Massively multiplayer online gaming is inherently unstable. Such games are typically released in an unfinished state as developers take advantage of a public that now expects such games to be works-in-progress. This trend has grown to the point where some online games have been barely functional on arrival. World War II Online showed up on its scheduled release date on June 6 last year but required a huge patch that replaced almost everything on the game CD before you could even begin playing. Even then, the game was bug-ridden and lacked many promised features. Anarchy Online hit stores at the end of that same month with stability issues, major lag, CD key problems, and, to top things off, a credit card registration system that initially wasn't handled on a secure server. It's hard to imagine an online game launch that could go any worse than those two.

Fighting Legends features many diverse character types.

Well, it used to be hard to imagine that. The launch of Fighting Legends, a real-time strategy/role-playing hybrid from independent development house Maximum Charisma Studios, has been even more disastrous. Bugs have been prevalent from the very beginning, and a flawed registration system and continual server problems make it a struggle just to get into the game. When you finally do fight your way inside, a combination of connection drops, bugs and associated anomalies, a half-baked game design, and a frustratingly obtuse world make you quickly decide that the battle isn't worthwhile. This is perhaps the ultimate example of an incomplete online game with more glaring defects than properly working features.

Cracks are evident right in the foundation. Bugs were so prevalent in the initial release that the game was unplayable. Just registering took more than six hours, spread over two days, as the menu system kept running into "page not found" dead ends. You would think that the system that allows the company to collect its $9.99 monthly fee would be the first thing to be checked out. Calls to Maximum Charisma's support line did little but run up our long-distance phone bill. Twenty-minute waits on hold were followed with generic advice about getting the most recent video card driver updates and the promise of a promptly e-mailed support guide (which didn't show up until the next day). The system never did work properly, although immoderate use of the refresh and forward buttons in our browser somehow got us through.

Zones are separated by magical gates.

But it didn't get us playing. After completing the sign-up process and creating a character, everything ground to a halt on the opening screen. Our character moved as instructed for a few seconds and then froze. Forward or backward movement was impossible from that point on, although the character could be rotated in place. All other keys functioned normally, and the gameworld continued to turn. Technical support couldn't resolve this problem--nor could more than a week of phone conversations and correspondence with Maximum Charisma's top troubleshooter, consultations with our local ISP, numerous driver changes, and finally reinstalling the Windows 98 operating system. Only switching to a completely new machine and Windows XP finally got the game running. As usual with this sort of thing, there is no way to tell what caused the glitch or even whether it was fixed by the system change or something that Maximum Charisma added to one of its regular updates. Connection problems lingered, though, and the entire system went down numerous times, including a lengthy interruption in service around the holidays. Instability remains a serious concern.

When we were able to play Fighting Legends, it quickly became apparent that the design was intended to give online gamers something new and different. Maximum Charisma certainly delivers in that regard, though the company has gone so far beyond what people expect of a massively multiplayer game that the results are nearly incomprehensible. The setting is the planet Exisle, following the crash of a "giant robotic entity" known as Lergan, "the cosmic seed." This crash, which was apparently caused by a mechanical spider-janitor that had succumbed to space madness (uh-huh), freed all sorts of creatures from their suspension in "cryojuice." Or killed them. The back story isn't very clear on this point, and there's some mention of ghosts. What is clear is that the scriptwriters should switch off the anime.