For those of you that read my post-E3 wrap-up article, you know my feelings on what a game should be in order for it to be fun. For those of you that did not, basically, what I said was that a game needs to be dynamic, skill-based, and replayable to the Nth degree. I have found a game that meets all these criteria. It is not very well known, but it should be. The game is World War II Online: Battleground Europe.

The game, which is being made by Playnet and Cornered Rat Studios, has been in production since 1999 and has gone through many, many expansions, fixes, upgrades, and so on. Just this October, the version 1.20 patch was released, marking the point when the producers of the game felt that it was solid enough of a product to have a box release for retail sales. Until this time, it has only been possible to play the game by paying for it online and downloading it. Now, coming February 1, 2006, it will be available on the shelves to hopefully increase the player base.

Not that the player base is small, by any means, where it stands now. There is already a large and devoted following of people playing this single instance Massive Multiplayer Online game on a daily basis, some of them who have been consistently playing for over four years, and others joining up every day.