If anyone's been keeping up with my various forays into the MMOFPS genre, then you may recall that, while I'm quite fond of this MMO style, I still have yet to see it fully implemented in a satisfactory way. The game that could possibly come closest to fulfilling my MMOFPS desires is, sadly enough, SOE's highly potential but largely ignored Planetside, and that game has not, unfortunately, aged well-especially given that it was released almost seven years ago and has not been updated within at least five of those years. One MMOFPS that I was fond of, but am ashamed to admit to (because it had the shallowness of a puddle), was Flagship Studio's Hellgate: London, and I suspect it mostly had to with the fact that I'm addicted to purple weapons, and I adore procedurally generated loot (which really just translates to lots of random chances at purple weapons).
Either way, enter Gearbox Software's Borderlands, an MOFPS (it's not quite 'massively' in its multiplayer content) that has probably done one of the best jobs thus far in blending the progressive gear-based nature of MMORPGs with the action-packed shooting style of first person shooters. A few days ago, Josh "Waxpaper" Bashara gave you a solid introduction to his first impressions with Borderlands as a game, so today I'll give you all a tour through the multiplayer aspects of Borderlands, as well as let you know why this game sets a pretty significant standard next to which aspiring MMOFPS developers can compare their in-development games..