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Might & Magic Creator Joins Garriott At NCSoft

Posted by simoniker on from the loading-up-on-the-legends dept.

Thanks to Google News for its link to the press release announcing Jon Van Caneghem, founder of New World Computing, has been hired by MMO developer NCSoft to work as "executive producer... on a new, unannounced online game project." As the release notes, Van Canegham "created the Might and Magic and Heroes series and turned them into two of the industry's most successful titles, with more than 20 million units in combined sales", and following the dissolution of New World Computing due to owner 3DO's collapse, and the sale of the Might and Magic franchise to UbiSoft, he'll be "working with [Ultima creator, Tabula Rasa developer, and NCSoft Austin head] Richard Garriott and NCsoft's... designers to create the next generation of massively multiplayer online games."

3 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. a little misleading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:a little misleading by simoniker · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually, ArenaNet and Destination Games are both owned wholly by NCSoft, I believe, so they're not quite as autonomous as you imply - Cryptic and NetDevil are officially independent though, I believe.

  2. Larry by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now if they can just get the Leisure Suit Larry guy, they'll be untouchable.

    --
    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.