Drift City

Here's our regular recap of the past week's ZAM features and noteworthy news stories. You can find more links after the jump. There's even more news where this came from, so head over to our news archive where you can search by tag if you'd like to see everything that happened this week on ZAM.

ZAM Features

SWG: Being a Jedi has Never Been Easier: Christopher "Pwyff" Tom takes a look at the current state of Star Wars Galaxies following its turbulent history of massive changes.

Chinese MMOs: Ripping off WoW?: With the newly announced World of Fight looking like a copy of World of Warcraft, Sam "azerian" Maxted asks if Chinese MMO developers are just copying the West.

The Birth of Millennium City: Jack Emmert, chief creative officer at Cryptic, gives us an exclusive look at the story behind Champion Online's Millennium City.

Exclusive Champions Online Media: In addition to Emmert's story, Cryptic also sent us some exclusive screenshots of Millennium City.

Talking with Terry 'Ming' White of WorldOfMing.com: Pwyff speaks with one of the biggest names in competitive World of Warcraft.

Some of you might remember that a little over a month ago, I was lamenting the lack of a triple-A driving MMO. Driving is definitely a genre that could be made to work in MMOs and while previous attempts have failed, this type of games shouldn't be written off as a bad idea. In the absence of a big name title to play, I decided to try one of the free-to-play games currently on the market. In the end I settled on Drift City, as it seemed to have the most in common with traditional MMOs.

Unlike some other online driving games, Drift City features an open world containing a variety of solo and group-based content. Most of the other driving "MMOs" I looked at were simply a series of lobbies, from which players could compete in one-off races. This isn't the case with Drift City, and if you can get through the confusing installation process, there's actually a decent little game in there.