pieces of shit masquerading as reality MMORPGs like Second Life or The Sims Online. But the most successful MMORPG of our time revolves around the conflict between Orcs and Humans. It’s medieval fantasy. It’s World of Warcraft.

Of course, everything’s eventual and nothing lasts forever. Everything must come to an end. You can see the future, if you look hard enough at the past. Someday World of Warcraft will lose the majority of its subscribers like Everquest did. Someday Azeroth will be over. And even if Illidan himself argues you are not prepared, he’s wrong. You can prepare yourself for the end of WoW.

You can also just look at the upcoming online games and decide for yourself if any of them have the force to displace WoW or if they’re going to be duds. There are a lot of games coming up for either Q4 of 2007 or Q1 of 2008. Some of them even look a little interesting. Here’s four titles I think stand out above the crowd:

Tabula Rasa looks good in theory. Fuck, even their marketing looks good; to promote the game’s upcoming release, they held a party this week in an anti-gravity chamber. How cool is that? Richard Garriott, the creator of the game, writes this about TR:

“In creating Tabula Rasa, I was determined to break away from our roots in medieval fantasy and develop a solid science fiction universe.”

This statement is exciting, any gamer could tell you that. If TR actually breaks the mold like it promises, online gamers could find themselves in for a shock; they could find themselves discovering a new side of an old genre. However, let’s also remember that while it promises to be different, promises were meant to be broken. TR’s NDA was lifted a few days ago and the initial feedback is pretty negative. So far this sci-fi MMORPG doesn’t seem to be any different or any more innovative than anything else on the market. It’s supposedly on the boring–”mind numbingly tedious,” I believe one beta tester said–side as well. As for my personal stance, let’s just say I like my PvP with a little more PvP and a side of even more PvP; Tabula Rasa, for its part, has no PvP. And after suffering through Final Fantasy XI many years ago, I can tell you that no PvP system is generally a bad choice in game design. Tabula Rasa: October 2007

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