[Well, this is interesting - longtime GSW friend and MMO fiend Michael Zenke has been talking to some of the folks at Red 5 - recipient of almost $20 million in VC to make what is presumably meant to be a WoW-beating MMO - and they have some interesting, high-level thoughts about persistent online worlds. Can they pull it off? We'll see!]

Ed Stark and Dave Williams are veterans of the tabletop gaming industry. Between the two they’ve had a hand in publishing major revamps of pen and paper roleplaying systems, popular trading card games, and a number of board games.

Between the two they’ve had a hand in the revamp of Dungeons and Dragons to the 3.0 rule set, the Legend of the Five Rings RPG, the West End Star Wars Roleplaying game, and numerous card- and board- games.

Last year they joined the still-running-silent, VC-backed MMO developer Red 5, based out of Orange County, California - the World Of Warcraft veteran-founded company has been in existence since 2005, has $18.5 million in backing from Benchmark Capital and Sierra Ventures, and most recently announced former Oracle exec Michael Weingartner joining the firm as VP of engineering.