When we first saw Galaxies, we thought: "Finally, here's the MMORPG that's going to appeal to the hardcore and the casual player" - it'll cross the divide, so to speak. Have you found that to be the case, or is it still only the hardcore MMOPRG fans that are playing?

Blackman: You know, we're just not branching out into the mainstream - if you ask me that in six months I think I'd have a better response. Our initial push was to try and get the hardcore MMORPG players in there first because they're the ones that are going to form the foundations of the community, and Galaxies is really community-driven.

We encourage players to create a virtual community within the game, by building cities for example... So we really wanted to get the foundation there, so that when the more casual gamers got in there, all the support networks were already up and running.

We're working on the space expansion right now, and I think a lot of players are really looking forward to that, and I think that that's going to have a huge impact on bringing in the more casual or mainstream players.