Sports MMO’s seem to be one of the newest and fastest growing trends in the virtual world, and developers F4 and Infront are soon to be tossing their entry onto the playing field.  Officially billing itself as a non MMO, Empire of Sports is an errr… non- massive, multiplayer online game focused on and around, you guessed it, any and all things sports.

Players start their non-mmo adventure as a rookie, and level up skills through a variety of entry-level sports: Soccer, Tennis, Basketball, Skiing, and Bobsledding.  You may also choose to participate in a wide variety of training exercises.  Word on the street is that Empire of Sports has a few goodies still up its sleeve and plans on introducing Track and Field events into the game in the near future.

An interesting and ‘real world’ touch to the experience gaining process is that each sport has a number of skills attached to it.  Training exercises can be done in single player mode that increases your general skills (think balance, reaction time, muscle structure) and you can practice specific skills to increase your ability in individual sports.  In other words, it’s a whole lot like being a real world athlete – you can go to the gym to pump some iron, thereby increasing your overall athleticism, or head off to the green ‘bounce back’ wall and work on developing that killer backhand.

As you train and gain experience in particular sports, you gain a competitive advantage over opponents.  You may also purchase in game equipment to give you some extra pwnage power.  Items can be acquired in three different ways: some are earned as a reward for winning a particular tournament or match, some are purchased with ‘won’ in game currency, while the others, and perhaps most important, can be purchased via an in game mall with microtransactions.  According to F4 and Infront, the microtransaction gear is not meant to provide über status in the game, and should not provide an unfair balance to the competitive non-MMO.  A nice balance considering the game should attract a wide variety of players, some with massive amounts of time on their hands, while others would still like to have some nice gear, but don’t have hours and hours on their hands to win the appropriate cash and/or tournament(s).

As with 99.44 percent of all (non) MMO’s, Empire of Sports supports guilds, aiding in quickly and easily finding others that have a similar play and/or time schedule.

Empire of Sports is currently in ‘Private Launch’ at the moment, which basically means you’ll need to fork over an email address to get playing….but other than that, you’re in like Flynn.  Empire of Sports is free-to-play with microtransactions supporting the continued development and support.

Give them a visit at www.empireofsports.com