Sadly, the holiday season came to an end last weekend, and the dead of winter is approaching. For many folks, January to March is a rather dismal time of year; the coming months are usually cold, dark and bleak for everyone north of the 38th parallel, until the warmth of spring finally arrives. Luckily for MMO fans, there are quite a few anticipated games scheduled for release this winter, and even more throughout the later months of 2010.

As we wrap up our collection of last year's best and brightest in the 2009 ZAM Awards, we can also look ahead at the great-looking MMOs scheduled for release in the future. Some developers are already running beta-testing trials, while others are diligently working to reach post-production in time for a third- or fourth-quarter launch date. In this feature, ZAM scouts ahead and takes a preliminary snapshot of a handful of MMOs we're looking forward to seeing in the coming months. In time, we will take a closer and more-comprehensive look at what the MMO industry is promising this year. But until then, keep reading for a brief overview (in no particular order) of the games we're looking forward to the most in 2010.

NCsoft and ArenaNet released a new Guild Wars 2 trailer today that explores the game's five playable races through the eyes of their iconic heroes. These races includes the sylvari, norn, charr, asura and humans. The trailer looks great, so be sure to check it out if you're a Guild Wars fan. Also, Zojja the asura is voiced by none other than Felicia Day of "The Guild" to keep with the MMO theme.

To coincide with the launch of the video, NCsoft sent us a brief trailer Q&A with Ree Soesbee, a world designer and writer for Guild Wars 2. Soesbee gives us some background on the races' heroes and homelands, and mentions that story is a "huge element" in Guild Wars 2. You can read the full Q&A after the jump.

Fresh out of the rumor mill: World PvP in the upcoming Guild Wars 2 might feature certain elements of real-time strategy (RTS) games. Actually, the rumored PvP resembles a cross between Warhammer Online's objective-taking and World of Warcraft's Alterac Valley, according to this post at KillTenRats.com. The blog post contains translated material from an interview with ArenaNet in a Dutch magazine; you can find the original forum post with the full translated text here. Most important is this bit of information, gleaned from the interview:

"The World PvP Maps bear a resemblance to RTS-maps and give you a chance to play different roles. You can conquer stone mines, which will then deliver stone by caravan to your catapults, you can attack and cut off caravans of the enemy, you can operate as a scout and inform the rest of hostile movement, you can man watchtowers and defend, or you can just run up to a lost PvP’er and teach him a lesson. All these actions will earn you experience."

As the original poster at KillTenRats, Ravious, points out, an open-world PvP system like the one described would have to be coupled with solid, underlying game mechanics to perform as intended. He mentions that instanced PvP zones like Alterac Valley usually work because they have player caps, but an open PvP scenario lends itself to all sorts of problems. Lack of players during off-hours means night owls could go hours without seeing much action, and population imbalances might result in frustrating zerg-fests. Still, it's too early to draw speculative conclusions; we'll have to wait to see how things play out later down the road in development. In the mean time, let us know what you think of this news regarding Guild Wars 2's world PvP.

Earlier this month at PAX, we had the chance to speak with a few of the developers from ArenaNet about the upcoming MMO, Guild Wars 2. A sequel to the successful Guild Wars (published by NCSoft), Guild Wars 2 is currently in full production, with a predicted release date sometime in 2010 to 2011. We learned quite a bit about the project, including its new and revamped engine, what to expect from PvP, and the story and lore behind it all. Before the interview, we had a brief chat with the team about the history of the franchise, and why they decided to make a sequel, rather than continue supporting the original Guild Wars.

ZAM: The trailer looks amazing. The architecture and the buildings look really cool.

Mike O'Brien: You don't even get a sense of how enormous that is, as you're flying through in the video. This is the kind of thing we could never pull off in Guild Wars I. This process of building our engine—we can imagine something like that, and then actually put it in-game.

ZAM: That was a very seamless transition between concept art and in-game. It looks like you can do a lot more with this engine; even with the mountains—they're obviously stylized—but they look a lot more real than mountains I see in other games.

Earlier this month at PAX, ZAM had the chance to speak with a few of the developers from ArenaNet about its upcoming MMO, Guild Wars 2. A sequel to the successful Guild Wars (published by NCSoft), Guild Wars 2 is currently in full production, with a predicted release date sometime in 2010 to 2011. We learned quite a bit about the project, including its new and revamped engine, what to expect from PvP, and the story and lore behind it all.

ZAM sat down for a Q&A about the upcoming sequel with Jeff Grubb (Game Designer), Daniel Dociu (Art Director) and Mike O'Brien (Founder and President, ArenaNet) to find out what players can expect to see in Guild Wars 2, which will be featured on ZAM in a few days, after the weekend. Before the Q&A, though, we had a brief chat with the team about the history of the franchise, and why they decided to make a sequel, rather than continue supporting the original Guild Wars.

Welcome back to the third and final part of my "Most Anticipated MMOs and How They Can Succeed" series! If anyone was keeping an eye on BlizzCon last week, I'm sure you're all very disappointed that Blizzard decided not to mention anything about their newest MMORPG. Interestingly enough, Mike Morhaime, President and co-founder of Blizzard, was quoted on IGN.com as saying that "it's [Blizzard's undeclared MMO] still in early development. You won't hear anything for a while," which allows me to speculate that perhaps this new MMO will be set to come out a year or two after all of the big names have already made their debut (Aion, FFXIV, Star Wars: TOR, Guild Wars 2). Of course, the only company that's capable of spending years and years developing a brand new IP would be Blizzard, as most, if not all, other development companies simply cannot afford to sit around developing a game for so long.

Of course, this article isn't going to cover World of Warcraft or anything of the sort; I just wanted to update readers as to how Blizzard is developing their baby MMO. You don't retain millions of users worldwide by simply creating a great game - timing is just as important in keeping those millions of users from straying from your flock. Let's look at some upcoming MMORPGs that threaten to cull some of Blizzard's gaming herd.

When will there be a beta?

Although we publically alpha- and beta-tested the original Guild Wars while it was still in early development, with Guild Wars 2 we will commence beta testing closer to the game's release. With that in mind, we will not start beta testing in 2008 as we had originally planned. Guild Wars 2 is a very large and ambitious game, and Guild Wars players rightfully have very high expectations of its quality. We want players to be absolutely blown away by the game the first time they experience it.