On Dragon Empires Cancellation

Middle Earth Online will be next?

Once Horizons was killed during development (1), Dragon Empires was the only MMORPG that looked half decent(2). The gameplay sounded interesting and the graphics/engine was amazing.

Now that it's killed as well, there isn't a MMORPG that I'm looking forward to, except Atriarch (www.atriarch.com) and by their schedule you can expect a release about 2035.(3)

Oh well...I guess I'll go MMORPG-less for a few more years until the next cool project shows up.

(footnotes:)

1. What was released was the dead corpse of Horizons. Guess what those people actually playing Horizons are doing. :)

2. WoW is very pretty, and technically 'well done.' However, they weren't even aiming at the kind of depth I think a MMORPG should have. I commend them on their ability to pick a target and hit it dead on....however, they just picked the wrong target for me.

3. The development studio making Atriarch are privately funded...by themselves. They are a generic development studio, and pretty good at it I guess. They'll work full-time on the game for a while, then, when they run out of money, they put it on the shelf and go hook up with a couple large contract jobs for a year or so. When they once again have buckets of cash, they go back to making the game of their dreams.
This makes it so they can do whatever they want, take as LONG as they want, and don't get pressure, (from anyone except anxious fans.) However, it also means that it takes a long long time, and if you aren't fanatically dedicated, it's quite frustrating to follow the game.

Kinda interesting to browse through the replies in that thread. A lot of people seems to be frustrated and are accusing Codemasters for stealing three years of their life (were their life made up of waiting for the game, only? Poor guys...) and others say they'll never buy another game from Codemasters. Someone also said that this would definitly hurt them in the future if they wanted to make another MMORPG. I don't think so though. As soon as they announce their next project (if there will be one) I'm sure most of them will line up, probably trying to not ge their hopes up in case this would happen again, but as soon as a beta would start I'm sure they all would sign up again, I know I will.

Hopefully they can re-use a lot of the techinical and design stuff and make something new, which could turn out great, I'm sure. :)