Rule the world in ArchLord

While the world continues to spaff on Warcraft, Codemasters is not-so-quietly building up its own interest in MMOs, having just signed up another Korean MMORPG in the shape of ArchLord.

ArchLord, developed by NHN Games, in open beta in Korea and due out in Q3, is a fairly typical MMO with a nice big juicy twist: every month, one player gets to be an ArchLord, giving them supreme control of the entire world and big scary powers to mash people up with.

That world is called Kantra, and has been styled with Renderware as you can see from the shots, cos, you can pick engines apart by graphics. Sometimes you don't even see the code; you just see blo[THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! Sorry about that, readers - Ed]. Audio (what's that ringing in my ears?) has been recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, which you can't tell from the screenshots.

ArchLord sees players banding together to uncover ancient relics of the Archons, which lead to this immense power when one person has a lot of them. Along with all the questing, there'll be plenty of room for PvP, with sprawling free battle areas and special places where guilds can go head to head.

It's all set to go live in Q3 2006, and we'll bring you more on ArchLord soon.