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Autoduel is still my single favorite video game of all time. It was a free-roamer, way before GTA, and the flexibility it offered with car design is still unmatched in my experience.

Auto Assault is also made by Lord British and Origin Systems (the makers of Autoduel), but was a MMORPG. I don't want to play MMORPGs. If they re-sold Auto Assault with a deep single-player experience, I'd be in gamer heaven.

I was just thinking how ads for present day products would rock in Auto Assault. Not only does it go with the post-apocalyptic theme - if you don't LIKE the ad you can just blow it to pieces. Sure it will respawn but then you can blow it up again.

I wouldn't be bothered at all if I they used advertising on old billboards in that game (which by the way is a rather fun MMORPG).

"Seeing how they *already* have a very popular MMORPG without a monthly fee (Guild Wars), I don't think it is a stretch to think this one won't either."

Seeing as they *already* have multiple MMOs which require a monthly fee (City of Heroes/Villains, Lineage II)and have stated in their Auto Assault faq that the game will have monthly fees, I think it's unlikely that the game will use the Guild Wars model.
What remains to be seen is if they will do the advertising vs paid model like Anarchy Online or if all paid accounts will have advertising.

Take a look at auto assault. It has all of that, pretty graphics, and is a MMO. It is in beta at the moment but is still a lot of fun. http://www.autoassault.com/

They probably mentioned CoH since NCSoft has published (or planned to publish) a fair amount of different MMOs in recent years, with CoH (arguably) being the most recognizable/successful.

Auto Assault. http://www.autoassault.com/index.html

Enjoy!

Perhaps this is what you're looking for... http://www.autoassault.com/index.html

Autoduel, not AutoAssault. AutoAssault is the new MMO vehicular combat game being developed by the folks at NetDevil.

If the article is going to mention TR and City Of Villains, it should also mention NCSoft's other upcoming MMO - Auto Assault.

And since I couldn't find it on those game's official sites, here are the ship dates from EBGames (which I'm sure aren't accurate, but hey):

* City Of Villains - 08/15/2005
* Auto Assault - 09/01/2005
* TR - 02/15/2006

This could get expensive. :(

(Although for the moment I'm still quite enjoying Guild Wars)

Themis [..] is involved with a failing or failed business [..] Jumpgate

I don't know about the others, but Jumpgate - a four year old game - is still very much alive and you can play it right now if you want to. They still have a hardcore group of regular players - and the game is still actively maintained with occasional new content and bug fixes. This is not my definition of a failure.

The company isn't failing either - the creators of Jumpgate, NetDevil, are now working with NC Soft on Auto Assault, a MMO car combat game.

"massively multiplayer version of Car Wars/AutoDuel, in which the scenario is the same, but the gameplay focuses on your vehicle" You may want to check this out: http://www.autoassault.com/ It's still in development phase but it looks promising.

SOE currently offers their All Access Pass :

"If you play more than one SOE game, or you want to try the other great SOE games available, SOE All Access opens the SOE game catalog to you.

SOE All Access grants access to all current games published by SOE*, which includes: EverQuest® EverQuest® Macintosh Edition PlanetSide EverQuest® Online Adventures Station Pass access, which includes the popular games Infantry Online, Cosmic Rift and Tanarus

Full access to these games for the low monthly subscription price of $21.99 is a potential savings of more than $18.00 every month over the total cost of the individual subscriptions!"


PlayNC (NCSoft) does not offer such a deal but is a central site for managing your online game subscriptions and I imagine once Guild Wars, Tabula Rasa, Auto Assault and others are released, we may start to see some special offers from them as well.


Skotos has been offering this type of service for a long time. For one monthly fee you can access and play all 11 of the games that they offer. Only 2 are graphical MMOGs (Meridian 59 and Underlight), but the other games are very good as well.


The largest factor in offering multiple "A list" titles for one monthly fee is offsetting development (and in the case of MMOGs, maintenance) costs and bringing in enough revenue to show a good profit. The bottom line is always a driving factor in any business. However, there is hope. As technology moves forward, we will start to see more and more rapid development of MMOGs of higher quality and consequently we should start to see a wider array of offerings and price points.


I also agree that some sports games should start to appear on the scene. XBox Live will probably be a driving factor to this more than anything. Playing football online against other players is quite fun and should prove to be very popular considering the amount of sports console games sold. Now, as to whether that genre will move to PC is yet to be seen, but as I mentioned before, in SOE's All Access Pass, they combine online console and PC subscriptions into one package. A diverse product line benefits them in this case. More comapnies need to grow in the genre and diversify at the same time, but that takes time and money. Soon though... very soon.

NCSoft is acting as a publisher here. The only titles developed by NCSoft is Lineage and Lineage II. Of NCSoft's other titles,

Guild Wars is being developed by ArenaNet , a group composed primarily of former Blizzard employees who worked on Diablo that left in the Vivendi Universal bankruptcy debacle over the possible sale of the games division (including Blizzard). They could have picked a name further from BattleNet, though.

Tabula Rasa is developed by Destination Games, the Austin, Texas group headed by Richard Gariott composed primarily of people that got fired from or left Origin after EA scrapped the Ultima Online 2 project. They were actually far into Tabula Rasa before being signed on with NCSoft.

City of Heroes is developed by Cryptic Studios based in San Jose, CA.

Finally, Auto Assault is developed by NetDevil .

All of these developers are completely autonomous as far as design goes. NCSoft is only the publisher and the billing gateway. For the sake of the independent developers that just happened to have signed up with NCSoft, please don't confuse their works with that of other developers.

And just so I don't look like a total idiot (if that's possible), here are some links with more info:

• http://www.autoassault.com/
• http://www.3dgamers.com/games/autoassault/
• http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/auto-assault/516265p1.htm l