If you are a fan of Marvel, you may have already taken an interest in the upcoming MMO game Marvel Heroes which is set for release on PC at some point in 2013. Ultimate Alliance and its subsequent sequel were great games in our minds and if you enjoyed that style of gameplay, you will probably like the look of how Marvel Heroes is shaping up. Created in the mold of Diablo, we have some uninterrupted gameplay for you to watch now, taken from the online beta which is now live and ongoing for those lucky enough to have obtained a key.

For those that are not aware, Marvel Heroes is being developed by Gazillion Entertainment, who are spearheaded by David Brevik, one of the key personnel behind the successful Diablo series. He’s now in charge of getting this ambitious Marvel MMO off the ground and just like Dust 514 which is free to play, Marvel Heroes is going to be free to play as well but supported by micro-transactions.

We’ve seen this style of play take on added significance in 2012 and if you happen to have played Marvel Avenger Alliance on Facebook, you’ll know how the Marvel free to play model works exactly and is still very enjoyable if developed right. From what we gather, the core aspects of Marvel Heroes are going to be free to play and will take a significant amount of time to ‘grind’ out all of the unlockables and added features.

This is a format that works fine in Avenger Alliance and it should be a good experience too for Marvel Heroes if Gazillion are planning a similar style. The danger with this of course though is greed as gamers won’t want to give all their time away to a free to play game that locks out key features with a pay wall. Playdom develop Avengers Alliance and having spent some time with that game ourselves, we can already start to see signs of greed taking over with many players unhappy with the way the game is going, with more and more emphasis on paid for features, rather than fixing up bugs and glitches which have been present for months.

Back to Marvel Heroes though, watch the near 60 minutes of gameplay footage from the beta yourself and let us know if this is a game you would be interested in playing next year. For now it is PC only, but the game will be available on Mac afterwards – no sign of a console release unfortunately.

Is free to play definitely the way forward for years to come, or do you still have doubts?

It looks pretty fun too, but we can’t hide our disappointment in reminding ourselves that this will be a PC game only. Having looked at the trailer, it seems like this game is crying out to be on console as well and you’ll probably agree with us after watching it.

There’s no release schedule for Marvel Heroes yet which may be slightly worrying, but at least this trailer gives us and every other Marvel fan an exact idea of how the game is shaping up. If you have played Marvel Ultimate Alliance, you will probably say that this game almost looks like an upgraded version of that. There also seems to be a Diablo vibe about it as well, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing having these two games as initial comparisons.

MUA was great fun, but again this is a PC game only remember so Gazillion, the developers behind the game are going to have their work cut out if this is going to be a huge success on just one platform only. We see the likes of Deadpool, Spiderman, Wolverine and even Black Widow in the trailer. It looks like the main plot is going to evolve around the cosmic cube, which you should now be very familiar with if you have watched all of the recent Marvel movies and The Avengers of course.

Having seen the trailer though, does this game really qualify as a true MMORPG? It’s a shame it’s not going to be on console, but it definitely looks promising regardless. One to keep an eye on folks.