For anyone who's ever played an MMO, there's certainly an appeal there. Teaming up with friends, teaming up with people you've never even met, and going out to conquer worlds or just blow up large portions of them certainly has points to its merit. But the MMO was largely a province of the PC gaming market, at least, until now. While games like Defiance started things up, the near future will be a big one indeed for MMOs on Xbox One.

There are actually several MMOs set to arrive on Xbox One before too much longer has passed, and not just in the United States market either. Of course, we all know about The Elder Scrolls Online, which is set to arrive during this holiday season at last report, which will bring MMO gaming to both Xbox One and PlayStation 4. But now, there's one more that's going global: the Neverwinter free-to-play MMO for Xbox One.

Neverwinter will hit consoles in China this September, and then, in the first half of 2015, make a move to Europe and the United States. While users will, not surprisingly, need an Xbox Live Gold membership to get in on the action, there won't be further charges beyond that point. Neverwinter, for those not already familiar, is part of the Wizards of the Coast Dungeons & Dragons series, specifically, the Forgotten Realms series. The PC version so far is getting into its fourth expansion—otherwise known as a module—August 14, so by the time the console version comes out, who knows how many of those expansions will be available?

Reports suggest that Sony was actually looking to take a lead in terms of console-based MMO action, so getting in Neverwinter will likely prove something of a relief for Xbox One gamers who are beginning to regret the purchase. Others are saying, meanwhile, that Neverwinter may well be one of the worst games that could have been had in that market space, but this is fairly standard for gaming; not everyone likes every game, and gamers in particularly can be particularly vociferous when it comes to their games. Still, there are some who are just glad to see new titles arriving, even if this is yet another one that's been shunted off to 2015, as though 2015 were the farm where mom and dad sent all the video games to so they could run and play and be with other video games, when sadly, they're all just dead.

Still, this is an interesting development. It will be particularly exciting to see if The Elder Scrolls Online can hold up against Neverwinter, especially given that Neverwinter will be a big cost-saver right out of the gate, unless something changes with The Elder Scrolls Online's plans. It's also good just to see more games set to arrive, because it was starting to look pretty sparse release schedule-wise, but with The Elder Scrolls Online likely to have a little extra edge time-wise on Neverwinter, will its lower cost allow it to recover?

This is good news all around, though just how far it will go in all this remains to be seen. We're really just getting started here—the first year of both systems won't officially arrive for another three months yet—and seeing how the game schedules are shaping up is noteworthy enough on its own. I'm still personally hopeful that modding will be permitted at some point, particularly with larger-scale adventure titles like the Fallout series. But there's plenty to watch in the meantime, and Neverwinter just might perk up the Xbox One market as nothing else has before it.