He did:

Sometimes opportunities present themselves that are simply too good to ignore, and if the time is right you just have to take advantage of them.

Not long after Blackguard.

Nerfbat leaves Sony:

I’ve decided that if I’m going to make a leap of faith of any kind in my life, I better do it while I’m still young.

Good luck, of course.

This is a quick “official” update about my “not Bioware enough” claim (that went further in the comments). I got this in a mail long ago but I rarely check that mail and forgot about it at some point.

First “news” is unrelated, Stormwaltz pointed me that CuppaJo, former City of Heroes community manager, moved from this to this. So from CoH to Tabula Rasa, going through that rumor that revealed to be an half-truth (right about people in CS losing job, false about CoH’s subscriptions falling down that much).

So still inside NCSoft, with just some shuffling. Beside this, I’m kind of worried about Guild Wars instead. Something that SirBruce wrote in that thread now seems to receive some confirmations. It seems that Guild Wars is failing its business plan and trying to compensate through microtransactions. Ugh.

And now the part about Bioware:

I just noticed your post from the 9th about the BioWare Austin studio licensing the Hero Engine. To specifically address your concerns about BioWare Austin not being “BioWare enough,” I thought you be interested to know that the core of the studio is half Austin vets (Rich, Gordon, Damion), and half transplanted Edmonton staff; James Ohlen (our creative director, who’s been with the company since Shattered Steel), Emmanuel Lusinchi (tech designer), and Daniel Erickson (writer).

Okay, I take note.

In the meantime Ubiq (who’s working on the combat system for that upcoming Bioware MMO) pointed to an interview with Simutronics about the Hero Engine. I read it but I didn’t find much that is interesting to quote or comment as it’s filled with very generic claims about how they needed the graphic to be state of the art and how it is all so great. It’s not an interview that actually says something concrete and sounds more like they are just trying to advertize and sell the engine.

HeroEngine is a complete solution for MMO developers. We built a client, a server, a toolset for the development team, and a back office billing and customer service solution. The client is not only an advanced graphics engine on par with the industry leaders, but it is tightly integrated with the server for optimizing MMO performance.

We’ve spent five years building HeroEngine, which is now more than three million lines of code plus middleware like SpeedTree, FaceGen, and other best of breed tools we integrated from other vendors.

BioWare Austin wanted to get up and running quickly, and they liked our ability to let them design, test, and prototype what they envision. We’ve known many of the people there for a long time, and we were on the same wavelength.

They also say that they are going to work on console ports in the future.

Something that caught my attention and may hint something about what Bioware is developing is that in the interview they insist a lot on how the engine is flexible and how the gamemasters can build and tweak content on the fly, so becoming an active part in the game through live events and things like that:

Our engine liberates GameMasters from simply being online customer service reps, and lets them be much more active in improving the gameplay experience. They can operate NPCs and monsters in real time, they can build massive quests and other in-game events…

Now we don’t know if Bioware was looking at that flexibility just to start working on the game sooner or if they instead plan to integrate active gamemasters and dynamic content as well. Actually we know nothing at all about the game. It’s fantasy themed, and that’s it.

So I don’t know, but my spider sense tickled at that point and I suspect that there’s something they are planning. It also reminded me an old post, still from Ubiq, where he said they needed a lot of writers. A content-heavy game, maybe, or maybe there’s another, more subtle, motivation.

Nevertheless my opinion remains the same:
“Licencing technology is like buying a roof for your design potential.”

I still think that “game design” cannot be detached and made independent from the technology development needed to realize a potential.

…to start a brand new studio, it seems. (another one? yay?)

While Lum seems to pay his tribute, as if he owed him a favor.

I don’t really have much to comment since I know nothing about this last event, nor I know how he worked or if he was doing a good work. My impression from DAoC was actually positive about him. But wasn’t him between those strongly supporting “Imperator”?

Reasons? Paint me skeptical:

I know the Internet TRUTH BRIGADES are immediately streaming toward the Batforums with the tolling of doom for Mythic, but, like me, his move was more about location than anything else. Since marrying he was commuting on a daily basis from Hunt Valley, MD to Fairfax, VA. There’s only so much of that a wife will put up with.

I’ve never doubted of Lum’s frankness, this is a first.

Anyway, who cares? That’s the best decision he ever made. I wonder if he was between those applauding.

I can already see a number of Mythic developers following him and jumping ship. With the only difference that, in that case, it won’t be publicized.

Good luck with the new studio. It won’t be easy to start from zero all over again.

It seems that Ubiq isn’t going to miss Shadowbane:

Back to the pixel mines I go. Today is my first day as the Lead Combat Designer for Bioware Austin.

In the jobs page at Bioware it is interesting to notice one of the “skill sets” recommended:

Familiarity with fantasy role-playing games is a must.

From SirBruce (attendible or not):

In a surprising statement at E3, Rich Vogel says they are aiming for 1 million subscribers, with 200K – 400K being at the minimum of what would be considered successful. This should give us an indication of the potential scope of this game and the resources BioWare is committing to it.

It seems also that the game will have a focus on the “story” (also confirmed by this request), which doesn’t really appeal me since I’m waiting for more interaction, PvP and sandbox-types of games more than content-driven.

This is all I’ve gathered till now. Only one thing is sure, we won’t see much for at least another couple of years:

BioWare, like Blizzard, does not rush things.

I have a long list of stuff I forgot to write about.

Two months ago Shadowbane went naked, erm… free. We were wondering what could be the consequences of this. The most positive expectation was that the game could have been used to promote a possible sequel that we knew was in the works.

Then we got the news that Wolfpack was blowing up. Goodbye optimism.

This week something appeared on the official website of the game:

I am not at liberty to say much at this moment. There is currently an official announcement in the works that will explain things at greater length and detail. At the same time, we know the community has many questions and we do not wish to just ignore the situation. What I can say at this point is that come tomorrow, Shadowbane will still be running and you’ll still have Sachant and myself here to do what we do best. You will also see Jinx, who is new to the Shadowbane Team but an old member of the community itself.

Let me dispel any rumors before they begin. Today Wolfpack Studios has been dissolved and is no more. With that said, members of Wolfpack are reforming under a new group. This group will be working with Ubisoft to help usher in the next era of Shadowbane.

In other words, do not go anywhere! The Saga that is Shadowbane has many more chapters to be written and read!

And from Ubiq:

So yesterday was my last day at Wolfpack Studios, which is I believe now officially closed down. Yesterday was an odd day, with basically two dozen people sitting around chatting and playing Magic, waiting to be fired. Er, “downsized”. Whatever.

As it stands now, it looks like a new studio will arise phoenix-like from the ashes of Wolfpack. That new studio will initially work on providing contract service and support for other MMO developers, and use the earnings to pitch a next-generation MMO. Some of the contract work is lined up already. As for the original title, it’s far too soon to say what it will be.

As for me, I’m not joining in on the above adventures. I’m pursuing an altogether different alternative, which will be revealed all in good time.

It sounds like a split. Some guys in the studio will stay and pass to the new one and hopefully work on a new mmorpg when the times are mature (unlikely, imho). While Ubiq and maybe some of his mates are moving to something else.

On Corpnews they say SB will need to find an alternate revenue model. It will be interesting to see how this goes as well.

EDIT: The new studio formed is named “Stray Bullet Games”.

The soap opera continues.

Small update and some precisations now that I dispelled some doubts that didn’t make sense.

See my previous guesses.

Fact #1 – Dungeon Runners is being developed in Austin and not in Cali. As someone remarked in the comments.

Fact #2 – Remember Blizzard’s devs leaving to join NCSoft? Well, these guys ARE NOT working on Dungeon Runners.

Fact #3 – Dungeon Runners was being developed by another company (Realm Interactive) with another title (“Exarch”, which also came from “Trade Wars: Dark Millennium”). For various reasons it passed to NCSoft who is reworking it substantially (I guess the release isn’t so soon as I thought).

Fact #4 – The Blizzard’s guys have really their own studio in Orange Country (known as “NCOC”), but working on something that is still unannounced.

It seems that Dungeon Runners went through many reiterations. See this three years old interview with the lead designer and notice how those screenshots resemble to those from Dungeon Runners. It looks like Joe Madureira followed the project all along as someone smartly noticed.

In its first incarnation (Trade Wars) the game was planned for a Q1 2002 release (and was a RTS). Wow, that’s four years ago. I originally thought the game had been quickly hacked together in a few months, it seems I couldn’t have been more wrong. It had a twisted, long history.

No idea if we’ll know more about all this at the E3. As Lum wrote in the link above, he isn’t working for any of those projects.