A couple weeks ago I stumbled upon the recent "Community Q&A" released by the development team of Black Prophecy, an upcoming sci-fi MMORPG. The Q&A was an interesting read, although it didn't prove to be a spectacularly informative piece for MMO fans who haven't been following the game's continued development. Since I fell into that category as well, the Q&A piqued my interest more than anything else. After all, there's not a whole lot to choose from in the mainstream market right now if you're a sci-fi fan and you don't play EVE Online. Sure, we have titles like 2029 Online, Exteel and PlanetSide—along with a few others—that have been generally well-received as niche releases over the years.

The developers have touted the fact that every space fighter model will be made up of 20,000 polygons, and the environments you'll be flying through won't be limited to the usual black space with pinhole stars. The game showcases an impressive and unique visual style by using a rich set of special effects that highlight gorgeous detail of interstellar phenomena like asteroid belts, nebulae, planet rings and gas clouds. The graphics actually resemble something you'd expect from a standalone PC game, rather than an MMO. That said, there's a reason many MMO developers choose not to push their graphics to the limits; most people would rather play at respectable frames per second than have to deal with GPU bottlenecks. We'll have to bookmark that thought for now and hope it has been optimized well enough to actually play at release.

The developers have touted the fact that every space fighter model will be made up of 20,000 polygons, (Black Prophecy Gold)and the environments you'll be flying through won't be limited to the usual black space with pinhole stars. The game showcases an impressive and unique visual style by using a rich set of special effects that highlight gorgeous detail of interstellar phenomena like asteroid belts, nebulae, planet rings and gas clouds. The graphics actually resemble something you'd expect from a standalone PC game, rather than an MMO. That said, there's a reason many MMO developers choose not to push their graphics to the limits; most people would rather play at respectable frames per second than have to deal with GPU bottlenecks. We'll have to bookmark that thought for now and hope it has been optimized well enough to actually play at release.