MMORPG Weekend Warrior: Batarangs and lightsabres at E3, and Flagship's scuttled crew

Posted Jul 19, 2008 at 9:41PM EST by QJ Staff

Listed in: News Tags: BioWare, Flagship Studios, HanbitSoft, Sony, Star Wars

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Greetings, and welcome to another round of QJ.NET's MMORPG Weekend Warrior! A lot has happened in the past week, starting with the massive influx of beta testers for EA Mythic's Warhammer game.

Over at E3, BioWare's just unveiled what their new MMO project is shaping up to be, while Sony Online Entertainment's let loose with the first official trailer for their new DC Universe game. Not that this week's all glitters, if you happen to have been following the recent row that's been going down with Flagship Studios' management.

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While the developers were forced to remove some features from Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning's current build, that doesn't seem to have phased the fans. EA Mythic reports that its recent opening of WAR's Guild Beta has garnered a considerable number of applicants.

Link: Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Guild Beta launches


Members of Magic World Online's beta community were cordially invited to the union of two souls earlier this week to demonstrate the MMO's marriage system. Mgame also unveiled details on the other features that have been added, which should offer quite a challenge even to the vets.

Link: Magic World Online open beta: Of marriage, promotions, heroics, and the devil's dozen


After continuous testing for the past couple of weeks, Jagex has now released RuneScape HD for use for both the free and paying members of the community. A couple of new improvements have also been announced for the game.

Link: RuneScape HD and other updates go live


Richard Garriot's Tabula Rasa kicked off the week with patch D10.3. While it's still running through its paces at the test servers, this new patch promises bug fixes for some of the bugs that may have afflicted players on the public realms.

Link: Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa - patch D10.3 hits test server


Crossovers. In the world of comic books, that word is one of the more epic things you can hear, signifying a step into some entirely new, exciting territory. It's the same step that NCSoft is about to take, as it merges the City of Heroes and City of Villains MMORPGs into one world

Link: City of Heroes and City of Villains merged into one universe


More spandex-clad adventures await as Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) lets loose with DC Universe Online's very first official trailer. No, you won't be playing as Gotham City's caped crusader, though it looks like you'll get to work under him. On the flip side, you may want to control your eagerness in spreading chaos and disorder over in Metropolis.

Link: E3 2008: DC Universe Online's first trailer


All those at E3 felt a great disturbance in the force - and they couldn't be any happier. BioWare used the event to confirm that the mystery game they were working on was definitely an MMO version of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Given how Galaxies turned out in its later years, could BioWare's project prove to be A New Hope for the fans?

Link:E3 2008: New Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic MMO confirmed

In not-so-pleasant news, there's more on the matter of Flagship Studio's mass layoffs of all its employees, save for the core members. The move has certainly rocked more than just Hellgate: London, with development on another of Flagship's MMOs coming to a literal standstill.

Link: Bill Roper: Flagship Studios still alive
Link: Mythos: Development team says goodbye to beta community
Link: Flagship Studios founding members "selfish and irresponsible," says HanbitSoft

Does bigger always necessarily mean better? Fellow blogger Enrico poses this question to the MMORPG fans out there, in an article delving into matters of map size, and how it may affect your overall immersion experience in you choice game.

Link: MMORPGs: does size matter?

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Flagship's recent announcement definitely comes as a shock to many of Hellgate's fans, give that it also signalled a temporary halt to any more new registrants. That aside, however, I am pretty worried about what's going to happen to Mythos now that its dev team is gone. A quick look at the beta forums indicates it's a pretty close-knit community, with player discussions there hinting that the MMO showed a lot of promise if it was ever completed.

What'll happen to the game now? I'm not sure. The first option would be that Flagship decides to find a replacement team to continue Travis' work, though given the company's current status, this seems unlikely. The second option calls for shelving the game entirely, though at great loss. The third option is that the Mythos team finds a new backer who will hopefully see the game through until its public launch.

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