Electronic Arts responded immediately upon Blizzard’s “Bard Hero” announcement, that it filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Blizzard Entertainment, related to the recently announced “Bard Hero” class addition to be featured in the highly anticipated “World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King” expansion.

The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in California, relates to a similar patent claim involved in another suit between Gibson and filed earlier against various retailers and EA over the guitar game interface used by Guitar Hero.

The “World of Warcraft” series combined has sold more than 3.64 million units in North America and raked in more than $1.2 billion in 2007 alone for their parent company, Vivendi SA.

Electronic Arts said the planned game class, in which players use a large guitar-shaped axe controller in time with notes on a computer screen to unleash killer riffs with the power of rock to defeat virtual monsters, violate numerous 2005 Guitar Hero patents.

Harmonix developed the first “Guitar Hero” game and was later bought by MTV. Electronic Arts and another company, Activision Inc., as well as several retailers, either develop, distribute or sell one or several of the games in the “Guitar Hero” series.

A representative for Blizzard Entertainment could not be immediately reached for comment on the pending litigation.

Cryptic Studios has just announced their latest MMO in development, Champion’s Online. Before you cry out against yet another Super Hero MMO from the CoH/CoV crew, take note that CO will be bringing an entirely new game to town. Much of whats being implemented goes back 5 years ago to the CoH alpha with features the Cryptic team wanted to do but couldn’t, and others through taking their knocks in developing and running CoH.

LOS GATOS, CA – February 20, 2008 – Cryptic Studios™, one of the leading independent developers of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs), announced today Champions Online™, their first ever self-developed and self-published MMORPG. Champions Online, based on the popular pen-and-paper Champions RPG, will give players the power of total customization of their hero experience while they explore a vast universe of richly detailed 3D environments. Champions Online is slated for release in Spring 2009.

Cryptic Studios also announced today that it has acquired the Champions intellectual property (IP) from Hero Games. First published in 1981, the Champions role-playing game is one of the first RPGs to forgo the traditional dice-rolling system of character generation in favor of a point-based system. Cryptic Studios has licensed back to Hero Games the right to produce Champions RPG books, and the sixth edition of HERO System and Champions, set to release in 2009, will include rules on how to recreate Champions Online characters and scenarios.

“We thought carefully about which IP to select for our next game” said Jack Emmert, chief creative officer of Cryptic Studios. “I’ve been playing the Champions RPG since it first came out and I love both the rich history and the wide array of compelling characters which made this an obvious choice for Cryptic Studios.”

“I am very excited to be working on Champions,” said Michael Lewis, president of Cryptic Studios. “We have a powerful development team, a better engine, more resources, and a vision for a new kind of MMO experience. Bringing the operating side of the business in-house enables us to be more efficent, get our developers even closer to the customer, and ultimately make a better game and long-term experience.”

Champions Online is all about total customization – it will offer a near infinte amount of character customization so that all players will have a unique game experience. Gamers will be able to create their hero’s name, back story, costume, powers and abilities as well as design their own personal arch-enemy and his or her back story, which will guarantee a truly unique experience.

“Champions Online brings a lot to the table. Gamers have literally billions of options to create their own fully customized hero,” Emmert said. “Couple that with the unique character generation system and tons of beautiful, expansive environments in which to roam, and Champions Online is going to be unlike anything MMO fans have seen before.”

More information to follow!

A very suspect report from the Korean Times by Cho Jin-seo cites the NCsoft company’s chief financial officer Lee Jae-ho as saying their will be layoffs at the Austin Texas Studio, along with the characterization of the project as a financial disaster after disclosing an estimated 105 million dollars lost on approximately 5.29 million US dollars in revenue for 2007.

Needless to say given the lack of popularity and credibility for the failing MMO this report is making its rounds among gaming sites, blogs, and forums quoting the article verbatim. Some of the numbers appear inflated, the reporter is also hardly credible due to past reports, but many of the claims in the article smack of enough truth to be plausible but seem cobbled together from multiple undocumented sources.

Here’s a breakdown on the claims made by Cho Jin-seo’s report:

• Tabula Rasa took six years in development before being launched. The project was restarted at least twice, and before the game was was released to retail with numerous bugs and an unfinished end-game. (If I recall correctly, TR was only restarted ONCE 2 years into development. -Scott)
• There will be downsizing of the Tabula Rasa team, Project Managers will stay, additional staff at the studio may be let go. Richard Garriots brother was already replaced by COO Chris Chung.
• Future development is to be done at the corporate level, not locally at the Austin studio.
• Only 5.39 million US dollars in revenue has been realized from Tabula Rasa to date, with only 15 million USD projected for 2008.
• 105 million dollars (estimated) was spent in it’s development, with a claimed 300 person dev team working on the project at one time. (Keep in mind that World of Warcraft’s initial development costs were only estimated at up to 60 million by Vivendi according to their first filed SEC report, saying TR cost more than that.. a bit unrealistic -Scott)
• The Garriott brothers each recieved stock worth nearly 15 million US dollars for signing on.
• NCsoft stock is at an all time low of 38,600 Won or 40.8 US dollars.

Source: The Korea Times

Follow Up: A Tabula Rasa Community Coordinator replied on PlanetTR.com saying “Take the report with a grain of salt.”

What’s your Mythbusters style verdict? True, False, or Plausible?