trion-world-network posts

Last June at E3, the MMO game company Trion World Network broke their cone of silence and gave members of the press a first glimpse of gameplay of their first title Heroes of Telera. Since then, well, there's been nothing. No updates, no new footage or screenhots, not much of anything from the company about the game.

However this week they did announce a couple of new people they have added to their executive team. One is David Reid who takes over as the company's senior vice president of publishing. He previously was the president of NCSoft West. In addition Scott Hartsman has been hired as Trion's chief creative officer and general manager of their Redwood Shores dev studios. He was previously an exec at Sony Online Entertainment.

June's E3 appearance remains the press's only public demo of Heroes of Telera, three years after the company announced its formation. It also has a sci-fi MMO project that is a co-production with the cable TV network SyFy as well as an RTS MMO that's being developed by Petroglyph.

This trailer for Heroes of Telara was shown at E3 2009 and provides a first look at the upcoming fantasy MMORPG. To learn more about the game, check out our impressions here.

"Long after the Age of Legend, when centuries of conflict devastated the fair kingdoms of Telara, the world teeters on the edge of darkness. Now, four rival factions grapple for control of the land as the struggle rages on in the wild territories. Arising from these ashes is Port Scion, a mighty city inhabited by survivors of the old empires. Only the brave and stalwart citizens of Port Scion can restore peace, and change the very course of history, for it is home to the Heroes of Telara."

Download HD Heroes of Telara E3 2009 Trailer (301 MB)

Trion World Network has been working in near stealth mode since it was first launched three years ago but at E3 2009 last week we finally got a chance to check out an actual playable build (hands-off unfortunately) for the company's first product Heroes of Telara. It's an fantasy MMO game that on the surface at least seems like every other fantasy MMO released but when you dig deeper there are some interesting new features.

One of those cool features is the way the game handles your playable character. Normally you pick your character class (Warrior, Mage, Cleric and Rogue) and you are stuck with it unless you make another character. Heroes of Telara lets you actually switch your character class. Yep you can be all those classes in one person. You still have to advance each class individually and there's no real explanation, story-wise, for why your character can suddenly morph from a warrior to a mage but it is pretty cool.

Ahead of showing off the game to the public for the first time at E3 2009 on Tuesday, Trion World Network has launched the official web site for their long awaited first MMO project, the fantasy game Heroes of Telara. The web site has the first screenshots from the game which we have reproduced in our gallery

The screenshots look, well, like a very generic fantasy game but Trion World Network insists that Heroes of Telara is different than the average MMO. One person's action could in theory affect the entire fantasy world. We will get lots more info on the game when we get our E3 2009 demo later this week.

Well, it's certainly about time. After years of press releases and hints, the MMO game developer Trion World Network has finally announced that it will reveal its first game at next month's E3 event. They even gave us the name of the game in today's press release: Heroes of Telara,

Details about the game are still pretty vague with the press release saying that " . . . Heroes of Telara will feature an unprecedented level of rich and dynamic gameplay, driven by recurring events, unexpected challenges and limitless new content." This sounds like the same game that was being directed by Trion World Network founder Jon Van Caneghem. However he has since left the company under a cloud of . . . something so it will be interesting to see how Trion spins this game at E3. The company is also working on an MMO in collaboration with the Sci-Fi Channel (soon to be SyFy . . . ugh) and just announced plans to work with third party developer Petroglyph on an unnnamed MMORTS game.

With last week's announcement that Trion World Network's president and CCO Jon Van Caneghem was "transitioning out" of the company it was looking like the well funded start up game developer might be in trouble. Today the company announced that they are teaming up with developer Petroglyph to create a new massively multiplayer MMO game that will use Trion's technology and be developed by Petroglyph.

Petroglyph was formed by former Westwood Studios/ Command and Conquer vets and has so far created the retail RTS games Star Wars: Empire at War and Universe at War: Earth Assault. Late in 2008 Petroglyph officially announced plans to release the free-to-play MMO Mytheon with publisher True Games. Big Download has confirmed with True Games' PR rep that work on Mytheon is still underway at Petroglyph which means this new game deal with Trion is for an all new project.

We've been wondering what in the wild, wild world of sports has been going on at Trion World Networks for a while now. The company has been good at sending out press releases telling us how much money they have raised to develop their upcoming MMO games ($100 million at last count) but precious little about the actual games.

The company still hasn't revealed any concrete details but our sister site Joystiq did get word today through sources that the company's co-founder and president/chief creative officer Jon Van Canegham has departed Trion. The company has officially confirmed that Canegham has "transitioned out". It tries to put a nice spin on things but when your co-founder leaves under this kind of cloud it does generate a lot of questions as to the state of Trion itself. Reportedly the company could finally reveal its first game at E3 this June.

While the Entertainment Software Association has yet to bring back some of the big guns that left the US trade organization a year ago (naming Activision Blizzard, LucasArts and NCSoft) it has been successful in getting a number of smaller game publishers to join the group. Today the ESA announced that two more companies have been accepted into its membership.

One is the console online company XSEED Games. The other is the Trion World Network, the MMO-oriented online game developer/publisher. As we have reported many times in the past year the company is supposedly working on at least two game projects but has so far revealed little about their titles, much less set a release date. With the two new members the ESA now has 25 companies in its line-up.

Formed nearly three years ago, Trion World Network has been good about sending out press releases about the money they have raised and the people they have hired. However they still haven't revealed much about their actual game products yet, other than one is a fantasy MMO and the other will be a collaboration with the Scifi Channel cable TV network.

Today's press release from the company is no different. They announced that among other new hires they have brought in Thor Biafore as their Customer Support Manager. Biafore previously was the Global Director of Customer Service for Blizzard and obviously was in charge of that department for the launch of their hit MMO World of Warcraft. Which is all well and good, we suppose. But Trion, isn't it time that we actually learn more about the games?

Even if the company you work for has raised a whopping $100 million, it seems you can still be laid off your job. GameCyte reports that's exactly what has happened at Trion World Network. The start-up MMO game developer, formed in 2006, laid off about 20 of its employees this week, according to unnamed sources.

In a follow-up article, Trion's CEO Lars Butler confirmed that layoffs had occurred but characterized it as a minor restructuring of the company. The company's web team has been let go and other positions have been moved from Trion's Redwood Shores, CA studio to its Austin, Texas office. The development of Trion's two unnamed games (a fantasy MMO and a collaboration with the Sci-Fi Channel) has not been affected, according to Butler. Still for a company that was announced way back in September 2006, the fact that they have not yet revealed any solid details for their game titles is troubling.