This past Monday, LEGO announced that they would be working with NetDevil, developer of Auto Assault, to produce an MMOG interpretation of their LEGO universe. The company cited "technological capability, openness to work with a large community, and their enthusiasm for the LEGO brand" as some of the reasons for partnering with NetDevil. Though it is not indicated in the press release, a graphic accompanying the item on the NetDevil site indicates that the game is scheduled for a 2008 release.
Source: NetDevil [ more info ]

I've been to the NetDevil studios, there were Legos everywhere. That's not to say that they were already working on an agreement with Lego, just that they seemed to have an interest in Lego products. Now to get Lego to realize that the average age of the current MMOG playerbase is substantially higher than "child aged". (They mentioned children in the article twice.)

At any rate, I love Legos and I love MMOGs. So, I'm ecstatic about the idea of playing in a Lego world. I just hope the reality of MMOG players might be a bit incongruous with the semi-simplistic nature of the Lego-verse.

That said... I can't wait. Looks like I'll be begging for another visit to NetDevil.

LOL! This ranks up there with the Tetris and Minesweeper ones. *snicker* Awesome!

And is remarkably similar to the Hello Kitty one. **whistles**

Originally Posted by Woody:

Now to get Lego to realize that the average age of the current MMOG playerbase is substantially higher than "child aged". (They mentioned children in the article twice.)

ToonTown Online is already posed to attempt to capture that elusive and lucrative market of children under the age of 10 whose parents will probably only let them play 1 hour / week.

woop, that sounds promising indeed

(the MMOG that is, not playing as a block)

After reading the press release and going to the web site, it appears that lego believes this will be a game for kids. Hopefully, NetDevil will correct that. I'd love to see a Lego MMOG.

Awesome comic today. I almost spit Mountain Dew on the screen.

Bah! Who wants to be a minifig that can wear scuba gear or a space suit when you could be a 1x3 red brick? **grins**

Lego Starwars while not a "mmorpg" was a heck of a lot of fun. If they had a lego fantasy mmorpg, I could see a lot of people playing it.

eep...

Auto Assault was painful... I won't be counting the days until ths one...

I can imagine many awesome things with this.

Thought #1: Your 'character' is actually just a set of Lego legs. It gains levels, strength, speed, skills, etc. You can then attach body parts, car parts, plane parts, etc to your legs.. basically any lego parts you find. 'killing' an enemy involves whacking on them till their parts go flying off, scattering about. Then can then be picked up and worn or carried off to sell.

The clincher with this is that everything's visual and everything's persistent. That is, if you see an enemy wearing an item (say, a nice hand joint) you have to attack them till the peice flies off and lands on the ground. You then have to go over and pick it up before anyone else does and then visually attach it to yourself. There is not 'inventory' of magical bag space.

Oh, I could go on, certainly.. but we'll just have to wait and see what they do with this.