After leaving his trademark on the gaming industry via the Ultima series (and also producing Tabula Rasa), Richard Garriot has sent an open letter to the said MMO's community, informing the fans of his plans to leave NCsoft in the near future. Why, or where, it still remains an unknown issue to us, but the certain thing is that it has something to do with his recent voyage into outer space. Or outer limits.



Hopefully, his plans will still involve gaming, since this guy is one of the bastards I will always remember, from childhood until now. May luck shine upon you whatever you do, Lord British, even if you have discovered a race of horny Japanese teenage girls and you don't want to share it. Click further for the letter:  (...)

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Excellent. According to this here press release, the girls at ArenaNet are proud to brag themselves with more than 5 millions copies of Guild Wars, sold worldwide. Congratulations, it sure is a big chunk o’ players stuck in their virtual world.

Let’s see now… World of Warcraft – 10 millions registered users. Guild Wars – 5 million games sold. Lineage – a couple of million dudes getting spanked by big breasted Dark Elven chicks there, too. This sure leaves some gaming space for upcoming MMORPGs… Yaright. Call me a grumpy and hateful old bastard, but I bet my (second) WoW account that some extremely hyped online games that are supposed to hit the market soon, will get totally pwned.

- Red Faction 3 is no more... But relax, nothing is fu... cancelled, dude. They just renamed it to Red Faction: Guerilla, apparently.

- Likewise, the Aliens FPS announced by SEGA at the end of 2006 finally has a title - Aliens: Colonial Marines, "invading consoles and PCs in 2009". The devs from Gearbox had better make aliens playable as well, at the very least in an expansion. Or else!

- NCsoft has "something to announce - not only announce but to show - by the second half of this year"... their very first console (PS3?) MMO game. They're "pretty psyched" about it. I'm not. Not yet, anyway.

- Epic's CliffyB loses faith in PC games, thiking that "the PC is just in disarray". So right now they're focusing on making Gears of War 2 console games. Can't say I blame them.

- Speaking of Epic, their Unreal Engine 3 also got licensed by Korean MMO maker Devroot Studio, for a new game codenamed "BK Project". They're a division of SONOV Corporation, who made that MMO with hot chicks, Shaiya: Light and Darkness.

- The Xbox 360 fails at a rate of 16.4% (give or take), while only 3% of the PlayStation 3 and Wii consoles fail. Should be interesting to see some sales figures for Microsoft and Sony's consoles in actual working condition!

- Wii hacked once again (and once again without much use), this time through an exploit in The Legend of Zelda. Great, wake me up when there's something worth seeing.

- Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings for the DS is being released tomorrow in the UK (and presumably the rest of Europe). We got the latest trailer here, in case you missed it.

- The Witcher, CD Projekt's debut RPG, has sold over 600,000 copies in 3 months. They're still aiming for 1 million in the first year, and at this rate they're going to shatter it. Grats!

As if it weren't bad enough that NCsoft's E3 2006 line-up was somewhat lacking in quality titles, their most promising MMO project - Aion: The Tower of Eternity - was first announced for the Asian market only. Fortunately however, even though the game is being created by NCsoft's Seoul studios, it will actually be aimed at a worldwide market. A most logical decision, given that none of their other titles managed to attract an excessive amount of attention: nor Dungeon Runners (give me a break), nor Tabula Rasa (a second re-design wouldn't hurt), nor Exteel (mecha just ain't my thing), nor even Soccer Fury showed any big potential, like the titles they presented a couple of years ago (Lineage II, City of Heroes, Guild Wars). And so, all we're left with is the high-fantasy, oriental-styled MMORPG, Aion.

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