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Turbine Buys Asheron's Call From Microsoft
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to Turbine's announcement that they've purchased back the entire Asheron's Call MMO franchise from Microsoft. Turbine, the original developers of the titles, has just announced a large venture capital-sourced funding increase, and will now "assume all responsibility for Asheron's Call and Asheron's Call 2 game and player support, including customer service, tech support, quality assurance and a new billing system." Additionally, a letter from the content developers reveals that "we are going to be making an expansion pack for Asheron's Call 1", the still-popular franchise originator.
..to welcome this change, dragging what seemed to be an otherwise good game from the jaws of evil.. Now just port it to some other platforms so those of us who won't use a Wintendo can play it.
This is a very aggresive move on their parts, I really hope it pays off for them! AC1 was actually a fun little game - hmmm it's almost half tempting to try it again.
I wonder though, what they're plans are for AC2 - seems like a bit of a dead end - I wonder if they could get AC1 up to AC2's standards graphically and then work on things from there? They could can AC2 and compensate those people some how, and then move ahead with one unified game.
Does this mean they won't be using The Zone? If they do drop The Zone, perhaps they will port it to Linux. I would probably start playing again if they did.
They're doing the Middle Earth MMORPG for Vivendi. They're doing the Dungeons and Dragons MMORPG (formerly for Atari - now they're self publishing, and using Atari as a distribution partner only), and of course, the AC series.
They're able to do this because they're using the same engine for all their games (AC1 being the exception, and we can hope they'll migrate it to their new engine too). Once you've got the engine done, assuming it's robust enough to handle the different rulesets for the different games (and Turbine's is - AC provided a complicated rules-base, and they learned some good lessons there), it becomes merely a matter of generating content for the games. And content is a lot easier to produce than graphics engines and back-end networking support.
I agree with earlier posters - this is a ballsy move by Turbine, and one that I think will pay off for them in the long run.
Give AC1 the new engine, and it'll be a game with tremendous staying power. AC2 was "MMORPGs for dummies" but I'm told they're learninng from their mistakes on that one, and it's getting marginally better (the game mechanics are going to remain too simplistic to interest most hardcore gamers, though).
Cheers, Turbine - all the Best!