Boldly going where Sony Online Entertainment went with Disney-flavored freemium offering Free Realms (but using a top 3/4 view as opposed to FPS), SEGA is now vaunting a creation from San Francisco based developer Three Rings called Spiral Knights: a cute, rich and massively multi-player Steampunk alien world adventure that will be free to play starting April 4th, 2011.

“You have crashed.

You are stranded.

But you are not alone. The Spiral Knights have awoken on an alien world. Their equipment stores have been raided and their starship, The Skylark, will not recover from the crash. Now they must work together to survive on a journey that will take them to the very core of the world.”

As is the case with most MMO’s parties can be formed with people playing remotely, and then you can choose among these to form a guild, build an arsenal and so on. But don’t be fooled – this is not so much massive as online – gameplay is more akin to RPG online co-op as groups are limited to only four players, and there sure won’t be guild housing any time soon.

Nonetheless, there must be something persistent enough about the world of Spiral Knights to merit the MMORPG categorization.