14 DAY TRIAL // Electronic Arts is definitely going strong these days, as it is launching some very interesting titles, like Dead Space or Red Alert 3, and has a couple of very big projects, like Star Wars: The Old Republic or EA Sports Active, currently in development. The company said, through the voices of various officials, that players would see a new side of it, and quality games would become something standard for EA, which was a corporation known for producing subpar titles, just to get the money from the customers.
Part of this new strategy, is the recent announcement that the company has made, in which it says that it will develop an MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) based on its very successful Dungeon Keeper series of games. This new title will be developed by the Chinese game studio NetDragon Websoft, which will handle everything related to its creation. EA will take care of the publishing and it offers the rights to the Dungeon Keeper IP (Intellectual Property).
Sadly for all of those MMORPG fans out there, the game will be slated to appear only in Asia, specifically China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau, as there were no concrete references to other territories in the official press release. Unfortunately, neither EA nor NetDragon gave any other details on the game, and they limited themselves to saying that it would be an MMORPG with elements from the original game.
"We are delighted to enter into an agreement with EA in the development of our first 3D MMORPG. Our partnership with this internationally renowned game developer is proof of our capabilities in game operations and development as well as a reflection of our market reputation. Capitalizing our strength to create a strong gaming experience, powerful operating platform and unmatched expertise within China's online game market, we are confident that Dungeon Keeper Online will not only become successful in the Greater China region but also achieve remarkable results overseas," said Liu Dejian, chairman and executive director of NetDragon.
For those of you who don't know, Dungeon Keeper was originally published by Electronic Arts in 1997 and featured a unique twist on the classic dungeon raiding games. You weren't the hero, who killed the monsters in dungeons, but the creator of it. It was your task to design the passageways in the dungeon and populate them with monsters or traps, so that the characters that were raiding it wouldn't succeed in their quests.
All in all, this is an interesting announcement, which is sure to make a lot of fans excited about the game. Let's just hope that EA will bring it to other territories besides Asia.