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Wish™ Debuts at E3 - Defines New Game Category Ultra Massive Online Gaming™

Huntsville, Alabama — March 17, 2003 — Mutable Realms, Inc. today revealed that it has been working on a new category of games that  provide unprecedented opportunities for people to meet online in a shared fantasy experience. The game, which has been under development for over a year, is titled “Wish”, and is one of the most ambitious projects that the gaming industry has ever seen. Wish will be presented to the public at the upcoming Electronic Entertainment Expo www.e3expo.com from May 14 to 16.

Unlike other Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) that confine the player to a server with only several hundred other players, Wish raises the bar by defining Ultra Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (UMMORPG). Wish employs a server cluster architecture that scales to tens of thousands of players in a shared and seamless 3D fantasy world.

The game is based on the Internet Communication Engine™ (Ice), developed by ZeroC™, Inc. in close collaboration with Mutable Realms. Ice provides extreme scalability and speed, and was developed by experts in the domain of very-large-scale systems. Wish also uses NDL’s Gamebryo™ 3D graphics toolkit and engine and IDV’s SpeedTreeRT™ for a rich and detailed medieval fantasy world with breathtaking visual effects.

“Providing the infrastructure for Ultra Massive Online Gaming was an enormous challenge,” said Michi Henning, ZeroC’s Chief Scientist. “The demands with respect to scalability, speed, and reliability are only surpassed by large-scale telecommunications projects. We are proud to have mastered this challenge. Many middleware technologies claim to be suitable for such large-scale projects, but Ice can actually prove it.”

"The Mutable Realms' team has been working hard the past year to bring a new type of online game to the industry," said John Austin, president and CEO of NDL.  "With our new technology we wanted to provide them with the flexibility to expand their production pipeline while saving them money and time so they can focus more on the game play experience."

“The Wish player is in for a truly new experience, not only in the size of their online world, but in the quality of the outdoor environment they find there,” said Chris King, president of IDV. “SpeedTreeRT technology will help build the first gaming environment with truly realistic trees – trees that blow in the wind and look full and real from any direction, but that use a remarkably small amount of CPU and GPU resources.”

Jamie Moffet, Senior Vice President of Mutable Realms said: “Our world class team of programmers and artists, ranging from 3D experts to an Emmy-award winning sound engineer, has created an unprecedented online gaming experience, with the help of our partners.”

The first public beta test for Wish will be conducted by the end of 2003. The final release will be available in Winter 2004.

About Mutable Realms
Mutable Realms, Inc., specializes in Ultra Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (UMMORPGs). Mutable Realms’ headquarters are in Huntsville, Alabama, USA, with a subsidiary in Halifax, Canada. Mutable Realms employs 25 people world wide. For more information, visit www.mutablerealms.com.

About ZeroC ZeroC, Inc. www.zeroc.com provides a fast and highly-scalable communications infrastructure for demanding technical applications, such as telecom, defense, on-line entertainment, manufacturing, and process control. ZeroC's flagship product is Ice, the Internet Communications Engine. Ice is one of the most versatile and powerful object middleware platforms available.

About NDL NDL, with offices in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, has been developing innovative 3D graphics software and tools for nearly two decades. The Gamebryo 3D graphics toolkit and engine empowers game developers to focus their energy and resources on what is most important to them: Creating great gameplay and compelling 3D content. Gamebryo's extremely flexible framework enables developers and publishers to more efficiently create cutting-edge, compelling titles for Windows, Xbox, PlayStation 2 and GameCube while saving time and money in the process. Gamebryo is based on NDL's NetImmerse technology, which has been used to develop more than 60 titles. For more information about NDL, visit www.ndl.com.

About IDV Interactive Data Visualization, Inc. is a worldwide provider of software products and services in the fields of animation, visual simulation, and engineering visualization.  Founded in 1999 by a team of experienced software engineers, IDV's mission is to provide visualization software that is innovative in its design and robust in its function.  IDV is a privately held corporation, located in Columbia, South Carolina.  For more information about IDV, visit www.idvinc.com. 



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Wish (PC)