Alganon has been offline for two months, is now owned by Derek Smart’s 3000AD

Nine years ago on Massively-that-was, we began covering the MMORPG known as Alganon – you’ll recall it as a bit of a World of Warcraft clone, long before that phrase was trite. You’ll also recall it as a game that weathered a major controversy back in 2010, when the game’s president, David Allen, was pushed out of the company. Why? According to none other than Derek Smart, who replaced him, Smart “fired” Allen “for insubordination and for acting against the best interests of the company,” investors, game, and team, arguing that he himself had a better plan for the game’s business model. Allen retaliated, accusing Smart of a “smear campaign” and suing him to boot (the lawsuit was settled in 2010 and Quest walked back some of Smart’s statements).

Since then, the game has muddled along without making headlines for much of anything besides an expansion in 2014. But that might be changing, as over the past few months, the game’s future has appeared less certain.

Back in October, Smart told Steam players that because of the game’s low population, the team hadn’t been investing much into the game for the prior year. “We were planning a visual update, and another DLC,” he wrote, “but those plans are on hold for now.”

But then in November, the game went offline for what Smart characterized as a server maintenance and migration. The store page, he wrote, would be disabled “to prevent new people from buying the game and being unable to connect.” It’s apparently been down this whole time.

Just two weeks ago, Smart posted that the switchover is more than just “unplugging a machine, moving it, then plugging it back in and turning on the power.” He said most of the servers were old and needed maintenance or replacement; moreover, apparently his company, 3000AD – which operates Line of Defense – has taken over the game.

“There are other business related issues which are also a part of this on-going process. e.g. though not announced yet, my company 3000AD which took over and has been operating the game since 2010, now owns QOL as well as the game, having bought out the majority investors of Quest Online. The ink on the deal has barely dried. Alganon will be back with new servers at a new datacenter where 3000AD hosts its titles, instead of where QOL has hosted it since 2006. And we’re also planning on releasing in other territories, as well as doing some marketing, and possibly an RTS game similar to what we did with our multi-platform game, Line Of Defense Tactics.”

“Like all other MMO games that were sunset, if we were doing that, we would say so,” he wrote.

That, of course, hasn’t stopped speculation about a de facto sunset on Reddit.