In reality everyone should be supporting and praying that Curt Schilling can turn this around. A successful MMO means a future for the company, the employee’s, gamers and a win for the state of Rhode Island. 38 Studios going under means gamers, the company and all its employee’s and most importantly the tax payers of Rhonde Island all lose. No one, even the most jaded critic should want this but that did not stop the hate from flowing in comments and message boards. I guess it just goes to show haters gonna hate.

Out of the blue today comes the news that 38 Studios made the payment to the REIDC and not only that they released the first peak of their MMO and its been announced the target launch date for the game is now June 2013. Great news for sure but bitter sweet if Curt and company can’t find a way to make it through this dark time. Curt is a fighter and I still have faith that this can all turn out right for everyone involved.

Now 38 Studios is under no obligation to tell us anything until they are good and ready. I am also not mad or even disappointed as I know developing a game like this takes a ton of work and things get pushed back. I would even prefer they delay the release of the game to do it right instead of rushing out a buggy POS game. That said part of bringing a new MMO to market is managing fans expectations and in this area I feel 38 Studios could do a better job. Common guys, give us MMO fans something, anything!

So to some this may seem like a big suprise but not to me because I reported back in Sept 2010 that Copernicus scheduled release date is September 2012.

So to recap we have the RIEDC who drafted the deal with 38 Studios for the 75 million state backed loan which has the sheduled release date for the game as Sept 2012. You add two big salary VP’s to your team, this has to be because your entering the next phase of your business which is gearing up for release in 6 months time. Last but not least you have Todd McFarlane confirming the game is supposed to come out later this year. The game has been in development for over 5 years with many veteran MMO developers and they said from day one they were not going to show the world their game until it was ready. I think that time is very near and I hope for all us MMO gamers its going to redefine and move the genre forward and be filled with AWESOMENESS!

The latest RPG franchise from Electronic Arts has stormed the charts in its debut week, taking No.1.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is the first new IP to reach the top of the charts since Deep Silver’s Dead Island last September – and the first new RPG IP to grab No.1 since Nintendo’s Pokémon Red way back in 1998.

It knocks last week’s No.1 – another RPG, Final Fantasy XIII-2 – down one place, followed by another new entry at No.3, 2K Games’ The Darkness II. The only other new entry to make it into the Top 20 was Deep Silver’s Catherine at No.20.

Source

This article by R A Salvatore does a fantastic job of explaining it all, of how the world of Amalur came to be and how it changed to be more then just the MMO. As a fan its my hope that soon we will know and experience both the world of Reckoning from the team at BHG and the MMO world 38 Studios has been working on since the company was founded. Exciting days lay ahead my friends, exciting days indeed!

The following article is written by fantasy author R A Salvatore on his work on the Kingdoms of Amalur games:

World-building is, mostly, an exercise in philosophy and logic.

Every culture has creation and destruction myths; building a world means exploring these and, perhaps, determining if one of them might actually be true.

In any case, these myths, or religions, are often shaped by the environment, both political and physical, and they, in turn help shape cultures.

Mark Twain once noted that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure rhymes. If you study history, you see the truth of that. Cultures follow a pattern, human needs demand certain systems, and there is a beautiful symmetry to be found in putting one culture beside another.

So take our own human history viewed through an honest prism. Now turn that prism just a bit to the side — for example, pretend that one of the more primitive creation-destruction myths is actually true (consider the 2012 Mayan craze currently hitting pop culture). In this skewed vision, add in elements to fit the new “truth” of history, the way Dan Brown did in The DaVinci Code, (and many others did before him) and you’ll find yourself amazed at how well those elements “fit” into the question of what really happened versus what we know from textbooks.

This is the secret of world-building, whether you’re recreating or reinterpreting our world history, or creating an entirely new entity. And a second secret: it’s a blast. I mean that. You are, in effect, concocting a gigantic conspiracy theory, and admit it or not, people love conspiracy theories.

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