The hook on the door for Midgard

[doma]

its all here:
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A Letter from the Creative Director to the Midgard Community

It may sound brutal, but there are several reasons why we're not going to proceed with Midgard at this point.

If you look at the massively multiplayer online worlds in production, it's obvious that there are lots of great medieval fantasy games in the pipeline, and many of them will feature game-play similar to what we’ve designed for Midgard.

Midgard was a unique concept, and it was never going to be "just another fantasy world". After all, it was based around the exciting history and mythology of the Viking Sagas. But, since much of modern fantasy springs from Northern European mythology, Midgard would still be pitched against a number of broadly similar settings.

Basically, what that means, is that Midgard was the right game at the wrong time.

There’s still some hope, however distant and faint. Midgard remains a strong and unique concept, and we'd love to get back to it... some sunny day.

If we ever do decide to restart the project, however, Midgard won't see the light of day until 2006 - at the earliest. We're going to keep the website and the forums up-and-running, but don't expect to hear anything more about the game... at least not for another few years.

So there you have it, guys. Thanks for your support and for sticking with us this long, and keep in mind that, although I'm as heartbroken as you are, I also believe that we've made the right decision. Our options are wide open now, and Funcom will make another massively multiplayer online game.

In the meantime, go play Anarchy Online! It may not have any Vikings or longboats or fjords, but it's a great game getting better by the day!

Farewell,
Ragnar
Ex-Game Director of Midgard (RIP)
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what do you guys think? good or bad news?

-d-

[Bionitrous]

A real shame. Everything I heard about Midgard was basically opposite to everything that AO got wrong IMHO.

No story promises.
Player empowerment.
A true skill system.
Tradeskills being a major focus.
Community environmental resource usage.
Player run economy.
Item decay.
City siege.

All that wrapped up in Vikings and Barbarians with no elves in velvet boots had me looking forwrad to it.

[doma]

midgard was shaping up to be REAL good. as you said , the exact opposite of AO. I was a true believer , until they canned it

[doma]

bump

[Tnekor]

Woah... they canceled Midgard!? What I've heard about it and read on various sites, it sounded very interesting. *sob*

This was bad news indeed...