Jumpgate Evolution is a MMO due to be released by NetDevil, and recently, its producer, Hermann Peterscheck, has answered a lot of questions related to the game. It's interesting to see how a new MMO is trying to explore niches and details that will make it a viable choice when it inevitably comes up to juggernaut World of Warcraft.

Jumpgate has a few things going for it. It's space based, which makes fantasy-based World of Warcraft less of a threat, and also sports a few features which might make it well suited for the player that doesn't necessarily want to engage in space combat.

While talking to Ten Ton Hammer, Hermann Peterscheck played up the diverse aspects of the game experience. Combat, gathering resources and crafting will be equally developed as gameplay mechanisms. Even if most of the players will try and complete missions and kill baddies to get rewards and loot drops, the game producer says that mining might be as rewarding as hunting for other players through a nebula. Getting resources is much more than simply choosing a big asteroid and clicking a button. Players will be challenged to navigate dense clusters of asteroids, of which most are just useless space rocks, while scanning for that elusive rare material that's in high demand on the market. Once they spot what they need, they'll also have to position themselves so that their mining equipment can extract the mineral at the best possible rate.

Other than mining, creating objects will be very important. There are certain in-game rarities that won't be directly available from in-game shops. These rare items will be either crafted by experienced players, who can then sell them for a nice profit, or they will be part of mission rewards for tough missions that can take a long time to complete.

Other non-combat activities will also be in Jumpgate Evolution. Some players can specialize on trading on the in-game market and Hermann Peterscheck says that fortunes can be made and lost this way. And if trading isn't your thing, then you can play a game of industrial espionage which emphasizes deceit.

If the features described above are well implemented, then Jumpgate Evolution might become a worthy rival for EVE Online, the current king of space-based MMO games.