by Jeff Woleslagle on Apr 23, 2010
Loading... is the premier daily
MMOG news and commentary
newsletter, only from Ten Ton Hammer.
The biggest news
story in the wide world of MMOGs this week was undoubtedly the Warner
Bros. acquisition of Turbine. While it remains to be seen exactly what
kind of impact this will have on the future of fan favorites DDO and
LotRO, certain elements of the deal are worth a closer inspection. Join
Jeff
“Ethec” Woleslagle as he
takes his best spaghetti western
inspired shot at it today in Loading… The Good, the Bad and
the Ugly
You vote with what you
view at Ten Ton Hammer, and the
result
is the Ten Ton Pulse (
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/thepulse/" target="_blank">What
is The Pulse?).
Here
are today's top 5 Pulse results:
Biggest
movers this week:
size="-1">Upcoming
Events
One of our favorite
Turbine personalities commented on his love of Spaghetti Westerns in a
recent edition of the
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/podcasts/live">Ten
Ton Hammer Live podcast, so in
Adam
Mersky’s honor (and because
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros" target="_blank">Warner
Bros. holds the rights to
another set of Clint classics, the Dirty Harry series),
today’s Loading explores the good, the bad, and the ugly
behind
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/83555">Warner
Bros. acquisition of Turbine.
The
Good - Turbine has been on
a tear ever since Asheron’s
Call 2 went the way of the
mastodon. Despite lackluster PvP and an
increasing feeling of disconnectedness between new players and the
newest content,
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro">The
Lord of the Rings Online
remains very
strong in our
Pulse numbers and will only continue to gather excitement and attention
as the fellowship inches closer to Mordor. DDO has become a case study
in both free-to-play conversion and execution, and devs would do well
to read up on Fernando Paiz’s interesting comments on how
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/events/gdc2010/ddo">the
microtransaction model democratizes games.
But Turbine also has big
ambitions, and big ambitions need deep
pockets. As in Warner Bros. sized pockets. We know Turbine has set
their sights on a console MMORPG, a feat that few devcos have
accomplished and (in my opinion) none particularly well. Like the old
song, it’s going to take a whole lot of spending money and a
whole lot time to do it right, child.
More interestingly, however, is
that old, entirely unconfirmed rumor
that Turbine is working on a Harry Potter MMORPG. Even if
it’s just a coincidence that Warner Bros. has the film rights
to the Harry Potter series, the acquisition will undoubtedly smooth the
way for Turbine to develop major IPs and licenses in the future, should
such plans suit their WB overlords. I’m holding out for a
Looney Tunes MMORPG, personally.
The
Bad - Warner Interactive,
WB’s game development arm, has
done plenty of light fare - mostly cartoon and film adaptations whose
success, it’s no secret, comes on the strength of the name
rather than their gaming brilliance and panache. Unfortunately, all we
know about Warner Bros. and MMORPGs is
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/207">The
Matrix Online,
which
is
hardly a flattering reference. In fact, it was a game built on a
collapsing IP - though an IP that reported made a cool billion for WB -
and probably was just about as stillborn as an MMORPG can be. Whether
TMO was WB’s way of kowtowing to the Wachowski Brothers or
just an experiment gone bad and promptly sold off and eventually
cancelled, it doesn’t do WB much credit. Whether WB learned
their lesson about what halfways efforts amount to in the MMORPG world
or not could really make or break Turbine just when they were finding
their focus.
The
Ugly - I’m no
expert on valuation, but the rumored $160
million price tag seems pretty low for a company making a mint on DDO
microtransactions and with over a rumored 400K LotRO subscribers too.
Also in the ugly category, Turbine had been the biggest privately owned
games studio in the US, and without the obfuscatory influence of a
major publisher, it was always easier to get the straight dope from
Turbine. That’s likely to change now, if past experience with
assimilated developers is any indicator.
So that’s my take on
the Warner Bros. acquisition of Turbine,
what’s yours? Did WB get a fire sale bargain? Does something
seem rotten? Or are you excited about Turbine’s prospects
with the caliber of IPs Warner Bros. might bring to the table? Share
your thoughts in the Loading... forum!
87 Ten Ton Hammer
features
in April! 446
in 2010!
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- Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle
and
the Ten Ton Hammer team