The after-hours Friday revelation that The Repopulation is relaunching early this year took a lot of our readers by surprise. The much-wanted sandbox MMORPGÂ had been offline for over a year, and though updates had been scarce, we’d been told Above & Beyond was using Fragmented’s profits to re-home Repop in its new engine, so there was grumbling at the lack of transparent progress, but not panic.
Now we know more of the story: that Fragmented wasn’t making enough to make Unreal-based Repop a reality, and in order to get the MMORPG to market and make original backers happy, A&B says the clear choice was to offload the game to Idea Fabrik, the maker of Hero Engine.
Some folks seem OK with this unusual turn of events; they wanted the game either way, and Idea Fabrik does have a vested interest in seeing a solid game come of its engine (and is apparently in good financial health now). Other readers? Let’s just say that there’s been a lot of ranting from all corners — people who feel they were lied to about the nature of the games, people who don’t believe Idea Fabrik can finish the game properly, and people who are just soured on the whole experience of watching A&B give up its dream.
Where do you stand on it, once Idea Fabrik actually gets it out the door? Will you give The Repopulation another chance under its new owners?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
