While the company won't make any formal announcements about its next massively multiplayer game for quite some time, president John Smedley told me recently that a new action title is in the works. And if things go according to plan, it will make its debut at E3 in 2006.

It won't be SOE's first foray into an action-based persistent world. "PlanetSide," a massively multiplayer online first person shooter launched in May 2003, has been moderately successful, but hasn't come close to the success of "EverQuest". So what's different this time?

"We know what we're doing now and we're going to take it to the next level," said Smedley, who declined to give any firm details on the game at this point.