Gods & Heroes is an upcoming MMORPG set in the world of Ancient Rome circa 300 BC, but in this version of history the gods and creatures of mythology really exist. You choose from one of six possible classes – gladiator, soldier, rogue, scout, priest, or mystic – and then align yourself with one of the gods. The god that you choose will depend on your chosen class as the twelve gods are each aligned with one of the player classes. Your alignment with a god will give you access to special powers only available to that god’s followers, so this means that there are essentially twelve playable classes.

The E3 demo of Gods & Heroes showed off a few aspects of the game that all look pretty interesting. First of all the world will be quite large. Ancient Italy is divided into a number of provinces, which are further subdivided into a fair number of areas. The area shown at E3 looked gorgeous and hopefully is an indicator of what we can expect from the game as a whole. The action took place along the shores of a shallow glassy lake. Temple columns lined one shore and waterfalls were tumbling over cliffs in the distance. The scene was mesmerizing but there was no time for sightseeing as there was plenty of danger around – especially in the form of some beautiful but deadly dryads.

One of the interesting aspects of the game is that all player classes will gain minions as they advance in level – up to eight at level 50. Since players can form groups of up to six, a high level group can go to battle with its own little army of 48 minions!

Look for the game to go into beta soon and to be available at the end of 2006. We’ll have more details on the game as they become available.