Midgard is radically different from other online worlds because it combines styles of play from different genres, both traditional single-player as well as other multi-player games. Blending elements of role-playing, city building, resource management, exploration, diplomacy and much more, the world will eventually be populated by thousands of other players, cooperating and competing to build the strongest, richest, and most influential communities. The aim of Midgard is to deliver varied and addictive game-play, while rewarding social interaction between players. Balance is also of utter importance, whether it is the balance between resources and economy, the balance between humankind and nature, or the balance between various crafts and trades. Since supply and demand is at the heart of Midgard, every profession is as important as any other.

There was a demo of Midgard being shown behind closed doors at ECTS. Unfortunately I was too late and they were booked full so I couldn't see it, but Jørgen Tharaldsen, Product Manager at Funcom took some time to tell me everything I wanted to know about Midgard, the demo and more. In this two page article are the things he told me (and more...).
(Accompanying the article you will fing several high quality artwork images, some of which are relatively new and scanned pages from the brochure they showed at ECTS).

Professions and Skills
Midgard is set in Scandinavia during the times of the Vikings (1000 years ago) offering a blend of Norse mythology, history and real life simulation. As a player you are part of the community inhabiting this world, where your main goal is to raise your social, professional, and political status. Initially when you start the game you have to choose a profession. There is a variety of choices that are open for you. You can opt to become a blacksmith, a hunter, a carpenter or a farmer, to name a few. Depending on your choice you will start in one of the starting villages and you can start becoming a specialist in your profession.
Only a few professions will be available to you from the start, but in time you will get access to better skills by seeking out mentors who can learn them to you, allowing you to reach the more advanced professions.

The concept of age is an important issue in Midgard. Even though you as a player do not get older, your experience in your profession is effected by the amount of time you have spend as is your wisdom. This allows a player who wants (and can) be online very frequently to go for the more advanced professions. Yet this does not limit the players with less time on their hands. As not everyone can be a leader in a community, there is a definite need for all kinds of players in Midgard.

Learning skills is a very essential part of the game. As a hunter, the hunting skills are very important of course, but how about the skills which allow you to cook the potential meal you just killed? You will not die from not eating or drinking anything, but you will get weak and not be able to move so fast as before or be able to be the winner in a fight with one of the animals. So there might be a lot of related skills that are useful to learn, given the profession that you choose.
And if you want you can even change your profession thus allowing you to play the game in many other ways as well, but to balance things you can only specialise in one trade at the time.

You will also encounter several quests on your way, some are hard some are easy. Once you finished the quest you will be rewarded of course and might find some special items or even get a new skill.
And even though there is no magic as such in the game, as it didn't exist in the time of the Vikings, there are Shamans who work with charms and potions and can do the things that some might think of as being magically.

Community Building
You can not play Midgard as it is intended without taking an active part in the community.
There is room for those who want to persue the role of a leader. For that you need to be very present in a village and thus raise your standing. Villages can also be part of an alliance, which allows them to trade goods with each other and thus becoming stronger and more successful.

You can also be part of a guild belonging to your profession. The guild is made up of both players and NPCs. Not all trades will have a guild from the start, but you can set up your own. To stay a member of a guild a fee has to be paid on a regular basis and goods need to be shared at occasions. But being in a guild will also give you the opportunity to access the special guild quests and have access to valuable items you would not have when you were on your own.

If a guild is a bit too much for you than you can still go for a clan like structure. In a clan all kinds of players can participate and not only the once who share your profession. Players in a clan can also opt to go out and create a village of their own, for which they would definitely need different professions in the clan in order to even think about doing such a thing. But care has to be taken in constructing a new village. The place you build it must be right and you will have to make sure that all the resources required for maintaining the village are present. If not then the village will soon fall apart.

Midgard is a kingdom and as such all villages are expected to pay taxes and support their king. However the kings arm only reaches the southern part of Midgard, so when villages are being build further north the king's presence is not felt that much anymore, nor is his protection. Then you even might decide to team together with another village and make a stand against the beasts and barabarians and even against the king himself if you feel up to it.

The total number of villages that can be constructed in the game is however limited to 50. There is also a limited amount of people on a single server as well. They don't want the world to become too crowded. So there will definitely be multiple servers on which you can play. It is however not possible to take your character from one server to another as this would be far too complex to do.

Resources
As you should have gathered by now each profession needs resources. And to get some of the resources you need to work together with others in order to get them. Let's say for example that you would like to travel the seas. You will need the skills for that of course, but you also need to have a boat. To make the boat you need wood and skilled carpenters. Someone needs to make the sail as well. So you can not make a boat on your own, it should be a team effort. With the boat you can go fishing and bring the fish back to the village, which can be eaten and traded. So a boat can be very beneficial for a village as it gives them food from the sea.

But you should be careful with resources, if you would chop down a complete forest than nature will fight back and you might find yourself being attacked by bears or other creatures constantly leading to your own demise. You should try to find a balance in all things you do.

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