IGN's PC Year in Review 2008
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Single-player role-playing games is a genre that has taken a hit with the advent of massively multiplayer online role-playing games such as World of Warcraft. 2008 only had a handful of memorable single-player RPGs, and right now the outlook for 2009 is just as bleak, if not bleaker. The only bright spot is Dragon Age: Origins, the long, long, long awaited game from the folks at BioWare. Dragon Age has been in development for a good part of the past five years, so here's hoping that it lives up to the expectations. Then again, it's from BioWare, so we expect nothing from the best. Meanwhile, Obsidian looks to get away from the swords-and-sorcery setting of role-playing with its intriguing Alpha Protocol, an RPG that seems inspired by the Jason Bourne movies. But what about Diablo III you might ask? Well, Blizzard announced it in 2008, and there is no indication or a release date, but the company has said that StarCraft II Terrains will ship before Diablo III, for whatever that's worth.
2009 will definitely be strange from an MMO point of view. We came into 2008 expecting a trio of high-profile, big budget MMO projects: Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, and World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. Those games were years in the making. Yet now that they're out, 2009 may prove to be a gap year for MMOs. Oh, there are certainly plenty of MMOs in development, from Star Wars: The Old Republic to Star Trek Online, yet there's a big question whether those games will be ready for 2009. At the very least, that should give us plenty of time to actually enjoy the sprawling online worlds that were delivered this year.
