The Wheel of Time turns... and we are a little bit closer to a WoT MMO.
There has been next to no news out of Red Eagle Games since the very first announcement of a WoT MMO being in-development back in 2008. Based on the standard development life-cycle of MMOs however, it is perhaps not wise to expect too much news about the game any earlier than later this year or early 2012 perhaps.
One of the preeminent things I am hoping for out of a Wheel of Time MMO is that there will be diverse playable options and affiliations. Ideally it would be possible to create and play as many different types of characters: Whitecloaks, Seanchanm Darkfriends, Aes Sedai, Asha'man, Aiel and so forth. It would be a real shame indeed if the playable options were only limited to a narrow heroic range.
The biggest problem I can think of with developing a WoT MMO is that of the story of the game itself versus that of the novels. If the MMO were set in the central world (Randland as I have long called it) then the players would be subject to the whims of the book characters in many extents; an issue that also brings up the matter of chronology in that when would a MMO of this nature be set in the timeline?
One option would be to set the game universe itself in one of the mirror universes, one that is sufficiently close to the main canonical time-line and setting; but which can then diverge and go its own direction. Thus instead of a linear progression of development that follows the narrative as a guiding (like LotRO) the novels would serve as a foundation of what is and what was... but who knows what may yet be?
