Enjoy the MMO experience in City of Heroes? Tabula Rasa? Guild Wars? Like the powerful graphical possibilities present in Gears of War and BioShock? What if you could have both? Today, NCsoft revealed that two new “top-tier” MMOs would be powered by Unreal Engine 3. We’ve none of the specifics yet, but we can present the requisite bold, forward thinking quotes from both parties to the licensing agreement:
“Unreal Engine 3 has a well structured rendering pipeline, and its graphical quality is superb thanks to advanced lighting and shadowing systems,” said Young-muk Choi, lead programmer, Development Unit, NCsoft. “Tools within the Unreal Editor empower us to instantly produce and optimize our outputs, and we especially love how the engine enables designers to easily prototype concepts without the need for programming.”
“NCsoft pioneered online game development using Unreal Engine, as evidenced by Lineage II, one of the most commercially successful and enduringly popular online games in history,” said Jay Wilbur, vice president of Epic Games. “We are thrilled to take this next step with NCsoft, and are fully committed to supporting their projects. We expect to be completely wowed by what they do with our latest technology.”
Want to see the beautiful effects that might have pushed NCsoft over the edge? You’re in luck; Shacknews just posted Epic’s official GDC2008 tech trailers in glorious HD. I know, I know, everyone and their game-developing second cousin is jumping all over Unreal Engine 3 these days, but you have to admit — the engine can produce some very pretty pictures.
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