ANOTHER NCSoft title, flood2crush strategery in full effect

[schild]

http://www.exarchonline.com/

Seriously, does it stop? Anyway, looking at the screenshots it looks like it's going to be NCSoft's EQ Clone (unless Tabula Rasa turns out to be one as well).

Here's the press release (well the worthwhile part):

AUSTIN, Texas, March 6, 2003-NCsoft Corporation, the world's largest online game company, today announced details of its upcoming online game, Exarch™. The project is under development by Realm Interactive, LLC™, located in Phoenix, Arizona and was previously identified under the working title of Trade Wars: Dark Millennium™.

Exarch (pronounced ex'-ark) features a fast-paced action RPG combat experience set in an enormous virtual world. Players can explore, battle and quest in multiple environments including mystical forests and foreboding alien catacombs. The sci-fi fantasy style allows players to forge into battle with classic melee-style weapons and armor such as chain mail and long swords or futuristic armaments such as power armor and plasma guns.

Exarch takes place thousands of years in the future within a distant universe. The Empire has recently collapsed, leaving the surviving Exarchs (the ruling governors of the once proud Empire) in a struggle to save what remains. Players will choose sides in an epic struggle that will determine the fate of all living things. Questing will be integrated into practically every aspect of the game and will combine combat with adventure in a world full of terrible monsters such as mutants, undead, robots and dragons.

The world will come alive thru the creative concepts of well-known comic book artist Joe Madureira. Creator of the blockbuster comic book series Battle Chasers and former artist of Marvel's Uncanny X-Men, Madureira has been a leading force in the comic industry for more than a decade. His unmistakable style of character design and visual storytelling have earned him international acclaim and helped sell millions of books worldwide.

More exciting information on Exarch will be added to the website at http://www.exarchonline.com in the coming weeks.

I can't even think of anything else to say about the sheer number of MMO's NCSoft is producing, other than, where the are they going to get all the players to make them all a success?

Edit: Just wanted to emphasize this - Mutants, Undead, Robots, AND Dragons. Please, please, please let there be a gun that shoots bees with an alt fire that shoots spiders.

[Stormwaltz]

I believe this one is vaporware. At least some of the devs are at ArenaNet now.

[waylander]

How many more level grind games are they going to put out, and people are going to put up with?

I know CoH and L2 are starting to suck wind.

[Alluvian]

"a fast-paced action RPG combat" could be fun if they actually do that.  EQ's marketers could call their game that as well depending on how slimy they felt on any given day.

Personally I think the primary should shoot spiders.  Although I could just remap my mouse keys I guess.

[Mi_Tes]

Perhaps a little too close to the concept behind Richard Garriot's Tabula Rasa for NCsoft.  Add to it that Joe Madureira is helping with Tabula Rasa (signing TR materials at E3 and provided the cover art of TR for the June issue of Computer Gaming) and the last press release was in 2003, it really doens't look like Exarch is going anywhere.

[HaemishM]

Joe Madureira is a decent comic artist, though he was much better suited to Battle Chasers than X-Men, IMO. The screens definitely look like his work. I'm not sure how much sci-fi will actually be in it; more like steampunk (without the punk).

[RipSnort]

I remember saving that link almost a year ago. It doesn't appear to have been updated since. I really liked the screen shots though. Gameplay aside, graphically it looked like a cool environment. Graphics definitely effect how much of bad game mechanics I'm willing to put up with.
Even before trying to play L2 in beta I hated the game because my badass male warrior looked like a 14 year old girl's dream date-candy ass-anime puss.

[schild]

Generally if something dies we hear about a company dropping it (in this case NCSoft) or out of work developers. Is there a press release anywhere saying that this game no longer exists? or anything?

[Krakrok]

Saw on Slashdot that NCSoft just snapped up Jon Van Caneghem (New World Computing hero) to work on yet another unannounced MMOG project. He did Might & Magic and Planet's Edge among others. Maybe NCSoft is taking the "lots of little 50,000 user target games" idea to heart.

Press release is here

[Venkman]

Yea, the Press Release was from last year. Exiarch was in NC Soft's booth at last E3, and felt like an EQ/Diablo clone. I'm not surprised there hasn't been a thing said about it since.