NCsoft Reveals New Studio, Promises to 'Break New Ground' in MMOs
In addition to publishing Cryptic Studios' super-powered PC MMO City of Heroes, NCsoft is known in the MMO community for the Guild Wars series developed by its ArenaNet subsidiary and the internally developed Lineage franchise, which has proven to be a massive success in Korea. It recently partnered with Sony to bring titles to PlayStation 3 and PSP.
Among the new studio's staff are a number of industry veterans, with World of Warcraft lead developer and Carbine co-founder Kevin Beardlsee serving as the company's vice president of design.
Other notable talent at the studio include 16 other ex-Blizzard employees, Tim Cain--co-founder of Vampire: The Masquerade--Bloodlines (PC) developer Troika Games and former producer, lead programmer, and designer on Black Isle's cult classic PC RPG Fallout--and Jeffery Gaffney, who co-founded Lord of the Rings Online (PC) developer Turbine, Inc. and worked on City of Heroes as executive producer. Cain acts as Carbine's programming director, Gaffney is the company's executive producer.
"This is a dev team made in heaven," flaunted NCsoft North American business CEO and Origin Systems co-founder Robert Garriott. "This group is as experienced as they come in the area of computer role playing and multiplayer game design. Making successful games is second nature to them. They are a very welcome addition to the NCsoft family. The gaming community should be excited to see what great things come out of Carbine Studios in the coming years."
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replySo much talent going to waste on NCsoft cash cows. I would rather see Cain and Garriott making epic in depth single player RPGs. Why not hire Chris Avellone to seal the fate of RPGs entirely? God damnit....
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While I think that MMOs will completely replace RPGs one day it would be nice to see a good single player RPG from them. I just think that if they managed to combine the epic nature of their storytelling with a good MMO then we'll hopefully see that WoW 's success can be reproduced and not as cookie cutter copy.
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MMOs replace single player RPGs? Yeah maybe for people who enjoy diablo, people who just want repetitive killing and constant e-penis comparing loot while talking to the umpeenth generic NPC to find the next dragon to slay.
Some of us prefer Fallout, Planescape Torment and Ultima to these games, and are horrified that their creators have chosen to sell out by throwing their talent into the MMO ring. I mean watching this and the comment made about Tabula Rasa I begin to assume Ultima IX was Garriett's fault....not EA's. Imagine that eh? I mean U9 is more complex than that MMO frankly, and thats pathetic.
RPGs aren't just about killing and looting. Where is the story, the interesting characters, the quests that make you solve shit......hell I'll come out and say it: wheres the CRPG? Tabletops are all about stats and loot only, not computer rpgs. Ever since we left AD&D's cookie cutter design behind this is not acceptable.
I mean I can see MMOs killing Oblivion and it's ilk, but never Fallout or Planescape. Never.-
I agree 100% with avatar. I remember when RPGs used to be about Role Playing, actually playing how your character acts and the choices they make. Now all RGPs are about one thing only: numbers. Flaming Sword of Godhood +11 that you must be level 65535 to use with a strength of 255 and has a .001% chance to proc the spell e-pene +3. Yes I do remember the days when getting a plain old longsword +1 in AD&D was considered amazing. Now you get those in the first couple minutes of a game and they are considered vendor trash.
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