As I walked into the Codemaster's booth, and took my first glimpse at Dragon Empires, I had to double-take. "Is this actually an MMORPG? It looks way too good to be an MMORPG," I thought to myself. Surprise surprise, Dragon Empires has turned out to be a beautiful game. It still isn't even entered closed beta, and we were told it isn't set for release until at least Spring 2004, so the visuals can only get better.

Most impressive about the graphics are the weather effects. We were shown a more humid swampy area that has a hazy fog hanging over it, and then taken to a mountain where a blizzard was summoned. After that, our demo took us up above the blizzard's cloud layer to sunny skies.

Don't fret though, the visuals are just the eye candy to draw you into the game. From what has been verbally exchanged to us, there will be quite a bit to do in the actual game world. There will be 3 races with 5 classes apiece, including an unlockable 16th class. Most intriguing about the gameplay is the economic system. There will be cities with markets where goods can be exchanged, and based on what resources are near the city, that will dictate trade prices, and of course industry within the city itself. A capitalistic supply and demand economic system in an MMORPG is something that I've not seen before. There will also be a dark side to these economics as well, since there are protected species of beasts, and thus poachers that highly covet items they can get from killing them.

Codemasters is on track for a very excellent game. The current crop of upcoming MMORPGs look very promising, and Dragon Empires has proven the trend for this year's E3.