We saw more than 20 MMOs at the recent E3 2010 convention in Los Angeles. We participated in the spectacle by attending parties, touring booths and watching the booths babes ... and the games, of course. So that is why each year, we honor the best of the best from each show. Over the next few days, we'll unveil our winners. Here is the schedule:

Today:

• Best Real Life Game
• Best Fantasy Game
• Best Sci-Fi Game
• Best in Show

Day 1:

• Best Party
• Best Booth
• Best Family Game

Day 2:

• Best Trailer
• Biggest Surprise
• Best Demo

So stay with us all three days as we unveil the winners. In case you missed our coverage, you can check out the E3 index page.

The "combat in space" MMO genre is sparsely populated these days, but E3 2010 reintroduced me to an old friend. Jumpgate Evolution was shown behind closed doors, aptly named as the next step to the original Jumpgate released in 2001. The precursor came out to good (but not great) reviews. The game was hampered by a publisher that went belly up around the time of release, and a solid stable space game, complete with elements of Starlancer, Freelancer and Privateer, slowly faded from view.

When NetDevil announced the next iteration of the franchise, in 2006, around the fifth anniversary of the original, they promised better graphics, more immersive game play and a continuation of the story. Now, more than three years later, the game has been through a couple of overhauls and the developer finally felt confident showing the game off to the public. And from what I saw, their confidence was justified.

As E3 came to a close just recently, more and more of our ZAM exclusive video interviews are now finishing up their preview polish and are ready to be viewed by all! This time we sat down with Jason from NetDevil to chat a little bit about Jumpgate Evolution, a ship-based MMORPG that's been long in the making. Most interestingly, the team announced that they had almost completely scrapped certain parts of Jumpgate Evolution because they wanted to make sure that the game was as good as they wanted it to be at launch. This is, obviously, a refreshing change from the normal rhetoric gamers are used to, about MMORPGs releasing early in order to meet specific demands or meet promises made to the community, and if you check out the interview, you can see just how much thought the team has put into this game. I'm definitely excited about this one, so check out the interview after the jump!

Check out this new Jumpgate Evolution gameplay video below.  Doesn't it remind you of Star Fox, but updated and darker? Jumpgate Evolution is pushing the envelope when it comes to combat in MMOs. We've got a full fledged space-ship-action shooter on our hands here. Please, trust us and watch!

After a period of 6 months with almost no news, Jumpgate Evolution's Executive Producer Lance Robertson has stated in his Pre-E3 Update that the game is getting a major overhaul. And when he says major he means it. "I’m going to be honest with you and tell you something that may be difficult to hear: what you saw and heard of Jumpgate Evolution before now may have little bearing on the actual game we're going to deliver" he says in his State of the Game forum post.

From what we can glean, it seems that the reason they went into such a dark news time was that they saw how much needed to be completely redone. Robertson states that they couldn't report on game features because they were going to be built from the ground up again and they didn't want to promise something that they weren't sure was going to make it into the game. They couldn't report on story because it was being completely rewritten.

On the positive side, in that no-news-time they did a ton of work and they're going to have a playable demo at E3 that showcases features of their current build. Also encouraging is their commitment to their original vision: "space warfare on a massive scale" according to Robertson. Hopefully, Jumpgate Evolution's E3 presentations will be even cooler than the ones we saw two years ago.

It's been awhile since we've heard anything from NetDevil about JumpGate Evolution, the upcoming sequel to the original JumpGate sci-fi MMO. Last October, ZAM underscored the community's anticipation for news about the sequel in our Jumpgate Evolution: What Are We Waiting For? editorial, but the news continued few and far between. Yesterday, "Scorch" of NetDevil finally posted an update in the official JumpGate Evolution forums, albeit a succinct one.

Scorch offers a few development details in the update, noting the return of "Battlespace" to its simulator roots in the original MMO. "I know this will make some of you happy in that advancing will only happen in 'real' space not instant action type playing," he said in the post. "I still hope to have some achievements/leader board materials form here but not likely to have any equipment or pilot advancing type effects."

The update also features details about the ongoing work on gameplay missions, factions, PvP and AI functionality. Check out the full posting after the jump, and visit ZAM's JumpGate Evolution portal site for more news and information.

NetDevil announced this week that Lance Robertson is the new executive producer of Jumpgate Evolution. He has worked in the industry for more than 10 years, and was most recently the senior producer of Warhammer Online for Mythic Entertainment. He was also a key player in the Dark Age of Camelot franchise.

According to the announcement, Robertson will bring his "experience and knowledge in how to create a PvP and PvE focused game" to Jumpgate Evolution. NetDevil plans on holding a community Q&A in the coming weeks so fans can ask Robertson questions about his work in the industry and the future of JGE. You can read the full announcement after the jump.

For the past few years in MMO development, one of the biggest challenges that has faced new developers has been the awkward issue of judging the proper time to release an MMORPG-on time (or even early!) versus spending more of that time (and money) to polish their game up to even higher standards.

About four months ago, I wrote an editorial praising two companies that heeded the warning of MMORPG ghosts (I'm looking at you Warhammer!) from the past, and chose to push their release dates back in order to make sure that they were giving their projects a little more time to grow. One of those companies was Cryptic, and their project was Champions Online-a game which, to their credit, did improve by leaps and bounds over the few extra months they decided to give it. This extra time, however, couldn't save the developers from having to make significant changes (including a significant increase to the difficulty of the game) a few weeks after launch, and, even now, players are still scrambling to find enough questing content in the upper levelling bracket to reach the level cap.

The other company that I praised was NetDevil, the creators of Jumpgate Evolution, and the guys who are still hard at work polishing and improving their game with no regard for the problematic beast they call the deadline (their scheduled release date is currently unknown, but Q1 2010 is a good guess). Curious as to the current state of this sci-fi MMORPG, we here at ZAM decided to call Scott Brown, CEO of NetDevil, to find out if Jumpgate Evolution will be one of the few MMORPGs to really experience that mythical "smooth launch" status.

The Austin Game Developers Conference is in full swing and NetDevil has released some new Jumpgate Evolution screenshots at the event. All of the images feature Solrain ships in combat, and you can check them out in our gallery.

In case you missed it, we discussed the status of the game with NetDevil President Scott Brown at the Penny Arcade Expo. Brown said there is no solid release date set for Jumpgate Evolution. "I don't think there's any way we can make it this year," he said.

Back in May we broke the news that Jumpgate Evolution had been officially delayed and since then, further developments have been few and far between. During our time at PAX we had the chance to talk with NetDevil President, Scott Brown about what the team has been doing, where they're at and when players can expect to play the retail version of the game. Unfortunately Scott mentioned that it's probably impossible to ship in 2009, but rather early 2010.

In addition to the fore mentioned topics in our interview, Scott mentioned their commitment to work with the UI modding community to make sure that JGE players will have plenty of choices when it comes to their user interface. Someone remind me to inform Dolby of our sister site, MMOUI.

ZAM: What is the biggest reason you decided to delay the game and go back to the drawing board?

Scott Brown: It's all based on player feedback. We started our focus testing with a few hundred friends and family testers. They came back with a lot of stuff they really liked, like the game ran well and it looked really good, but there were just some certain things about it that weren't immersive; the game didn't feel epic. Of course, epic was really our goal, so we went back to the drawing board on mission systems, special effects, A.I. especially - did a lot of work there - to really bring the level of immersion up.

ZAM: What are some of the things that you improved? I saw that the A.I. had been redone. What specifically did you redo?