R.A. Salvatore – MMO Fallout

Perfect World Entertainment has announced that this Tuesday, players will have the opportunity to question R.A. Salvatore himself. Salvatore is the New York Times bestselling author known for his Dungeons & Dragons novels, including the character Drizzt Do’Urden. The upcoming expansion for Neverwinter, Underdark, features Salvatore’s character quite extensively.

As we know, many of our adventurers have traveled across an eternity of campaigns in D&D, so our live stream will be a Q&A session for and by the community. We’ve heard many a tale of how Salvatore’s stories have inspired or changed your lives, which makes us all the more excited to host this stream. This is your chance to not only ask any questions you may have about his novels, characters or writing process, but also a chance to show him how far his influence has reached.

Players are encouraged to leave their questions and comments in the official forums, which will be answered in the live stream on Tuesday.

(Source: Neverwinter)

“From the mediocre game that nobody bought and doesn’t really like that much, comes a big giant version of that game!”
-Todd McFarlane

Todd has a point. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning released one month ago and sales figures place the title at over one third of a million sales. Now that gamers are well versed in the realm of Amalur and the inner working concepts of fate, the team at 38 Studios is instituting phase two of Operation Franchise: Release an MMO. Labeled Project Copernicus, the Kingdom of Amalur MMO is set for release later this year, 2012.

I have my own concerns over Amalur’s prospects for a 2012 release. Assuming the game can hit its 2012 release, the folks at 38 Studios will be competing against The Secret World, TERA, Guild Wars 2, the new World of Warcraft expansion, Neverwinter, and more. Never mind the recent and future free to play transitions of existing MMOs, of course the existing market as it is.

I have high hopes for Amalur Online (my name), but I also recognize the kind of risks that are taken when a developer puts out an MMO for the first time. Crafting an MMO is very different from creating a single player game, and 38 Studios did the smart move by creating a fan base and setting out a base expectation for quality.

More on Amalur Online (not the actual name) as it appears.