Sankando – MMO Fallout

Earth Eternal has been in the pipeline for a long time, since it shut down rather unsurprisingly last August, and it was revealed that the game was indeed sold at an auction but to an unknown buyer. Since then we’ve been speculating on who the buyer is, ultimately turning out to be a rather unknown Japanese developer Sankando. Just recently, Sankando rebooted Eartheternal.com:

Welcome back to the Earth Eternal universe! It’s been a long time since we last explored the exciting world of Earth Eternal but we are proud to announce the return of the US Earth Eternal service this Summer! Currently we are putting the finishing touches on the US server and we plan to open the game into Open Beta very soon. Please visit our forums and meet the fantastic community and dev team and check back often for the latest Earth Eternal updates.

Some information has been revealed already pertaining to the relaunch. Unlike the previous version, the new Earth Eternal will not play through the browser but rather its own client. The open beta is expected to start “very quickly,” so keep tuning in to find more.

Unfortunately for those of us in the states and Europe, our hopes that Earth Eternal was picked up by Time Warner were dashed when it was announced that a Japanese company, Sankando, had bought the title and was planning to re-release it under the name Ikimonogatari. Unfortunately, this is where the news descends from triumphant to disappointment: Sankando will only release Earth Eternal in Japan, at least for the time being.

Right now our focus is on the Japanese release. We are investigating our options for an English re-release.

My guess is that Sankando wants to test the game in home territory before they go ahead and launch international operations, or invest the money in translating the game to other languages. That does, however, raise some valid skepticism as to the game’s viability and odds of reaching the Western audience. Earth Eternal was, to scope the game broadly, a bare bones browser version of WoW, albeit with adorable characters, that financially collapsed so hard, there is a black hole where the Earth Eternal offices used to be.

Hopefully the Sankando team will pull a Fantasy Earth Zero (In Japan) and turn Earth Eternal into a financial profiteer. MMO Fallout will continue supporting the game, although I have to admit I may refuse to change the category title. The game will always be Earth Eternal.