Gamespot posts that Turbine is closing down its Santa Monica outpost, the home of the original Asheron's Call. The staff are being offered jobs at the main office in Massachusetts, so it's unclear what's in the cards for AC.
With high-profile (and pricey licenses) Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online in development, this news and AC2's closing could indicate the studio's desire to direct resources to games that might bring a larger subscriber base than the < 40k and < 20k of AC and AC2 respectively.
I never played AC2, but had fun with AC and was impressed by a lot of their innovations: the fealty system, episodic content, a changing world, live events. 2000 was the year to be playing, and culminated in the famous Defense of the Shard, which people are still talking about. Here's hoping that LOTRO and D&DO include some of this good stuff.
3 comments:
Mmm, LOTRO looks interesting. I'm getting a bit fed up with fantasy stuff though - would like to see something more Neal Stephensony with a hint of Dave McKean. With just a hint of Grant Morrison too.
Of course if that ever happened, you could probably only play twenty minutes a day and then have to put your head in a bucket of cold water, but I bet it would be worth it...
And yes, pirates (proper old-fashioned ones with big cuffs and flintlocks) will always be cool.
How gorgeous a McKean-designed MMOG would be!
Some of the player-designed superheroes running around City of Heroes could be right out of Morrison's run of Doom Patrol. I've seen Baked Chicken, The Strict Freudian, Auntie Social...
My favourite City of Heroes 'run past' (admittedly I only played it once), was an woman in a startlingly skimpy business suit called simply 'The Lawyer'. Clearly someone missing Ally McBeale quite badly there...
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