There have been many massively multiplayer online games, but there aren’t any sports games that I know of until now. Yes, that’s right, there’s now a baseball MMORPG game. After being in Beta for so long, I didn’t know whether or not it would be released as a final version.

Believe it or not, it has come out in a final version, although there was some tweaking. At first, it was announced that a $7.95 monthly fee would be charged for early adopters while new players would have to pay $9.95 a month. As you can imagine, feedback to this play, was..uhh…not so good. Netamin noticed this and quickly adjusted to a very interesting idea – season play. A full season can last up to two months (approximately 10 games or more if you make the playoffs). This is a fantastic idea and kudos to them for thinking of it.

Signing up is pretty easy, and if you don’t want to play a full season, you can play all you want in a pick up game…no level limits as was originally discussed. There are some nagging issues – the website has been fully updated to reflect the new pricing and in some areas of the site you’ll wonder if this is an English site. Error messages like “Login Fail!” don’t give you that sense of professionalism.

You’ll need to have a broadband connection to play the game. Since this is truly a team game, your team is only going to be as good as the slowest internet connection. Downloading the game does not take long.

After you log in, you’re brought to the locker room, where you have three “lockers.” You can create a different player in each locker. Customization tools are meager; however there aren’t a lot of items to choose from this early in the game.

Once you create the player, you’ll have player stats and skills which will easily remind you of a traditional RPG game. Your player is pretty bad to start off. The first thing you need to do is go to the UBO camp to hone your batting and fielding skills (pitching too, if necessary). Batting is pretty straight forward. You can select the amount of power you are going to give your swing; however the higher the power, the less “range” you have in hitting the ball. You swing by using the left mouse button and you aim your swing by moving the mouse to where you think the ball is going. I found this very difficult but one could say it is more like real baseball. During camp, I would like to see what a coach may think of my swing – is it too late, is it too early, etc. Most console games show you this, and it goes a long way towards helping your timing.

While out in the field, you have free rein to go wherever you want. So, if you’re playing 2B, you can play a shift, or play for a double play. If you hate your teammates, feel free to play in foul territory. This should be all coordinated with your team, but more on that in a bit.

If you’ve played any other baseball game, pitching should be easy to figure out. Select a pitch type, aim the pitch, and select the strength of the pitch (using a meter) and then throw. Pretty easy, but based on the ability of your pitcher, it may not be all that accurate. Your just created pitcher will probably throw nothing but lettuce. And by lettuce, I mean big fat looping balls that are very easy to hit, however they are e.coli free.

Once you’ve completed camp, it’s easy to get into a game. The rookie levels are always well populated. There are usually game hosts available to help you out in case you don’t know what you are doing. Because this game is online only, you have to have other online players in order to get a game going. Honestly, I found this the most difficult part of the game. You have a minimum number of players and people keep bouncing in and out.

Since you are playing the role of one player (and only one player) you see action when your player sees action. If you are 7th in the line up, that’s when you get to bat. The good news is that spectator mode is actually pretty fun and you can type via text messages to your other players. As a newbie catcher, the other people on my team were very helpful just in telling me how to throw the ball back to the pitcher (press 5).