Massively multiplayer online games have long suffered from a nauseating lack of originality, smothered in an endless monotony of grinding away on dire rabbits for experience points and completing a never-ending strings of cookie-cutter, carrot-on-a-stick fetch quests. That trend continues even to this day, as unimaginative clones promise a revolution while blatantly clamoring to be the next World of Warcraft. GamesBeat has sifted through dozens of current and upcoming MMO titles to see if any of them are actually worth a damn so that you don’t have to.

In the following pages, you’ll find the six most innovative and exciting MMOs available or coming soon as well as four more that look promising but that we haven’t had the chance to test out yet. You’ll notice that these MMOs mostly stray away from the typical fantasy settings as well as the mindless point-and-click combat that has dominated the scene for far too long.

Please feel free to share any standout MMOs of your own in the comments below or your thoughts on our picks. Not every game resonates the same way with every player, but we can’t denying that these handful of titles are at least pushing the genre in interesting new directions.

Blade & Soul

We listed Blade & Soul among last year’s most anticipated MMOs, and many months later, a Western release has yet to come. Still, the wait has only allowed the anticipation for this fantastical, highly stylistic martial arts epic to intensify.

Centered around famed Korean artist Hyung-Tae Kim’s beautiful visual design with gameplay inspired by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers, Blade & Soul really is positioning itself to stand out from its innumerable competition.

The game’s story arc has also seemingly received more attention than most MMOs, but we’ll have to judge that for ourselves at a later date. Either way, Blade & Soul is already one of the best-looking games in the world, period.

Guild Wars 2 publisher NCSoft is in the process of localizing Blade & Soul, but no release date or even beta details have been given at this time. For me, personally, Blade & Soul seems like it will be an excellent replacement for TERA, which featured equally beautiful graphics and similar action-based combat but became a little too grind-heavy around level 30. Now that TERA’s free-to-play, definitely check it out if you haven’t already.

Firefall

Firefall made last year’s list as well, and since then, Red 5 Studios (comprised of former Blizzard Entertainment staffers, among others) has pushed forward on the player-versus-environment (PvE) content, which is where my interests lie. Up until recently, Red 5 have been focusing heavily on making Firefall a serious contender in the e-sports arena with state-of-the-art shoutcasting, spectating tools, and its signature fast-paced player-versus-player (PvP) third- and first-person shooting.

With open beta set for July 9, the team is rapidly expanding the variety of content in the game to appeal to a broader range of playstyles. The battleframe system has also been reworked several times over to provide more meaningful options to both new and longtime players. As a solo player, I started off with the Engineer battleframe so I’d always at least have a soulless, merciless auto-turret to keep me company, but I quickly upgraded to the advanced Bastion battleframe, which allows me to have three instead of one autonomous killing machines at my side.

Also of note is all the effort Red 5 has put into its community and lore-building. From celebrity livestream events to an ongoing manga fleshing out the in-game story, Firefall extends far beyond the walls of MMO trappings. It really feels like a developer who’s gone “all in” on this project, so whether it succeeds or crashes and burns like the ill-fated CMS Arclight, at least you’ll know that the game was made by people who wanted to and not people who had to because their publisher wanted an MMO on its résumé.

For those who want in on the game before the open beta, Firefall has three tiers of founder packages available with immediate access, permanent experience bonuses, and additional in-game items and currency.

Warframe

When I first heard Digital Extremes was funding its own free-to-play online co-op space ninja game, I was immediately on board. The triple-A independent developer was behind the criminally underrated Dark Sector (a masterfully violent shooter whose proprietary engine rivaled the then-cutting edge Gears of War) and the more recent The Darkness II (as well as the Star Trek movie tie-in, which we’ll assume it did just to help fund Warframe.) So Digital Extremes has earned some trust, and it seems Warframe is the game it wanted to make all along, according to creative director Steven Sinclair in GamesBeat’s exclusive interview.

There’s a lot to like about this growing game and its increasingly varied content, but the crazy cinematic action definitely takes center stage. Unfortunately, no one can be told how awesome Warframe is. You have to see it for yourself:

The Warframe team also shared some of its favorite warframes to use in-game and its most memorable moments using them:

Rebecca Ford, Warframe community manager:

I’m going to have to go with Ember, the real Girl On Fire (take that, Katniss Everdeen!). I’m a sucker for fire-based things (Charmander, anyone?), and the execution of dominating fire attacks is my exact play style. My favorite moment with Ember would have to be when I hopped in a game mid-session, when a group of strangers were doing an infested mission. I spawned, grabbed one energy sphere, had my third power ready to go (Fire Blast), and jumped into a swarm of infested and unleashed. Havok and chaos ensued, and Ember was a hero!

Mitch Gladney, level designer:

The Warframe that I like the most is Excalibur. To me, this frame is the poster boy of the game, and I always play games as the title character. He also looks so cool; I often catch him looking at himself in reflective surfaces throughout the ships.

I’ve had a lot of memorable moments with Excalibur, but one instance stands out the most to me. I was playing with three other people, and we were holed up in a hallway with about two dozen Corpus Walkers and Crewmen advancing toward us. One of my squad members — we’ll call him Johnny — was always the bravest of us four, so without hesitation, he sprinted out into the firestorm. We all watched in horror as he was pummeled by bullets. He was lucky to survive, quickly ducking behind a data terminal for cover. Everyone froze up; we were all scared. The next seven seconds felt like eight seconds. I leaned out to scout the area and was shot multiple times. Johnny was still recovering, and the other two, Doris and Joshua, were cowering together, asking each other to give a note to their loved ones if they didn’t make it. I’d seen enough. I leapt from my cover and yelled, “I’m the hall monitor; show me your pass.” Nobody heard me because the gunfire was too loud and I may not have said it but rather just thought it … ah. I wish I had said it. Anyway, I performed my Slash Dash and obliterated a bunch of enemies. This brief break in their assault gave my squad the chance to come out from hiding and dispose of the rest of the Corpi. We don’t talk about that moment much these days — too many painful memories — but to this day, they still thank me. They don’t say anything, but I know they are grateful.

Steve Sinclair, creative director:

FROST! Because I go for the new and shiny. I love that [role-playing game] trope of freezing a dude and then shattering, like back in Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance … . Frost is just too damn cool (sorry, couldn’t resist).

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Trion Worlds has signed a deal with South Korea’s XL Games to bring the big-budget fantasy role-playing game ArcheAge to Western markets. It will publish the game on its Red Door online commerce platform in North America and Europe. The deal represents a major bet on the massively multiplayer online gaming business, which is competing fiercely for the attention of consumers alongside rivals such as social, mobile, and console games.

The title has spent six years in development, and its creator is Jake Song, who made the smash hit online game Lineage. It has been in closed beta tests for two years and has launched in beta testing in Korea. For Trion, the deal is a big coup, said Lars Buttler, the chief executive of Redwood City, Calif.-based Trion, in an interview with GamesBeat. He described ArcheAge as having an “incredible amount of polish.” Trion aims to launch the game later this year in North America, Europe, Turkey, Australia, and New Zealand.

Trion is the publisher of Rift, another fantasy MMO that also took about six years to make. Buttler said that the game generated more than $100 million in revenue for Trion in its first nine months, and the title will soon be coming out in China, one of the biggest MMO markets. Trion also developed an online games publishing platform dubbed Red Door, which it can use to publish games developed by other companies. One of the premier games coming up is Crytek’s Warface, a modern combat shooter that is expected to be published this year.

ArcheAge might seem similar to Rift, but Buttler says the two are different. ArcheAge is divided into two continents. The western one (Nuia) is designed to appeal to Western gamers, while the eastern one (Harihara) is targeted at Asian gamers, who prefer different art styles.

“We’re thrilled to be working with Trion Worlds, a company who is setting a new standard for gaming by embracing original, high-quality [games] on a dynamic connected platform,” said Song, the CEO and founder of XL Games. “We are impressed with Trion’s track record as they have consistently delivered against an unwavering vision; we are confident partnering with Trion will help bring ArcheAge the success it deserves.”

Buttler described Song as a “perfectionist in the best way.”

The addition of ArcheAge will give Trion a busy spring, with Rift China, ArcheAge, and Defiance (an open world sci-fi shooting MMO that is debuting in conjunction with the launch of a SyFy channel show on television starting in April) all moving into large-scale beta tests that precede official launches.

“We could have half a dozen launches this year,” said Buttler. “We are on an amazing inflection point now. We think [Red Door] will be the winning platform.”

Buttler also said that company will publish its online games on “any connected device.” His company is operating “games as a service,” where you launch a game and continually update it.

In ArcheAge, players choose a continent and then launch a virtual life in the online world. They can design their own characters and engage in all sorts of activities such as farming, flying, trading, building ships, creating underwater gardens, fighting naval battles, and more.

“It’s all you expect from a triple-A game,” he said. “In this category, you have to see World of Warcraft as competition.”

Tencent will introduce ArcheAge in China while GameOn will publish it in Japan. GigaMedia will publish it in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao. That’s as close to a global launch as any MMO has ever had. Trion will translate the title and make changes to suit Western audiences.

Buttler described Red Door as a true web-based platform consisting of the back-end infrastructure and monetization tools for a huge online game. It has a development platform aimed at speeding up publication and a server architecture designed for dynamic events, where changes happen to the game world on the fly.

Meanwhile, Buttler said that the company has delayed the launch of its End of Nations real-time strategy MMO. The title was made by external developer Petroglyph Games in Las Vegas. But Petroglyph’s contract expired, and Trion decided to bring the game in-house to finish it, said Buttler. That resulted in layoffs at Petroglyph at the end of 2012, and Trion absorbed a number of its developers. That team is now making the game “more accessible,” said Buttler. That means the team is making it easier for players to get started more gently.

“It will take longer, but it was the right decision to bring it in-house and polish it more,” he said.

But the delay isn’t a problem since Trion will be more than busy publishing other titles in the first part of the year, said Buttler.

While Rift was tied to the PC, future titles will run across platforms. Defiance, for instance, will be published simultaneously on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and the PC. Over time, Buttler said the company will embrace smartphone and tablet platforms in a bigger way. Right now, Rift has companion apps, but those don’t let you play the same game while on the run.

Trion has a big war chest to publish huge games. The company raised $85 million in early 2012. Trion has more than 500 employees.

“We created a wish list from day one with the start of Red Door,” said Buttler. “We got Warface from Europe, and from Asia, we got ArcheAge.”

Here’s a trailer video for ArcheAge.

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