"We'll fight them on the internet"

Massively multiplayer games generally fall into two categories at the moment - third person fantasy role-playing games and futuristic space sims. Bucking the trend are the curiously named Cornered Rat Software, currently working on "World War II Online", which producer Chris Sherland describes in an interview with RPGVault as "the first real virtual battlefield".

Or, to be more specific, it is "a massively multiplayer online game based on a World War II timeline and weapon technology, with a fully integrated strategic system that allows for complete persistence within the game world, played on land air and sea simultaneously. Players will control ships, planes, armor, and troops, all in first person, engaging in fully immersive combat within a detailed physics-based simulation, developing individual personas in an RPG layer that allows rank and responsibility increase with direct effect within the gameworld."