Just outside Denver, Colorado lie the offices of Maximum Charisma. With some of the nicest slopes in the US just yards away, you'd think that the staff of fewer than two dozen would frequently take days off to go skiing. They would, if they weren't diligently working on their debut game, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game that incorporates classic strategy elements called Fighting Legends. The company was founded in November 1999 and has been formally working on the game since January 2000. Originally conceived in a casual conversation about how current online games can be improved upon, Fighting Legends has since grown into a near-alpha build. Inspiration for the company's name came from a line from The Simpsons, where the nerdy Martin describes his role-playing character--the title fits well. Many of the employees knew each other before the company's founding, so there's a genuine feeling of trust and friendless among the coworkers in the office. The founders of Maximum Charisma are no strangers to MMORPGs, having played EverQuest and Ultima Online feverishly, so they feel confident that they know what works and what doesn't in this genre. They are banking on that knowledge, as well as the desire to do something different with the genre, to have Fighting Legends become a hit among gamers.

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Maximum Charisma recently invited GameSpot to its offices to take a look at the latest pre-alpha build of Fighting Legends. The build we played wasn't quite complete, as the combat and magic systems hadn't been fully implemented yet, but the designers at Maximum Charisma hope to have a fully functional alpha build completed in one to two months for in-house testing. After the alpha stage is over, they will progress through several closed beta tests to tweak the game before its target launch date in late 2001.

Like other online games in the genre, Fighting Legends will be a subscription-based service of $9.95 per month, with the first month free. Once the game launches, you can expect to find several servers across the country, each with its own self-contained gameworld--your character won't be able to jump between worlds, so once you commit to a server, you're stuck on it. The world of Fighting Legends is called Exisle, and it's split into three shards: the Underplane, the Surface World, and the Sky Realm. These shards are further broken down into 153 smaller zones. Additionally, there will also be several hidden zones for you to find and explore. You'll be able to travel between the different shards and zones via the game's gate system.

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There are a total of nine playable clans in the game, all of which are spread across the three different shards. When you first start a game, you'll be asked to choose from one of the following clans: Arachin, Wee, BONE, Human, BioMecha, Pyron, RIN, BearKat, and M Clan (a mysterious clan that hasn't been named yet). You start with only one unit, the avatar, who is your main character in the game. However, Fighting Legends will have up to 81 distinct units and five character classes. Melee units are strictly hand-to-hand combat units, and they are the best in this area. Technique units aren't quite as strong as melee units in hand-to-hand combat, but they have the ability to heal others. Missile units have ranged attacks, while Mpower units can use magic. Speed units, as the name implies, are the fastest of the five classes.