Joystiq and Massively are cross-posting a piece I wrote up on The Agency, one of the two darlings of SOE’s hotel suite at CES. Basically the idea was that everyone had already seen the video and such by the time we’d already got back. So I took the audio from a chat Chris Grant and Barb Dybwad did with the devs + the one I and Dan O’Halloran had, and I diffed between the three sources of information. The result is what you see at the site.

Some of the most interesting tidbits the developers were willing to discuss that day weren’t on the guided tour. Lead Designer Hal Milton and Design Director Matt Wilson were willing and able to discuss several aspects of the project still in the development stages with us and our friends at Massively; we were able to pick their brains on the game’s business model, the fantastic world they’re creating, character advancement, future content additions, and the numerous challenges of creating a game that straddles two platforms.

Because it’s all informational, there’s no real room for me to include my opinion of the game in there. That’s what this place is for. To put a point on it: The Agency is my new ‘game of the future’. Since I started digging on these games back in the day I’ve always had some game or another to look forward to, a game to keep me enthusiastically reading sites like Lum the Mad back in the day. The period I remember most vividly with ‘future games’ was the time early in my post-college working period where SWG and WoW were both in-development. I spent endless lunch hours pining for those games, looking forward to their release. I read every update, every piece of information, every dev blog … it was a good time. Over 2007 I spent much of the year looking forward to Warhammer Online, and now the launch of the greenskins is fast approaching.

So, I need a new star on the horizon. The Agency has definitely stepped up. Sitting and listening to Hal Milton do his thing is inspiring. He and Matt Wilson are so obviously smart, so obviously ‘getting’ what it is that they need to do in order to make this game a success, that it’s fun just to watch them expound. If The Agency fails, it’s not going to be because of a lack of courage, or because of a lack of good ideas. And in fact, the game is showing signs of being one of the biggest sure-fire successes SOE has ever done. Already a solid play experience (apparently) in a Pre-alpha state, the team plans on having their featureset frozen by the time they leave alpha. This means the Beta phase will be nothing but iterating on content, getting the polish right. IE: just what everyone has been saying since Blizzard’s game released.

I can’t wait to get my hands on the controls of this game. Just watching the video was inspiring. It’s great … fantastic even … to feel this way about a game again. The Agency looks like it’s more than just a breath of fresh air’ or ‘new paint’, but a fundamentally different way to play with my friends in a MMOG.

Here’s hoping their efforts bear the variety of fruit they’re reaching so far out on that limb to grab.