Turbine buys Asheron's Call from MS
Turbine Entertainment Software Corp., a leading developer and publisher of online subscription entertainment, announced today that it signed a final agreement to purchase the complete Asheron\ufffds Call massively multiplayer online game franchise from Microsoft\ufffd Game Studios. The franchise transfer includes all Asheron\ufffds Call intellectual properties, including Asheron\ufffds Call\ufffd, Asheron\ufffds Call\ufffd: Dark Majesty and Asheron\ufffds Call 2\ufffd: Fallen Kings\ufffd.
Interesting move. The obvious reason for this was that Asheron's Call 2 was not much of a success. It wouldn't surprise me if Turbine ends up dropping 2 down the road and using it's better graphics engine to update 1. From what I have seen the Asheron's Call players are mostly happy with this move, because they blame MS for most of the serious problems that have effected the game.
As is to be expected when dealing with MS, there is a rumor floating that MS let this happen because they are doing some sort of MMORPG themselves internally.
Personally I'm just glad I never got into these types of games. I've already got enough expensive hobbies, and when I talk to people that play these sort of games they spend more time talking about various technical problems and broken game updates then anything else.
Jay