Perpetual cans Gods & Heroes News

PC MMO News by Robert Purchese

11 October, 2007

Perpetual Entertainment has stopped work on massively-multiplayer online game Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising, and the project is now on "indefinite hold".

Confirmation of its demise came from developer boss Chris McKibbin, who wrote an open letter to fans on the official website - just weeks after announcing that the game had been temporarily delayed.

"The development team established some very lofty and ambitious goals when the initial work was started on Gods & Heroes," explained McKibbin. "Recently, we took a step back to evaluate the competitive landscape, the game's current state, and the overall goals for our organisation."

"And while we are truly proud of and pleased with what we have created in Gods & Heroes, we also realize that achieving the level of quality and polish that we are committed to will take a significant investment."

Perpetual will instead focus its resources on Star Trek Online, offering jobs to those made redundant by the recent move. It perhaps confirms observations that the traditional fantasy genre is too crowded and that a strong brand is the bread and butter of a successful MMORPG.

Star Trek Online is currently in the early stages of development, with open beta and retail release dates yet to be determined. Head over to the official website to catch up on developer logs and all sorts of concept art.

Are you excited about Star Trek Online on PC?
View Eurogamer readers most anticipated games

Yes

Thanks!

Want to comment on this article? Log in, or register!

Poster

Comment Low-scoring comments hidden. Log in to see them!

kallenai

11/10/07 @ 12:12

You buried this comment

Comment below viewing threshold

Show

Another MMO bites the bullet because of being rushed by the publishers to get it to market when it was clearly not ready. It's pretty depressing really how often this is happening in the MMO market now, Vanguard being a prime example and Tabula Rasa heading in the same direction. LOTR Online to a lesser extent suffers from a similar problem in that the game has about 2-3 months content, but as soon as you hit the level cap there is simply nothing to do, the gamer is left with the sense that it could have been improved with another few months development.

Seems publishers watched Blizzard make a mint out of World of Warcraft and decided they wanted a bit of the cake so push developers to get new mmo's to market before they are properly thought out or developed. Tested Gods and Heroes and although it wasn't going to set the MMO scene alight it had some novel ideas, so its a pity its been canned.

Edited 1 times, most recently on 11/10/07 @ 13:12

Brogan

11/10/07 @ 12:37

You buried this comment

Comment below viewing threshold

Show

When you quote someone's written statement can we not get rid of the stupid Z's, please. Surly it would be fairly easy to do some thing like this....

"... we also reali[s]e..."

just gets on my tits is all.

Wrestlevania

11/10/07 @ 12:57

You buried this comment

Comment below viewing threshold

Show

...aw crap. :-(

Edited 1 times, most recently on 11/10/07 @ 13:58

Bumhug360

11/10/07 @ 13:22

You buried this comment

Comment below viewing threshold

Show

"Another MMO bites the bullet because of being rushed by the publishers to get it to market when it was clearly not ready. It's pretty depressing really how often this is happening in the MMO market now, Vanguard being a prime example and Tabula Rasa heading in the same direction. "

Tabula Rasa rushed! Its been in development for 7 years (officialy 6 as Garriott wasnt supposed to be working on anything for a year after he left EA).

Bleh

11/10/07 @ 14:31

You buried this comment

Comment below viewing threshold

Show

It's just a shame that they stopped with the game but I can understand it. I was in the beta and it was really great game but the game just lacked to much to stand off against all the other, no crafting and pvp from the start. That's stuff you really going to need if you want to survive with a mmo in my opinion.

AOFanboi

11/10/07 @ 15:27

You buried this comment

Comment below viewing threshold

Show

Tabula Rasa rushed! Its been in development for 7 years (officialy 6 as Garriott wasnt supposed to be working on anything for a year after he left EA).

Well, you need to count from the last total redesign, so the real dev time is probably shorter. :)

I liked as comment I saw that they refocus because G&H would compete with Age of Conan - and possibly lose - while Star Trek would face hardly any competition in the sci-fi field. A very good statement at the horrid mess that Star Wars Galaxies has turned into. There's basically just EVE and Vendetta out there, and both of those are closer to Elite than to a traditional MMO.

mcmonkeyplc

11/10/07 @ 17:36