Turbine Vs Cryptic: Turbine Introducing Forgotten Realms?

In the past, I’ve discussed the ongoing “fight” between Turbine and Cryptic Studios over how Cryptic’s upcoming Neverwinter MMO will directly compete with Turbine’s Dungeons and Dragons Online. After an undisclosed settlement with Turbine, Cryptic made it clear as day that Neverwinter is not an MMO, and never will be an MMO. That being said, when Perfect World Entertainment purchased Cryptic, the developer did a flip and announced that the game would be a full open world MMO.

According to DDO Cast, Turbine has been busy purchasing domain names relating to Dungeons and Dragons, as well as Forgotten Realms. The optimist in me wants to believe that Turbine is planning on throwing the first punch by expanding the game into Forgotten Realms territory, and pulling back any customers who might have left for Cryptic’s game. The pessimist in me, however, feels the need to point out that companies buy domain names all the time for a variety of reasons. A selection of domains are below:

ddounderdark.com
ddoforgottenrealms.com
ddo-motu.com
lolthiscoming.com (Lolth is coming, thank you comments.)

But why is this relevant? The Dungeons and Dragons community is fractured (to say the least) when it comes to Eberron and Forgotten Realms, to the point where some won’t even touch Turbine’s MMO because it takes place in the former rather than the latter. In the event that Turbine does launch a Forgotten Realms expansion, it would offer a substantial increase to their potential player base.

(Source: DDO Cast)

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