Now, many of us have already played an MMO and owned a pet of some type that was controled, by default, by some rudimentary AI in the game engine.

That isn't what I'm talking about, exactly.

Imagine your character... independent from you... and still functioning.

Consider your character to be like a child that you raise from 1st level. Just like real children, you must periodically turn your back on them and worry about what type of mischief that they could get into while you are not looking.

Why should players have to be directly responsible for the grind aspects of a game?

The possibilities that this creates are truly astounding, as I will proceed to illustrate...

I found an incredibly cool graph illustrating the anticipated future trend of computing, gaming, movies and artificial intelligence. They graph things between Best, Worst and Base Case scenarios, showing a range of just how pleasant or unpleasant things could become. Regardless, it is all inspiring from a technology perspective. Some truly great ideas are listed across the graph; things that I had not previously considered and that the industries affected may not have either. Virtual cinema attendance was one idea that struck me as obvious in retrospect, but predicting the last human produced film and game on such short notice (10 years from now?) is not something that ever occurred to me.

No matter who you are, there is bound to be a few things that spark your interest. I will be using the graph as a repeated inspirational exercise going forward; it's just that cool.

• Atlantica MMO (2433)

  This game came out of nowhere and took the MMO community by storm. It is currently rocking the top of the charts over at MMORPG.com. I downloaded it in-between client checks, since it was free, initially based on the glowing reviews it was being given over on Ten Ton Hammer. I was not disappointed.

  Atlantica takes traditional MMO play-style and turns combat upside down by going back to a turn-based system. At the same time, they also provide the player mandate to populate an entire party of custom selected mercenaries of various abilities that function like additional characters with full enventory and equipment sets. Combining the re-simplification with the excessive complexity results in some strategic gameplay that is reminescent of Final Fantasy.

  If you played the Final Fantasy MMO and found it to be a boring grind, Atlantica's inclusion of up to eight mercenaries will very likely provide what you felt was missing.

• Age of Conan (1984)
• Spore (1948)