You can talk about it now! Expect an article about it for tomorrow, but if you’ve been playing — how did you like it?

It’s just one day shy of a week since the folks at Acclaim proudly stated Spellborn would be entering closed beta this very week. Has anyone gotten in yet? And if so, without breaking the NDA, is the stability good? How do you like the new tutorial on the shardship? How fun will it be once you find out you can’t skip it with subsequent characters? :)

Well, maybe they’ll add some way around that. (This is based on the EU version of the game)

We’ve been waiting for this game since its launch was first announced for a year ago. Here’s hoping for a smooth beta stage and maybe we can play — in April? Please?

Runes of Magic has been getting a lot of attention from the blogosphere lately. Though obviously heavily inspired by World of Warcraft, this Taiwan import adds multi-classing and many other little twists to the basic formula. It’s been in beta for months, goes live in March, and today sent me an email saying they had over 450,000 players worldwide.

That’s not just beta signups — that’s implying there’s 450,000 people — worldwide — playing Runes of Magic. And that is a very, very good thing.

Why? Well, the more successful MMO games in the genre, the more willing companies will be to make new games and try new things. Recent high profile MMO failures can only be making investors dubious about the whole genre. The success of Runes of Magic, WoW-like though it may be, can only say to the devs of the world that if you have a strong vision for your MMO (ie, copy World of Warcraft), keep your costs down, team reasonable and goals within reach, you don’t need to spend fifty million dollars or more and fail. You can spend considerably less, and succeed.

There’s a slim possibility I may have been dismissive of Sparkplay’s Anthro (not Furry) MMO, Earth Eternal, in the past, but –

Okay, I just have to get this off my downy-feathered chest, here. Earth Eternal is a Furry MMO. I understand why they are trying to distance themselves from it. The Furry sub-culture has gotten a reputation for kinkiness, but, seriously, there’s a certain percentage of any sub-culture that’s kinky. Go to any sci-fi convention and it won’t be only the Furries who are getting odd looks.

I’m looking right at my Erma Felna, EDF collection. I read my kids the Redwall books and my son, in particular, loved them (to this day, even, and he’s almost 22!) One of my oldest friends makes fantastically elaborate Furry costumes, okay? So when I say “furry” instead of “anthro”, I’m NOT putting Earth Eternal down. I’m just calling it as it is. The Earth Eternal devs can go tirelessly from place to place correcting the usage, but I know and they know that it’s a Furry MMO and they should accept it and move on. The Anthro vs Furry argument is of the same nature as Geek vs Nerd and Trekkie vs Trekker. Splitting (bristly) hairs.

Anyway. The game is fantastically colorful and whimsical, can be played in a browser or from your (Windows, for now — Mac soon) desktop, multi-classing, is free to play … have a look, watch the videos, sign up for the forums to have a chance at getting into the beta, and let your fur down with the community, all of whom are devout aficionados of anthropomorphic fiction, and NOT FURRIES.