Summer has always been my favorite time of the year for games. It seems to be the one season where developers really push the exciting projects they are working on. Case in point, there happens to be an extremely intriguing MMORPG currently in the works by a small group called Cosmic Origins, and the name of that game is Frontier 1859.

A little over a year ago, Cosmic Origins founder Daniel McMillan first publicly proposed the need for an online role-playing game that would revolutionize the genre. We've all dealt with the problems that come out of a MMOG - overcrowding, griefing, clichés, and server bugs just to name a few. So why not build a game that tries to address these tiresome issues from the very beginning? Furthermore, why not finally build a game that lets the individual player determine exactly how he or she wishes to participate? After a year of interviews and looking for funding, not to mention many more years before that of research into American Mid-West history, so it would seem Mr. McMillan's dream is finally beginning to come true and a very healthy community has grown up around Cosmic Origins.

Frontier 1859 takes place in the American Plateau during the historic era of Western settlement. The player is essentially given all the necessary tools to start a new life for themselves, either alone or working with others, and from then on, whatever you put into the game is what you get out of it.

The Frontier character system gives the player a great deal of freedom. Gone are the days of choosing an initial class or profession, and being forced to play out your career on a predetermined level path. Replaced instead by a compliment of skills - divided into skills you are inherit from your family, skills that you are taught, and finally skills that you learn on your own by doing. And as in real life, any skill you possess only gets better with practice, but fail to pursue an active lifestyle and you could very much lose the use of the skill altogether.

Your player character's appearance in the game can be customized in a multitude of ways. There are also many different ancestries available for your character, such as Irish settler, African American, Scottish, Chinese, Washoe or Paivte Native American. Your ancestry does not force you into any particular role, but each does come with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. There is always the role-play figure in the equation to consider as well.

Above and beyond the basic character attributes and qualities, is the player's Reputation. The Frontier Reputation system is the accumulation of that character's past and present. Every action you take that affects the game world, will affect your character in turn. Your Conscience Inventory keeps track of the major moments in your life that may weigh heavily on your character's disposition. Did they murder an innocent bystander? Did your character witness a theft but chose not to report it? These are the kinds of things Frontier keeps track of, and in the end, can lead to a character hanging from a noose.

Gone too are the static, prefabricated locales built ahead of time for the players by GameMasters. In Frontier, it is the players who shape the landscape. A world of an endless blue sky above forest lands as far as the eye can see. Promising towns and villages can be found along rivers, small roads act as the arteries between people and supplies. Every building that can be found in the game will have realistic properties, which means finally no more unusable fake structures taking up space just for the sake of eye candy.

Any player can gather enough materials and labour to build their own settlement, anything as large as a bustling city or as a small as a mining town. You don't even have to be in the game itself to design your property, thus eliminating the tedium some of us find when we simply want to play around with the novelty of having our own store. All you have to do is download the virtual land you own, design, and then upload the information back into the game world. Then it's just a matter of designating the space as private, public, or scheduled use. And if you're not too interested in doing everything yourself, there are several pre-made kits you can purchase and customize instead of working from scratch.

The very intention of Frontier 1859 is to immerse the player in a virtual world. The economy is fed by player merchants. The jury in a court case, or the vigilantes of a gruesome posse are players too. All of it is authentic to the historic setting at the heart of the game. And as the players add to the game world, and as the developers update the content to reflect the changes to the area over the years, you will soon find yourself living a completely other life through the eyes of the character your created.

But what if Westerns make you gag? What if "Cowboys and Indians" sounds worse to you than a trip to the dentist? Why should you even bother with this game at all, then? Well, there's some encouragement for people like you. Taken from the official Frontier 1859 website, under the heading "Who would play a Western-based MMORPG if they don't like the movie genre?":

Anyone who is looking for a role playing adventure that allows for the freedom to try different things, without feeling like they must obtain level X before the fun can start. Anyone who does not want to feel alienated as a beginner. Anyone who wishes the game would not get in the way of pursuing their sense of wonder. Anyone wishing that the time vested would have an affect on the game world around them. Anyone experiencing a lack of enthusiasm from experiences with massive multiplayer online role playing games.

As a player in Frontier 1859 you are free to farm, explore, craft, socialize, exercise faith, teach, steal, herd, love, hate, kill, tease, or just about anything else you can think of. This game isn't about telling you what to do. It's about letting you go wild and do whatever it is that you think is fun. There can be consequences to certain unlawful actions, but then again, that's half the fun of doing something wrong in the first place, isn't it?

I would strongly recommend everyone take a look at Frontier 1859. You really get a sense for the amount of hard work that has gone into the game so far, and you can appreciate the dedicated developers and fans that support it. Even if this game is a ways off from being released, there is a lot of innovative work being done on Frontier. There are so many interesting facets to this game, I'm not even sure if I can cover all of them within the scope of this article. It is so incredibly refreshing to see a developer strike out and try to do something new and different. This is definitely a game you will be hearing good things about in the future.

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