Lineage 2 is the successor to the reigning subscriptions champ in the MMO world, Lineage. Based firmly on its predecessor’s strengths, Lineage 2 is shaping up to be one of the best MMOs I’ve ever played…and it’s still in closed beta. To be fair to other MMOs with betas passed, Lineage 2 has been released in Korea and is in open beta in Japan. So the North American closed beta is an iteration of an already released product, but still, it’s nice to see an MMO with this level of completeness at this stage in the game. If releasing games in other countries is the only way to get a product into the North American market that’s respectable at launch, I say call up NATO and strike a distribution deal.