You should fix that.

K2Networks approaches the online games market as a company looking to provide a service, not a product. It makes sense that online games are treated more that way than as a SKU sitting on a shelf in a game store. They still sell games in retail; but their focus is online game play.

Their newest offering – the one that they’re showing off here at E3 and I had the luck to get some time to see – is called War Rock, and it’s an import from Korea.

War Rock is, in essence, a modern day setting first person shooter. However, that’s just the very basics. It’s an online FPS, combining persistent characters in a non-persistent world.

Basically, you have five different character classes – medics, engineers, scouts, combatants, and heavy weapons units. Each class has a specialty. Medics can heal people. Engineers can repair vehicles. Scouts can use the best sniper weapons, while heavy weapons guys can use the biggest guns. Combatants are jacks of all trades but masters of none.

Though your character may be persistent, your class isn’t. You can change it for every game that you play, and in certain game types, every time you spawn.

Your character doesn’t level up like in some games or gain new skills. Instead, you earn dinars for your time online. Dinars can be used to purchase new weapons for a set amount of time – 1000 dinars, perhaps, for one week, or 3000 for a month.

You have a set number of weapons you can carry, and some weapons can only go in certain slots. You gain a fifth slot after some time of play, and there’s a “bonus” slot for items that can be given from contests or other promotions. That might be a pair of binoculars, a flash-bang grenade, or an MP5K submachine gun.

So, once you log in you pick out a server. There will be a number of different types of servers – K2Networks is looking at putting parental controls on the type of server you join, and there will be “new player” servers where you can learn the game without fear of getting wasted constantly by the more experienced players.

Then there are three types of games. “Mission” games are the smallest, at a maximum of 8 versus 8, for 16 players total. These usually involve an objective such as planting a bomb, though they’re looking into other options such as hostages or VIP protection. Missions are the only ones where you can’t change your class on a per-spawn basis.

Infantry combat is the “medium” sized game. It goes up to 12 on 12, or 24 total players, on an urbanized map. There are a small number of vehicles that start off neutral, plus control points to take.

Vehicle combat is the largest sized game, using 32 players at 16 versus 16. There are many more vehicles in this mode, though infantry will still be needed in many of them in order to hold the territory gained by the vehicles (much like real life).

K2Networks has plans past these, though. They’re looking at things such as asymmetrical game modes, where you may have a small number of heavily armed soldiers versus a larger number of poorly armed soldiers – something that will replicate some of the more modern warfare situations.

User input, in general, is very important to K2Networks for War Rock. There’s already clan support in the game, and they’re planning on adding things such as persistent holdings for clans between games, additional avatar selections, etc. Also, user input will help K2Networks on their plan for monthly or bimonthly updates to include new modes, new weapons, new maps, and the such.

There’s a wide variety of control in the game already. You can run, crouch, roll, and lay down. Engineers can lay land mines. You can control vehicles, though only one person at a time in a vehicle (you can fire all the weapons). Vehicles also have multiple viewpoints to use. You can control anything from a 10 ton cargo truck to an M1A1 tank to an A-10 Warthog ground attack plane. Be careful, though – being in a tank doesn’t make you invulnerable if you are leaning out to use the machine gun (as the developer showing us the demo found out in the game he was playing).

The graphics already look pretty good, especially for an online shooter, though K2Networks is still working on them, plus other localization issues (such as translating, modes of play, etc.). The pre-release will be coming out here soon after E3, and right now they’re hoping for the end of July timeframe for the game. With constant updates, community input, and clan support, this could be a good first person shooter for gamers looking for a change of pace from other games. It’ll be exciting to see how it comes out.