This we'd like to see!

Most of the games in The Legend of Zelda series stay fairly rooted in the action-RPG genre and whilst that hasn't been detrimental to its overall quality and reputation, it does leave room for those wanting a deviation from the somewhat limited offline play for some wishful thinking.

It seems a group of Zelda fans have taken that wishing and started to mould something out of it in the form of a Zelda MMO (massively multiplayer online) game. The name of Zelda World suggests just that: a place where familiar locations like Hyrule Field and Kokiri Forest are explorable, with more places and people undoubtedly to come. As the game is currently in the alpha phase, there's naturally not a lot with which to interact. Unless you like glitches.

Of the few things that have been coded so far are the starting weapons, which consist of a sword, shield, and bow. Several arrow pick-up points have been created, but there's not a lot to use the arrows on at the moment except air. You can try the alpha version by visiting this web address but at the time of writing this article, the servers seem to be down due to maintenance.

Nintendo has a bit of a reputation of being protective over the felt-loving elf, even going as far as issuing a take-down notice to the makers of The Legend of Zelda: Hero of Time, a fan-made film, ordering them to remove it from the Internet.

It's likely this MMO fan project will attract the attention of Nintendo's legal department, especially since Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma has already expressed the possibility of online play in future instalments of Zelda games. On the other hand, if Nintendo chooses to let these fans go about their business, they could easily use their model and ideas as a launching board of their own, as well as a way of determining what works and what doesn't. However, since this fan project is likely to take years to complete, we can almost bet on another take-down notice getting drafted.

[source zeldainformer.com]