While fantasy and sci-fi settings seem to be the most popular among recent massively multiplayer online role-playing games, early online games looked toward historical combat for their inspiration. Games like Kesmai's Air Warrior and iMagic's WarBirds pit numerous players against each other in classic air battles in the skies over Europe and the Pacific during World War II. Cornered Rat Software and Playnet are hoping to recreate the sensation of doing battle with and against hundreds of other players with their upcoming online RPG/simulation hybrid, World War II Online. When it releases later this year, the game will let you choose to play as any military branch from any country of the Axis and Allied powers. Whether you want to drive a tank, fly a plane, or rush a machine-gun nest, World War II Online will have something for you. We sat down with producer Chris "Mo" Sherland to discuss this promising online game in detail.

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GameSpot: What kind of previous experience designing wargames does the team at Cornered Rat have?

Chris Sherland: Some of the team here worked on WarBirds and Dawn of Aces at iMagicOnline. In fact there are a couple here that date back to the ICI days and the original Confirmed Kill. World War II Online is a different animal though, and as a design it's our first. Granted we bring tons of gaming experience to the table, and we spent months in daily design meetings, but from the ground up it's our first attempt at a complex and cohesive design.

GS: What's the biggest challenge you're facing in developing World War II Online as opposed to WarBirds and Dawn of Aces?

CS: I would have to say that the time/distance factor was the biggest nut to crack. You have movement rates that vary from walking speed to driving speed to flying speed. Those relate to distances to combat and time to combat that have to be balanced to keep the game enjoyable and playable. You have to ensure that none of players moving at the aforementioned rates has to travel too long to get into a fight.

GS: Is World War II Online completely persistent, or is the length of each game limited?

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CS: Totally persistent. The game does not have any predetermined flow aside from vehicle and terrain releases. The players will control all the rest. Some battles or campaigns may take days or weeks and some maybe months. All these battles are part of the larger war for Europe.

GS: How many of these releases do you plan to make over the game's lifetime? Do you know what kinds of vehicles and new terrain those releases will comprise?

CS: That's not certain yet. There will be many updates that are downloaded for new vehicles and probably new terrain addition, though larger terrain updates such as Pacific Theatre will likely be new retail versions.

The technology here is based on global digital elevation mapping, and the whole planet is represented at one half scale. The releases of theatres over time will represent filling out the planet with cities and towns, etc. The goal is that in a couple of years we will have the planet represented in one virtual environment with all relevant theatres of World War II represented.

GS: How many players will the game support simultaneously?

CS: Right now we are shooting for 10,000 players in the Blitzkrieg theater of operations. And we currently have 10 or more theaters of operations planned to make up a seamless World War II Online "world." That's where we want to start, and take it higher from there. With the retail distribution plan we have with Strategy First we should be able to attract a lot of players. We're setting up our server technology to be flexible and growth oriented. 10,000 players per theater is a number we fully plan to exceed. We still may end up with shards but not if we can help it.